Grandad, There's A Head on the Beach

2.

"How are the drugs? You feeling any effects?"

"No."

"That's impossible."

"Not really. I haven't taken them out of the package yet."

"Jimm, you promised."

"I know. It's just…being a guinea pig for untested pharmaceuticals seems a bit risky to me."

"They're perfectly safe. Trust me. I know the chemist. And the company pays a lot of money. And it's all legal. As long as you and Mair refuse to accept 'dirty money' from me, I have to find you an income elsewhere. And tell me you can't use a lot of money right now."

"No, we could use it. But what if there are side effects they haven't thought about? What if my breasts swell up grotesquely?"

"Then you'd have two fewer reasons to be depressed. They're antidepressants, not hormone replacements. Take the damned pills. Fill in the damned questionnaire and take the damned money. You're an unemployed journalist in an unoccupied motel, who's rapidly approaching middle age with little hope of finding a man. You need income."

I had so much I could have come back at her with, but there was no point in both of us feeling sorry for ourselves.

"So what makes you think I'm depressed?" I asked.

"Right, and what makes you think I haven't met a sweet girl and proposed marriage?"

My phone conversations with Sissi, nee Somkiet, were a lifeline from the constant sinking feeling of living in a coconut. She was plugged into the unreal world through the Internet. She played high-stakes poker in LA. Was a celebrity judge on YouTube Cover Dance, where desperate teenagers mimicked popular dance routines. Her alter egos dated the alter egos of losers from Brazil to Birmingham and had online sex. And she committed numerous felonies. For the previous eight years, since the mysterious disappearance of her German husband and benefactor, she'd been stealing money willy-nilly. She preferred to restrict her victims to pornographers, the wealthy-but-senseless, and celebrities. She was probably obscenely rich in some offshore bank where money is just a column of numbers on a screen. Money you'd never have to lick your fingers to count. But as she only lived inside her computer, that seemed appropriate in some way.

Her off-line self, once the most stunning Miss Tiffany Transvestite World in the history of the competition, was now podgy and unkempt and lived in a dark condominium in the northern capital. Apart from the occasional walk on the roof, she hadn't been outside for a year. Her food was delivered. A PA did all her real life business, and she hadn't felt the touch of a lover for at least six years. It was starting to concern me that I was the most normal person in my family. Just to let her know the actual world still had something to offer, I told her about my beach head and Grandad Jah shooting up the SUV.

"And I thought life would be dull down there," she said.

"See? So why don't you come down? Mair would really like to see you. And you can protect us from the rat brothers."

"Hmm. You do make it sound tempting. And you know I'd love to, but I've started this exfoliation course."

"So come in a few days when you're finished."

"It's a four-week course."

"You're exfoliating for four weeks? I can't seem to picture you without any skin."

"I have to look my best for Seoul."

"That's soul, the essence of a person or living thing?"

"No, that's Seoul, the capital of South Korea."

"The Cyber Idol thing?"

"They're having a ball. I'm the guest of honor."

Sissi had been offering her pro-bono make-up and personal grooming tips to a massive Web site in Korea called Cyber Idol, where ugly people underwent Photoshop makeovers and submitted their airbrushed avatars for online beauty competitions. No subterfuge barred. Sissi, or at least press photos of herself ten years earlier, had become their guru. She was the fairy godmother of misinterpretation.

"So why buy product?" I asked. "Why not just Photoshop yourself exfoliated? I seem to recall there's a function. Peel away layers, or something?"

"Because…"

The pause was so pregnant I expected to hear water burst.

"…it isn't online."

"What? They're having a ball. A gathering of fakes who made themselves look attractive only on their Web sites. How can it not be online?"

"It's called a coming-out party."

"Coming out of what?"

"Of the Internet. There's no pretense. We've seen all the before and after photographs. The winners are the ones who do the most remarkable job of changing from duck to swan. This is a ball for the befores. Ugly pride."

"But that would mean…"

"I'm going to Korea."

"But, Sissi, that would entail leaving the condominium. Going to a crowded airport. Sitting beside a complete stranger on a plane."

"First class, of course. I wouldn't be mixing with commoners."

"You'd be seen in public…as you are."

"I've booked the tickets."

I screeched down the phone, and birds all around me fled for the sky. The dogs barked. Mair called out the name of a dog we didn't own and told it to be quiet. I was so excited I did a little dance and tripped over Gogo, who growled at me.

"Oh, Sissi. That's great. I'm so excited."

"Really?"

"Of course. This is massive. It's like you're coming out too…out of your shell."

"I'm frightened, Jimm."

"You'll be the belle of the ball. They'll love you."

"You think so?"

"I know they will."

