by Laird Barron
Swayne wore a cream-colored suit of a cut most popular with the royalty of South American plantations. It’s in style anywhere I go, he explained later as they undressed one another in Kenshi’s suite at the Golden Scale. Swayne’s complexion was dark, like fired clay. His slightly sinister brows and waxed imperial lent him the appearance of a Christian devil.
In the seam between the electric shock of their reunion and resultant delirium fugue of violent coupling, Kenshi had an instant to doubt the old magic before the question was utterly obliterated. And if he’d forgotten Swayne’s sly, wry demeanor, his faith was restored when the dark man rolled to face the ceiling, dragged on their shared cigarette, and said, “Of all the bathhouses in all the cities of the world….”
Kenshi cheerfully declared him a bastard and snatched back the cigarette. The room was strewn with their clothes. A vase of lilies lay capsized and water funneled from severed stems over the edge of the table. He caught droplets in his free hand and rubbed them and the semen into the slick flesh of his chest and belly. He breathed heavily.
“How’d you swing this place all to yourself?” Swayne said. “Big promotion?
“A couple of my colleagues got pulled off the project and didn’t make the trip. You?”
“Business, with unexpected pleasure, thank you. The museum sent me to look at a collection—estate sale. Paintings and whatnot. I fly back on Friday, unless I find something extraordinary, which is doubtful. Mostly rubbish, I’m afraid.” Swayne rose and stretched. Rich, gold-red light dappled the curtains, banded and bronzed him with tiger stripes.
The suite’s western exposure gave them a last look at the sun as it faded to black. Below their lofty vantage, slums and crooked dirt streets and the labyrinthine wharfs in the shallow, blood-warm harbor were mercifully obscured by thickening tropical darkness. Farther along the main avenue and atop the ancient terraced hillsides was a huge, baroque seventeenth-century monastery, much photographed for feature films, and farther still, the scattered manors and villas of the lime nabobs, their walled estates demarcated by kliegs and floodlights. Tourism pumped the lifeblood of the settlement. They came for the monastery, of course, and only a few kilometers off was a wildlife preserve. Tour buses ran daily and guides entertained foreigners with local folklore and promises of tigers, a number of which roamed the high grass plains. Kenshi had gone on his first day, hated the ripe, florid smell of the jungle, the heat, and the sullen men with rifles who patrolled the electrified perimeter fence in halftracks. The locals wore knives in their belts, even the urbane guide with the Oxford accent, and it left Kenshi feeling shriveled and helpless, at the mercy of the hatefully smiling multitudes.
Here, in the dusty, grimy heart of town, some eighty kilometers down the coast from grand old Mumbai, when the oil lamps and electric lamps fizzed alight, link by link in a vast, convoluted chain, it was only bright enough to help the muggers and cutthroats see what they were doing.
“City of romance,” Swayne said with eminent sarcasm. He opened the door to the terrace and stood naked at the rail. There were a few tourists on their verandas and at their windows. Laughter and pop music and the stench of the sea carried on the lethargic breeze as it snaked through the room. The hotel occupied the exact center of a semicircle of relatively modernized blocks—the chamber of commerce’s concession to appeasing Westerners’ paranoia of marauding gangs and vicious muggers. Still, three streets over was the Third World, as Kenshi’s colleagues referred to it whilst they swilled whiskey and goggled at turbans and sarongs and at the Buddhists in their orange robes. It was enough to make him ashamed of his continent, to pine for his father’s homeland, until he realized the Japanese were scarcely any more civilized as guests.
“The only hotel with air conditioning and you go out there. You’ll be arrested if you don’t put something on!” Kenshi finally dragged himself upright and collected his pants. “Let’s go to the discothèque.”
“The American place? I’d rather not. Asshole tourists swarm there like bees to honey. I was in the cantina a bit earlier and got stuck near a bunch of Hollywood types whooping it up at the bar. Probably come to scout the area or shoot the monastery. All they could talk about is picking up on ‘European broads.’”
Kenshi laughed. “Those are the guys I’m traveling with. Yeah, they’re scouting locations. And they’re all married, too.”
