Category: Penh-dacity

Desmond, an accidental English-language expat, keeps himself afloat in Phnom Penh by sleeping above a bar called Snuck. His boss just walked in, in the company of a man with several slightly different names. Now read on for the second part of our new fiction series by Guilermo Wheremount.  

Bong James Bong,” repeated Sambath with a mighty laugh, and he banged on the counter and ordered drinks in Khmer. “I meet him in Bangkok, bring him to Phnom Penh. Big star from England. Big hit song, very famous, always see on karaoke.”

A synapse or two snapped in Desmond’s recall centre: James Bonne… an explosion of soft pastels and blurry camerawork and blonde curls and walking on a beach sometime in the mid ’90s, and he blurted out: “Sweet sugar for my baby love.”

Bong James Bong turned to him with a putrid snarl that curdled slowly into an acid grin. “I don’t sing that anymore.” “It was my sister’s favourite song for about six months,” Desmond remembered. “She listened to it over and over and over, singing along and…” “Kerrrrrist on crutches, if I had a quid for every time…” “It was so cute. She was only six.” “Like I say, I don’t play that anymore.”

“No, no, you must play that one,” said Sambath, chuckling. “All Khmer love that song.” “We’ll see about that,” said Bong James Bong, the grin swiftly becoming his follow-the-boss-for-the-money smile. “Wow, she would be so impressed. So will you be playing a concert in Phnom Penh?” asked Desmond. “I believe so,” said Bong James Bong, and he wandered off, hands in pockets, towards the raised portion of the bar that Sambath had been ominously referring to for some weeks as “our stage”.

“He play here two time, this Saturday and next Saturday, exclusive to Snuck bar,” said Sambath. And then quietly: “Desi-mond, you now music manager for Snuck bar. You make big success, I make big bonus for you.” “This Saturday? Like, tomorrow? “He not got much free time so he come now. Play two times for us. Very big star, all Cambodia know him, then all Cambodia know Snuck bar. Foreigner know too.” “We’ll need some equipment…”

“Have already. I bring tomorrow. You tell all your friends come see James Bong. Tell Internet,” he added, pointing to the computer that sat forlornly behind the counter collecting beer stains. Desmond noticed that Phany had arrived quietly and was busying himself behind the counter. “Okay, Mr Desi-mond, we go hotel now for Bong James Bong, I see you tomorrow, my friend bring equipment…” Casually issuing orders in several directions, Sambath drifted across the room to Bong James Bong and ushered him out the door and into a tuk tuk.

“Everything okay, Bong Des?” asked Phany. “Turns out we’re becoming a music bar, Phany.” “Okay. That’s good.” “Maybe. You ever heard of James Bonne?” “James Bong?” Desmond sang a little of Sweet Sugar For My Baby Love. Phany’s face brightened. “Oh yes, like very much. I sing for my girlfriend in karaoke all the time.” “I haven’t heard it for years.” “Cambodia like very much, bong.”

“Well, that was him. He will play here Saturday night. I guess I’ll have to contact the papers or something,” said Des, slipping into thinking out loud, and he grasped his phone. Belinda: Yo are you free now? Need your help. The response when it came was neutral: Oh no, not again 😛 Gimme half an hour. 

It was closer to 20 minutes, actually. Belinda was as keen as the next expat for the chance to drink on someone’s tab, a small price to pay for providing local knowledge to the uninitiated, a service she often provided to Desmond. After Des had outlined his predicament she leaned back and let him order her a second beer. “I’ll hook you up with Wyndy, she writes for the Herald. I’ll call her now.”

“It’s such short notice,” said Desmond, who was starting to panic. Standing still too long had led him to fear actually doing something. “It’s too late to get anything done for tomorrow.” “Yes, but she can come and see the show and promo it for the second one. Then you’ll be the big hero. Don’t sweat it; everything happens at the last minute here.”

