Cambodia Noir Read online

  Then the monsoon hits. Sheets of water rip across the world beyond the awning.

  Terry doesn’t seem to notice the rain. He’s busy smiling his Mona Lisa smile at me over his shoulder. Channi’s smiling, too, as she tops off my beer and slides over more peanuts. It’s like I just won some fucking award.

  Something’s happened, but nobody else notices, they just keep grinning. The moment passes. Not even a snapshot: just a rumble in the distance, then the rain.

  * * *

  Back at the house; unsteady on the narrow stairs. Almost night now. I rattle Gus’s gate in the dark; no answer. Up to my floor, stumble over the suitcases on the landing. When I was in Vientiane, Gus put one of those American vampires in here. Girl left her shit while she went on some backpacking jaunt, and here it is, still in my hall, waiting to kill me. Consider trashing the stuff, but it’s too much effort. I’ll make Gus deal with it later.

  I thought the beer would get me to sleep until it was time to go out, but I just lie there in my cage, listening to the rain. Pictures keep flashing in my mind: men in dark uniforms with plastic-wrapped bundles on their shoulders. The general and his aide crumpled into the back of a police van like yesterday’s newspaper. The police and the army, facing off. Why now? The Eastern drug trade is peanuts these days. Ten years ago, maybe, it was big—four times as much dope coming out of the Triangle, all headed for the States. But times change: a few warlords crash and burn, supply declines. The US invades Afghanistan and a new supply appears, traveling west through Turkey and Europe. Cambo gets left with the scraps, again.

  But out here, we’re hungry. Even scraps are worth fighting over.

  DIARY

  June 28

  Phnom Penh airport is tiny, made of cinder blocks and glowing with yellow sodium light. Border officials wear uniforms embroidered with pagodas and elephants. . . . Stamps, visas . . . and then waiting, and more waiting. I’m not sure if the men here make a fetish of blond girls the way they do in Japan, but I don’t much want to find out. I wrap myself up and fade from view. It is one of life’s little consolations: realizing I can choose whether or not to be seen.

  It’s a while before the boy comes, but I spot him at once. There aren’t many foreigners here, waiting—or arriving, for that matter—and he’s the only one who fits the type. He might be 25 or 26, actually, but there’s still something boyish around him. He’s got that phthisic look, with curling blond poet hair and a hawk nose, and, pinky swear, he is actually wearing round, gold-rimmed spectacles! He’s like a cross between D’Artagnan and Sherlock Holmes. He’s worrying about whatever made him late, and not sure who (or what) he’s looking for, but still he moves with the thoughtless grace of someone who has always been beautiful.

  Jealousy.

  I let myself remain invisible for a while, just to watch him, until . . .

  “Hello?”

  “Oh! Um, hello?” Very proper English accent. Very posh!

  “Are you looking for me?”

  A pause. “You’re Jun Saito?”

  Even when I let them, they don’t see me.

  * * *

  It took some time for him to drag my stuff into this huge black monster of an SUV, but now it’s done and we’re off. The boy is up next to the driver, chatting to me over his shoulder as if he’s some midnight DJ, talking us through the gray pre-dawn hours on the freeway. I know I should be listening, but I can’t stop looking out the windows and writing it all down.

  An airport road goes nowhere, connects to nothing. Its end is the edge of the real world, a border between us and the sky. We cross over and for a moment we touch the clouds—but we always end up in another airport, on another airport road.

  Just past the soft shoulder, men and women sit in lawn chairs in little circles of light—not from streetlamps, but electric bulbs hanging on poles or swooping from billboards on ribbons of wire. Old women fan themselves next to carts stacked with juice, or food, or Fanta bottles that the boy says are full of gasoline. Old men play cards on folding tables and drink strange canned drinks. A few young girls sit alone, and I don’t dare ask what they’re there for. They watch the cars with the faces of stargazers watching comets, hurtling distantly by with a whispered promise of obliteration.

  Then the city, glowing like a Catherine wheel. The boy sends the driver down Sisowat Quay, which he says is our neighborhood: It runs all down the Tonlé Sap river, and we drive through the wide lawns of the old colonial hotel district . . .

