“Can you help them?”
“Help, yes. For a short while. Honestly, it’s heart-wrenching,” he answers, expressing the sadness openly, as he prefers.
“Why isn’t God watching us more closely?” Xixi asks.
“You mean, why isn’t the moon full every night?”
“I guess.”
“I’m no priest,” John B says. “But I’ll say this—the moon has cycles. It has to. Otherwise, I believe we wouldn’t have the tides, and the planet might blow apart.”
“Wow.”
“I’m no scientist either.”
“Manga chases his own tail during full moons.”
“Manga?”
“He’s living in a hotel in the New Territories. He has all four legs.”
“I thought maybe you were talking about your father.”
She smiles. But then she thinks about it, or him, more likely, and the smile slides off. Gobshite: her mother summarized what went down in Bangkok. John B knows plenty of two-legged, tail-chasing dogs, with their proud pink willies and come-on barks. He’d be only too happy to step outside the compound and ruin Daddy Kwok’s playboy smile with a fist, should he try visiting the daughter he so miserably failed. Which he won’t do, needless to say—show up, be contrite and humble, act a real man.
“Truth be told,” John B says, “he had to return to Hong Kong for business.”
“Really? So fast?”
“Your mother explained the situation … Men need no end of forgiveness for our sorry habits, I’m afraid to say.”
“I’ll forgive him. Why not.”
“Good girl.”
She thinks for a second. “But can you still tell my mom not to hurry? Hom said I did a good job sweeping the garden, and I told Mrs. Chum I can make pork adobo and arroz caldo. That’s chicken porridge, basically.”
“Why don’t you tell her yourself? We’ve Internet.”
“I like not being on the Net,” she says. “Or Facebook. Or even having a phone.”
“Most of the girls here dream of nothing but owning the latest phone or their own laptop.”
“I like it the way it is right now.”
“Fair enough.”
“And I never want to have my own room again.”
“Okay.”
“I want to share with Rachel.”
The older sister, he also knows, thanks to the mother’s lengthy phone confession. “Would she be willing?”
“I think so. She needs a break from cute white guys.”
John B resolves on the spot to quit trying to figure Xixi Kwok out, and just enjoy. “I’ll ask your mother to wait a week or so. But she may not care for the request, coming from me.”
“She probably thinks you’re a thug. Still a thug, I should say.”
“Then you were listening to my sermon after all?”
“Every word,” she says. Her smile, real now, is like sunlight inside the cabin of a jet after the blinds are raised. He squints at the brilliance.
“Your mother might be right about me.”
“You’re a good man, John B. I can tell.”
To his astonishment, he feels tears welling up and ready to spill. “There’s Sam,” he says, rising. “He’s already made one sketch that he showed me earlier. Sam, over here, son. Don’t be so bloody
Khmer about it,” he adds, meaning too dignified and reserved for his own good.
Reedy, blushing Sameth, destined to fill out into a handsome young man, takes the pigeon steps of the bashfully excited.
“Give it up, mate,” John B says. He is going to have to start the tune off for these songbirds. They don’t have much time, and this is the right meadow, the proper perch, for a courtship.
The boy offers the jagged sheet, freshly torn from the pad.
“Isn’t it wicked?” John B says.
She examines the drawing while they both examine her. The sketch, done with evident talent, depicts Xixi Kwok with luminous almond eyes, a tiara tucked in her short hair and beads adorning her neck, her upper torso a blur of limbs, a dozen hands in total, each offering a significant gesture. She is heroine and goddess, manga and Guanyin.
“It’s nice,” she agrees. But her expression says otherwise.
“You at Wat Pho,” Sam says. “Like you tell me.”
“It’s nice.”
“No good! I knew it.” The boy hangs his head.
Rarely for him, John B has nothing to offer. He shouldn’t be in the courtyard, by the spirit shrine. He should leave these youngsters to their own company. I’ll be on my way, he is about to announce, knowing well that adults are meant to protect the young, not exploit them, and encourage their fragile dreams, not crush them, and that the chance Xixi and Sam might have to enter adulthood without permanent scars, unfixable broken bits, is one that Hom never had, and many of the residents at the shelter won’t have, and maybe he didn’t have—but no, no, no, he would never make excuses.
“Can you draw me as just any girl?” she says.
“But you aren’t—not after all you said.”
“That stuff’s not me, Sam. That’s only what happened the last couple of months.”
John B motions for the boy to take his spot on the bench, and then turns away as Sam Chum, a clean, clear sheet open on his lap, executes his first, the first, pencil mark.
“Just any girl,” Xixi says. “I’d like that.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the following for their help: Michelle Berry, Randy Boyagoda, Mark Dickinson, Anna Foran, Claire Foran, Tony Jeffries, Alice Kuipers, Mary Ladky, Jennifer Lambert, David Manicom, Yann Martel, Dave McKirdy, Emily Schultz, Iris Tupholme, Nury and Mary Vittachi, Sarah Wight, and Noelle Zitzer. Special thanks to Tara Moayed for all her hard work and patience.
About the Author
Award-winning author CHARLES FORAN writes novels and non-fiction. Planet Lolita is his fifth novel. He lives in Toronto.
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Copyright
Planet Lolita
Copyright © 2014 by Charles Foran.
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EPUB Edition April 2014 ISBN 9781443428729
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
FIRST EDITION
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, aside from those clearly in the public domain, is entirely coincidental.
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