Butterfly Stories Part 4

He reached over her to turn out the light, and she cuddled him. He sucked her little nipples and she moaned. He kissed her belly, and eased his hand in between her legs. She'd shaved her pubic hair into a narrow mohawk, probably so that she could dance in the bathing suit. He stuck his mouth into her like the midget had, wondering if she'd push him away, but she let him. He had to suck a long time before he got the c.u.n.t taste. She started moaning again and moving up and down until he could almost believe in it. He did that for awhile until she pushed his face gently away. He got up and opened her with two fingers to see how wet she was because he didn't want to hurt her. Not surprisingly, she wasn't very wet. He reached under the bed and got the tube of K-Y jelly. He squirted some in his hand and smeared it inside her.

What's that? she said.

To make you juicy, he said.

When push came to shove, he didn't use a rubber. She felt like a virgin. When he was only halfway in she got very tight and he could see that she was in pain. He did it as slowly and considerately as he could, trying not to put it in too far. It was one of the best he'd ever had. Soon he was going faster and the pleasure was better and better; she was so sweet and clean and young. He stroked her hair and said: Thank you very much.

Thank you, she said dully.

He got up and put on his underwear. Then he turned on the light and brought her some toilet paper.

She was squatting on the floor in pain.

Look, she said.

Blood was coming out of her.

I'm sorry, he said. I'm really sorry.

No problem, she smiled . . .

I'm sorry!

Maybe I call doctor.

He got her some bandages and ointment. She prayed her hands together and said Thank you.

He gave her one thousand bhat. She hadn't asked for anything. - Thank you, sir, she smiled.

Enough for doctor?

This for taxi. This for tuk tuk.

He gave her another five hundred and she prayed her hands together again and whispered: thank you.

He gave her some ointment and she turned away from him and rubbed it inside her. When they finished getting dressed she hugged him very tightly. She turned her face up to let him kiss her if he wanted. He kissed her forehead.

She hugged him again and again. When he'd shown her out to the tuk-tuk, she shook his hand.

Well, he said to himself, I certainly deserve to get AIDS.

7.

I can't help but feel it's wrong, he said.

Well, we're giving 'em money, aren't we? said the photographer, very reasonably. How else they gonna eat? That's their job. That's what they do. What's more, we're payin' 'em real well, a lot better than most guys would.

8.

What did the journalist really want? No one thing, it seemed, would make him happy. He was life's dilettante. Whatever path he chose, he left, because he was lonely for other paths. No excuse, no excuse! When the photographer led him down the long narrow tunnels of Kong Toi (they had to buy mosquito netting for Cambodia), he got bewildered by all the different means and ways, but everyone else seemed to know, whether they were carrying boxes on their shoulders or hunting down cans of condensed milk, dresses, teapots, toys; it was so crowded under the hot archways of girders that people rubbed against each other as they pa.s.sed, babies crying, people talking low and calm, nothing stopping. How badly had he hurt Oy? He had to see her. Lost, the two vampires wandered among framed portraits of the King, greasy little blood-red sausages, boiled corn, fried packets of green things, oil-roasted nuts that smelled like burned tires, hammerheads without the handles . . . But it was equally true that the vampires felt on top of everything because they were f.u.c.king wh.o.r.es in an air-conditioned hotel.

9.

In the bar after the rain, the girl leaned brightly forward over her rum and c.o.ke with a throaty giggle; everyone was watching the gameboard, smoking cigarettes while the TV said: Jesus Christ, where are you? and the girl said to the photographer: Tell me, when you birthday?

She said to the journalist: You smoke cigarette? so he bit down on his straw and pretended to smoke it, to make her laugh . . .

The girls leaned and lounged. The photographer's girl was named Joy. She kept saying: Hi, darling! Hi, darling! - Her friend's name was Pukki.

Come here, darling, said Pukki. What you writing?

I wish I knew. Then I'd know how it would turn out, said the journalist.

He likes to write long letters to his mother, said the photographer.

The girls had brought the photographer a steak. He didn't want the rest of it, so he asked Joy if she wanted to eat it. Pukki cut pieces for her, nice and fat; she screamed teasingly because it was hard to cut.

You buy me out please, Pukki cried to the journalist.

I love Oy, he said. Tonight I buy Oy.

(That's real good, said the photographer admiringly. That's the way to show 'em!) The journalist got a little loaded and made the bar-checks into paper airplanes and shot them all over the room. Patiently one of the girls gathered them all up; she smoothed them and put them back in his cup and he said: You boxing me? and she giggled no. More girls swarmed around, cadging drinks (he bought them whatever they asked for), sliding their arms round him, snuggling their heads on him, stroking his money pouch slyly.

The photographer squeezed Joy's b.u.t.t and Pukki's t.i.ts and all the other girls cried in disgust real or feigned: You b.u.t.terfly man! - He bought Joy out, and Pukki screamed at the journalist: Please you no buy me out whaiiiiieee?

I'm sorry, he said. I promised Oy. I'm really sorry.

