Laa and the Lizard
By KorskiIn a hotel room of no distinction, a four-inch black lizard with iridescent lime-green spots crawls along the edge of a ceiling, follows an electrical cord that leads to an overhead fan, and from a motionless blade drops onto the flat belly of a middle-age man who, while asleep, has an enormous hard-on. Laa is beside him, her head on his shoulder, a leg straddled over his two long legs. They are in a Vientiane two-storey hotel that fronts on the street that is less than a block from the river, in a country where to sleep with a Lao woman if you are a foreigner and not married to her is a crime subject to imprisonment.
You have engaged in a criminal act, the lizard says.
I was unable to control myself, he murmurs.
It should not have been so hard to avoid this difficulty.
I think I didn’t want to avoid it.
You never want to, the lizard says.
There is a knock on the door, and it wakes him. He looks at his watch. It is nearly 3 a.m. in the morning. It cannot be the help wanting to change the linens and clean the room.
They have come for you, the lizard squeaks, and smacks its lips, and smiles.
I know, he whispers.
Your wayward habits have caught up with you.
This is the wrong time to tell me.
It is the best time to tell you.
He opens his eyes and looks at Laa, her face inches away. She is sound asleep, breathing effortlessly, so happy in her innocence and youthful beauty, and with the reward she will receive in the morning. He wonders where it all would have gone had she spoken his language, been more than smiles and hand squeezes and unprovoked hugs.
He looks toward the window and considers the possibility. But he is on the second floor. He is not sure the window will open, or how to get it open. Or if the jump is too great to make safely. There is not enough time to get everything together, even if it were possible.
There is another knock, this time harder. Some words are spoken.
Laa stirs but does not wake. He knows he will never see her again. He knows nothing more than her first name, and that is all he will ever get. Maybe he could return some day and walk the streets and ask if anyone knows a young woman named Laa who has long black hair that hangs below her waist and who brims with life; and rides a red motorbike with abandon.
The lizard moves onto his left breast and says, What will you do?
What can I do? he says.
The lizard wiggles its tail and purrs, You can look for your money. You will need it soon enough.
Thank you, friend.
Thank me? Why? Think of what you do and thank yourself for your misbehavior. Your unerring stupidity.
He looks to his pants on the floor beside the bed. He does not know how much money he has. He does not know if he has enough. But what will be enough? He has heard they will make him find a way to have enough.
He says, I will listen to their words and make a judgment.
Ha! See what happens when you become a mere man of words! They will not be interested. Nor even understand what you are trying to say.
He feels angry and says, Who brought you to me?
You brought me here.
I don’t understand. I did no such thing. You are a mere reptile and live in this unnatural home because you have been exiled.
Mere! Ha! I would never do what you do. Only another human would be as foolish.
I call what I do something else.
You are always using your own dictionary. It will be worse for you than for others. You are an American. Do you remember what Americans did here?
I cannot be responsible for what I did not do. I was no part of that war.
But you were by association, and that is good enough. We are all judged by association.
I have another passport, and I will use it. I bought it in Thailand.
So you are a criminal twice over!
If only you knew. But why do you care? You come to me uninvited. I didn’t ask you to engage me in this moment of trouble.
You need reminders, and words wiser than your own counsel.
Reminders of what? About the wisdom of behavior this is none of your business?
Remember you are not like me. You are human. You are a cripple, because you have culture. The lizard bites his nipple and draws blood.
He feels no pain and he watches the blood run down toward his pubic region. He says, Go away. Let me deal with my own messes.
He thinks he doesn’t have enough to avoid real problems. He fears what enough might be. The thought makes his mouth dry. He looks across the room for a bottle of water or a beer he might have brought to the room. There is nothing in sight. He looks to his pack on the floor under the window. He sees nothing that will quench his thirst.
