Throw Like A Girl (22 page)

Amazingly in all the confusion, she found her driver for the ride to Pattaya. Or rather, it was hardly amazing since the system for the gratification of well-paying tourists was very efficient. The heat outside was molten. She was glad for the expensive, air-conditioned car, furnished with bottled water and flyers for different area attractions: the Floating Market, temples, elephants, dancing girls in traditional garb, monks, monkeys, waterfalls, snorkeling, world-class shopping, none of which was in evidence or she quite believed existed. Traffic surged. The driver swerved and cornered at thrilling speeds, like the streets in a video game. Sheets of light reflected off a glass-fronted office building. As Melanie watched, an ornate red and gold dragon traveled the full length of the building's front. It took her a moment to realize it was an ad pasted on the side of a bus.

“First time you Thailand?” The driver was proud of his English.

“Yes.” That didn't seem emphatic enough, so Melanie nodded, yes yes yes.

“First you Pattaya?”

Again she nodded, wondering if it was a trick question, and why one answer hadn't been enough. But a middle-aged white woman traveling solo to a notorious center of sexual entrepreneurship might require extra scrutiny. Perhaps she was actually a retired transvestite nightclub performer, or else she was in need of some unguessable variety of personal companionship. Melanie fell asleep again and woke a couple of hours later when they arrived at her respectable, extravagant hotel. She was installed in a room carefully incorporating East meets West: rice paper screens, low platform bed with excellent box spring, big honking television.

It was night, but now she was unable to sleep. Twenty stories up, she watched the hectic lights that outlined the crescent of beach and the life beyond, the lurid goings-on at the beer bars, discos, hostess bars, go-go bars.

She checked her phone again but there were no messages.

She lay down and must have slept a little because she opened her eyes to daylight. She ordered an American-style breakfast from room service. Her head felt like a helium balloon, lightly tethered. She dressed and had the concierge call her driver.

The Christian Relief and Rescue Center was on the edge of the pleasure district. Melanie caught glimpses of jumbled, empty streetscapes with signs in different scripts, their neon gone blind in daylight, cartoon posters of winking, come-hither girls, the fake-looking thatched roof of an open-air bar. It was early and there was still a little freshness in the air, a sea breeze that stirred the cooked, garbagey smells. Street cleaners were hosing down the pavement. Vendors were setting up food carts. Here and there some of the aimless, dissipated sex tourists were out for a stroll, looking as if they were afraid of running into somebody else from Sioux Falls.

The center was housed in a two-story frame house with wrought-iron balconies and tall, flamingo pink shutters. Melanie couldn't help thinking it looked rather like a whorehouse itself, except for the cross out front. She told the driver to wait. The front door was ajar; it opened into a long hallway. The cheerful sound of a typewriter encouraged her. At the first door, a pretty Thai girl wearing a plain white blouse and slacks looked up from her typing and smiled. “Good morning,” she said, her voice a slight singsong.

Melanie's heart rolled around inside her like a pinball. “I'm looking for Poona Chumnoi.”

“Ah,” said the girl. “Ah.” She got up from the desk, recalibrated her smile, and asked Melanie to wait, please.

So she wasn't Miss Chumnoi. She'd been so sure. Left alone, Melanie studied a framed poem on the wall about God bringing the rain to grow the roses. Girls' voices called out to each other from somewhere in the building. Light feet padded unseen on the stairs. A stout white woman about Melanie's age, with her hair going gray in pieces, came in. “May I help you?”

Melanie introduced herself. The woman's face registered no recognition. “I got a letter from her—Poona Chumnoi—about the center, the work you do. I sent a donation. We've been e-mailing…” Melanie trailed off. She really had no good explanation for being here.

“Would you like something to drink?” the woman asked. “Iced tea? Lemonade? I'm Greta, by the way.” Melanie followed Greta down the long hallway. An old-fashioned ceiling fan stirred the air. The hall led outside to a small brick terrace, shaded by trees with thick, glossy, unnatural leaves. Greta sat down on a bench and patted the space beside her. “Would you like to try the iced tea? It's good old Lipton's. Reminds me of home.”

Melanie said yes, thank you. Greta's growing-in gray hair made her look rather like a badger. Melanie guessed she was some kind of housemother, a missionary, probably. She wore black-framed glasses and had a big pink wart in one eyebrow. Did you have to be homely to live a virtuous life? She hoped not. Greta called out something in Thai and another girl who might have been Miss Chumnoi but was not appeared with a pitcher and glasses.

The tea steadied her though she still felt, and no doubt looked, shipwrecked. Greta said, “You say you got a fund-raising letter from us? How extraordinary.”

Melanie explained the import business. She said she guessed she was on all kinds of lists. Greta waved that away. “We're Mennonite,” she explained. “We don't solicit outside of our own church family. The letter was from Poona? So you've never actually met her.”

“No, we just…correspond. Like pen pals. But, you know, by e-mail.” The more she tried to explain herself, the more abjectly witless she felt. Something black and harsh and foreboding was taking shape, like a flapping crow. “Is Poona all right? Did anything happen?”

Greta sighed. “This is really most distressing. I have to wonder who else she wrote to. I'm afraid she's gone off the reservation.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Recidivism. It's a chronic problem. The girls can earn so much more as prostitutes than doing anything else. I always believed that Poona was sincere in her religious feeling. And she may well be. A sinner can be every bit as genuinely religious as a saint. They just don't test as well.”

“What are you saying?”

“We haven't seen her in almost a week. I expect she's back at one of the clubs. If you sent her any money, I'm sorry to say it's probably gone.”

“That's all right,” Melanie said. By now any catastrophe was filtered through a thick layer of jet lag and disorientation. She wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep.

