by Jess Row
I had my Thai cell phone there on the table, next to the Lonely Planet; I could call Tariko, or get into a cab and head back to the house. Should I be afraid, I wondered, actually? And who of?
Who else, other than Martin?
It would be convenient to have a person vanish in the middle of Bangkok. Probably there’s few places in the world with more opportunities to disappear. You could go to Patpong and have a prostitute slip you a little GHB, and the next thing you know you’re decomposing in a field on the road to Ayuthaya while she empties your bank accounts. You could get on a bus for Phnom Penh or Chiang Rai or Vientiane and leave in the middle of the night. If I went missing, I thought, who would look for me? The night before leaving I’d emailed my parents my flight receipt, telling them I was on a reporting trip for a book project with no definite return date. They don’t expect regular phone calls or emails; it might be a month before they started looking in earnest.
Have I become that much of a liability?
Because of that additional five percent?
Because I’m a competitor? Another story, another celebrity? Becoming Chinese: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them: An American Leaves Home to Join the World’s Newest Superpower: Chinese from the Inside Out.
Because he thinks he’s doing me a favor. Before I become the tragic mulatto.
Because I’m the last one on earth who knows his real story. Who can pin him to a map.
Thinking this way was so ridiculous I flushed, the hairs prickling on my arms.
But then why would he have them follow me? Don’t these things depend on the element of surprise, the bag over the head, the hustling into the unmarked van? Wouldn’t they be more likely to send someone as bait? Like in The Crying Game. Forest Whitaker, the black soldier from Tottenham, snogging with Miranda Richardson in a muddy field at an Irish country fair, when Stephen Rea puts a gun to his head. Miranda Richardson, killed in a skiing accident just a few years ago, an untreated head wound, only in her fifties.
No, that was Natasha Richardson.
This is my last day on earth as Kelly Thorndike, I thought, the last day in my own skin, as the person my parents made, my grace period, and I’m inventing surreal murder plots and misremembering old movies. Shouldn’t this be a sign of something? I ought to be in a panic. Shouldn’t I run home, in a defensive posture? I ought to be missing my Rice Krispies about now. My neat and orderly life, my books and furniture, my desk, the clean-swept hardwood floor where I can pad about barefoot and listen to the police sirens streaking down St. Paul knowing they’re not coming for me. Baltimore. Home. But no. I didn’t want any of it. I’ve broken the spell, I thought, I’m free.
You want anything else?
The kind-faced young waiter in a Greenpeace T-shirt scooped up my dishes with one hand and refilled my water glass with the other.
Give me a recommendation, I said. I’ve seen the temples. What should I do now?
Take a river taxi, he said. You won’t regret it. Best thing for a day as hot as this.
—
The man in the gold glasses and brown uniform followed me onto the boat, ten paces behind, never glancing my way, talking on his phone the entire time. An ordinary preoccupied commuter. Now he’s taken a position on a bench next to the gangway. Alarm, alarm. A well of panic into which anything can fall without making a sound. I’m going to be leaving this life before it’s even begun. I turn away and pretend to study the enormous white cone of Wat Arun, just coming into view on the far side of the river.
Or—it occurs to me just now—maybe he’s simply having me followed. To make sure I don’t stray. No surreptitious emails, no long phone calls, no meetings with clandestine publishing agents. Why does that seem, if anything, even less believable? Of course he would consider it. I would, too. Given our history, who would believe in such a thing as absolute trust? I should call him just to confirm. In an easy tone. Hey, Martin, about that guy watching me—
Two heavy fingers rest on my shoulder.
You Kelly? he asks when I turn around. He’s removed his glasses and stares at me with puffy eyes, the lids swollen like inchworms. Kelly from USA? My name San.
I have no idea what to say to this, so I nod.
Somebody want to see you, San says. You know. You know him. Follow me, please. We get off next stop.
