Cambodia Noir (19 page)

“You wan' room?” He chomps down on the wad in his cheek. “Ve'y quiet.”

“Yeah. Two nights. I'll pay now.”

He spares me a sideways glance as I hand him some bills. “You wan' company?” he murmurs, looking at his fingernails like they might be fakes. “I know nice girls.”

“I'm all set, thanks.”

“Wan' boy? Ve'y young, ve'y clean.”

“Just me and Mary Jane.”

“End of hall, turn left, all the way to end, left again.”

I nod and walk down the hall. I don't go to the room I've just bought, but to the one the Aussie gave me the key for.

It's tiny, just big enough for a double bed and a little table in a corner. Another near the bed with a lamp on it; fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. That's the main reason for choosing this place: the ceilings are high, and the pasteboard walls they've thrown in between the rooms don't go all the way up. At the top are bracketed air conditioners, surrounded by a patchwork of boards and drywall, occasionally broken by tin ventilation grills. Standing on the table, I can hold my camera up for a view down into the neighboring room.

I take a few test shots, checking the light. The fluorescents next door are off, the lamp on—it's almost too dark. But we don't need A-1 material, just recognizable faces. I check the shots, then take a few more. I can't see what I'm shooting, so I have to figure out how to angle the camera to get the bed and as much of the room as possible—then figure it out again for the doorway. I shoot and erase until I'm sure I can get it right later, in the dark. Here's hoping Charlie can last a couple minutes. When I'm satisfied, I get out the muzzle and put it on the camera. It's totally quiet, but bulky, and I won't be able to see the screen or use the controls when I'm shooting. I take a few more shots, unmuzzle the camera to check them, then put it back. I do it again, and again—until I'm sure.

When I'm ready, I kill the light and sit on the bed. Take my shoes off, then pull a couple Dexedrine from my pocket and swallow them dry. Wouldn't do to fall asleep now. I could have a long wait.

In the dark, time moves slow. I can't risk a light. Alone with my thoughts—not where I want to be. I keep going back to June. There was something else in the journals, something important. I'm trying to remember—but it's lost in the fog

in Kabul

and there are bad dreams there, shapeless figures waiting for me to say their names and let them in. To chase them off, I think about the beer I'll have when I'm done. About the river, the lights of the river, glittering off the water in the night

dark shapes moving beneath

Channi's smile as she hands me a frosted mug; her frown as she talks about her past.

She's a puzzle. Good Cambodian girls don't work in bars. Not at night, not with foreigners. They don't read your palms. But she's not dancing in a bikini, either—won't be what everything here wants her to be. Playing all sides: a Mormon and a waitress and, maybe, a girlfriend. Not good, not bad, but a little of both. I try to picture her face, and her eyes ask me how I got here. I don't have an answer.

I get edgier as the night goes on. Two or three times I hear footsteps in the hall and climb up on the table—but they always die away. Then, a little past two thirty, someone reaches the door next to mine and stops. I'm ready. Start taking quick bursts as soon as I hear the key in the lock. I try to hit the shutter just as their voices get clearer—my best chance for a face shot. Sound of giggling. I shoot again and again until I hear the door close, then change the angle to catch more of the room. I'm breathing deep and quiet. There's a clink, like glasses—hopefully the Aussie's sober enough to spike Charlie's drink. The less he remembers, the better we all are. I aim the camera through the lattice and shoot again, maybe another face shot. The drinking doesn't last long, quickly replaced by the sounds of lips, buttons, zippers.

There's a thud, and a voice I don't know says, “I turn light off.”

I catch my breath.

“Leave it on,” the Aussie says. “I want to look at you.” There's a moan. I guess he's being persuasive.

I angle the camera on the voices: standing by the door, then back as they settle on the bed. They're taking their time. Good. I shoot a couple more bursts, checking the glowing dial on my watch.

To time myself, I imagine what they're doing, a selection of positions and actions. Now on all fours, now leaning on the wall. I imagine the sound of the shutter inside the casing: snap snap snap. Reaching for each other—

Snap snap.

After maybe five minutes of this, I think I have enough to risk checking the camera, so I step down and carefully pull off the muzzle, shielding the light of the screen with a thin blanket.

Lots of motion blur, it's inevitable. I got a recognizable angle on Charlie in the door, and another when he's got the Aussie's face in his crotch, but you can't quite see what's happening. Most of the shots of actual sex are muddy: reaching arms, the burled shape of a spine; dark spaces between, where hands and mouths and cocks touch just beyond the reach of light and lens. The Aussie biting Charlie's nipple. A couple that are almost the money shot, the boy on the bed with Charlie riding cowgirl—face turned away, but he'd be hard to mistake if you knew him.

Not enough to quit yet. There's a better picture somewhere.

The sounds from the next room are getting louder, more frantic. Not much time left. I double-check the settings and muffle again. As I get up on the stool, I hear more footsteps in the hall.

A moan from next door.

Snap snap snap.

The footsteps pause, just outside.
Why—

Snap snap.

A key clicks in a lock. Their room.

I freeze, not even breathing. The boys don't notice, absorbed in their two-man ballet. My finger twitches.

Snap snap snap.

I hear a door opening and a shout—low, breathless, choked with fear and surprise. It ends in a wet-sounding thud. A splash, like water. Snap snap snap, even as another cry begins and ends in the sound of flesh on flesh. A sob, a gasp, a crash of glass. Something patters against the wall I'm standing behind, and I bite my lip so I don't start screaming. I can smell it, like a butcher's shop but a hundred times stronger.

