Chapter 16
The door is open, which is a surprise. Everyone should be asleep.
Kwan had found her way home through the bright morning, resolutely dry-eyed, without thinking about anything at all, without even feeling the rawness between her legs. She had looked at faces, at shop windows, at cars in the street, at the occasional scraggly bush clinging to life in a square of dry dirt on the sidewalk, giving her full attention to everything she saw. When she finally reached the building, after a lifetime of walking, she had hauled herself up three flights of stairs, leaning against the wall as she climbed, expecting to have to cope with the lock on the door, which sometimes sticks. She was steeling herself against the lock, knowing that if it did stick, she'd burst into tears.
But the door is standing open.
She starts to go on tiptoe and then thinks, Why? What can anyone do to me now? And drags herself the rest of the way down the hall and stops in the doorway and stares in, her heart swelling inside her until she feels as if it will push its way right out of her chest, and then the tears do come.
Sitting on some folded squares of cloth on the cold cement floor, her chin resting on her chest, is Fon. She's obviously waited all night and into the morning for Kwan to come home. In front of her is a cup on a saucer, the only matching cup and saucer in the apartment, and the cup has something dark in it. Steam rises from the cup, so Fon fell asleep only a few minutes ago.
Kwan's second sniffle brings Fon's head up, her eyes instantly on Kwan. Fon gets up and runs to her and wraps her arms around her, hugging her so tightly Kwan can hardly breathe. Kwan looks down at the top of Fon's head, and then she rests her chin on it and cries out loud, Fon patting her back like someone burping a baby.
The face she makes when she takes the first sip from the steaming cup sends Fon into a seizure of laughter. The two of them have been sitting on the floor, with the folded cloths-clean towels, Kwan sees-between them. Fon falls sideways, onto one elbow, laughing and pointing at Kwan's face.
'It's awful,' Kwan says, but she can't help smiling, feeling the stiffness of the skin on her cheeks, salty with dried tears. 'What is it?'
'It's Nescafe,' Fon says. 'You mean you've never drunk coffee?'
'Why would I?' Kwan puts the cup down. 'Why would anyone?'
'You drink that,' Fon commands. 'I worked hours to make it.'
'Really?' Kwan reluctantly picks up the cup and sips it again, trying not to betray how bitter it is. She gets the first sip down and then takes a bigger one, hoping to drain the cup quickly.
'You don't know anything, do you? It's instant. You just boil water and put the powder in.'
Kwan stares down at the cup. 'Is there any way to get it out?'
'Yes. You drink it.'
Kwan holds the cup out. 'I'll share it with you.'
'Smell it first,' Fon says. 'Smell it and then drink it.'
Kwan sniffs the cup. 'It smells better than it tastes.'
'Well, then smell it every time before you drink. Get the smell in your nose first. But drink it.'
'Why?'
'Because you need two things.' Fon picks up the towels, and beneath them is a new, still-wrapped cake of hotel soap. 'You need to get cleaner than you've ever been in your life, and then you need to talk. And that stuff'- she nods toward the Nescafe-'will help you talk.' 'HE COULDN'T DO anything at first,' Kwan says. She is on her back on the couch, with her knees drawn up because the sofa is too short for her, with her head resting on Fon's lap. Beneath her hair, wet from the cold-water shower down the hall, is a folded towel. She wears clean, fresh-smelling pajamas that belong to Fon, bright primary-school yellow, with happy teddy bears and birthday cakes all over them. It seems to be the teddy bears' birthday. The pants come to a premature halt just below her knees, although they reach the tops of Fon's feet.
'I could have told you that,' Fon says. She lifts a strand of wet hair and lets it fall. 'Your hair is so nice. He usually can't. He drinks too much.'
'Oom said the same thing.'
Fon's eyebrows go up. It makes her look even more like a child's toy. 'Oom? Oom actually bothered to talk to you?'
'She asked why I was saving my hymen. Whether anyone was paying me interest.'
Fon laughs, just a short syllable. 'Our bar's little nun. Talking you into going to work.'
'She's in love-'
'With that big guy,' Fon says. 'Too handsome for me. But for a while now, he's the only one she'll go with. He buys her out and we don't see her for three or four weeks, and when she comes back, she might as well have stayed away. She just hangs on to that pole all night and doesn't go with anybody.'
'He pays her.'
'Well, of course he does. Oom's pretty, but she has to eat, same as me.'
The buzz of traffic from the street below floats into the room through the open window. Kwan can feel a warm energy coursing through her, a little kernel of electricity beneath her heart. She lifts her head and takes another swallow of the Nescafe. It's starting to taste better. 'Oom's beautiful.'
'Beautiful is easy. Keeping a good heart, that's hard. But you know what? In twenty years she won't be so beautiful, but you and I-you and I will still have good hearts.'
'You think I have a good heart? How can you tell?'
'Kwan. You're as transparent as water.' Fon kisses the tips of her fingers and then places them dead center on Kwan's forehead.
Kwan puts a hand over the place Fon touched. 'I never had a friend like you before.'
Fon is silent for a moment, but then she says, 'Be careful. Lots of girls will act like… oh, well, you know. Nana.' She smooths Kwan's wet hair. 'Everybody in the bar wants something. They want to borrow money or they want some man who likes you or-this could happen because you're beautiful-they'll pretend to be your friend so they can drag you into threesomes.'
'Threesomes?'
'Two girls and one man. Some of the girls who are ugly will do that, make friends with a beautiful girl so they can say to a man, 'You want me and my friend over there? Two ladies? No problem.' '
Kwan says, 'That's awful.'
'It's okay sometimes. It's less work, and it's a little safer. Most guys won't try anything with two girls in the room. And if he doesn't speak Thai, you can talk about him while you're working, as long as you don't laugh too much.' She runs her palm over Kwan's slick hair again. 'But,' she says, 'speaking of ugly.'
'What?' Kwan holds up the cup, nothing inside but a thick black paste on the bottom. 'Can I have some more?'
Fon takes the cup out of Kwan's hand and puts it on the three-legged table. 'No. You're going to want to sleep eventually. Ugly. You know, Captain Yodsuwan. Talk about it. Get it all out, and then you can go to sleep.'
'I slept at the hotel, a little. You're the one who stayed up.'
'I'm used to it. You're a farm girl.'
'That's what he called me,' Kwan says, and suddenly the coffee seems to be rising in her throat. 'Just after he called me a whore.'
Fon puts her hand back on Kwan's forehead. 'It doesn't mean anything. You're the same person today you were yesterday.'
Kwan says, 'Not exactly.'
'Oh, well, if you never lose anything more valuable than that, you'll have lots of tears left over when you die.