I'd been so excited by Sissi's news that I'd completely forgotten to tell her about our guests. The very fact that our end-of-the-planet resort had guests at all was news. We relied on a modest short-time-half-bottle-of-Mekhong-whiskey-two-condom-two-hour-max-midday-and-late-night trade. It concerned me that we were encouraging promiscuity and turning a blind eye to adultery, but we had bills to pay. Morality is a luxury for the wealthy. You could count the number of legitimate holidaymakers who'd stayed with us on one fist with a couple of fingers left over. We were no threat to Novotel. Double bed with lumpy mattress, fan, TV (local crap, no satellite), drinking water, hot shower if you were quick, and windows that didn't open. If you wanted to hear the surf, you'd have to leave the door ajar and have gales blow you out of bed. We didn't design the place, just took it over from a couple who knew nothing about tourism. We had no budget to fix it up.

We were always amazed when people stopped off on their journey south on our obscure back road and asked about our place. Once they'd seen the rooms, they'd invariably keep going, even if it was late at night and they were running on caffeine. We'd had a birdwatcher for a few weeks, who spent her days up to her knees in the bog next door. We once had a small flock of Taiwanese evangelists working their way south, spreading the word. I would have given anything to be a lizard on the wall when they hit the extremist Muslim south. Oh, then there was the Channel Five news team that took us over for two nights. They were doing a feature on the demise of the Gulf. I didn't see the finished program, but I was told we featured extensively.

And that was it. Our longest stayers of the past year. Was it any wonder we were still living off the savings? But the money we'd made from selling our beautiful little house and shop with attached Laundromat-our livelihood, our birthright, our family culture-was almost gone. The bank had phoned and asked if we were planning to make any deposits into our account. They said, if not, the province would provide loans if we could prove we were in strife as a result of the monsoons. In fact, we were in strife as a result of not having the vaguest idea of how to run a resort. But we weren't too proud to accept government handouts. We took photographs of our place and filled in the grant application. Grants like these were on a waiting list of up to six months. We'd be high and dry by the time it came through. I doubt we'd send it back though. The monsoons had already disintegrated our beachfront ornamental garden, and the high tides were edging closer to the huts. Every morning we awoke expecting to see the guest chalets bobbing off toward the horizon.

Given the season and the state we were in, we should have been grateful for any paying guests we could dredge up. But there was something odd about the couple we had staying in hut three. They'd arrived in a silver Honda City with tinted windows not an hour after we'd finished cleaning up the glass and pot shards from our morning gunfight in the car park. Me and Mair were sitting at the concrete bench/table combo in front of the shop. The car drove past, then stopped about twenty meters ahead. We assumed they'd mistaken our shop for a 7-Eleven since it was coincidentally painted in the same colors. That was as far as the similarity went. We had so little stock we had to space it out on the shelves like museum exhibits. We could offer cold drinks and snacks but nothing else a weary traveler might require. The car reversed slowly and pulled up alongside me and Mair. We found ourselves staring at our own reflections in the window. I mussed up my short hair, which was looking uncharacteristically neat. A faint buzz accompanied the lowering of the window, and we were left with a view of identical smiles on the faces of two angels a generation apart. The younger was so naturally beautiful I wished I could start again and make a better job of myself. The driver was obviously her mother.

I looked at Mair and asked, "Why don't we look like that?"

"Ours is a beauty that takes patience to discover," she said.

"Excuse me," said the young lovely. Her palms were together, her index fingers caressing her lips in a sweet wai we were obliged to reply to. "Good day. Do you have rooms available?"

I laughed deep in my throat. Even when all the stables in Bethlehem were jam-packed, we'd still have rooms free.

"I'll check the register," I said, getting to my feet.

"Of course we do," said Mair. "We're completely empty."

I sat down again. For all the training I'd invested in my mother on the subject of business management, she still had that annoying habit of telling the truth. The driver leaned across her daughter. She had shoulder-length hair, but it somehow retained its perfect shape, like early computer animation. She could have stood on her head and her hair wouldn't have budged.

"Here's the problem," she said. "We stupidly left home without our ID cards. My husband has FedExed them to Songkla. So, just tonight we don't…"

Mair laughed.

"We're so desperate we'd let Andrew Hitler stay here without checking his ID," she said, and winked. "No questions asked at the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort."

To their credit, the lovelies laughed. They must have known who Andrew Hitler was because they handed over a deposit big enough to rebuild our ornamental garden a hundredfold. I was sure we'd have to return most of it the next morning when they fled in horror, but it was nice to have serious money in my hand for once. Arny walked in front of the Honda, as he herded them to their room like a muscle-bound mahout guiding an elephant. I could see mother and daughter gaze out toward the murky gray sea and the garbage-strewn beach, and I knew they wouldn't be unpacking. But as the car slowly followed Arny, the question that entered my mind was "Why does it have no number plates?"