  . . . along an acre of bars and cafés, tiny shops offering Internet from child-sized bamboo cubicles, restaurants serving seafood and pizzas laced with marijuana for the tourists . . .

  . . . past wide green festival grounds around the royal palaces, gleaming gold pagoda tops in the background . . .

  It’s all brilliant-colored and strange and exciting. This place is so beautiful . . . I can’t help but think that everything will be different.

  * * *

  The apartment is shatteringly empty. It’s like a prison cell.

  A long, rectangular room of cinder blocks . . . on one end, a door leads to a balcony; on the other, a second opens onto the landing, where a camp stove on a counter makes the kitchen, and a corner next to the stairs is walled off to form a tiny bathroom. The doors aren’t even solid, they’re grates of heavy steel without glass. The windows have these slats that only close to a 45 degree angle: this place barely counts as indoors.

  They called it the cage, and so it is: I am a bird now.

  There’s no furniture but a bed with a single sheet and a bare wicker desk. Apple crates pretending to be shelves hold a few dog-eared airport crime novels, some colored filters and lens cases, and a stack of manuals for camera equipment. The photographer’s room is a perfect reflection: he leaves nothing of himself behind.

  When he returns, I wonder what he’ll find of me?

  It was practically a party when the boy and I arrived. The house sits on a dark side street near the river. The bottom floors are a Cambodian artist and his wife, the third is the paper’s editor, Gus, and the fourth is the photographer (now me). They all met us outside as we pulled up. The artist had to welcome us with all sorts of complicated greetings, which the others stumbled over each other to translate. Gus is older, late 30s, I guess, but crazy and South American and built like a wrestler, wrestling me and the boy and my luggage out of the car as he kept up a patter about the paper and the elections and what all we’d see and we’d do, and the boy chiming in on the choruses . . . and in the background the photographer, just leaning against the building, smoking and watching. I don’t know how to describe him: big, I guess. God knows how old he is. I think he’s like me: when he wants to, he can make your eyes slide right past him. We all sat in Gus’s room, and he poured us whiskeys and congratulated me on not dying in a fiery plane crash, at which the boy laughed. I did, too, as it seemed expected of me.

  It was an odd night. On the one hand, oh God, the awkward . . . phony cheer and big smiles. There was something between the two men, I could tell by the way they danced around each other’s words. I’ve taken the photographer’s room because he’s traveling, and at one point I asked him where . . .

  “Laos,” he said, “Vientiane.”

  “What for?”

  “Work.”

  Then he lit another cigarette. He’s like that. And I would totally have called him on it, but suddenly Gus was asking me about school, and the program that sent me here, and what my training had been like, and I had to think of the answers and so I forgot all about the photographer . . . just like I was supposed to. I want someone who protects me like that.

  The boy wanted to be charming, but there was something on his mind as well: he kept getting dragged back into his thoughts when the conversation lulled.

  But despite all that . . . it was kind of wonderful. The three of them, they would never admit it, but they were friends. They had that way about them: they’d been through things together, and often when they spoke it was in
words that barely made sense to me, an inner language that might as well have been Cambodian. (The older two actually speak Cambodian—they call it Khmer—which only made things worse.) How long would I have to stay here, before I could understand what’s going on?

  But for a couple of hours, whatever it was they had, I felt like I was part of it.

  And then, just like that, it was over. The photographer had to catch a plane. Gus and the boy had work in the morning, never mind Sunday. They told me to take the day and explore the city, and then suddenly they were all gone and I was back in this empty cell.

  I know it’s impossible, it’s too dangerous, but I catch myself wondering—what would it be like to stay?

  WILL

  OCTOBER 3–4

  Friday night, the river is a regular Chinatown fair. Under carnival lights, journos and aid workers argue and drink and dodge the foreign students, who act like sailors on shore leave. Bar girls shout from the sidelines; beggars and touts flog what they got to flog. I light a cigarette and breathe deep, trying to catch the pulse of the night. No one’s sleeping: they’re all here, looking to talk about where they were today, what they heard, who did what. How long do we have, before the shooting starts?

