Jalan Jalan

by Mike Stoner

  ‘Here.’ She hands me a napkin and points to my nose. I wipe it and blow.

  ‘Sorry. I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Tidak apa-apa. No problem.’

  She is as beautiful as the first time I saw her. Dark Indian skin and large dark eyes, bar lights reflecting in them. They’re alive. Her hair falls thick over her shoulders and down her back. Laura is sitting silently, watching. Maybe.

  The barman says something in Indonesian to Eka and she says something back and waves her hand at him. He moves away.

  ‘What is wrong, crazy English man?’ Eka pushes the whisky towards me. I take it and drink just a mouthful. It burns the inside of my cheeks.

  —Go on, tell her, says Laura from the next stool, legs crossed, foot bobbing, I dare you.

  I shake my head.

  —You’re not here. You’re not here, no matter how hard I try to make you here, you’re not here.

  —Are you sure? How can you be sure?

  —I can’t, but—

  ‘My girlfriend died a few months ago. I have trouble forgetting her,’ I say.

  —Ah, so that’s how it is then. Rather be with a pro than with your super-dead girlfriend. Nice. I’ll be off now. See you later. Thanks for the birthday drink, numbnuts.

  I take a deep breath, swallow, widen my eyes and blink. Guilt crashes into my gut like a brick.

  ‘I talk to her sometimes,’ I say, ‘but I don’t think she’s really listening. She says she is, but I don’t think she is.’

  —Oh yes, I am. And watching everything you do.

  —I thought you were going?

  —Haven’t made up my mind yet.

  ‘You are sad man. Crazy sad man. How do you know she not listens? Spirits are very clever.’

  —This girl’s not as dumb as she looks.

  If I could give Laura an icy stare, I would.

  Eka pulls a stool out and sits next to me, legs crossed. There is a little skin showing between the bottom of her jeans and the top of her shoes.

  ‘I don’t know. I just think that it isn’t possible.’

  ‘Many strange things possible in the world. Many many. Perhaps you should believe she there.’

  —Go on. Believe.

  ‘I’m going crazy believing that. Talking out loud all the time. Wanting to touch her, to feel her and not being able to. It’s better I don’t believe. I’m trying to get away from her. To forget her.’

  —Forget me? Huh.

  —God. Shut up.

  ‘So if you don’t want her spirit here, you must be strong. You must have new life.’ She prods my arm on the last two words.

  ‘Ha.’

  ‘What funny?’

  ‘That’s exactly why I came to this country. For a new life, a new me. A New Me.’ I finish my whisky and ask for the same again. ‘For you?’

  —Yes, please.

  ‘Maybe I try this too.’ She sniffs my glass, looking at me over its rim. ‘Whisky?’

  ‘Yes.’

  —Oh, don’t give her my drink.

  ‘Please.’

  I order the same for Eka.

  —Numbnuts.

  —You still here?

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ I say, hoping Laura will take the hint.

  ‘Sometimes here.’

  ‘To meet men?’

  She laughs.

  ‘Yes. To meet men for money. I am bad girl.’

  —Ooooh. Slapperrrr.

  ‘And you told me you weren’t a prostitute.’

  ‘No, not prostitute. I just take money from men. I am beautiful, so I can.’

  —A pro, and modest with it. Charming.

  Eka sips her drink and grimaces. ‘I never sleep with them first time.’

  ‘Second?’ I ask.

  ‘Sometimes. If I like. But not for you tonight. I think you need talk tonight. You not need sex.’

  I don’t disagree. And nor does Laura.

  ‘It’s her…it would have been her birthday today. I haven’t thought of her much for a few days, well, not that I’ve noticed, and then I wake this morning and the first thought: it’s Laura’s birthday. My day ruined.’ I finish the drink. I’m not feeling drunk yet.

  ‘Poor Mr Crazy.’ Eka runs her fingers down my cheek. I jump. ‘I’m sure she is happy you remember. I’m sure she miss you. Please give me cigarette.’

  We smoke in silence. I can sense Laura brooding nearby. More whiskies are poured.

  ‘You must live your life. You cannot stay in past. She understand.’ She stubs her cigarette out.

  —I bloody don’t.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to do,’ I say. ‘But there’s a big part of me just wants to think about her and live in the past. I just wish I could go back, change something. Stop her, so she misses the bus.’

