The Atlas

BLOOD

You want some blood? said the guy in the camouflage coat.

Yeah.

The back of my arm is good.

The doctor hit it. — Yeah. That's a good vein, the doctor said.

I hope so. It's at a hard angle, though. You can get it straighter there, Doc. It's up to you. You know how you want to do it.

The needle went slowly in. The guy in the camouflage coat bit his lip. Not looking, he said: You get it?

Yeah.

Good.

The blood came out from between the wings of the butterfly in a pretty thread, reproducing those times when traffic becomes a liquid with many red eyes that oozes through tunnels in obedience to horizontal pinball gravity. Just as taxi-lights bleed across the ceilings of tunnels, so the pink vibrations took wing inside his eyelids. The corpuscles were smoking, tottering trucks and weepy-eyed cars rushing like red ants between the ribs of some dead bridge.

Still going, huh?

Yeah, said the doctor. It's a gusher.

That's good, 'cause I never mess with the back one.

He looked down at the floor. Yeah, he went on. I have a positive antibody. I hope I don't have AIDS. I've been feeling terrible lately.

As he sat there leaning forward he jigged his knee and he jigged his fist on his knee. He looked very serious.

The guy in the camouflage coat got a Butterfly Bar vest and a bar number like the girls and went around like some tragic diffusion of evening traffic, saying to them: OK you pay me one baht I sleep you hotel no problem I smoke you my Mama-Papa very poor — and they laughed.

But the slender sad girl whose hair was rubberbanded back in a ponytail said: I no like my job.

Why you work Soi Cowboy then? he said, throwing his jacket off and rolling up his sleeve.

Little money. I send money Mama-Papa.

You have Thai boyfriend?

Before I have. But he send me away. I small small money. He marry big money.

The slender girl never resisted. Her tiny fieldworn hands would always settle on his back, gently caressing. (Before, I work water buffalo, she said.) She had a pale ocher face. She never complained about his not using a rubber.

You want some blood? he said afterward.

No, sir. Why you say give me blood?

I want to do it to you. I did it to you one way, but maybe you still don't have my antibody. I want you to drink my blood. I want to maybe stick you with this needle and squirt my blood into you, OK?

The slender girl wrung her hands. — OK, sir. Up to you.

The guy in the camouflage coat remembered the woman who'd given him the disease. He remembered going to the doctor with her.

Hi, the doctor had said. Are you gonna do this?

Yeah. I guess, said the scared woman, smiling. Then she said quickly: no, I really have to get to work. — She ran away.

She was dead now.

Close your eyes, bitch, he said to the slender girl. I don't want you looking into my eyes while I do this. Don't worry. I'll pay you one thousand baht.* Make a fist. Make a fist, I said. Yeah, that's a good vein. You got such pretty litde veins.

Thank you, sir.

OK, it's going in. Don't move. Don't move. There it goes.

Thank you very much, sir.

What the fuck are you thanking me for? I just murdered you.

Excuse me sir me no no understand you speak.

I apologize, he said. It's just that I've been feeling pretty down lately.

* About U.S. $40 in 1993. About what an all-night girl might expect to receive.