—
We’re in the tourist quarter. Khao San Road, where the trustafarians play. Streaming past me are muddy-faced white girls done up in braids and beads, batik skirts and jingling anklets; twenty-something boys in Beerlao and ManU and Che T-shirts; towering Aussies with splotchy sunburns gnawing kebabs and spooning pad thai out of paper cups. San threads me through the middle of the street, dodging tuk-tuk drivers and travel agents offering flyers, strolling ukulele players and kickboxers giving impromptu demonstrations. We turn two corners, all the sidewalks packed with pink faces, puffed out by heat and alcohol. Down an alley lined with sidewalk cafés and massage chairs, and under a hotel canopy—Hotel Santana—into deep, pungent shade. Sticky cocktails, cigarette smoke, spilled beer and fish sauce. On the back wall The Notebook plays on an eight-foot screen with the volume turned down, a close-up of Ryan Gosling’s puppy-dog eyes.
Mort Kepler, reclining in a rattan chair, a bottle of Singha and a glass of mango juice at his elbow, sees me and jumps to attention, with a broad, toothy grin. Son of a bitch, he says. I can hear him halfway across the bar. They got you. I was just about to pack it in for the day. Want to know how long I’ve been sitting here, waiting for you?
—
Mort, I say, swallowing a warm wave of shock, how the fuck did you make this happen?
I’m a reporter, he says. This is what reporters do. Use fixers. Local eyes on the ground. Haven’t you ever—oh, wait. I forgot. Right! You don’t have a background in journalism. Okay. I guess I have to explain everything from the beginning. Well, I have what Hemingway used to call a one hundred percent foolproof bullshit detector. And when I looked at you, right from the start, I knew you were hiding something. Just not what.
I raise one hand, defensively, and lower it a moment later. What’s the point in arguing with him? I’m so glad to see him, so relieved, I almost want to reach over the table and hug his bristly shoulders. Go on, I say. Give me the full report. I’m listening.
So you shitcan the station, you and what’s-her-name, after, what is it, three months? Three months after you get there? I’ve had Chinese food that lasted longer than you at BCC. Well, so I had nothing else to do. And a grudge, yes. A vendetta. So I started tailing you. Having nothing better to do. Don’t you remember that day I crept up on you in Fell’s Point? There are no accidents in this world. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that? I was hoping for an introduction to the girl, but it didn’t take long to trace her back. Quite a pedigree.
You followed her, too?
No, you idiot. I used the good old-fashioned Internet. Photo-recognition software. And then a fifty-dollar scanner to pick up your WiFi signal. There’s this amazing store online, Orchid Imports? Based right in Baltimore. Sells all that kind of gadgetry. Ever heard of it?
Nope.
That’s okay. I don’t expect you to give up your sources all at once. Let’s just chitchat. Pretend I didn’t just shell out five thousand bucks to make this happen.
Who ever told you I was reporting anything?
Well, you don’t expect me to believe you’re involved, do you? Come on. Good luck with that. If you’ve managed to convince them of your ideological soundness, you’re a better actor than I ever gave you credit for.
I can’t do anything but stare at him, in sheer, confused defeat.
The movement, he says. Does it have a name? I did a lot of digging and came up all zeroes. Wilkinson’s friends with everybody, but no one wanted to talk when I came around. And believe me, I know people. So I’ve been doing a process of elimination. It’s not the New Black Panther Party. It’s not the Revolutionary Communists or the ACP. It’s not Occupy Wall Street. It�
�s not the Nation. If it’s Islamist at all, he’s a cell of one. Never been to a mosque, never met with an imam. There’s always that possibility. He could be one of those YouTube guys, the Zarqawi syndicate. But I doubt it. I think he’s starting from the ground up. He’s got the charisma, the connections, and the funds. But what is it, man? Just give a clue. What’s his agenda? Black nationalist? Radical self-determination? Third World revolution? Chavismo? Or is he just another drug runner with fancy ideas? Okay. Not that. I can tell just by looking at you.
You must be a mind reader.
