A Haunting Smile

by Christopher G. Moore

  Weird Bob had been strolling down the street at the time of his death, carrying a new electric fan with transparent green plastic blades and a red bow tied to the grille. Several months before, he had read about a tall man contest in the newspapers and arrived at the hotel in time to win and eat at a free buffet.

  “You gotta read the party column of the newspaper and get a press card. Then you can eat free in Bangkok.”

  It was the only thing Weird Bob had ever won in his life. When pulled by the rumors of Radio Bangkok 108.3 into the streets, he naturally—to his way of thinking—went with his electric fan, his lucky charm, which fate had awarded him for being tall.

  Weird Bob wore thick glasses that rode down on his nose, his balding scalp thatched with strands of brownish hair, his pearshaped body stuffed in baggy clothes. He had been standing near the curb showing farangs his first-prize fan. What they noticed however was that Weird Bob’s pants defeated gravity, sliding down his hips but never falling down to his ankles. His belly hung heavily over the top and his chest was sunken. It was Snow who said that Weird Bobby could walk into any Patpong bar dressed like a vagrant, carrying his new fan with the red bow, and walk out five minutes later with a beautiful teenager. And Crosby was the one who said Bangkok was the only place on earth where freaks like Weird Bob who finished last anywhere else in the world finished first for an entry fee of five hundred baht. Everyone with a purple stepped across the finish line a winner. It was the only place on the face of the earth where charm, good looks, intelligence, breeding, and wisdom amounted to such an insignificant advantage. Given the time and money needed to acquire such attributes, Weird Bob was living testimony to the fundamental error that such resume entries carried any real value on the sexual front lines of Bangkok.

  Montezuma stood with his arms folded not far from the barricade, smoking a cigarette (a habit he had developed about one hundred fifty years ago) and staring at Weird Bob’s body.

  “Where will they take the bodies? In which temple do they keep the skulls?” asked Montezuma, measuring the heads of the dead like a film director framing a scene.

  Cortez laughed. “What is that Aztec humor? They are going to burn the bodies.”

  Montezuma sighed heavily. “It reminds me of the old days, when we would burn the guts and hearts. Those were the good old days.

  What beautiful idols we made. The idols I’m convinced liked the smoke. Burning bodies makes a good sacrifice. I like these people,” said Montezuma. “They do their gods well.”

  This disgusted Cortez, and made him wonder why he spent so much time hanging around Montezuma who after four hundred and fifty years of being had shown such a dismal learning curve. Until he remembered he had no choice in the matter. In the Temple of Death, Montezuma and Cortez had found themselves bound together. The sentence of doom had been sealed with Montezuma’s death. Frankly, Montezuma had got on his nerves from day one. Cortez plotted his release from their bond. He looked over at Montezuma who pulsated between something vaguely human in form and a formless limegreen mist—one with a lit cigarette hanging out of the sickening green cloud. It looked like the cigarette smoked itself. There was an explanation for Montezuma’s condition (it affected Cortez less). They had smoked through a virus in Harry Purcell’s computer when he was connected to the Internet system. He downloaded a video computer game—his software didn’t alert him that his little prize from the Balkans had ghosts and a virus. It had been Montezuma’s idea to lodge in the video game called Montezuma’s Revenge—Harry was a sucker for any game naming the Aztec or Cortez. The irony was the programer’s virus had lodged in Montezuma and turned him into slime without any warning.

  Cortez asked himself the difficult question: How could anyone who had been dead three hundred years take up such a disgusting human habit as smoking?

  “They will burn the bodies. The reason is simple. Politics. A command has a choice. Count or destroy the evidence,” said Cortez. “Otherwise the evidence will destroy them. In this century it is a crime to sacrifice human beings. Belief in idols is no defence. The way you Aztecs carried on, the whole lot of you would have been tried on charges of crimes against humanity.”

  “It was religious freedom,” said Montezuma. “There’s nothing quite as wonderful as a human sacrifice. If I had a pulse, it would be throbbing just thinking about it.”

  Cortez ignored his friend as he watched the Thai colonel close the rear door of the van and wave the driver on, who then sped away from the scene.