Arny-born Arnon but edited in admiration of Arnold Schwarzenegger-was in the same boat as me. Once our mother sold up, against everyone's will, and moved to Nevernowayland, we'd had a filial obligation to follow her. She was only fifty-seven then, but we sensed she'd need us. Despite, or perhaps because of, her eccentricities, she had become a popular member of the Maprao women's association. Together they'd formed an animal protection group and a local-produce cooperative. They'd ignored Bigman Beung and taken control of a biodiesel still donated by some Japanese Lions Club. They had oil-waste buckets in all their houses and had arranged weekly pick-ups. They'd already produced enough rough fuel to run all the Weed-wackers in the district. All the professional grass cutters now queued up at the still, delighted to be paying half the cost of diesel at the pumps. The women planned to expand and convince truck drivers to drive on waste. As none of these incentives existed before we arrived, I have to assume Mair was the catalyst. Either way, she had a lot more friends than me and Arny. What she didn't have was a man in her life, so what happened the day after our run-in with the rats really caught us all by surprise.

Our family compound is set back from the beach, which gives us a fifty-fifty chance of not being swept out to sea. My hut is a few meters from Mair's. I was woken at two A.M. by a heavy grunting sound competing with the crash of the surf. The grunt was winning. At first, I thought it was Sticky eating my flip-flops again, and I was preparing to go back to sleep when a horrendous scream rent the air. I rushed out of my hut to find Grandad Jah rushing out of his. We were both carrying our fake Movada LD flashlights. The sound had most certainly come from Mair's hut, so we hurried onto the balcony and hammered on the door.

"Mair! Mair! You all right?" I called.

There was no reply. I turned the handle, but the door was locked.

"Mair?"

Grandad went to the side window, but that too was shut.

"Mair!"

I grabbed the smallest flowerpot and was about to smash the porch window when I heard the click of the lock. The door opened a crack. Mair somehow oozed herself out through the gap and quickly closed the door behind her. I shone my light on her face. She was flushed. Sweating. The wind whipped up her hair. Her ugly Chinese pajamas were disheveled. In fact, the top was inside out. Mair did the Titanic smile.

"You all right, child?" Grandad asked.

"Fine," she said. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"There was a scream," I told her.

She looked up at the big black racing clouds as if trying to remember the lyrics to a song.

"Mair?"

"Yes," she said at last, "it was a nightmare. I remember it clearly. In my sleep I must have kicked the TV on and…and there was a horror movie. Yes. A scream. Simple as that."

She nodded at the end, as if the explanation might have been in some way credible. From behind her, the sound of a glass falling onto the floor but not breaking. We have sturdy glassware.

"I should turn off the TV," she said. "Go back to bed, both of you."

She turned and squeezed back into the dark room. In the brief second my flashlight beam was allowed inside, I swear I saw movement on the bed.

"You girls never learn from your mistakes," said Grandad gruffly as he turned away and headed back to his hut. The Gulf wind shoved against his skinny carcass, and I feared he might be carried off by it. My mother was on her way to sixty. A girl only in the eyes of a father. I flicked off my light and made heavy footfalls down the wooden steps. And there I waited.

Twenty seconds later Mair giggled and said, presumably to her TV, "They're none the wiser. Go to sleep."

I tried to ignore all the clues, but they were there, flapping around in the wind like dirty laundry. I went back to bed that night wrapped in incredulity and not a little envy. It had been almost eighteen months since my last. . . since I last had a nightmare and kicked the TV. Before attempting to sleep, I reached for the trial drugs now open on my bedside table and took two, washed down with the last of my Romanian red. The room was so black I felt like I'd been painted out of the scene. I didn't know whether to laugh or suffocate myself with my pillow. Instead, I found myself in a dream.

It was disconcertingly erotic. I was locked in a steamy embrace with Ed the grass man in the unfinished hull of his new squid boat. We were on a mattress of curly wood shavings. Ed, I may not have mentioned, was the gangly young man who came every month to cut our grass with his impressive Weedwacker. He'd once begged me to go out with him. Well, perhaps he didn't beg exactly. In fact, he didn't quite get around to asking, but I knew he was about to.

He wasn't bad-looking, as grass cutters went. He had those dark chocolate eyes, not Vosges exactly, more Tesco Lotus plain. But despite that and his knotty muscular stomach, I wasn't about to let him have his way with me. And I was most annoyed to find him there in my erotic dream. Who did he think he was, clunking away there on top of me, his knees banging against the wooden planks? And to make matters worse, I awoke to the realization that the sound of our love-making was in fact that of a headboard banging against the wooden wall of the neighboring cabin. My mother's cabin. I looked at the alarm clock. It was six fifteen. Did she have no shame? I took two more antidepressants and wrote on the questionnaire beside DAY ONE, "No effect whatsoever."