Grandad, Thereэ's head on the beach

'I have to look my best for Seoul.'

'That's soul, the essence of a person or living thing?'

'No, that's Seoul, the capital of South Korea.'

'The Cyber Idol thing?'

'They're having a ball. I'm the guest of honor.'

Sissi had been offering her pro-bono make-up and personal grooming tips to a massive Web site in Korea called Cyber Idol, where ugly people underwent Photoshop makeovers and submitted their airbrushed avatars for online beauty competitions. No subterfuge barred. Sissi, or at least press photos of herself ten years earlier, had become their guru. She was the fairy godmother of misinterpretation.

'So why buy product?' I asked. 'Why not just Photoshop yourself exfoliated? I seem to recall there's a function. Peel away layers, or something?'

'Because…'

The pause was so pregnant I expected to hear water burst.

'…it isn't online.'

'What? They're having a ball. A gathering of fakes who made themselves look attractive only on their Web sites. How can it not be online?'

'It's called a coming-out party.'

'Coming out of what?'

'Of the Internet. There's no pretense. We've seen all the before and after photographs. The winners are the ones who do the most remarkable job of changing from duck to swan. This is a ball for the befores. Ugly pride.'

'But that would mean…'

'I'm going to Korea.'

'But, Sissi, that would entail leaving the condominium. Going to a crowded airport. Sitting beside a complete stranger on a plane.'

'First class, of course. I wouldn't be mixing with commoners.'

'You'd be seen in public…as you are.'

'I've booked the tickets.'

I screeched down the phone, and birds all around me fled for the sky. The dogs barked. Mair called out the name of a dog we didn't own and told it to be quiet. I was so excited I did a little dance and tripped over Gogo, who growled at me.

'Oh, Sissi. That's great. I'm so excited.'

'Really?'

'Of course. This is massive. It's like you're coming out too…out of your shell.'

'I'm frightened, Jimm.'

'You'll be the belle of the ball. They'll love you.'

'You think so?'

'I know they will.'

I'd been so excited by Sissi's news that I'd completely forgotten to tell her about our guests. The very fact that our end-of-the-planet resort had guests at all was news. We relied on a modest short-time-half-bottle-of- Mekhong-whiskey-two-condom-two-hour-max-midday-and-late-night trade. It concerned me that we were encouraging promiscuity and turning a blind eye to adultery, but we had bills to pay. Morality is a luxury for the wealthy. You could count the number of legitimate holidaymakers who'd stayed with us on one fist with a couple of fingers left over. We were no threat to Novotel. Double bed with lumpy mattress, fan, TV (local crap, no satellite), drinking water, hot shower if you were quick, and windows that didn't open. If you wanted to hear the surf, you'd have to leave the door ajar and have gales blow you out of bed. We didn't design the place, just took it over from a couple who knew nothing about tourism. We had no budget to fix it up.

We were always amazed when people stopped off on their journey south on our obscure back road and asked about our place. Once they'd seen the rooms, they'd invariably keep going, even if it was late at night and they were running on caffeine. We'd had a birdwatcher for a few weeks, who spent her days up to her knees in the bog next door. We once had a small flock of Taiwanese evangelists working their way south, spreading the word. I would have given anything to be a lizard on the wall when they hit the extremist Muslim south. Oh, then there was the Channel Five news team that took us over for two nights. They were doing a feature on the demise of the Gulf. I didn't see the finished program, but I was told we featured extensively.

And that was it. Our longest stayers of the past year. Was it any wonder we were still living off the savings? But the money we'd made from selling our beautiful little house and shop with attached Laundromat-our livelihood, our birthright, our family culture-was almost gone. The bank had phoned and asked if we were planning to make any deposits into our account. They said, if not, the province would provide loans if we could prove we were in strife as a result of the monsoons. In fact, we were in strife as a result of not having the vaguest idea of how to run a resort. But we weren't too proud to accept government handouts. We took photographs of our place and filled in the grant application. Grants like these were on a waiting list of up to six months. We'd be high and dry by the time it came through. I doubt we'd send it back though. The monsoons had already disintegrated our beachfront ornamental garden, and the high tides were edging closer to the huts. Every morning we awoke expecting to see the guest chalets bobbing off toward the horizon.

Given the season and the state we were in, we should have been grateful for any paying guests we could dredge up. But there was something odd about the couple we had staying in hut three. They'd arrived in a silver Honda City with tinted windows not an hour after we'd finished cleaning up the glass and pot shards from our morning gunfight in the car park. Me and Mair were sitting at the concrete bench/table combo in front of the shop. The car drove past, then stopped about twenty meters ahead. We assumed they'd mistaken our shop for a 7-Eleven since it was coincidentally painted in the same colors. That was as far as the similarity went. We had so little stock we had to space it out on the shelves like museum exhibits. We could offer cold drinks and snacks but nothing else a weary traveler might require. The car reversed slowly and pulled up alongside me and Mair. We found ourselves staring at our own reflections in the window. I mussed up my short hair, which was looking uncharacteristically neat. A faint buzz accompanied the lowering of the window, and we were left with a view of identical smiles on the faces of two angels a generation apart. The younger was so naturally beautiful I wished I could start again and make a better job of myself. The driver was obviously her mother.

I looked at Mair and asked, 'Why don't we look like that?'

'Ours is a beauty that takes patience to discover,' she said.

'Excuse me,' said the young lovely. Her palms were together, her index fingers caressing her lips in a sweet wai we were obliged to reply to. 'Good day. Do you have rooms available?'

I laughed deep in my throat. Even when all the stables in Bethlehem were jam-packed, we'd still have rooms free.

'I'll check the register,' I said, getting to my feet.

'Of course we do,' said Mair. 'We're completely empty.'

I sat down again. For all the training I'd invested in my mother on the subject of business management, she still had that annoying habit of telling the truth. The driver leaned across her daughter. She had shoulder-length hair, but it somehow retained its perfect shape, like early computer animation. She could have stood on her head and her hair wouldn't have budged.

'Here's the problem,' she said. 'We stupidly left home without our ID cards. My husband has FedExed them to Songkla. So, just tonight we don't…'

Mair laughed.

'We're so desperate we'd let Andrew Hitler stay here without checking his ID,' she said, and winked. 'No questions asked at the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort.'

To their credit, the lovelies laughed. They must have known who Andrew Hitler was because they handed over a deposit big enough to rebuild our ornamental garden a hundredfold. I was sure we'd have to return most of it the next morning when they fled in horror, but it was nice to have serious money in my hand for once. Arny walked in front of the Honda, as he herded them to their room like a muscle-bound mahout guiding an elephant. I could see mother and daughter gaze out toward the murky gray sea and the garbage-strewn beach, and I knew they wouldn't be unpacking. But as the car slowly followed Arny, the question that entered my mind was 'Why does it have no