  ‘Bus?’

  —I don’t want to hear this sob story. I’m off now. Don’t you dare forget the slice-of-cake rule. And if you do, don’t catch anything.

  I shake my head.

  ‘She died in an accident. She’d just got off a bus.’ The words are foreign and uncomfortable as they come from my mouth.

  ‘Do not think of past. Perhaps she will be reborn and when you are reborn perhaps you will be together again.’

  ‘Rebirth? You believe in that?’

  ‘Yes. I am Hindu. My ancestors came from India many years ago.’ She runs her fingers through her hair, it falls through her fingertips like silk. I want to feel it too. The thought surprises me.

  —Men, comes a voice from somewhere in the back of my skull, you can’t help thinking about nooky, can you?

  —You’re still eavesdropping, then?

  No answer.

  ‘You talk to her again?’

  ‘No. Yes, a little.’

  ‘You want I go? Leave you two alone, crazy man?’ She has an eyebrow raised and her full lips smile.

  ‘No. Actually I don’t. I think she may have already left. Jealousy’s got the better of her.’ I raise my glass and knock it against hers. ‘Cheers. Here’s to strange coincidences.’ I down the glass again and finally my head spins.

  ‘What is coinci… coinc…?’

  ‘Coincidences. It means very lucky to meet you here tonight.’

  ‘I am happy meet you. But no pom-pom tonight.’

  ‘Sorry? Pom-pom?’

  ‘Sex. No sex.’

  ‘Good. I don’t think my girlfriend would like it.’ Good joke. I break into a mad and slightly high-pitched giggle which feels like it might become tears so I stop. Eka looks at me while I do it, but makes no comment or facial movement.

  ‘But we go to hotel and we sleep together, yes?’ One eyebrow raised.

  —What do you think? I ask Laura, knowing full well she’s still loitering.

  —Really? You want my opinion about her?

  —Yes.

  —Honestly and jealousy aside, I think you need solid company and whatever I may be, I can’t give you that. So go on if you really must, but no pom-pom.

  —No pom-pom.

  ‘What says your girlfriend,’ asks Eka, looking at me from under a length of hair she is twirling between her fingers.

  ‘Yes. She says yes.’

  —But no pom-pom.

  ‘But no pom-pom.’

  —Now I’m really gone. Defo. Just ‘cos I want you to get a cuddle doesn’t mean I want to see it. Slice-of-cake rule; no eating, remember. So behave, Ice-Cream Boy.

  —I will.

  ‘Good. One more whisky.’ Eka waves her empty glass under my nose.

  We drink another whisky. She takes me to a cheap hotel in a back street somewhere. The guy who works at the desk calls her by her name. We go to a room. We climb into bed. She takes my clothes off. She massages me. She walks the length of my spine in bare feet. Bones crack. With each crack tension dies. Thoughts are squashed. She takes her clothes off. I press my body close against hers. We kiss. We hold each other. We sleep together, me in her arms, my head on her breast, a landscape of beautiful s
kin stretched out under me, dark and smooth. She strokes my hair. I try to stay awake to take her in, but I can’t. I sleep. No pom-pom.

  I laugh at her and then my mind asks why she is telling such a joke; it’s not funny, so why would she say such a thing.

  So I ask, ‘What?’ and laugh again, once.

  ‘It happened in Pilsen. The bus stopped for a break. They think she looked the wrong way.’

  She is calm. How can she be if it’s true?

  ‘She looked the wrong way and then crossed.’ And her voice breaks up and there is sobbing and apologising and then, ‘She looked the wrong way and…’

  I want her off the phone. I want it back in its cradle and I want to go back to my book and I want to return to the story and I want her off the phone so Laura can call and tell me it’s a mistake because it isn’t her. Of course it isn’t her.

  Suddenly Jane’s voice is calm again.

  ‘Are you alone?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you call someone? Don’t be alone. Call someone.’

  ‘I will.’ Get off the phone. Laura is trying to get through.

  ‘OK. You will call someone? Get someone there?’

  ‘Yes.’ The phone is shaking against my ear.

  ‘We’ll call you tomorrow. I’m sorry. She looked the wrong way.’

  Something is going out of my body. I can feel it leaving me. Something is leaving me.