“Wankers. Hell with the disco.”
“No, there’s another spot—a hole in the wall I heard about from a friend. A local.”
“Eh, probably a seedy little bucket of blood. I’m in, then!”
Kenshi rang his contact, one Rashid Obi, an assistant to an executive producer at a local firm that cranked out several dozen Bollywood films every year. Rashid gave directions and promised to meet them at the club in forty-five minutes. Or, if they were nervous to travel the streets alone, he could escort them…. Kenshi laughed, somewhat halfheartedly, and assured his acquaintance there was no need for such coddling. He would’ve preferred Rashid’s company, but knew Swayne was belligerently fearless regarding forays into foreign environments. His lover was an adventurer and hard-bitten in his own charming fashion. Certainly Swayne would mock him for his timidity and charge ahead regardless. So, Kenshi stifled his misgivings and led the way.
The discothèque was a quarter-mile from the hotel and buried in a misshapen block of stone houses and empty shops. They found it mostly by accident after stumbling around several narrow alleys that reeked of urine and the powerful miasma of curry that seeped from open apartment windows. The entry arch was low and narrow and blackened from soot and antiquity. The name of the club had been painted into the worn plaster, but illegible now from erosion and neglect. Kerosene lamps guttered in inset sconces and shadows gathered in droves. A speaker dangled from a cornice and projected scratchy sitar music. Two Indian men sat on a stone bench. They wore baggy, lemon shirts and disco slacks likely purchased from the black market outlets in a local bazaar. They shared the stem of the hookah at their sandaled feet. Neither appeared interested in the arrival of the Westerners.
“Oh my God! It’s an opium den!” Swayne said, and squeezed Kenshi’s buttock. “Going native, are we, dear?”
Kenshi blushed and knocked his hand aside. He’d smoked half a joint with a dorm mate in college and that was the extent of his experimentation with recreational drugs. He favored a nice, dry white wine and the occasional import beer, preferably Sapporo.
The darkness of the alley followed them inside. The interior lay in shadow, except for the bar, which glowed from a strip along its edge like the bioluminescent tentacle of a deep-sea creature, and motes of gold and red and purple passing across the bottles from a rotating glitter ball above the tiny square of dance floor wedged in the corner. The sitar music issued from a beat box and was much louder than it had been outside. Patrons were jammed into the little rickety tables and along the bar. The air was sharp with sweat and exhaled liquor fumes.
Rashid emerged from the shadows and caught Kenshi’s arm above the elbow in the overly familiar manner of his countrymen. He was shorter than Kenshi and slender to the point of well-heeled emaciation. He stood so close Kenshi breathed deeply of his cologne, the styling gel in his short, tightly coiled hair. He introduced the small man from Delhi to a mildly bemused Swayne. Soon Rashid vigorously shepherded them into an alcove where a group of Europeans crowded together around three circular tables laden with beer bottles and shot glasses and fuming ashtrays heaped with the butts of cigarettes.
Rashid presented Swayne and Kenshi to the evening’s co-host, one Luis Guzman, an elderly Argentinean who’d lived abroad for nearly three decades in quasi-political exile. Guzman was the public relations guru for a profoundly large international advertising conglomerate, which in turn influenced, or owned outright, the companies represented by the various guests he’d assembled at the discothèque.
Kenshi’s feet ached, so he wedged in next to a reedy blonde Netherlander, a weather reporter for som
e big market, he gathered as sporadic introductions were made. Her hands bled ink from a mosaic of nightclub stamps, the kind that didn’t easily wash off, so like rings in a tree, it was possible to estimate she’d been partying hard for several nights. This impression was confirmed when she confided that she’d gone a bit wild during her group’s whirlwind tour of Bangkok, Mumbai, and now this “village” in the space of days. She laughed at him from the side of her mouth, gaped fishily with her left eye, a Picasso girl, and pressed her bony thigh against him. She’d been drinking boleros, and lots of them, he noted. What goes down must come up, he thought and was sorry for whomever she eventually leeched onto tonight.