He slipped her a hundred bhat and she brightened . . .

10.

So they went to Oy's bar, the photographer, the journalist and Joy. Toy said: She no work today.

Is she OK? said the journalist. I worry about her. I hurt her p.u.s.s.y. I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . .

She no work today, Toy smiled.

11.

The manager came and said: Oy? Which Oy? - Evidently there were so many Oys . . .

The photographer went and looked (he was very good at picking people out), but he couldn't find her.

12.

Racing the unhappy accelerator in stalled traffic, the taxi driver ignored the tree leaves wilted down into b.a.l.l.s in the air that smelled like a black fart. The journalist sat up in front with him so that the photographer and Joy could fondle privately. The letters on the bus beside him swirled in white flame. Wet noises came from the back seat. The driver stared from the righthand window, disapproving, envious, appalled, or indifferent.

He say me where you go I say Metro Hotel, Joy announced.

Finally the light changed, the driver s.h.i.+fted gears so that his weird mobile of sh.e.l.ls tinkled as the taxi sped past dogs and corn-stands. A big canvas-covered truck loomed in the darkness. The driver looked ahead when they stopped again: his lips were wide and rounded. Raindrops shone like dust on the other cars' winds.h.i.+elds. A foreigner made chewing motions in back of a tuk tuk and then he was gone forever as the taxi driver made a roundabout and rushed between twisted pillars, honking his horn in the fog. He took them down secret-arrowed alleyways to the hotel . . .

13.

All night the TV went aah! and oi! to dubbed movies while the prost.i.tute lay wide-eyed in the photographer's bed, bored and lonely, snuggling her sleeping meal ticket while the journalist, unable to sleep on account of the TV and therefore likewise bored and lonely, could not ask her to come even though the photographer had offered because he didn't feel right about it the way she snuggled the photographer so affectionately (when he got to know her better he'd understand that she wouldn't have come anyway) and besides he was worried about the growing tenderness in his b.a.l.l.s. He jerked off silently to Joy; it didn't hurt yet, just felt funny, so he could still pretend that it was nothing; as soon as he was done he wanted to get inside Joy as much as before, and then he had to p.i.s.s again; that was a bad sign; as soon as he p.i.s.sed he felt the need to p.i.s.s again.

14.

In his sleep he listened, and every time he heard the rustle of her in the sheets he woke up with his p.e.n.i.s as hard as a rock, aching. It was a little before six. His desire seeped like the tropical light coming slowly in, first illuminating the white valleys in the curtains, next the white barred reflections of the curtains in the mirror, then the white sheets, his white sheets, her white sheets folded back down over her shoulders, the black oval of her head on the white pillow (could he see her fingers on the sheet?) Now the outline of the grating grew behind the window, now a white belly of light on the ceiling, the white upper walls, black wainscotting, the white closet shelfs black clothes. Her silhouette was sharpening; he began to see the shape of her hair, his socks and underpants hanging to dry on the curtains. He could see the outlines of leaves through the grating. Now the wall-blacks weren't quite black anymore. The frame of the TV had differentiated itself from the screen. The bathroom door detached itself from the wall-ma.s.s. Clothes and luggage were born on the tables. He could see her shoulder now separating from the sheet, the white bra-straps leaping out; her head was turned away, toward the photographer; he could see her neck, ear and cheek begin to exist as separate ent.i.ties from her hair. He could see the border of paleness around the edge of her blanket. He could see her breathe.

15.

The white hazy morning air was humid with the smell of fresh Brussels sprouts, not yet too thickened by exhaust. Little piebald dogs yapped on the sidewalk. Two policemen motorcycled by. The tuk-tuks were mainly empty, the buses only half full.

The sun was a red ball over the ca.n.a.l whose violet-grey fog had not begun to stink; a motorboat wended feebly down the middle of its brown water, which was thick like spit, and spotted with oil, trash, leaves; the boat vanished in the fog below the bridge long before its sound was lost, and birds uttered single notes from the vastly spread-out trees that resembled the heads of broccoli; aluminum-roofed shacks, siding and boards walled the ca.n.a.l as it dwindled past piers and banana trees; beneath an awning a little brown boy squatted and shat while his mother dressed; a long tunnel of boards and siding ran along the ca.n.a.l, and in it people were going about their business; a brown dog and a white dog bit their fleas; a man in a checkered sarong dipped water from a barrel; a baby cried; a boy was was.h.i.+ng his clothes. The dogs left wet prints on the sidewalk. The sun was whiter, higher and hotter now. The air began to smell more acrid. Another motorboat came, very quickly, leaving a wake; other boats started up. The man who'd been in the sarong came out of his shack, putting his wet s.h.i.+rt on. He walked barefooted. Other men got into their boats. This morning run of business reminded him of the evenings at Joy's bar when the girls gathered gradually.

16.

At breakfast the photographer sat on pillows, a sweet brown arm sleeping around his waist. Eighty percent of the Pat Pong girls had tested positive for AIDS that fall. Probably she'd be dead in five years.