  Something’s still bothering me. I can’t figure it out—but I’m starting to wonder if it’s connected to this morning at all. What if the faint tingling in my fingers is a warning of something else? Something seen and forgotten, unnoticed—

  Still coming.

  My cigarette tastes stale. I toss it on the pavement. Fuck signs and portents. Half the city’s out tonight, must be somebody I can bum a joint off.

  The River’s Edge is crowded. I see Channi working the tables out front, arms full of drinks, smiling pretty at the barbarians. She gives me a quiet wave. I’m about to head over when I hear Rockoff’s voice from up the street: a wordless growl, like a stereo with the bass too high.

  He’s our local celebrity: made his name in ’75, shooting the fall of Phnom Penh. Someone famous played him in the movie. He got evacuated in the embassy siege, then came back as soon as he could. The place had its hooks in him. He’s outside Happy Happy now, sitting with Doyle from the Daily, and that bearded Welsh photographer whose name I can never remember. Gus, too. They’re real gone already, the table covered with half-eaten pizza and roaches and beer cans, and Rockoff holding forth on who knows what.

  I sit down.

  “William,” Gus shouts. “Qué fiesta, eh?”

  “Hey, Gus. Hey,” I say to the photog whose name I forget.

  “Hey,” he says. Doyle nods more or less in my direction—the other papers don’t like us much. Rockoff just keeps talking: “Fuckers in editorial. Never been out here, don’t understand how a revolution happens. Not just ‘boom.’ These places got a tolerance for chaos, they can limp along for ages—” Bland waitress, Beerlao. “Every time some asshole gets an itchy trigger finger, the fucking Times thinks the whole country’s gonna collapse—”

  “You saw the pictures, eh?” Doyle says. “That’s a hell of an itch.”

  “That jerk Keller,” Rockoff snorts. “Makes everything look like the end of the world.”

  I’m sitting right here. Not sure Rockoff has ever asked my name.

  “Party’s at Vy’s,” Gus says, handing me a spliff.

  “Shit.”

  “No pasa nada, she’s in Paris till next week. Someone has a key.”

  He looks wrecked. Something’s up with him. Didn’t show up at the house after work, must have been drinking all day. Odd.

  My beer comes. I drink it, order another.

  “It was just the same in ’75,” Rockoff is saying. “No one sees the shit coming, not until it’s way too late.”

  I can’t help staring. Rockoff was made for Cambodia. He’ll never leave, he can’t. When he dies—if he ever does—he’ll still be right here.

  * * *

  Vy has the best apartment in Phnom Penh. I haven’t been in years. Banned for life—possibly after smashing up a Danish-modern dining room, but I’m not sure. Those memories are difficult to get to: reach out and they slip between my fingers.

  From the street, I can see people crowding the terrace, a big wrought-iron job that curves around the third floor, over the river. Gus stops at the quicky-mart while I linger on the sidewalk, watching the rickshaw drivers doze in their contraptions. I had four more Beerlaos, listening to Rockoff and Doyle argue about whether Hun Sen is going to take back the government by force, and I’ve gone right through the day’s strange anxiety and out the other side. Nothing I need now but more.

  A Psychedelic Furs song drifts down from the balcony. I know it, I can see Butler pulling his shirt off on the record cover—first track, but can’t remember the title. Gus comes out with two six-packs, and we head inside. Vy’s paintings are the same, but the furniture’s new: weird postmodern stuff in primary colors, Keith Haring on a ketamine binge. Someone’s strung Christmas lights—Vy would think it’s tacky, but she’s not here. The Furs have been replaced by some southern hip-hop, and the room is packed with expats dancing like it’s their last chance.

  I head for the kitchen, start jimmying the cabinet where Vy hides the good wine. There’s a decent-looking Chilean: I look for a glass, then think better of it and drink from the bottle. I’m not sharing with humanitarians. Four swigs and I’m brave enough to face the party.