The Viking gentleman looming across from them certainly vied for her attention, what with his lascivious grimaces and bellowing jocularity, but she appeared content to ignore him while trading glances with the small, hirsute Slav to the Viking’s left and occasionally brushing Kenshi’s forearm as they shared an ashtray. He soon discovered Hendrika the weathergirl worked for the Viking, Andersen, chief comptroller and inveterate buffoon. The Slav was actually a native of Minsk named Fedor; Fedor managed distribution for a major vodka label and possessed some mysterious bit of history with Hendrika. Kenshi idly wondered if he’d been her pimp while she toiled through college. A job was a job was a job (until she found the job of her dreams) to a certain subset of European woman, and men too, as he’d been pleased to discover during his many travels. In turn, Hendrika briefly introduced Kenshi to the French contingent of software designers—Françoise, Jean Michelle and Claude; the German photographer Victor and his assistant Nina, and Raul, a Spanish advertising consultant. They extended lukewarm handshakes and one of them bought him a glass of bourbon, which he didn’t want but politely accepted. Then, everyone resumed roaring, disjointed conversations and ignored him completely.
Good old Swayne got along swimmingly, of course. He’d discarded his white suit for an orange blazer, black shirt and slacks, and Kenshi noted with equal measures of satisfaction and jealousy that all heads swiveled to follow the boisterous Englishman. Within moments he’d shaken hands with all and sundry and been inducted by the club of international debauchers as a member in good standing. That the man didn’t even speak a second language was no impediment—he vaulted such barriers by shamelessly enlisting necessary translations from whoever happened to be within earshot. Kenshi glumly thought his friend would’ve made one hell of an American.
Presently Swayne returned from his confab with Rashid and Guzman and exclaimed, “We’ve been invited to the exhibition. A Van Iblis!” Swayne seemed genuinely enthused, his meticulously cultivated cynicism blasted to smithereens in an instant. Kenshi barely made him out over the crossfire between Andersen and Hendrika and the other American, Walther. Walther was fat and bellicose, a colonial barbarian dressed for civilized company. His shirt was untucked, his tie an open noose. Kenshi hadn’t caught what the fellow did for a living, however Walther put whiskey after whiskey away with the vigor of a man accustomed to lavish expense accounts. He sneered at Kenshi on the occasions their eyes met.
Kenshi told Swayne he’d never heard of Van Iblis.
“It’s a pseudonym,” Swayne said. “Like Kilroy, Or Alan Smithee. He, or she, is a guerilla. Not welcome in the U.K.; persona non grata in the free world you might say.” When Kenshi asked why Van Iblis wasn’t welcome in Britain, Swayne grinned. “Because the shit he pulls off violates a few laws here and there. Unauthorized installations, libelous materials, health code violations. Explosions!” Industry insiders suspected Van Iblis was actually comprised of a significant number of member artists and exceedingly wealthy patrons. Such an infrastructure seemed the only logical explanation for the success of these brazen exhibitions and their participant’s elusiveness.
It developed that Guzman had brought his eclectic coterie to this part of the country after sniffing a rumor of an impending Van Iblis show and, as luck would have it, tonight was the night. Guzman’s contacts had provided him with a hand-scrawled map to the rendezvous, and a password. A password! It was all extraordinarily titillating.
Swayne dialed up a slideshow on his cell and handed it over. Kenshi remembered the news stories once he saw the image of the three homeless men who’d volunteered to be crucified on faux satellite dishes. Yes, that had caused a sensation, although the winos survived relatively intact. None of them knew enough to expose the identity of his temporary employer. Another series of slides displayed the infamous pigs’ blood carpet bombing of the Viet Nam War Memorial from a blimp that then exploded in midair like a Roman candle. Then the so called “corpse art” in Mexico, Amsterdam and elsewhere. Similar to the other guerilla installations, these exhibits popped up in random venues in any of a dozen countries after the mildest and most surreptitious of advance rumors and retreated underground within hours. Of small comfort to scandalized authorities was the fact the corpse sculptures, while utterly macabre, were allegedly comprised of volunteers with terminal illnesses who’d donated their bodies to science, or rather, art. Nonetheless, at the sight of grimly posed seniors in antiquated bathing suits, a bloated, eyeless Santa in a coonskin cap, the tri-headed ice cream vendor and his chalk-faced Siamese children, Kenshi wrinkled his lip and pushed the phone at Swayne. “No, I think I’ll skip this one, whatever it is, thank you very much.”