“Sambath said there’s a big bonus in it for me if it’s a success.” “Does this mean you can pay me back?” she asked as she dialled. “Hi, Wyndy? Yeah, got a story for you…”

 

]Continues next week  

 

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!

 

Desmond was in charge of a bag, but he went out anyway. Everything was going fine until… well, it’s hard to tell exactly when it went bad, but it went on to become really bad. He’s just woken up without his phone, and without the bag, and it appears he really should have spent the night at home watching the rest of the medical drama television series box set he purchased for just that reason. Now read on in the tenth part of our exclusive fiction series by Guillermo Wheremount.  

Sun burning my face off like a blowtorch. In too much pain to move. Can’t update status in such a state. I beg forgiveness.

Desmond squinted his eyes open to find Dr Cranky peering into his face and sticking something medical in his ear. “You should have come in as soon as you had the symptoms. Did you eat liver? Did you wear shoes that are too small? Do you live near a fountain?” The medical thing went into his navel and punctured something. Putrid fluids abounded.

I think it was the Jamesons.

“I knew we’d get the truth from you sooner or later. The Jamesons has caused a disfibrilation of your grunderthal nerve. Give him thirty of Xaxax and a glass of orange juice with raisins in it.”

Hairy hell? Where was I?

The slow piecing together of the previous evening took on a much more important hue than usual.

Boat. Barbecue. 

Then what? Absence of Bangkok. Walking. X-Ray-X Bar. Koreans. Sweet Home Alabama. Hairy, hairy hell. Sweaty bollocks of our saviour.   

Ernest the gecko peeped from behind the AC unit then scuttled across the wall and out the vent. Too rich for his blood. Desmond also scuttled, but much, much slower, to the shower, where he stayed rather longer than usual. The boat, the conversation with Clarissa, the disturbing threat of violence…

Oh my sweet brother of holy shellshocked deliverance I must find the bag. Men with titanium teeth and fists made from machine guns will trap me in a one-way street and break my limbs with axe handles.

With a lurch he fell on the tap to stop the water, and with another he was savagely drying himself.

“You see, the trouble with axe handles is that they really do shatter the bones. It’s none of your greenstick fracture, it’s a real apple crumble they’d created down there,” said Dr Cranky with more than professional interest. “Which is fine, if you don’t need to use your knees for the next couple of years.”

In smaller and smaller lurches, as his paranoia-inspired energy drained away, Desmond set off in pursuit of his redemption. Dr Cranky’s Khmer cousin called after him as he went through the gate. “Maybe today come fix water. Maybe this afternoon.” A strangled yelp was the best answer he could manage.

Once in the street Desmond walked with purpose towards nowhere in particular. A familiar-looking motodop asked him where he wanted to go. Seeking inspiration Desmond thought of X-Ray-X Bar. Retrace steps. Find clues. This seemed to make sense to the nodding motodop if nothing else. They wove through the Sunday traffic like a no-altitude luge run. They pulled up outside X-Ray-X, but there was nothing going on but a security guard fast asleep under an umbrella.

So Desmond found himself standing in the early Sunday afternoon at a crossroads near a pumping, stenching market, not far from the river, with not close to an idea. What would Spiderman do? Probably not be wearing big shorts and a Tintin t-shirt, obviously. Unless he was undercover… Desmond abandoned that line of thinking and walked slowly in the direction he was heading, refusing to buy sunglasses and books as he went.

All at once he was aware of a voice calling his name. “Mr Desmond!” A tuk tuk pulled up in front of him, driven by the grinning Vuthy. Were those titanium teeth? “Mr Desmond! I find you! Mr Hank told me. You got the bag? You give bag to me, OK?”

Desmond froze, swallowed, and failed to have any idea come into his head. So he turned and ran straight into the pumping, stenching market.