  I make it halfway to the balcony before I get cornered. She’s about twenty-five, with a maroon tank top and a black clove cigarette. She looks like everyone else here.

  “Malbec,” she says. “Nice.”

  I hold out the bottle. She takes it and gazes up at me for a long time. I wonder if I could fuck her.

  “I’m Andrea.” She takes a long swallow.

  “Will.” Another pause. It goes on awhile. I could get her talking if I start on the day’s violence, but I’m tired of it. I don’t want to hear what any more children think about Cambodia’s political stability. “What brings you here?” Safe question—you can take it any way you want.

  “Ohmygod, I don’t know, y’know?” She laughs. “This place is intense, and I’m just, like, ‘How did I end up here?’ I did poli-sci at school, but then, hey, guess what? I wound up working as a manager at an interior-design firm in Minneapolis, which wasn’t really where I saw myself in twenty years, you know, so I just—”

  Where will I be in twenty years? Will there be anything left, except the hunger and the fixes?

  “—after that, I’d had it, y’know? So I volunteered with this NGO—”

  I can’t fuck anyone who talks this much.

  “—now it’s Worldwide Relief, we do this thing out in the villages, teaching kids to avoid land mines, but it’s really, y’know, tough—”

  I’m getting frantic. Her face is going blubbery with self-pity and I may not be able to control myself.

  “—keep writing these letters home, trying to explain what I’m seeing, y’know, how important it is, but I think my friends don’t even get what I’m talking about—”

  I can see Gus: he’s on the porch, deep in conversation with a very hot girl with multicolored dreadlocks. I will him to look my way. The girl next to me is still going:

  “—do you think so?”

  “Absolutely.” She gives me a funny look: that must have been the wrong answer. I take another long swig of wine.

  “What do you do?” she asks.

  Not a safe question.

  “I take pictures of dead people.”

  She laughs, but it’s nervous. Without realizing, she takes a quarter step back.

  I let the silence go on awhile.

  “Just dead people?”

  “If I can’t find any dead ones, I’ll do live ones. They don’t sell as well.”

  Her left hand crosses over to hold her right elbow: shielding her body from me. I step a tiny bit closer, take another drink. Wait for her to speak.

  “Doesn’t that make you feel kinda . . . gross?”


  Feign shock: “It’s my job. You know what we say: ‘If it bleeds, it leads!’ ” Give her a Walmart grin. She looks sick. “Let’s talk about you. Land mines, wasn’t it? I get a lotta work from land mines.” Watch her face; wait. Any more, she’ll cause a scene.

  “Y’know, I’m not loving the wine,” she says. “I think maybe I’ll get a beer. I’ll be right back.”

  I head for the porch. Gus is still there, wedged into a rattan armchair with the dreadlocked girl sitting on his lap. With them is some scar-faced local fixer whose name I have forgotten, and Number Two, who’s got a huge bag of cocaine open on the table and is looking around for a razor blade.

  “Sit down, Da,” he says, when he sees me. “You look like you might lose your dinner.”

  “Aid workers.”

  “The horror, the horror.”

  Number Two does crime at the paper. He’s got a way of making you check your wallet when he’s around, but he’s an okay guy to hang out with. Came as an intern last summer and just stayed, which indicates strength of character. He’s skinny and British and went to Eton or something, but he’s actually fucking smart. I’m fairly sure his name is Chris, but there’s another Chris at the paper, so Two got stuck with digits.

  Gus waves to me, still looking distracted, but the girl sticks out her hand.

  “Meg.”

  “Will.”

  Number Two goes back to describing his trip to the Svay Pak brothels two days earlier. “—truly bloody vile. I mean, it’s a dead duck in a shell.”

  “That’s a delicacy for you,” Meg says. She sounds Australian.

  “A metaphor for the entire Svay Pak experience: Who wants to eat an abortion? But Barry had nine of the bloody things. He started getting it on with this girl, after five minutes he just lost control. Chuntered all over her.”

  “Hijo de puta,” Gus mutters. His eyes are about a million miles away, but Meg’s looking at Two like he’s the world’s first dancing cockroach.