No, you’d just be a terrible poker player. I’m getting somewhere, I know that much. It’s like I thought. He’s a big thinker. He’s got ideas. So look, listen to me. I’ve covered insurgencies before. That’s my specialty. Leonard Peltier, Mumia, all the great ones. They all needed a chronicler. A mythologist. You know that book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse? Matthiessen ripped it off from my reporting. I would’ve sued him, but AIM said no. Didn’t want the distraction. Listen, I’m a movement guy underneath. Ask anyone I’ve worked with. I can talk a good line to the lamestreamers, but make no mistake: I’m a tool in the hands of the people. Not a word of this comes out till the moment is ripe. Listen, if you are actually in Martin’s pocket, let me talk to him. That’s all I want. Ten minutes to make my case. We can all be in it together. I’ve got the connections and the savvy. You’ve got—well, whatever it is. You’ve worked with him. And Robin, too. Robin’s obviously the key.
What are you talking about?
Have you read her master’s thesis? Talking Resistance: Therapy as Emancipation from Freire to Fanon? I know I’m not supposed to use words like this, but what the hell. Here we are in Bangkok. The girl’s fiery. We’re talking about the diary of a mad black woman. I don’t care if she works for Hopkins or Harvard or the goddamned Cato Institute, she’s a double agent. Scratch that surface and you’ve got a latter-day Angela Davis. Put the two of them together and you’ve really got something. The brains and the means.
A waiter brings me the same thing he’s having, the mango shake and the glistening bottle of Singha.
The mango’s for the vitamins, he says. The beer’s to stay relaxed. Old R&R trick I learned from my friends who spent years in Saigon. Because you never know, do you, when someone’s going to bomb the place out? All these Yankees, out here in the open air? One of these days they’re going to do Bangkok like they did Bali.
He grins, lifts his straw fedora, scratches his bald spot. I never noticed, in the office, just how hairy he was—a salt-and-pepper thatch that runs up his wrists under the sleeves of his linen shirt and emerges over the collar, covering the nape of his neck. A sinewy, almost apelike, grasp. Here is a man, I’m thinking, who loves living his life. Mort Kepler, by Mort Kepler. A self-authored man. Emerson would be proud, and horrified. Does anyone my age live so vigorously, so unironically, so heedless of offense? On the other hand, did his parents? Or are the Boomers just a separate species, never to be repeated?
Mort, would it help in any way, I say, would it make any difference, if I told you you were completely fucking crazy?
All I need is one word. Not even a word. You don’t even have to say it. Just nod. What’s in the boxes? Is it rocket launchers? Centrifuge parts? C-4?
It’s electronics. Gray market electronics. You can ask him.
Well, answer me this, then. If it’s not a movement, what the hell is it? What happened to you, to turn you into this kind of, what, a robot? Is it a cult? A new religion, excuse my language? What, is he some kind of mystic? I mean, if it’s not drugs, and it’s not revolution, and it’s not just out and out money, then what the fuck is left? Religion, right?
I want to tell him. This is it, I’m thinking, this is the door, the way around and over and out. Mort Kepler is a steaming pile of crap, yes, but he’s also a real reporter, who has actually in his life turned a story around and sold it. Leave it to him to break the news. Who cares if it’s Mother Jones or The Nation? Let him have the scoop, let him write the book, and then go back to Baltimore and start again. Hire a lawyer and negotiate a plea deal. Probably it’ll all amount to nothing. Look for another NPR job. Move back in with the parents, if it comes to that. Take shelter. Embrace the ordinary. Take shelter in this pockmarked face, in these big capable hands. Treat Mort Kepler as a father confessor. Why the hell not?
Because I’m free, that’s why. When I’m Curtis Wang, I’ll never have a conversation like this again. What would Mort Kepler say, if Curtis Wang were sitting across the table? He’d be mincing his words, biting his tongue, thinking all kinds of inappropriate thoughts about the Little Red Book and internment camps and industrial espionage and Yao Ming. And penis size. How else do men like him measure their distance from other men, when it comes down to it? Wasn’t I tempted to ask Martin about it, once, long ago? To ask, that is, as a joke, whether Silpa had invented penis extensions, as a side project, to correct for anatomical averages? I can see it in Mort’s face even now, in embryo: Chinaman, my dick is bigger than yours.
Why would I choose that? Why would I step out of the circle of belonging, where I’ve always been? The gilded prison house of whiteness, with its electric fences, its transparent walls? Being the most visible, therefore the most hated, of all? The one who can always condescend, not the one condescended to?
Reader, doesn’t the question answer itself?
