Other Earths

squeezed onto the sofa; I was all but pushed out of the conversation, and had to lean forward to see what was happening at the opposite end, where Dan had isolated Riel, sitting between her and Lucy. Air conditioning iced the room, and the din of the dance floor was reduced to a thumping rumor.

Dan and Sean (Sean was a little man’s name—in a perfect world, he would have been named Lothar) had recently arrived from Thailand and spoke rapturously of Khao San Road, the backpacker street in Bangkok. This identified them, if they had not already been so identified, as a familiar species of idiot. Khao San was a strip of guesthouses, internet caf’s, bars, tattoo joints, travel agents, etc., where each night, indulging in the distillation of the backpacker experience, hundreds of drunken expats assembled to gobble deep fried scorpions and buy sarongs and wooden bracelets at the stalls lining the street, and—their faces growing solemn—to swap stories about the spiritual insights they had received while whizzing past some temple or another in a VIP bus. They had hooked up with Mike, a college bud, in Phnom Penh. He had been in-country for less than three weeks yet talked about Cambodia with the jaded air of a long-term resident. I guessed him to be the brains of the outfit.

Dan held forth at some length about his hour-and-a-half tour of the Killing Fields, explaining to the ever-so- blitzed Riel (she had added three drinks and the better part of two joints to her chemical constituency) how it had been majorly depressing, yet life affirming and life changing. The Cambodian people were awe-some, and his respect for them was so heartfelt, I mean like totally, that he managed to work up a tear, a trick that foretold a future in show biz and may have achieved the desired response among the inebriated breeding stock back in Champaign-Urbana, where he attended school, inducing them to roll over and spread, overborne by the sensitive depths of his soul; but it zipped right past Riel. Listening to him gave me a feeling of superiority, and I could have kept on listening for quite some time; but Lucy was unhappy, pinched between me and Dan, and I thought it appropriate to drop a roach into the conversational soup.

Leaning forward, I asked, “Why don’t you have a taxi girl like your pals here?”

Dimly, Dan seemed to perceive this as a threat to his ambitions toward Riel. A notch appeared in his brow, and he squinted at me meanly. Then inspiration struck, perhaps an illumination akin to his moral awakening at the Killing Fields. He acquired an expression of noble forbearance and said, “I don’t do whores.”

Sean loosed a doltish chuckle; the faces of the taxi girls went blank.

“Seriously,” Dan said, addressing first me, then Riel. “I revere women too much to want to just use their bodies.”

“Shit, man,” Mike said, and he burst out laughing. This set everyone to laughing, with the exception of Riel. Our laughter drowned out Dan’s earnest protests, and once it had subsided, Mike confided to us that Dan’s girl had fled the room. “She was one psycho bitch,” he said. “One second she’s grabbing his junk, the next she’s talking a fucking mile a minute, pointing at shit.”

“What was she pointing to?” Lucy asked.

“Fuck if I know. I was too wasted, and she was talking Cambodian, anyway.”

Lucy inquired of the taxi girls in Khmer and, following a back-and-forth, gave her report. “She said the room was different.”

“Huh?” said Sean.

“That’s what they told me.”

“I like being used,” Riel said out of the blue.

This alerted even Dan, who had been sulking.

“It makes me feel, you know …” Riel spaced on the thought.

“How does it make you feel?” asked Mike.

Riel deliberated and said at last, “When Tom comes inside me, it’s like I’m being venerated.” She turned her calm face to me. “I wish you’d come in me without a rubber, so when I walk around I could feel it running down my thigh. It’d be like a reminder of what you felt. Of what I felt.” She looked to Lucy. “You know what I mean? Isn’t it that way for you?”

Lucy’s head twitched—it might have been a nod—and she compressed her lips. The college boys stared at me in wonderment. They had, I thought, taken me for a relative or some kind of neutered loser. The taxi girls were transfixed, hanging on Riel’s every word.

“It’s because I’m beautiful, I feel that way, I think. Mitch always told me I was beautiful. Lately he wasn’t being honest, but he believed it once upon a time. Now, with you guys …” She smiled at Lucy and me. “I’m this exotic country you’ve traveled to. Like Cambodia. I’m a lot like Cambodia. The land of beautiful women.” She waved at the taxi girls. “You’re absolutely perfect. You are. You’ve got these perfect titties. So firm, I don’t have to touch them to know.”

Sean’s girl blushed; he gaped at Riel.

“Mine are too soft.” She glanced at her breasts. “Don’t you think?”

Lucy and I answered at the same time, her saying, “No,” and me saying, “They’re fine.”

This, the implication that the three of us were in a relationship, provoked Mike to say delightedly, “Fuck!”

“Could I have another drink?” asked Riel, and, turning to Dan: “Maybe you could bring me a drink?”

He hesitated, but Mike said, “Yeah, get us all one, man,” and he went off with our drink order; the door opening allowed a gust of music inside.

Lucy started to speak, but Riel cut in line and said to me, “Mitch wanted to sell me to other men, but I wouldn’t let him. I wonder if that’s why he left.”

“Beats me,” I said.

“You wouldn’t sell me, would you, Tom?”

I had a pretty fair buzz going, but nevertheless I noted that this was another disturbing resonance between my life and The Tea Forest. “There’s no need,” I said. “I’m rich.”

With a finger, Riel broke the circle of moisture her glass had made on the table. “I don’t guess it matters. Someone’s always using you.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! I am fed up with your dreary pronouncements!” Lucy put the back of one hand against her brow, a move suitable to an actress in a silent film, and imitated Riel’s fey voice: “It’s all so morbidly banal!” She dropped the impersonation and said angrily, “If you reduced your drug intake, you might have a sunnier outlook.”

Unruffled, Riel said, “You’re not where I am yet. You’ll have to increase your drug intake to catch up.”

Sean and Mike glanced at each other. I could almost see a word balloon with two downward spikes above their heads, saying in thought italics: This is way cool! The taxi girls lost interest and idly fondled their new best friends; but their interest was restored when Riel asked Mike if he planned to have sex with his girl there in the room.

“If you’ll have sex with Tom and Lucy,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Why not, man? We’re all friends.”

“Little orgy action. Yeah,” said Sean, and had a toke off a joint that his taxi girl held to his lips.

“You haven’t even introduced us to your dates,” I said to Mike. “That’s not very friendly.”

“Hey, fuck yourself, dude,” said Sean, suddenly gone surly, no doubt due to some critical level of THC having been surpassed.

Mike said, “Oh-oh! You don’t want to be getting Sean upset. My man’s third team All American. He’s a beast.”

Sean glared at him. “Fuck you, too.”

“Really?” I leaned back and crossed my legs. “What position do you play? No, let me guess. You’re an offensive lineman, right?”

Lucy put a cautioning hand on my knee.

“Nose guard,” said Sean, unmindful of the emphasis I’d placed on the word offensive.

Riel started singing, a breathy, wordless tune that drew everyone’s notice, and then broke it off to say, “Your friend’s been gone a long time.”

“It’s nuts out there,” said Mike. “He’s probably still trying to get served.”

“Or hooking up with another whore.” Sean extended a hand to Mike, who slapped him five but did so listlessly, as though out of obligation.

The door flew inward, and a diminutive Cambodian, one of the gold watch/silk shirt crowd, with a high polish to