Desmond, who doesn’t gym or like Swedes so much any more, is heading for the riverside, carrying a bag for a friend, to go on a boat ride with a fetching young lady. This is the plan, anyway. Now read on in part six of our exclusive fiction series by Guillermo Wheremount.
After weaving through the traffic that was starting to coagulate around the intersections, threatening to cause peak-hour heart failure for the city’s circulation system, Desmond pulled up at the boat quay and paid his motodop, who nudged his bike towards a noodle cart and didn’t look like he was going anywhere. The boats were lined up, maybe 30 of them, trying to look seaworthy, and he walked along looking for the name Rose Petal Flower Love of the River Mekong but nothing sprang out at him in precisely those terms. Tense, with backpack getting heavier and plastic bag full of beers and weird Scandinavian snacks getting warmer, he retraced his steps until he heard a voice calling his name.
There she was, the name-caller, jumping a little and waving. But who the heck was it? He approached with a cautiously warm smile. “Hi, how are you, Des?” “Good, good.” “Traffic’s terrible, isn’t it?” “Yes, yes.” “And the sky is so beautiful!” “I guess, yes.” “How long have you been here?” “I just arrived. Now I’m looking for the boat…” “Yes, me too. They told me 5 but there’s nobody here. I guess they’ll come later.” “Anyway. There’s plenty of boats.” “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming or something, like I’d said something wrong.”
Oh shit this is Nancy I was looking for a redheaded American and this is an Australian with dreadlocks better say something quick so I don’t look stupid. “No, I’ve just been kind of distracted today. This is a crazy town.” “I know! I…”
Whatever else she may have known was interrupted by her phone ringing, and then some more energetic jumping and waving, and soon there was quite a crowd of girls and boys of a variety of heights and weights and accents. Most of them were wearing T-shirts with beer advertising on them, or the Khmer alphabet.
Then someone who knew the score was leading them down to the boat, where the one who brought the ice shovelled it into the big orange box and the beers began to be delivered into its care. And there was shrieking and laughing and balancing on the beam to get from the muddy shoreline to the tipping boat, and the sun was coming down, and the stragglers were calling from the quay to delay the departure, and then finally the Rose Petal Flower Love of the River Mekong was pulling away from the shore and everyone had a beer and everyone was spread around from the top railings on the upper deck in the slight breeze to the karaoke machine down by the engine and the sky was exploding into red and orange and the traffic was far, far away, and Nancy had vanished and Desmond was wishing he wasn’t carrying such a heavy bag but somehow kept remembering not to take it off.
And then, by the railing at the rear of the upper deck, he somehow found himself in conversation with an orange-haired girl who looked definitely familiar, and he felt compelled to introduce himself. “Yes, Desmond. I’m Clarissa. We met last night.” “Yes, we did. And you’re a dentist from Ohio.” “I’m a journalist from Seattle. You came here to work for an NGO that wanted to give free cameras to young Khmer with talent in photography, but kept having all its cameras stolen.” “Um, yes.”
“Not the best idea, in retrospect. So it closed down while you were in the air on the way here. But you stayed on anyway because the apartment and the visa was paid for and the beer is cheap.” “Yes, and you work for…” “I’m not working right now, I’m taking an extended travel break in the hope that I find things worth writing about.” “Like what?”
“Like why you’re carrying a heavy bag on your shoulders that you keep wanting to put down but then remember that you don’t want to do that so you don’t. Until the next time you realise you’re carrying a heavy bag on your shoulders.” “Are you creepy or just spooky?”
“I’m just observant, Desmond.”
“Clare?”
“Clarissa. What’s in the bag?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I bet you can.”
“I can’t.”
“Okay. Suit yourself,” she said and then abruptly changed the subject. “What are you doing later?”
Continues next week