  “That would take a miracle,” said Cortez after a thoughtful pause. “You having a pulse.”

  “A pulse with blood that flown at a different rate. In our day, we cut out thousands of hearts, ripped them hot and steaming from the chest, and built idols from human blood. We believed in miracles. Blood excited us. It made us alive. Blood filled us with hope and joy and pleasure. Blood is sacred. If only you could get past this Catholic barricade, Cortez. You are so limited.” Montezuma turned and began to wander away in the direction of the demonstrators.

  “Where are you going now?” Cortez called after him.

  “To a skull bar in Patpong. I’d ask you along. But I know how you feel about these things as a Catholic. I read your dispatches. And I know—and you know—and you know that I know that you know—what you really did with some of our Aztec women in Temixtitan. You didn’t divulge everything to Charles V or the Pope about those activities. True or false?”

  This shut Cortez up, as it always had. It reminded him why he followed Montezuma—to keep him away from Charles V and the Pope.

  “Wait,” shouted Cortez.

  Montezuma wasn’t surprised. “Come on, I’ll buy you a girl.”

  Cortez caught up with Montezuma. “No, it’s nearly time for us to go to work. We have a job, Monty. You think we materialized in Bangkok to have fun? You know the ground rules. Fun in Bangkok is strictly for the living.” The time had arrived to tell Montezuma his story about the chemical attack on the Patpong skull bar but he lost his courage.

  “Watch the skull collection but don’t interfere with the skull selection,” recited Montezuma as if it were a mantra.

  “Full marks for the Aztec,” said Cortez.

  “You coming or not?”

  Cortez sighed the eternal sigh of a ghost with a troubled conscience. “You will be disappointed.”

  “Skulls have never disappointed this Aztec.” In a flash of slimegreen fog the Aztec vanished.

  PART 4

  THE LOVERS

  1

  MONTEZUMA REFUSED TO budge; he issued a command, ordering Cortez to attend a sex show in Patpong. It wasn’t a question of permission. Cortez had to obey the order of his victim. This was the worst part of being dead, thought Cortez. Though he admired the Aztec, who in his opinion had a perfect instinct and timing for a night of temple hopping as the gunfire echoed on the streets. Cortez tried to hold himself together, now was not the time or place to go unglued; he fought off the memory of the eerily decaying place he had visited earlier. How he had ever defeated this Indian in life was one of death’s great mysteries. Inside the upstairs bar Montezuma had chosen as an interesting temple tower, they sat in darkness as a Harley Davidson motorcycle descended from a hole in the ceiling. A man in his twenties stripped naked from the waist wore a black leather vest studded with silver decorations—stars, buttons, Nazi crosses—and a black military hat with a plastic bill; the hat was pulled forward until it rested above his eyebrows, making him look like he was tilting off balance and about to fall off the bike. Under the rider, with her legs splayed apart, arching her back, displaying her small, dark, wet patch of land, was a young naked girl with a flat belly. Her expressionless, dull eyes stared at the ceiling and her small mouth shaped in the letter “O” sparkled with glittering flecks in her red lipstick. She moved her hips as the Nazi driver pumped and grinded pelvic bone to pelvic bone on the back of the motorcycle. While he fucked, he stared off into the distance. Like this was just another job. Another m
ountain to climb, another performance, thinking about scoring some drugs.

  “You think they are temple lovers?” asked Montezuma.

  “Is this a trick question?” said Cortez.

  “Ah, to be alive. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry sitting around the bar as if their biology would last forever,” replied Montezuma with a chuckle. He leaned over an old slightly torn Greenwich Village catalogue of sex aids: hundreds of different vibrators—some electric (batteries not included)—in many shapes, sizes, and colors, penis rings, handcuffs, nipple clips, bondage ropes, plastic blow-up dolls, porno films, and 900 numbers (credit cards: Visa, Diners, American Express, and Mastercard only). Montezuma flipped the page with a long sigh of regret. There was a full-color lay-out of a long-legged blond, lying on her side, her legs scissored. The camera angle was from the back, and she was frozen in the act of inserting black beads into her anus. He sighed again, wrinkling his nose.