Continues next week  

 

Desmond didn’t really mean to head towards X-Ray-X Bar, but by a long, twisting, turning route he found himself in its vicinity. It was merely a bar, on a street surrounded by other bars, each one promising more sardonically Babylonian pleasures than the last, each with a happy hour, a pool table, a cluster of sequined black dresses with oranged hair laughing and snacking and calling to passing potential customers. ‘Hello, Sir!’ called the sirens, mermaids too skinny for the sea; the sailor, having no mast to lash himself to, chose his port.

In fact, he wasn’t even sure it was the right one. Another damp shower of ‘Hello, Sir!’ splattered on his head and shoulders as he entered. He adjusted himself to the redness of the interior, with the faces behind the bar shining crimsonly like a horror movie, hoping that one or more would start to look familiar; the stomp stomp stomp of the dance music hurt his peering eyes.

One of the women who had followed Desmond in deftly steered him towards a bar stool and ordered the Jameson he asked for, then sat and watched to see how he was going to behave. He slowly scanned the room. There was no sign of Hank. This wasn’t hard to establish: there was far more company than customers. An unshaven character was slumped on the bar a short distance away and he stared at Desmond with withering contempt, or possibly shortsightedness, while two bored-looking women attempted to engage with him. In a booth towards the rear, three off-the-plane corporate types were talking loudly in Korean or something and ignoring the staff clustered around them. A very large man in emphatic shorts waddled around the pool table while a pair of very high heels defeated him mercilessly.

The woman next to Desmond began to look slightly as if he might have seen her before. ‘Hank come tonight?’ he asked. “He bar-fine Srey Lin. Maybe come back later.” No wonder the damned phone is off. Desmond looked down and saw the Jameson was gone already, so he said yes to another. Her name was Theary, she was from Kandal. He complimented her on her English. The waddling man left and so Desmond offered to let Theary beat him at pool. They knocked the balls around and he took another drink. Screw Hank and his shenanigans. Still he held onto the bag; it had become a kind of oversized talisman: he would spite Hank by being honourable in the face of dishonour. Hand back the bag untouched, despite the deceit.

The hazy atmosphere grew slowly hazier. New customers arrived. Someone took control of the computer at the bar and started programming loud American rock music, which compelled some patrons to encourage a couple of the staff to get up on the bar and shuffle desultorily in the general vicinity of the beat. Desmond was occasionally aware of a bleating from his phone, but he knew it couldn’t be from Hank because Hank would be back here before too long. Theary was efficient: there was always another Jameson.

Somehow then he had challenged one of the Koreans to play pool. He beat the Korean but the Korean refused to buy him a lady drink. This caused some commotion. He thought he saw Srey Lin appear behind the bar, but by the time he got there she was gone. So he began talking to the unshaven shortsighted guy and insisted on buying a round. Then he was sick of the whole place and called for his bill and didn’t that seem like it was a good deal larger than he remembered? … and he grabbed the bag and tried to saunter into the night, but stumbled into it instead and there was a tuk tuk and there was going somewhere and then all things turned somewhat black.

Then all things turned somewhat bright: the noonday sun kicked him in the face. It could have been worse: the apartment was the right apartment, the bed was the right bed and he was alone. It was just that he didn’t have his phone any more. Or the bag.

Continues next week  

 

Our hero (or anti-hero, if you prefer – things being all postmodern/postcolonial and such) Desmond has been drinking and vomiting and being interrogated on a sunset boat cruise on the Tonle Sap with a bunch of drunken expats and backpackers… which normally would be just his kind of thing. But he’s carrying an important backpack belonging to his friend Hank and the interrogation is by an American journalist. She’s still asking what he’s doing later, so he maintains his optimism. Now read on for the eighth part of our exclusive fiction series by Guillermo Wheremount.  

The Phnom Penh night had fallen, the riverside had exploded into twinkly lights and Sisowath Quay was a lithe shining serpent of traffic. The Rose Petal Flower Love of the River Mekong surged its way back to the dock and the evening cruise was over. The beer T-shirts and ankle tattoos and nose rings all drunkenly balanced their way down the narrow plank and headed up to the tuk tuks.

