Desmond is on the run on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Now read on in the penultimate part of our exclusive fiction series by Guillermo Wheremount.
Running through the market turned out to be a poor choice, but Desmond was starting to feel as though choice was itself overrated. Twisting through narrow aisles, knocking into increasingly antagonised bright pyjamas, he wound up stopped in his tracks in the market’s dank humid centre by a youth effortlessly butchering a difficult-to-identify animal and separating it into a variety of large stainless-steel bowls while gasping fish looked on. It wasn’t so much that he lost Vuthy, who hadn’t even got out of his tuk tuk, as got lost himself, finally emerging from beneath the awnings with no idea of where he actually was.
Guessing which way was the riverside, he walked away from it. Only to find he had guessed wrong and was suddenly right there. His stomach responded by alerting that he needed some anti-hangover grease. The bag and phone could wait. He would just have to stay out of sight of Vuthy. He crawled himself into a tourist trap and ordered a burger.
“They’re good,” said an unshaven-sounding voice from the next table, “but the fries aren’t so great.”
“What?” said Desmond, not really looking round.
“The burgers. Here. Good,” said the unshaven man, breaking into smaller sentences to be better understood. Then his face brightened in recognition and he took off his glasses to be more recognisable. “Hey. Hah hah. How’s the morning treating you?”
Desmond kept to his monosyllabic style. “Huh?”
“You got home OK? Or have you not been home? Hah hah.” The unshaven man had a grating laugh, like a dog panting, and he was too damn perky. And he’d been too damn perky last night too, hadn’t he? Desmond vaguely remembered something about having to make him understand how cruel the world was… All at once there was a hand being extended to shake and Desmond met it weakly. “Des, right? We met last night at X-Ray-X. Peter. But you kept calling me Clarissa for some reason.”
“Oh. Yes. That.”
“You look terrible. Hah hah.”
“Thank you.”
“You were hitting it pretty hard. I’m surprised you’re up and about. When I left you were all for us heading off again somewhere else. Hah hah.”
Shiv, this cretin probably lives on cornflakes and sunshine. Drinking makes strange fellowships.
“I made it home.”
“Glad to hear it.Hah hah.”
Hang on, this cretin might know where I was.
“Was it you who put me in a tuk tuk?”
“You don’t remember? Hah hah. No, you insisted that we go to some place around the corner from The Constantinople. Lucky Lady, Lady Luck? I stayed for one, but it was well past my bedtime, hah hah. What a wild town.”
“Hah hah,” said Desmond humourlessly. But he had a lead.
“I’m off to the shooting range shortly, if you’re interested? I go every time I come, it’s such great fun, hah hah.” But Desmond resisted the temptation.
Full of burger and slightly stimulated by some thin coffee, Desmond headed back into the hinterland, turned left at The Con, and looked up to see a sign that looked familiar. Lady Luck Bar. He poked his head into the open door, recoiling on a wave of nausea from the lingering scent of spilled alcohol. Some feeble ‘Hello, Sir’s came from a group of women sitting around the counter, eating. Yes, the arrangement of the mirrors, and the angle of the pool table… even in the light of day.
“Sir, you come pick up your phone?” called one of the women from behind the bar.
“My phone?”
“Your phone and your bag sir.”
Astonished and curious, he ventured into the dim, quiet room. Plastic boxes of rice and strange stews and shellfish were strewn across the counter with a couple of rolls of toilet paper and a pile of fruit peelings. The rest of the staff ate and laughed and ignored him.
“You friend of Mr Hank, right?”
“I am.”
“You very crazy last night, bong. You not remember me?”
Desmond squinted an apology. She laughed.
“You not remember me. Sopheap. You come here before. Before different name, Happy Joy Club. Because now Lady Luck Bar. Mr Hank not come here so much, have girlfriend.”
“Yeah…” He was hoping it was true, but he was struggling to make sense of it all.
“Here, bong.” She dropped out of sight behind the bar and bobbed back up again. “Here your phone, last night you give to me, you say hold my phone while you go to minimart. You very drunk, crazy drunk. I say OK, I keep three day then you not come back I give to my sister. ”
It was, indeed, his phone. And then she bobbed down again and the bag was sitting on the counter as if nothing had happened.
Don’t miss next week’s finale!