  “If we had this advanced digital insertion equipment in Temixtitan, we might have spent our time ordering out of the catalogue and less time making human sacrifices. Yes, we could have been corrupted. Leaving aside blood and skulls for the new age. Century after century, I’ve seen the technology improve. And I can’t help ask myself, ‘Why, Montezuma, did you live in an age when all we had to make our idols were dried out vegetables?’”

  “You said the same thing about the typewriter and telegraph,” said Cortez. “You seriously believe that the absence of electronics and plastic vibrators was the cause of your Aztec perversions? The reason you made temple idols from seeds and vegetables? What you did to your victims before you slaughtered them...” Cortez stopped cold; there was only so far a general could go in criticizing a commanding officer.

  “Afraid to say it?” asked Montezuma. “I order you to finish this thought. The one you fear is not listening.” Cortez looked around the bar, having a quick once over to see if the Pope, who rarely materialized in Patpong skull bars, had paid a temple visit to check up on him.

  “Say what?” Cortez was on the defensive.

  “We had sex with the victims. Not all of them, of course. But we fucked as many as seemed comfortable. It was a way of comforting them. Sex is perfect for comfort. It’s not half bad for lust,” he chuckled. “Ah, if we had the telegraph it would have been a different story.”

  “But we would have had the telegraph, too,” said Cortez.

  Montezuma stared up at the stage, ignoring Cortez. “You simply got lucky and caught us with our pants down, seeking comfort.”

  “I knew it,” said Cortez, as the live sex show started. On the stage, a naked girl with tattoos spread her legs, raised her pelvis, inserted a dart in her vagina. She aimed and suddenly launched the dart from her vagina, popping a balloon near the head of Snow, who managed to duck just in time to save the loss of an eye. He had taken a break from the frontline for some R & R.

  “A Scud-tart attack,” shouted Snow. “Duck. Who knows if you can get AIDS from a paper dart? Do you want to be the test case?”

  Crosby picked up the dart and tried to examine it in the near darkness. “Rocks fall, bikes disappear into the ceiling, darts fly on Patpong Road as civilians flee the scene under a fresh attack by demon whores. The Army will be sent in to finish off the tarts.”

  “ ‘The lawless dart-shooting hussies deserved a bullet,’ the general said. Yeah, I can see that playing on the wires,” said Snow. “Which reminds me, I’ve got to get back to the Royal. Catch you at HQ later.”

  “You Aztecs...,” said Cortez as Snow walked through Montezuma without having the slightest idea he had gone through a ghost.

  “Don’t ‘you Aztecs’ me. It’s racist,” said Montezuma, who hated being walked through. “We had to make do with whatever sex devices we could grow. Who ever heard of a ‘machine’? In sixteenthcentury Spain are you going to tell me that you had ‘machines’?”

  “Sodomy is a sin,” said Cortez. “Every God-fearing person knows that. Eye Wave Machines which assist sodomy are the most sinful.”

  “Fearing God earned you me as your after-life commanding officer,” said Montezuma.

  Cortez went from slime-green to pale white like the scales on a decayed fish. He hated this reaction every time the Indian scored a direct hit on him inside a foreign temple.

  Montezuma didn’t let up either. “If I had a porno flick, it would display my favorite Sound Wave number—900. Dial 1-900-666-Help. What a world they the living live in—Eye Wave Machines which display numbers to punch into Sound Wave Machines. You remember the ad on the Smart Eye Machine—of course you do—for the best blow-jobs in town dial...”

  “Stop,” shouted Cortez. “You’re technologically illiterate. The Eye Wave Machine is a TV. It’s what Americans use to sell cars and the Smart Eye Machine is what Americans use to guide bombs through windows. It has nothing to do with oral sex.” Even after being dead nearly five hundred years, Cortez could not bring himself to use the expression: “blow-job.”

  “People in this time can have home delivery sex and remote control human sacrifices.”

  Cortez watched as another dart passed through his hand and punctured a balloon held by a bar girl who bounced up and down on the lap of a tourist.

  “Dial 1-900- 666 -Kill,” said Cortez.

  “I don’t know that one.” Montezuma looked confused.

