A man entered the shop, tall and white-haired, his skin so tanned that it gave off a violet lustre in the strip lights of the fish tanks. His appearance attested to a life spent under the sun. The juxtaposition was odd; what was his interest in an indoor hobby like aquarium fish-keeping? I realized the connection when he put a plastic bag on the counter; the cleaner wrasse was swimming inside.
‘I’m returning the wrasse. My wife told me she bought it from here,’ he said with a faint European accent.
I did not answer and tightened my grip on the broom handle. Andie had lied to me about her marital status. Deceived as I was, I had no desire to be killed by a jealous husband.
‘Okay, relax.’ He held up a gnarled hand to assuage me. ‘My ex-wife.
Well, not until she signs the papers. If she signs them.’
I waited for him to get interrogative. Would he ask me to step outside for a fistfight in front of the dim sum restaurant? When I still did not speak, he said, ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘Andie has no real friends in KL. I suggested a change of scene to her.
We even bought a studio apartment in Mont Kiara last year.’ He pushed the wrasse towards me. ‘Since no one’s going to live there now, there’s no need to decorate it.’
I opened the till to give him a refund for the fish.
‘No, please. I insist.’ He refused the money. I asked him what was his job. ‘I own a scuba-diving school in Thailand. Hey, maybe you should try it one day.’
I ignored his offer and blurted, ‘Do you still have feelings for Andie?’
He smiled as if I had articulated something he could not admit to himself.
‘We live apart, but we are not separated. She goes and returns. Nothing’s definite with her and that’s the deal.’
‘I know.’ I agreed and thought of the male and female shrimp inside the Venus Flower Basket, an arrangement of complete security but defined by soft translucent bars.
Andie sent a blank email with a photo attachment to my business mail address; a fuzzy snapshot of sea snakes mating, taken with an underwater camera. I replied with a brief thank you and never heard from her again.
My customers thought I had closed my shop for a month. Instead, I renovated it and got rid of the marine fish and invertebrate tanks. I applied for a license to sell dogs and cats. The shop was noisier with barks and meows, but at least it distracted me from thinking about Andie. My new employees did not understand why I was obsessed with checking the sex of new puppies and kittens. I was looking for recurrences of Andie’s condition in nature.
Of course, I never found any, but conventional family life found me when a petite woman walked into my shop one evening, tearful that her boyfriend had stood her up outside the dim sum restaurant.
However, my fiance baulked at making love in the bathtub. She told me I could get hurt. She did not understand when I replied that I had already been hurt that way.
Mad For It
So I’m in Phuket, Thailand, just a few weeks and I get a job teaching English.
I need a clock to remind me to wake up. I want a big damn clock on the wall ticking like crazy. I go to Tesco in my tie and blue silk shirt and see an amazing Thai girl, about 27. Hair cut to the shoulders, wide mouth, a narrow waist that makes her hips and heavy breasts pull your eyes. Some women have this sexual power, like a love potion that people drink up. Karl Jung says it is a projection of the soul or anima. Walt Whitman says steer for the deep waters only.
Enter Goy and my first chance at exotic True Love. A long neck.
Yearning in the face and dark eyes. A relaxed, nurturing vibe amplified by our struggle to communicate as she shows me how to work the clock. My arm brushes against her nipple as she winds up the mechanism. I’m happily swimming out to dark waters. A puff of her cream and cinnamon smell rises to my nostrils. But when I take the clock home, I just can’t get it to work.
A few days later I come back, see her in jeans and a red blouse with SAME SAME on the curvy front. Somehow I get her in the mood and a short while later we’re upstairs in the cafeteria eating Japanese dumplings and fish sauce. She crosses her legs and laughs at me staring. Her toes are painted black. Even her feet are candy.
Her ex was a butterfly. She has a 3-year-old daughter back in Isaan.
Phuket has all the decent jobs, but she misses the rubber tree farm back home.
She’s been working at Tesco five months and dealing with 12-hour days. She sends roughly one hundred dollars home each month. Half her salary.
She lives in a one-room apartment and eats cheap dinners. She’s looking for the right man to save her. Show her the good life. And she’s a swimmer.
Her one day off: Sunday. She doesn’t believe I’ll take her to the beach, which is just as sweet as milk, so we find a shop and I pay for a white bikini. She puts it on at the back of the store and pulls the curtain back for three seconds to let me peek. Time slows. I see deep into her eyes. I see the dark circles of her nipples. I think red wine and French movies. Deserted beaches. Crazy, deep sex. TL.
Time goes on and life is paradise. Better than selling hard drives and meeting co-workers for after-dinner mimosas at Bennigans in America. I never think of the NFL or sitcoms or politics. She teaches me Thai. I teach her English. I feel deep, emotional thrumming in my stomach when we fuck.
Until she comes home one night a different woman. Wouldn’t talk. Shrugs off my hands. Pouts like a little girl and it isn’t sexy. There’s a cold, white pallor to her face that just looks mean. Says she doesn’t like work. The other girls gossip about her because she’s with a
farang
and not married. She wants to quit work and take care of me. She wants money. Maybe move back to the farm and build a house in a rice field. Her parents need funds for everything: hospitals, food, booze, happiness. And then there’s a dowry. A big one. I can’t live without beaches and the ocean. I don’t eat much rice.
And I didn’t leave California with my pockets full of gold. About 20k in the bank and an old Taylor guitar on my back. I chew on dowry for a week or two, but she doesn’t like delays. I came to Thailand because I can live in a bungalow near the beach, swim every day and eat mango, coconut and banana. Drink red wine. She locks herself in my bedroom and talks on her cellphone for hours. Comes out in a denim mini-skirt and heels and leaves me alone until midnight. I’m licking paint off the walls. She gets distant. Starts the going out thing a few times a week. I try to follow her once, but get lost in the mountains. I’m on a steep, dark incline. No streetlights. Weird sounds from the forest. A cool and ominous wind shakes the trees. I’m the only man on the planet. On the way down, I crash into a guard rail. Call her for help, but she doesn’t answer. I know she’s fucking around. But it feels like a way out. I didn’t come to Thailand to be a wingman.
That night, I put her on the couch and yank at her twenty-dollar satin panties until she cries. I want proof. I want revenge. She buries her face in my shoulder. Tears soak through my shirt. I find her lips. My heart thumps.
She sits on my lap and does this squeezing thing she can do with her vagina I don’t understand and I let it go.
But it isn’t back to normal. So I give her 500 dollars for her parents to do whatever. It makes her happy for a while. Pancakes and cheeseburgers fly out of our little kitchen. She buys a bus ticket home to deliver the money and quits her job. Which isn’t exactly what I want, but the sex is so damn magical.