  ‘Take care. Don’t be alone. I’m sorry.’ Jane hangs up and the phone rattles against the side of my head. I put it back in its cradle and it lies peacefully, as if it never said a word.

  I sit on the arm of the chair and look at my book lying face down and splayed on the seat. I’ll read until Laura phones. I know she’ll phone and then I can phone her mum back and tell her the mistake.

  I pick the book up and my eyes scan the mass of letters on the page and they roll and move and nearly form words but then fall apart again and I can’t find a sentence to start so I pick the phone up and dial and it rings and my mother answers and she is sleepy and I ask her to come and she asks what’s wrong and I say Laura and she looked the wrong way and then she says my god and I’ll be there soon and I put the phone back and it is still and silent again and the silence rings in my ears and something is coming up my throat and up under my skin and I don’t want it to come but it has to and it pushes up beneath my face and is trapped for a second under my eyes and what is in my throat comes out of my mouth and it is dark and black and piercing and full of guilt and my soul is trying to escape and be away from this and what is under my eyes also bursts out and it is acid that burns and the cry I make has no sound but it is deafening and I am curled up on the floor and my legs writhe and my hands pull at my face and hair and still this monster flows from my mouth like bile and finally it stops and there is knocking on the door and I am not alone and my mother holds me and holds me and holds me but I am empty and she is grasping a husk.

  ‘Come and lie on the bed and sleep,’ she says, and I follow and she cradles me from behind and every time I close my eyes I see Laura look the wrong way and step out and I see her see her mistake and turn too slowly as a car hits her but it is wrong and then I picture it again and this time it’s a truck and the next it’s a bus and the next it’s a car and each time it can’t be right because it can’t happen and I can’t imagine Laura not being.

  Laura is always.

  Laura is always and she will call and I get off the bed and go back to the phone and pick it up and listen for her voice but all I hear is the long long tone and I replace the phone and check it’s in its cradle and I pick it up and I hear the tone humming at me, and it hums and it hums and it hums.

  POM-POM

  I watch a cockroach crawling up the cracked wall, its feelers wobbling in their search for whatever it’s searching for. It’s a big bugger, nearly three inches long, but most of them are big buggers. I’m getting used to them, in toilets, kitchens, sometimes beds.

  I can smell the mattress under me; old sweat from a thousand bodies and something musky. I can also smell Eka’s sweet perfume. She lies with her back to me, curved vertebrae showing through brown skin dappled by early morning light, but her hand is in my hand. I think I should feel guilty, but nothing has happened between us and I have no one left to feel guilty towards. But it doesn’t change the fact that I think I should feel guilty, even though I don’t. I try to pull my hand free, but hers squeezes tighter over mine.

  ‘Stay, Mr Crazy. You must tell me how you feel.’ She rolls over to face me and now holds my hand with both of hers. Her breast feels heavy against my arm ‘You feel OK?’

  She is more beautiful in daylight. Her eyes look almost too large for her face and are such a dark brown that the pupils nearly blend into the irises. Although her thick black eyebrows are raised in question, there is a slight mocking to her expression.

  ‘I am OK. I think.’ I take a second to check. I do feel OK. The spine-cracking has left me feeling loose. The cuddling and holding has left me feeling calm. The weighty breast on my arm is making me feel horny.

  The conversations with Laura seem misty and distant now. In today’s light, sneaking in low through a crack in the faded, stained curtains, I know I didn’t talk to her. How could I? Old Me must be smiling at yesterday’s emotional joyride.

  Well that’s it. Now shut up and stay quiet and keep all that emotional claptrap rubbish with you. No more tears. No more supernatural chats. She looked the wrong way; she’s dead. Now I’m getting on.

  ‘Look better.’ She is up on her elbows looking down at me, holding my hand beneath her chin. Her breast is now resting against my side. ‘Your face not so…’ and she scrunches her face up.

  ‘I feel better. A new day today.’ Corny but true.

  ‘Now want pom-pom. You? Pom-pom?’

  I raise my head and kiss her. Her lips are soft and moist and her tongue pushes into my mouth. My arms go around her back and she climbs on top of me and her breasts squash against my chest. And New Me slips into her and Old Me whisper-shouts ‘Laura’ somewhere, but New Me drowns him out by pushing his face into Eka’s hair and the exotic smells within and his hands feel the silkiness of her skin and his eyes take in the mouth-watering colour of her, and Old Me is buried beneath the lust and the moment and the desperation of moving on.