  Cortez liked catching him out like the day when they were both alive and Cortez had cried, “Look!” And as Montezuma turned to look, a stone had smashed into the side of Montezuma’s head.

  “If you had been running the Sound Wave Machines in the temple, that’s the number you would have used. A dial-a-victim hotline.”

  Montezuma smiled. He was not in the least offended. “That would have been a nice touch. Look around. These people don’t know how lucky they are. They don’t have live Spaniards invading their temples. They have tourists paying for sex. While the local soldiers make the usual streetside human sacrifices. Boys will be boys, and rituals without blood are useless exercises,” sighed Montezuma. “Another two, three hundred years, just think what technology will do for sex. Smart beds, smart mirrors, smart wallpaper, and smart carpets—they will read a person’s mood, sexual desires, reserves of energy and deliver the right machines, toys, and tapes. About then I might decide on risking another rebirth.”

  Such talk always unsettled Cortez who as a Catholic still clung to the thought that rebirth was nonsense even though almost everyone he had ever known had been reborn multiple times since 1519. Still it was an article of faith which died hard even for the dead. But he be grudgingly understood the ground rules of karmic twinning which applied to the dead. If Montezuma were reborn, then he would have to go back as well. The trade-off was that Cortez was entitled to believe after his rebirth that he was unborn.

  “Why don’t we go back to Sanam Luang or the Royal Hotel and watch the killings? We are probably missing out on some real fun looting, beatings, roadside executions.” He knew how to get Montezuma’s attention.

  “Executions? We saw a few in our time. We weren’t half bad at it,” admitted Montezuma.

  “The soldiers were doing such a wonderful job of slaughtering. And you are right, it does bring back memories of the old days. And you know how fresh human blood cheers you up.”

  “It’s what we Aztecs used to live for. But now that I’m dead, fresh human blood? I’ve gotta confess, Cortez, somehow the old magic is gone. It has lost some of the old thrill,” said Montezuma wistfully.

  2

  “RADIO BANGKOK 108.3 update on the insanity. News flash. We are live—mostly live—coming to you from our broadcasting headquarters on the sixth floor. Another invasion to take us off the air has been repelled. About ten minutes ago the Army just tried using the elevator to the sixth floor. Now there was an original idea. By our count five soldiers marched into the elevator and pushed the sixth floor button. Did you guys volunteer for duty? Fat chance. You were ordered into the elevator. When the grunts hit the sixth floor th
e elevator door opened. And guess who was waiting for them? The Navy. The brave men who have risked their own lives to keep us on the air. We owe our lives to the Navy. They’ve pitched in and helped because they believe what is going on in the streets is wrong. It can’t be allowed. And they know that keeping one non-Army radio station is one way of getting the truth out. So back to the elevator incident. The doors opened and four of the Navy’s finest were waiting. They knelt on the floor, they had their rifles against their shoulders, watching as the elevator light bounced from the first, to the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors. As the doors parted and the soldiers saw who was waiting for them and what was pointed at them, guess what the soldiers did? They slammed their fist against the close door button. It was save your ass time. It takes one kind of courage to shoot civilians in the street and another to come out of an elevator with the Navy aiming at them. So they stared down the barrel of those Navy rifles for one second before fleeing the scene. It reminds me of a ten-wheel truck driver hitting a bicycle on the highway; the driver steps on the gas, he’s outta there in a flash. The Navy guys loaded a bullet in the chamber. This made some noise. Enough noise to make the Army hit team duck and push the eject button. They let their fingers do their walking. A message for the soldiers downstairs. We want to let you know the Navy has got much, much ammo left. They are watching the staircase and the elevator. We think the Army is back on the ground floor tying another note to a rock demanding that we surrender or they will really come and get us this time. Hey, fellahs, for the record, surrender has two ‘r’s’ not one ‘r’. Give up the fight and go back to school. This one is for the boys who can’t spell and whose recent visit was unexpectedly interrupted. For the trigger-happy boys downstairs, take a hike, keep out of our face. Up next is a song by Tracy Chapman and it’s called Behind the Wall. We dedicate it to the boys in the elevator who got cold feet.”