and ugly is just under his skin, almost invisible. My gritty, weary mind slips sideways for a moment and anxiety soaks into the marrow of my bones like blood through a bandage.
We go to sleep.
His is surprisingly long and deep and dark. Nothing flashes behind his eyelids, no beautiful woman dances across his retinas, shedding clothes as she moves. Just sleep, like a taster of death.
And I sleep too, down in the snugness of his chest. But my sleep is fitful, broken and full of images, because that is what I am: a record of a life like an old cine film in a can, curled in on itself so frame lies upon frame upon frame, image doubled over image, from the outer edge of the spool to the tightest curl in the centre. A whole life stored away, but always available for late-night showings. Always ready for curtains to open on one of the countless moments of now.
Swoosh, almost silent, the curtains part to keep me from sound sleep. A short, but a classic, keeping me occupied while he snores.
I watch the scratchy lines move up and down and across the screen, the black-and-white numbers flash in countdown, focus the lens and there it is…
Her apartment: she stands with her back against the open door, one hand on the handle and the other ushering me in, as if she is showing me a portal to a magical land.
‘Here we are,’ she says.
I am gently spinning from alcohol and the closeness of her. I walk past as she holds the door open, aware of the sparks that jump from her to me and me to her. We are a Van de Graaff generator on heat.
There is a smell of patchouli and coffee in her apartment. A sofa, a rocking chair and small portable TV occupy the room. A rug keeps the wooden floor warm, and off to the right I see a kitchen hiding behind a wall and off to the left a bedroom winks.
‘Take a seat. That seat.’ She points to the sofa with its pair of big red cushions and caress-me fabric. I do as I’m told.
‘Whisky?’ She pulls off her hat and scarf and coat in a motion that is so quick it baffles me. Am I that wasted that time is playing its tricks with me?
‘It’s all I have, so it’s all you’re getting.’ And she is sucked into a flashing white light in the kitchen.
I watch my fingers play an invisible miniature set of drums on the arm of the sofa. Then a glass is pushed into my hand. An inch of light-golden liquid sloshes drunkenly around its base while a fat and half-melted candle on the coffee table is lit. A body falls onto the sofa next to me and my shoulder is touching hers. Static builds. I run a hand through my hair to make sure it’s not standing on end. The warmth from the whisky runs down my neck and through my stomach.
‘So?’ she says, curling her legs up under her.
‘So?’ say I.
‘It was a good day.’
‘It was.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you.’
I swirl my whisky around the glass and then my mouth and then my head.
I look at her and she is staring at her knees and the teacup of scotch which she holds there. Her eyes are glazed and flicker in the candlelight and she is smiling.
‘A very good day,’ she says and looks at me and my heart detaches itself from its veins and arteries and tumbles down into my stomach, where it lies stunned, before jumping back and reattaching all its life support.
She looks like she saw it happen.
‘Kiss me,’ she says.
I kiss her.
She dances across my eyes, shedding clothes as she moves.
HELLO GOODBYE
W hen I awake at some point before dawn, there is a voice nearby, its song undulating, growing stronger with the changing light. From further off another two voices travel across the city to me, melodies added to the main theme. It is a human dawn chorus that rises from nothing to something beautiful. It winds its way around my senses and holds me to my bed. I don’t expect it. I have never considered it and its appearance surprises me. I am just here, without expectations or any real knowledge of this country. I have come only out of the need to be rid of my past and with no thought for where that expulsion has taken me. That is why, when the muezzin starts, and other voices join in and fall across the city with the rising sun’s light, I cry. I cry due to the unexpected and simple beauty of the song.
There again it might not just be the call to prayer that makes me cry; it could partly be due to the close call to vomiting from a few hours ago. Maybe too much beer on spicy noodles in an unsteady stomach, maybe too much grass. That could the reason for my tears—strong, strong grass. This is yesterday:
Pak takes me to my new home. He introduces me to Kim and Kim to me. Kim is a man. A Californian man, mid-thirties, tall, in a brown flower-patterned shirt. Pak leaves as soon as he can. He has to be somewhere else. Kim closes the door behind him. My new house is open-plan and cool, white tiled floor, big-cushioned armchairs with wooden armrests, a muted TV showing a small and chubby Asian-American beating up four men in suits with swift and precise movements of an umbrella. There’s a kitchen along one wall and a dining table in front of a window and door to a concrete garden. Four more doors lead off the main room. This is my home.
‘Fuuuuuuccckk. That man is such a fucking fuck, man.’ Kim sits in a chair and puts his long legs out over the small table in front of him. He hits the volume on the remote. ‘Make yourself at fucking home, man.’
I drag my travel-tired rucksack across the tiles, opening doors until I find a room that isn’t a toilet, a shower or a bedroom with Kim’s dirty underwear sniffing the floor. In my room are two single beds; only one is made up, the other still has a plastic cover on the mattress. I lay my rucksack on the unmade bed. Fumbling deep inside one of its pockets I find the pebble. It is smooth and comfortable in my palm. It’s the only thing I’ve allowed myself. The only memory I’ve brought. No photos, no other souvenirs of her, just this pebble. I turn it in my hand, swallow down hard on the two of them who stir at the feel of it and return it back to the pocket. I give my bag a pat.
‘Sleep well.’
I go back and flop in an armchair next to Kim.
The chubby Asian-American on TV is now giving life-changing advice to a small blond American boy, while Indonesian subtitles translate along the bottom of the screen.
‘Yeah, go Sammo. Tell that white boy how to be good. I fucking love Sammo. Beats the shit out of people with toilet rolls and fucking bananas and things like that and is sooo fucking wise.’
I nod. Sammo does look wise.
‘Do you smoke?’ Kim asks me.
Not much. Not recently. Not since Laura.
How much pain have I been in? Too much to remember I’m an addict. I have never once thought about smoking again. Now I remember I am an addict, I want one.
‘Yes. Are they Marlboro?’
‘No, not these, man.’ He waves his brown cigarette under my nose, and for some reason the pungent smell of it makes me think of apple pie. ‘But you can have one if you want.’
‘Cheers.’ I take one and light it. The return of a forgotten comfort, long-time banished. Too pissed off and demented to remember the deadly old habit. It hits my throat like a saw and I cough. Smoke swirls around us like a mist. The sweet smell of scented tobacco hangs in the stillness of the warm and humid evening.
‘Kretek cigarette, man. Strongest cigs in the world.’
‘Tastes like it.’ I know why the smell reminds me of apple pie. Cloves. The taste is surprisingly strong and it’s suddenly soothing my throat, taking the teeth off the saw. My coughing subsides. ‘But very good.’ The clove coats my tongue while the tar slides into my lungs.
‘Anyway