  We both lie there afterwards, smoking the clichéd après-sex cigarettes; a pretty damn good post-coital habit if ever there was one. I watch the smoke rise towards a crack in the ceiling. A sliver of sunlight shines through the smoke, creating a cheap laser-show effect.

  I suppose I should get to work. I sigh a long breath of smoke out. ‘I should get to work,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Be happy man at work. Think of Eka, not dead girl.’

  I think dead girl plagued my dreams in the night, but I’m not sure. She certainly hasn’t plagued my mind since. For a fleeting moment I want to apologise to Laura for treating her so badly on her birthday, but I knock the idea away with a backward head-butt onto the pillow.

  ‘Ada apa?’ asks Eka, leaning across me and stubbing her cigarette out in the ashtray on the side table. She lies back down.

  ‘Nothing. Tidak apa-apa.’ I roll on my side so we are facing each other. ‘Terima kasih.’

  ‘Why thank me? I like.’

  ‘For last night. For helping. Maybe I’d be lying drunk in a gutter somewhere now if you hadn’t been there.’

  ‘I do not understand all you say.’ She rubs her nose against mine. ‘But I happy I help.’

  ‘I must go.’

  I give her a kiss and go the bathroom. The floor feels gritty beneath my feet so I go up on my toes. The bathroom is a traditional Indonesian mandi: a sort of stand-up bath next to a squat toilet. I go higher on my toes, use the squat from a standing position, then get in the mandi and throw scoops of cold water from a big bucket over my body. Two cockroaches the length of my index finger watch from the corner, feelers wobbling. I come out and dry myself with a towel t
he size of a flannel and the thickness of a hanky and I feel dirtier than before I washed.

  Eka is already dressed. I’m disappointed.

  ‘We take taxi? Your work and me my house?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. OK.’ I pull on my trousers and the rest of my clothes. I wonder if she’s going to ask for money.

  ‘You want see me again?’ she asks. She climbs behind me on the bed and throws her arms around me while I try to pull on my sandals.

  ‘Yes.’ I do. I want her company. I want to look at her more. I want sex. I want more cheap dirty hotels and more spine walking. I want the life of a man who doesn’t care what others think. I want to go off the British Standard Kitemark rails that I’ve had under me for most of my life. I want to freewheel and not worry about things getting in my way. She’ll help in sending New Me in any direction he wants to take and she’ll help stamp on any unwanted visitors who may turn up.

  ‘Bagus. You find me on Friday night in Iguana Club.’

  ‘I will.’ I turn to kiss her but she is up and off the bed and opening the door.

  ‘You work now. Come, Crazy.’

  I’m tired.

  All these moments, all these times. I’m tired. I’ll sleep in this warm place. The beat of his heart is strong and calm. Sleep. For a while. Curl up with Laura down here. Hold all of her in my arms and in my mind. Sleep with her. Comfort her for the pain she feels while he finds comfort in another. While he tries to push her aside, ignore her and attempt to vainly move on from love. Console her while she has to watch him lose himself in the flesh of another. She has to bear the jealousy and the inevitability of his life without her. We will sleep together, with our moments. Close our eyes. Dreamless sleep. Long, peaceful, dark sleep.

  WALNUT

  T he new club is right next door to Iguana. We stand there looking at it, nodding at the appearance of this new neon-signed place. The sun drizzles its heat over us. Charles is in a dark suit with a dark tie shot through with bright red swirls. His hair is slicked back. Sunglasses hide his personality. On the other side of him is a short old man whose face is made up of wrinkles joined together by peaks of leathery flesh. He reminds me of a walnut. One of his eyes is misted over milky white. He is wearing a plain brown short-sleeved shirt over a beige-and-black sarong which hangs just above sandaled leather feet. His toes are adorned with long, dirt-encrusted toenails. Over his shoulder hangs a multicoloured woven bag. I’m guessing he’s the dukun. There is also a group of men in business suits and sunglasses behind us. Beautiful girls in short skirts and T-shirts with the name of the club on them mingle and walk up and down the street, handing out flyers and free packets of Davidoff cigarettes.