“You are such a wet blanket, Swayne said. “Come on, love. I’ve been dying to witness a Van Iblis show since, well forever. I’ll be the envy of every art dilettante from Birmingham to Timbuktu!”
Kenshi made polite yet firm noises of denial. Swayne leaned very close; his hot breath tickled Kenshi’s ear. He stroked Kenshi’s cock through the tight fabric of his designer pants. Congruently, albeit obliviously, Hendrika continued to rub his thigh. Kenshi choked on his drink and finally consented to accompany Swayne on his stupid side trek, would’ve promised anything to spare himself this agonizing embarrassment. A lifetime in the suburbs had taught him to eschew public displays of affection, much less submit to a drunken mauling by another man in a foreign country not particularly noted for its tolerance.
He finished his drink in miserable silence and awaited the inevitable.
They crowded aboard Guzman’s two Day-Glo rental vans and drove inland. There were no signs to point the way and the road was narrow and deserted. Kenshi’s head grew thick and heavy on his neck and he closed his eyes and didn’t open them until the tires made new sounds as they left paved road for a dirt track and his companions gently bumped their legs and arms against his own.
It wasn’t much farther.
Daylight peeled back the layers of night and deposited them near a collection of prefabricated warehouse modules and storage sheds. The modules were relatively modern, yet already cloaked in moss and threaded with coils of vine. Each was enormous and had been adjoined to its siblings via additions and corrugated tin walkways. The property sat near the water, a dreary, fog-shrouded expanse surrounded by drainage ditches and marshes and a jungle of creepers and banyan trees.
Six or seven dilapidated panel trucks were parked on the outskirts; 1970s Fords imported from distant USA, their white frames scorched and shot with rust. Battered insignia on the door panels marked them as one-time property of the ministry of the interior. Alongside the trucks, an equally antiquated, although apparently functional, bulldozer squatted in the high grass; a dull red model one would expect to see abandoned in a rural American pasture. To the left of the bulldozer was a deep, freshly ploughed trench surmounted by plastic barrels, unsealed fifty-five-gallon drums and various wooden boxes, much of this half-concealed by canvas tarps. Guzman commented that the owners of the land were in the embryonic stage of prepping for large-scale development—perhaps a hotel. Power lines and septic systems were in the offing.
Kenshi couldn’t imagine who in the hell could possibly think building a hotel in a swamp represented a wise business investment.
Guzman and Rashid’s group climbed from the vans and congregated, faces slack and
bruised by hangovers, jet lag, and burgeoning unease. What had seemed a lark in the cozy confines of the disco became a more ominous prospect as each took stock and realized he or she hadn’t a bloody clue as to north or south, or up and down, for that matter. Gnats came at them in quick, sniping swarms, and several people cursed when they lost shoes to the soft, wet earth. Black and white chickens scratched in the weedy ruts.
A handful of Indians dressed in formal wear grimly waited under a pavilion to serve a buffet. None of them smiled or offered any greeting. They mumbled amongst themselves and loaded plates of honeydew slices and crepes and poured glasses of champagne with disconsolate expressions. A Victrola played an eerie Hindu-flavored melody. The scene reminded Kenshi of a funeral reception. Someone, perhaps Walther, muttered nervously, and the sentiment of general misgiving palpably intensified.
“Hey, this is kinda spooky,” Hendrika stage-whispered to her friend Fedor. Oddly enough, that cracked everybody up and tensions loosened.
Guzman and Rashid approached a couple of young, drably attired Indian men who were scattering corn from gunny sacks to the chickens, and started a conversation. After they’d talked for a few minutes, Guzman announced the exhibition would open in about half an hour and all present were welcome to enjoy the buffet and stretch their legs. Andersen, Swayne and the French software team headed for the pavilion and mosquito netting.