I’m expected back at the office, I tell him. Conference call at five.
No more R&R, huh? Who’s the conference call with?
I give him a pitying look.
Enjoy the rest of your time in Bangkok, I say. Go get a massage at Wat Po. They’re only five bucks.
The massages I want are all in Patpong.
With that, I give him a wave, and walk easily out of the bar and down the alley, as if I’ve lived here all my life, and step into a hot pink taxi waiting at the corner. No one follows me.
I wake up with Wendy sleeping next to me.
Her hair spilling across the pillow, her fingers dug into the crook of my elbow. Long white curtains blowing away from an open window, a French door, actually, on her side of the bed. Birds twittering and the hump and sizzle of the surf.
We’re on vacation. Meimei is with my parents in New Paltz. I know these things immediately, automatically, when I open my eyes. This is the vacation we promised each other we would take for our eighth wedding anniversary. Vieques. My supervisor at BUR, Kathleen, insisted we borrow her condo.
How is it that things sometimes fall into place so easily?
That was what Wendy asked me at dinner last night. We were picking through the remains of a grilled yellow snapper, eating the last tostones with our fingers.
I mean, when we came to the United States, she said, the first thing I promised myself is we would take vacations. She switched to Chinese. My parents never took one. Where would they have gone? All their family was in Wudeng, and it’s not as if they could have afforded to go back to Shanghai. Or Beijing.
We’ll take them, next time we go.
It’s expensive now. Not like when we lived there. Even a three-star hotel in Beijing now costs a hundred bucks a night. It’s like New York. I looked it up. The real question is, when can we afford to go, period?
We’ll work it out.
You always say that.
When I stand up my gaze crosses the room to a small mirror, an antique, propped on the dresser, in a blue frame crudely painted with doves. My chin, my eyebrows, my neck. My eyes.
Remember when I first met you, she’s murmuring, how funny I thought it was that you came from a town called Athens? Curtis, I’m so glad we came here. It’s a place we won’t have to explain to each other. But next time we have to bring Meimei.
Don’t make me feel guilty about that.
I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I said next time.
We are in the midst of ordinary life, I’m thinking to myself, as I cross the room and pull on a loose cotton shirt, one I’ve kep
t crumpled in the back of my closet since the last time I went to the beach. A good life. I close my eyes. I don’t have to think about it at all.
—
I’m being pulled up through a warm ocean, thick, silky, amniotic, toward the surface’s blue light. A throbbing, murmuring voice: no one knew she had the gun. Where’d she get it? Korea? You know what the prison sentence is for owning an unregistered firearm in Korea?
—
When I come back from the 7-Eleven, with three slices of pizza stacked up in a box, two Dr Peppers and a Sprite and a bag of crab chips in a plastic bag, Alan and Martin have pulled themselves out of the water and are lying stretched out, facedown on the pool deck. No towels. Skin on concrete, hands by their sides. They look like they’ve been executed where they lie. The lifeguard ignores them.
What the fuck are you doing?
Sunbathing, Alan says. Vitamin D.
You’ll turn into a crispy Chicken McNugget. It’s about 105 out here, Loco Blanco.
That’s Blanco Loco, Martin says.
From the back, from an angle I never see, two slabs of human tissue, two specimens: one white as Crisco, white as Sherwin-Williams Bright White, white so that he reflects the sun, an oblong moon; one turned dark, coal-dark, much darker than his usual medium-toned, maple-syrup color. I stand there for a moment, fascinated. It’s not usually this stark. Pink, brown, and yellow, Martin says. We’re the twenty-first-century Neapolitan trio.
You know something? Alan’s voice is muffled by the concrete. This is it. I could live like this.
And if the sun were a little hotter, we could just turn right back into pure carbon.
Shut up. I mean it. Freeze time. So I can just lie here in the sun, smelling that pizza Wang brought back, watching Katie Cryer over there practice her synchronized swimming or whatever it is.
It’s so unlike him, a positive statement of any kind, let alone a declaration of happiness, that Martin lifts his head and turns it to the other side, so that he faces the back of Alan’s head. And I think, this isn’t my story. This is a dream I’m going to wake up from and never remember.
