Butterfly Stories

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The photographer had gone out with Joy, to buy her some shoes with bells on them that she craved; the madam could give the photographer a good price. Probably she was leaning up against his belly on the bar stool right now (supposed the journalist), his hand on her ass which was bathing-suited, hence multicolored like a baboon's, and there'd be a gleam on the shot glasses and the liquidlike ceiling, a shimmer on her silver bracelet and gold earrings; he knew; he'd seen a bar or two by now… He came to the Hotel 38 at the beginning of a rainstorm. The men at the first-floor landing gazed at him with contemptuous hate-filled faces. When he got the key from the office he said kap hum kap, and one of the men sneered kap hum kap falsetto. - Thank you, the journalist said to him wearily. Thank you very much. He climbed the two flights of stairs. When it was cool and damp like this, the sweat still dripped down the back of his neck; the only difference was that he didn't mind it because it wasn't hot sweat. Sometimes a breeze blew so softly that he could not feel any motion from the air, only a faint coolness where the sweat was. In the halls of the Hotel 38 there was never any breeze, of course. He let himself in, turned on the light, closed the door, and sat down on a chair. Giant red ants swarmed on him. He got up. The rain was coming down harder now. He turned off the air conditioner, unhooked the screen window over his bed, and pushed the shutter open. Then he stood there watching the rain spear down, rattling on tin roofs, splashing on streets, waxing and waning with gravel sounds beneath the thunder, making new unsteady vertical bars between the bars of windows, solid bars of rain nailing themselves down to concrete ledges and lower roofs from which they instantly ricocheted and then puddled like softnosed bullets, falling faster and faster now so that the air darkened; a flicker, then it thundered directly overhead. .

The rain continued long after dark. He closed the shutters finally and sat on the unmade bed. One of the photographer's used rubbers was on the floor. A fresh one waited on the bureau, like a fresh battery pack ready to be plugged in. The rain trickled on outside.

The bathroom door, a little ajar, was gripped by claws of humid darkness. The dirty walls, splattered with the blood of squashed bugs, seemed his own walls, his soul's skin and prison. How could he set his butterfly free?

Then he remembered the Benadryl, and smiled.

His balls ached.

Pukki had bought him another Singha beer, the 630 ml size. There was about an inch still left in the brown bottle. It would be warm and flat and thick with spit, but it would do to get the pills down. He lifted the bottle idly, and a cockroach crawled away.

He got up and began to search listlessly through the first aid kit. He felt neither happy nor sad. For a long time he could not even find the Benadryl, but in the end he saw that he was holding the jar in his hand.

After awhile he unscrewed the top and swallowed a capsule dry. It went down fairly easily, and so did the next, but the third one didn't, so he took his first swallow of beer, which was no better than he had expected, but if he could eat whore-pussy this was a cinch. The pills were sticking on the way down, but eventually the bottle was as empty as his heart. In the next room, someone coughed. He lay down on the bed feeling a little sick and stared at the ceiling for awhile; then he got up and turned the light out. It was very dark. He undressed down to his underwear and got under the covers.

Later, when the dark figures bent over him and he didn't know whether he was in hell or whether he'd simply flubbed it, he strained with all his force to utter the magic words: More Benadryl, muttered the journalist.

THE END