He slowly gets up and rubs his eyes. He goes to the door just as there is another knock, this one harder than those that came before. He turns to the bed and sees one of Laa’s legs, and her pretty feet, and the toes that he took to his mouth and drove her half mad with laughter and excitement, demanding more of what she had never before known. This is why she would love him for a day or two, until she learned a new pleasure. Novelty insured fascination, short-term infatuation.
The lizard says, Shake your head. Just shake your head.
Okay, if you say so. His mouth is so dry he cannot swallow. It is suddenly hard to breathe.
Let her explain, the lizard says as he moves closer to his mouth and toward a lower lip that looks inviting. The lizard wants more blood. It seeks not pain but nourishment.
After the first time, and after she had rolled to one side and quickly fallen asleep with exhaustion, he got mental pictures of her as he looked at the fan blades that the lizard would use to get to him. He got a picture of her when she was in her early twenties, and then again when she was in her early thirties. Even at that age, ten years on, he knew that he could sit across from her in a restaurant and sip on a glass of red wine as he had that night they met. And he could imagine that she was ageless. But then one day, he feared--feared the reality that cannot be denied--he would be sitting across from her in their kitchen, a setting long mundane, and for too long worn with the words of small fights and minor misunderstandings over nothing important. Now he would be staring at the face that her young impoverished life had given her, and that had been drawn out and into that shape where clarity and the kind of definition he relished cannot reside.
You will remember this one, the lizard says..
He feels only despair, and he says, Can anything be worth remembering?
Of course. Whenever you are bored, and need consolation, and are feeling sorry for yourself.
You do not speak like a cold-blooded reptile.
You underestimate me. And my warning that you will be foolish again.
Can I be imagining everything, including these words from you?
You will know soon enough.
If this is real, I will be marked as having engaged in a criminal act.
You need not worry. They have no interest in giving you a public record. Or even a fast ride to the airport. They only care about your money. That is all that matters to these people. Have you not learned this?
With the word criminal in the air, he brings to mind his brother, so different, never a criminal, or criminally inclined. Has he missed all the highs? Does he have stories to tell?
Tell me the story now, the lizard says.
Why?
Because I want to hear it.
You are the story, and this is a dream, is it not?
A dream? It depends how much Laa means to you.
Will you bring her to me on another night if I say I must have her again?
I cannot. There can only be one night like tonight with her. It is no different with others. For anyone or anything. No human event is repeatable.
Sometimes I turn foolish and forget what is so obvious.
That is to be human and not reptilian.
Ah, but look at the size of my brain!
Yes, and look at the expanse of your foolishness!
He thinks of putting on some shorts before going to the door. It will change the amount they ask for, surely. But he has doubts, and he remains naked. Can he intimidate them in his great ape nakedness?
There are three of them. Two standing side by side. Dark, bulky, in plain clothes, hardly what he had expected. He does not see a gun.
They say something to him, and he understands not a word. One of them moves toward him, and slightly past him, enough to see Laa in bed, a leg above the sheet, bare and elegant in light that comes from a street light. A small tattoo above her ankle glistens like silver in morning light.
The young Lao man just inside the door says something meant for Laa. Slowly she raises her head from the pillow. Her lips shine brown and red. They are begging lips, still warm and full of the night and early morning that preceded.
She gets up and wraps a towel around herself and goes to a dresser across from the foot of the bed. Her long delicate hands fumble in the darkness, inside a large brown purse. There is the noise of a small animal in the bush, of paper being crumpled, and of metal scratching metal.
Up they come, in her hand.
Now he remembers. He remembers clearly how she told him to hang on. He remembers her hair in his face, and the smell of sewer water and the damp night dilating his nostrils. He concludes, needs to conclude, and without knowing, that it does not belong to her. It is needed now. This is the reason for this late hour knock on the door. It is, isn’t it? In a minute or so—one of tense anticipation that he will never forget—he will know.
Stickman's thoughts:
Smiles here!
The author can be contacted at korski1@cox.net.
The author of this website, NOT this article, can be contacted at: stickmanbangkok@gmail.com.