Another thud.

It's happened in a second. I need to move but my body won't respond. I'm frozen, imagining what's on the other side of the wall. It's worse than seeing, and my stomach rises. Don't throw up.

Move!

Legs won't move.

Only thing I can do:

Snap snap snap.

My head is pounding, my mind screaming at me: run.

They'll see you.

Will they come here? Should go to the door, get behind it—shit, there's a hammer in my bag, maybe I can sandbag one of them and get out.
And then? Away? How?

Thunk thunk thunk.

Snap snap snap.

Metal clatters to the ground, then silence.

Whoever they are, they don't bother closing the door, and I hold my breath as they step into the hall. They're walking fast, not running. No hurry. Their footsteps go down the hall and around the corner.

My body is mine again. I pivot the camera around the room, trying to catch every possible angle. Then I get down.

Got to get out of here. Right now. I stuff the camera in the bag. Shoes. What have I touched? I wipe everything I can think of with the corner of a sheet, still in the dark. Silence outside—I might only have seconds. No hesitation. Open the door and step out into the hall like nothing's wrong. Wipe the knob with my shirt, drop the key on the floor. The other room is lit up, the door hanging open. The glimpse I get as I pass makes my stomach boil.

Don't throw up—

I hear a voice around the corner: a question, loud and frantic. A door opens. I keep going, trying to match the fast, relaxed pace of those retreating footsteps. More steps now, down that other hall: Running. I don't look back.

I'm not going for the exit: the building could be watched. Instead, I head around the corner to my own room. As I put my key in the lock, I hear a man's shout from the hall I was just in, then a woman's scream that goes on and on and on. The key won't fit. It's not working. My heart's beating faster and faster.

Key's upside down. I curse, turn it, and slip into the room just as doors around me start opening.

There will be panic now. Guests will be rushing to grab their bags and get out before the police come. If I stay calm, I can slip out with them, unnoticed.

Then what?

I had a joint tucked in my pocket for afterward, and now I fumble it out and light up. Takes about fifteen tries. A few quick pulls to steady the speed raging in my blood.

Only then do I take the muzzle off the camera and glance at what I've done.

Christ, I need a fix.

Midnight.

I'm invisible, on an invisible street, the kind you walk past a hundred times before you realize it is your destination: that up ahead, where the road appears to peter out, is a hidden path to a place you'll never have a name for.

I am not sure how I got here. What draws me, night after night, down these pitch-black alleys . . . around the knots of men gambling on the pavement by candlelight . . . past the cramped kitchens visible through glowing windows, where women in pajamas still sweat over camp stoves?

I am a collector—like Benjamin's backwards-facing angel, who from such discarded fabrics wove the whole of the twentieth century. I hoard these nights, store them away in the drawers of memory. I will make from them something astonishing. . . .

I am a liar: I do it because this is when she comes to me.

Stand me anywhere in the pitch black, and I can feel it, tugging under my ribs: a golden wire, strung across the night, connecting me to her. She draws, I follow. And sometimes, walking midnight streets and gazing in through lighted windows, I think I see her: This is the life we almost had, together. When it was just her and me it was hideaways, boltholes, tiny rooms like these, where our breath burned in each other's nostrils, where we cooked off rings plugged into the wall and the smell soaked into our clothes and never left. We smothered each other.

I remember waking to the feeling of her nails on my back, gently tracing hieroglyphs of dream, and she talked to me for hours and hours—though there is little left that I can recall.

I say this as though it happened often . . . as though I had many memories of her. Perhaps it was once, twice? I don't know. The rest of the time it was Father's house: far-off views, mist on treetops. Mother used to joke about those huge windows: she said it was so he'd see them coming.

His world, not ours. She became distant and cold, a figure down a lonely hall in a glittering dress. All that space seemed to make her afraid.

Of the things from my childhood I know are true, there is little more than this.

On a bike, city sliding by. I look back: Am I being followed? In dark streets, there's no way to tell. One arm around the driver, I fumble the phone out of my pocket, break it open, and toss the pieces into the night. Pop another of Gus's Dexedrine. Try to keep breathing.

I came out of the hotel with the crowd; grabbed the first moto I could find. The drivers saw what was happening: five times the fee to get me to Martini's. Not too many places crowded at this hour of the morning, but the taxi-girl clubs are still going. I hand him his money before we've even stopped.

Martini's isn't packed, but there are still bodies at the tables: middle-aged men, the ones who can't quite commit, nursing drinks as they try to find something to talk about with girls in cutoff shorts and bra tops, pretending they're here for more than a commercial exchange.

I make a beeline for the bar, wary of my incongruous backpack and roadkill eyes. I stand out. Get a drink and down it, always watching the door. No one suspicious comes in, so I head for the bathroom and change my shirt and pants for the spares in my bag. Slip out the back, down an alley, listening for footsteps, or bike engines gunning.

Nothing.

I walk a long way to another big street, flag a moto, and stumble over what to tell him. I can't go home. Can't go to the river, or the Heart: places someone looking for me would go. But I need people around: another nightclub. Can't think of a name, not sure where I am, what time it is—late or early, who can tell?

“Dancing. Take me to dancing. With girls.”

The driver nods.

What went wrong? Were we set up? But if someone was onto us, why didn't they know I was there? It doesn't make sense. I've been trying to flush a tail, but there's no point: if the guys who got Charlie and the Aussie knew about me, they'd have killed me in the hotel.