Desmond followed, having been assured everyone was going for barbecue, and he was definitely in favour of this, his stomach being fuller of beer than anything else. By using the dubious old trick taught him by his grandfather (“Just run with the flow of the crowd, keep yourself behind the loudest voice,”) Desmond found himself wedged into a tuk tuk with a minor United Nations of passengers – some kind of African, two kinds of Europeans, a South American and Clarissa from Seattle, while one strident Canadian aggressively negotiated the driver down from three dollars to two.

They disembarked a few blocks later at a barbecue restaurant that spilled out into the pavement, where previously arrived tuk tuks had already deposited a seething mass of limbs and haircuts and armpits onto a collection of small plastic chairs around a hastily arranged long table for two-dozen oversized diners. Desmond settled in somewhere a few too many seats away from Clarissa, the bag between his knees, and poured beer into a glass of ice.

“But I really wanted an authentic experience, you know?” “Yes, I’m taking lessons from a lovely little man…” “I’m sorry. Can I see the vegetarian menu? Is the soup made with animal stock or…?” “Try Russian market.” “No, I don’t want to buy any of your books, thank you. And you should be getting a good night’s sleep so you can concentrate at school tomorrow.” “Hey, do we know if the lettuce is organic?” “So I’m looking for a place on my own, you know, but I don’t like the idea of having a whole family living downstairs and watching me all the time.”

“I can’t decide whether to go to Sihanoukville or Siem Reap next.” “You shouldn’t visit orphanages, you know, it’s bad, I read about it…” “And it was so cheap!” “Yes, but this one is different; it’s run by a proper NGO.” “Have you tried spiders yet?” “Has anyone found diet tonic water anywhere? I keep looking and it doesn’t seem to be stocked by anyone.” “Really? Can you give me an introduction? I’d love to visit. You know, for a really authentic experience.”

Not soon enough, Desmond saw a familiar face across the street and there was a chance to show how integrated he was with the local population. With a quick ‘I’ll be back’ glance at Clarissa, which she didn’t even notice, he ambled over and soksabayed Vuthy, Hank’s regular tuk tuk driver, who had more than once been his transport home in the middle of the night.

“Hello my friend,” said the broadly smiling driver from the back seat of the vehicle.  “Did you eat yet?” “Not yet. Just waiting for my friends to order. First they want to talk.” “You drink beer instead!” “Yes, good idea. How are you?” Vuthy raised his arms above his head in some kind of stretching gesture. “Oh my goodness, not so good today. No people, no money. Mr Hank, he have a bag just like that one.” “Yes, he asked me to look after it while he’s in Bangkok.” “When he go Bangkok?” “This afternoon.” “No, he no go Bangkok today. I just take him visit his girlfriend at X-Ray-X Bar.” “Really?”

The ground began to move under Desmond’s feet, spinning into a new orientation where he was being deceived and, as Clarissa had pointed out, possibly being placed in grave danger. Or maybe it was the Scandinavian snacks coming in a second wave. “Maybe at 5 o’clock. Maybe he still there. I take you there?” “No, it’s OK. I’ll call him. Thanks,” Desmond said weakly and turned away.

He stood in the middle of the street, waiting for Hank to pick up. No answer. And again. And again. Slowly Desmond began to move, stumbling into a slow-motion montage-like state, as if it was at the conclusion of 55 minutes’ worth of a major television drama series finale, walking expressively to the soundtrack of a throbbingly emotional vocal overlaid with slide guitar and a quivering saxophone and bonus gospel choir… defying his guardian angels to save him as he went.

The blurt of the horn of an SUV nudged him off the middle of the road, closer to the pavement, but otherwise he continued dazed trudging in a daze, into the night.

Continues next week  

 

 

Desmond, in his role as a bag-carrying, beer-toting boat passenger, appears to be having a good time despite the weight on his shoulders. He may even get lucky: he was just asked by Clarissa, a Seattle redhead, what he’s doing later. Now read on in part seven of our exclusive fiction series by Guillermo Wheremount.

