Taking him by the hand, she guided him upstairs through the molten crowds and bought them fruit. Then they went into the auditorium. It was almost unbearably hot, and the shrill screaming crackling echoing movie was interminable. But he was very happy because she held his hand and snuggled against him, and he could watch her smiling in the dark.
There was a newsreel about the latest floods. She pointed, held the edge of her hand to her throat like rising water.
Then she brought him back to the hotel. People lined up on the sidewalks to watch them pass; he longed for one of those Chinese rockets-on-a-string, to clear the landmined path. .
Well, what have you been up to? said the photographer, on the bed, nursing his skin rash.
Got married.
Oh. Well, I guess that means I'd better clear out. Is an hour enough?
He still didn't really want to fuck her. He just wanted to be naked next to her, holding her for the last ten minutes or two hours or whatever it would be until she went to work. He stripped and took a shower. While she did the same, he looked for his gonorrhea pills. When she came out he got into bed with her. She pointed to her watch. She had to go soon. She snuggled him for a minute, then pointed to the tube of K-Y jelly. He didn't want to confuse or disappoint her anymore. If that was what she expected, then he'd better do it. She touched his penis, and he squirted the K-Y jelly into her and rolled the rubber on and got ready to mount her, and then something in her face made him start to cry and he went soft inside her and rolled off. - She was not pleased, no two ways about it. After all, it was their honeymoon. She was rubbing him; she wanted him to try again. He put more K-Y jelly inside her and took the rubber off and threw it on the floor. The doctor had said he wouldn't be contagious anymore; sex was only hurting him, not anyone else. As soon as he was inside her, he went soft again. He was crying, and she smiled, looking into his face, trying to cheer him up; he was behaving like a baby. He traced a heart on his chest, pointed from himself to her, and drew a heart between her breasts. She nodded very seriously. He made a motion of two hands joining and she nodded. He said: You, me go America together. . and she shook her head. She drew a square on his chest, not a heart, then pointed to a heart-shaped chain of gold that some other man must have given her. .
She got up and took a shower. He started to get dressed, too, but she gently motioned him back into bed. She dressed very quickly. She came and sat with him for a moment on the bed, and he pointed to the number eight on his watch and signed to her to come to the hotel then and she nodded and he said: Ah Khun. * — Then she stood up to go. She clasped her hands together goodbye and he was crying and she was waving and kissing her hands to him and she never came back again.
THE END
' Thank you.
~ ~ ~
But the end of the story is not the end of the story; that doesn't happen until THE END when they lower you into your pitch-dark grave. The punchline of the closed episode recedes as experience continues, which must be why it's so difficult to learn anything.
I wonder if she's waiting for me at the disco, the journalist said. Maybe she misunderstood -
I'm sure she is, drawled the photographer. Yep, she's just sitting around waiting for her knight in shining armor.
That night he had a dream that he was getting married and everyone was so happy for him; all the street orphans were there drumming and dancing; reformed Stalinists made him fish soup; the cyclo drivers donated their vehicles to serve as chairs. .
When he told the photographer a little more about it, the photographer said: She must have thought you were a real pain in the ass.
They were on the way to the battlefields, although not much was going on there; truth to tell, that was how they liked it. Their official driver (the interpreter assured them that he was not in the secret police) sped importantly down the road in the government car whose insignia meant secret police; every fifteen seconds the driver honked. A woman rode side-saddle on the back of. a motor scooter, holding a basket of green fruit in her lap. The driver honked and the motor scooter skidded aside; the woman almost went flying. The driver gunned it and pulled ahead, drowning her in dust. Down the hot white road where cyclists bore bushy loads of grass, the pale car rocked and bumped. The driver honked, and pedestrians leaped for their lives, scrambling up the dyke of yellow dirt. They passed angle-roofed tin-walled houses on stilts. A naked brown child was fishing in tea-colored water. A water-buffalo sucked its mother. - There are two kinds of land mine, the interpreter was saying. One explodes if you touch it anywhere. The other kind explodes only if you step on it. - The journalist was barely listening. He could not stop remembering the way she'd been looking at him when he started crying and she was trying to cheer him up by smiling and teasing him with her finger though her eyes were sad and distant like always, so he tried to smile back like a good sport even with the tears running out of his eyes and he could not miss her looking at him so searchingly and then she rose to pray her hands ah Uvun and goodbye, gently going out the door.
You see, an English student had told him (another of his myriad helpful interpreters), sometimes I too like to play with taxi girl. But, you see, I have girlfriend.
And I think you have already had a taste of Cambodian girls? the interpreter said suddenly.
Uh huh, said the journalist, thinking: Which spies and busybodies in the lobby didn't report us?
A poster of a worker, hammer in one hand, gun in the other. Jungle to the left (to the far left); that was where the Khmer Rouge were. More empty orange rivers; a kid barfing out the window of the Red Cross van. . The journalist rubbed his balls.
The Chief of Protocol received them on a high porch. He was pleased with the journalist's French. He read their dossiers and clapped a hand to his mouth in mirth.
Ah, a beautiful girl there — did you remark her? he said in the car.
No, Monsieur, said the journalist.
But I believe you do regard them.
Yes, I do regard them, replied the journalist in the most pompous French that he could muster. For me, every girl in Cambodia is beautiful.
The Chief of Protocol laughed so hard that he had a coughing fit.
Clearly it was his job to amuse the Chief of Protocol. - In Phnom Penh, every girl is a delicious banquet, he said.
Delighted, the Chief of Protocol embraced him.
What did you tell him? asked the interpreter.
I said that it is very hot today, said the journalist.
The Chief of Protocol said something to the interpreter, who giggled.
Yes, yes, said the interpreter, and Battambang is famed for its lovely roadside flowers.
Sounds like we'll be gettin' some pussy tonight, said the photographer.
Well, said the journalist cautiously, that's up to them. But at least we know it's in our file.
At the expensive restaurant where they had to take the driver, the interpreter and the Chief of Protocol, two hostesses came to sit with the white boys. The journalist tried to give his girl to the Chief of Protocol, who sat constantly at his right hand talking until his ears ached, but no matter how many circumflexes the journalist piled on, the Chief of Protocol said: I am married!