“Try not to judge her too harshly. These poor girls. So often they just don't believe they're worthy of redemption. If you'll give me an address, I can certainly let you know if we hear anything.”

Melanie produced a business card. Greta studied it. “If you don't mind my asking, why are you here? This isn't your typical resort spot. Well, it is and it isn't, if you take my meaning.”

“My husband and I have been having some problems.” She had foolishly entrusted her life to love, and it had disappointed her, and she'd had some goopy notion of self-sacrifice, or maybe it was self-punishment, of making amends. Living humbly in service to others. Being worthy of redemption. So much for that. “I guess I needed to get away for a while.”

Greta's eyebrows, wart and all, lifted ironically. “I'd say you managed to get pretty far away, dear.”

The phone rang in the deep dark dreamtime of Chad's sleep. He was out of bed looking for it before he was actually awake. When he picked it up he was just glad the noise had stopped, and didn't say anything until Melanie's voice detonated in his ear. “Chad! Are you there?”

“Crap.” She'd startled him and he'd banged his shin on a table.

“Did I wake you? I'm sorry. I keep forgetting if it's earlier or later here.”

“Where's here, where are you?”

“Thailand.”

Silence spread like a pool of water between them. “Chad? Hey.”

“Thailand, the country?”

“Yes, but never mind that now. I miss you so much. How was the concert?”

He was waking up now, beginning to assemble the various pieces of consciousness and memory. “It was OK. Fine. Good. You're kidding, right? Where are you really?”

He heard music starting up in the background, a boom-boom beat with squalling saxophones, a jabber of excited voices speaking some monkey dialect. “I'm coming home tomorrow. Or is it still yesterday? Anyway, soon.”

“You could have told me where you were going.”

“Well you could have called me.”

“I did! I tried but the phone didn't work.” Melanie was saying something the music drowned out. “I can't hear you.”

More jabbering, sound of rushing air, things slamming. “That's better,” Melanie said. “I'm in the car. Thanks, Niran. Niran's my driver. We've grown very close. Tell me about the concert.”

“It was a little crazy. They're one of those anarchy-rage bands.” The lead singer had briefly set his own hair on fire. There had been a simulated crucifixion. At least, Chad thought it was simulated. “I guess I hadn't heard about their stage shows.” There had been considerable damage to the club, and a minor street riot. They were still trying to figure out liability.

“But you got your publicity, right?”

“I'd say so.” There had already been a couple of letters to the editor and a resolution introduced in the city council. Of course none of this would necessarily be bad for business. It would be a great irony if he ended up making money in spite of himself. “Oh, Danielle left town with the band. She put a note on my car's windshield. She said she was tired of watching out for me, and I was on my own, and from now on she was just going to try and be happy.”

“She said that? Watch out for you?”

“Yeah.”

Melanie pondered. “You know what's strange? I'm going to miss her. It was kind of comforting, having her hang out in the driveway. Like a night-light or something.”

“Yeah.” But the strangest thing to him was the conjunction of the words
happy
and
Danielle
.

“Girls. They're always running off somewhere, aren't they?”

Chad shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He didn't know what she meant, but he gathered that he wasn't supposed to. He hadn't told her everything about the concert. How he'd been stressed, and worried about her, and feeling sorry for himself, his chickenshit, sorrowful self that always held back, always stopped just short, and what good had it done him? So he'd gone backstage with the band, drinking shots of tequila with them, tequila and God knows what else, things smoked, things ingested, things inhaled. How the memory of the next twelve hours had been snipped from his brain like a piece of film. He woke up on the floor of the band's hotel suite, sick, sweated, shaking, alone. The band's hit song, “The Path of Excess Leads to Wisdom,” was blaring from the stereo. He felt the edge of a broken tooth with his tongue.

A little anarchy and rage, he discovered, went a long way. He'd tried, and failed, to commit rock-and-roll suicide. Who knew what he had done, and with whom? Bile crept up his throat. From now on, any stranger on the street might have the goods on him.

“You know what I think?” Melanie's voice broke in on him. He shook his head, forgetting that she couldn't see him. One of her Buddha statues sat on a shelf in front of him. He'd seen it countless times before. Or maybe he had never seen it. His vision was adjusted to the dark by now. The Buddha's grave, placid face drew him in and he stood there, his mind fixed on exactly nothing.

Melanie again. “I think life isn't supposed to be normal.”

“What is it supposed to be?” Chad asked, but the connection failed then.

Thirty-six hours later, Melanie guided her car cautiously along the airport access road. She seemed to have forgotten how to drive, although she assumed this was a temporary condition. There was a certain apprehension involved in seeing Chad. There would be explanations, recriminations, promises. They would have to start all over again and keep starting over. It was possible that they had learned nothing at all.

Melanie turned the radio on and found the station's signal. “Graceland” was playing. Then the song ended and Chad said, “That's one guy I never get tired of listening to. The great Paul Simon.” Simultaneously near and distant, absent and present, his radio voice struck her as miraculous. The sky was filled with waves of invisible electronic longing.

“Special thanks and greetings going out to all my clean and sober friends. You're my everyday heroes. Stay strong. Stay in the now. And I've been thinking…”

There was a pause while Chad took a sip of coffee and set the mug down again. Melanie could see him as clearly as if she was in the room.

“…about the big questions and the little ones, and whether there's really any difference between them. The Dalai Lama says that the purpose of life is happiness. Isn't that grand? Isn't that a
relief?
”

It was. But Melanie knew something the Dalai Lama didn't, or maybe he knew everything and just hadn't said it yet, or maybe everything in the world was always and continually being said again and again: that happiness too was something you had to work at. She took a turn and Chad's voice faded. She circled until she found the signal once more, then aimed the car straight toward it.