Desmond played it ultra cool, as if he was a man used to being asked what he’s doing later, and almost always knows what to say. To buy some time he reached for the packet of snacks gifted to him earlier in the day by the Scandinavian backpackers and opened it. There were some salty looking brown twisted squishy things inside.

“What is it?” “Swedish I think. Or Norwegian.” “No, what is it? Is it meat? Or fish?” “I don’t think so,” he said, taking one and smelling it with a bit more suspicion than was probably necessary, then biting it with a little less caution than was probably appropriate. “Tastes OK,” he said, swallowing bravely, leaning a little on the railing. “Salty. Want one?” Clarissa shook her head politely. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Suit yourself,” and Desmond recklessly tossed a few into his mouth, started to chew, felt his face turn white and suddenly was vomiting forcefully into the Tonle Sap. So forcefully that the weight of the backpack almost tipped him over the flimsy guard rail. And if Clarissa hadn’t wrenched the bag off him, he may have followed the Swedish delicacies into the river himself. “Careful, sailor, there’s no lifebelts.”

Humiliated, Desmond crumpled and sat at her feet, spitting dejectedly into the water. “Damn Swedes.” “Would you like another beer?” “Ja tack.” It was several nauseated river-staring minutes before he realised she’d taken the bag with her. In fact, she was already walking back towards him carrying it when it occurred to him that he didn’t have it any more. “The bag!” “It’s certainly heavy,” she commented nonchalantly. “What’s in it?” She handed him a new beer and opened her own, taking a long drink that showed how little interested she actually was in his answer.

Hell, the woman probably just saved my life, I’d better widen the cone of silence. “A large amount of money,” he whispered, making sure he was out of everybody else’s earshot. This raised her eyebrows indeed: “Drugs?” “A favour for a friend of mine. He wanted me to look after it.” “How much again?” “He said a heartstoppingly large amount. I didn’t inquire further.” “Are you being followed?” “No,” he said, then reflected and admitted: “Not that I’m aware of.”

“How do we open it?” she asked casually, and he looked around to see her trying zips and finding the padlock. “No! It might… he… it would…” “Kill you, yeah. I guess.” On that thought, Desmond and Clarissa dropped their discussion to gaze on the sky, all spectacular reds and greys. The boat was puttering southwards along the riverside, pretty lights flashing from the quay. Other boats passed, some people waved. A fishing scull powered by a miniature outboard motor running on the smell of fish oil cut across the current, a small family huddled in the rear under the encroaching dark. The slashing sound of dance music from the quayside aerobics was fading into the encroaching night.

“So who is this friend?” “His name is Hank.” “Not Hank Vaughn?” Desmond had to admit, “I don’t know his full name.” “You don’t know the full name of the guy and you’re carrying…” Her sentence trailed off in mystification. “It never came up.” “Short guy, always wearing a Barcelona shirt?” “Nope. Tall and burned-out aristocratic-looking.” “Oh, so like a classic con artist?” Desmond had to admit that was a fair description. “What does he do?” “He strolls around looking busy.” “Sounds like a lawyer. Or a con artist.” “Looks a bit like Ralph Fiennes, actually, but taller.” “Capable of extreme violence?” “Not really, but I’m sure he’d know people who are. He could fly one in quite rapidly I expect.” “Or he could be as flimsy as a cardboard cop.” “Also true.”

“So this con artist called Hank who looks busy, who you’ve known for how long?” “A few months.” “A few months, has asked you to look after a bag full of money… why?” “He had to go to Bangkok for the weekend.” She drilled him with crazy eyes. “He left town?” “I guess.” She dropped her crazy eyes and shook her head. “Phnom Penh, huh? Your guardian angels are going to work overtime, my friend.” “I pay well.”

She seemed satisfied with that answer. So she tried for another one: “So, what are you doing later?”

Continues next week  

 

 

 

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