Chapter One - Pattaya Beach, Thailand, 1980
Ali sits on a low brick wall in his swimming trunks, smoking a cigarette, sleepless as the sea he looks out upon. Restless. A moody turbulence has grown amongst the waves that rise and fall with in surly argument. Each arriving column of waves announces its presence some hundred metres out with a snort of white spray and then slinks into a stealthy, submerged approach before suddenly arrising to dump its anger upon the sand. The resulting roar is like a bawdy summons to a fight in the street. Ali stubs out his cigarette and prepares to hoist his stout body to the challenge but sinks back down again as he catches sight of a BMW slipping round the corner of the tarmac strip that runs up to this poor excuse for a beach.
The car glides noiselessly closer, swerving every now and then to avoid the shards of broken glass left behind by the drunks of the previous night. The BMW pulls up and a thin man in silk steps out and bends down to check the integrity of his tyres.
"They don't make them like they used to!" Ali calls gaily from his brick wall.
"Fuckwits, man!" his friend scowls, "Alcoholic ass-holes with zero awareness of where they are or of what they're doing!" Shaking his head, he saunters over in his suit to join Ali on his humble perch.
"So, D, apart from the car, how are-"
"Jesus, man your teeth are getting bad, huh? Is that what's making your cheeks swell out like that?" His voice is unhurried and calm.
"Mmm, last night was the first time I didn't go out dancing this year." Ali shakes his head, "I was like a hamster or something. But my teeth aren't troubling me this morning so I prefer to forget about it."
"You used the same approach with your head, too, as I remember - Right up to the point that you had to be dragged off to hospital for surgery!" D observes dryly.
It's true. Ali's scalp looks like its spent the better part of a month in close embrace with a blowtorch. Which, in a more protracted sense is a quite accurate account of events. During his swims 5km out to sea, his shaved head was so often exposed to the cruel Asian sun that the surface layers of skin began to peel in revolt. Ali, preferring to be 'ignore-ant' of these things, as he puts it, let it slide until the cells of his thick-headed scalp could take it no more and defected to the guerrilla banners of skin cancer.
The surgeons and nurses had never encountered a patient more troublesome than this wild-looking Caucasian. The Thais are amongst the best in the world of steel-glinting surgery and, inside the operating theatre, highly-skilled teams in green overalls and white masks moved with sleek precision around their knocked-out subject.
"Nurse, scalpel."
"Scalpel."
"Okay, first incision-"
"Nnnnnnnoooo!" Ali cried rising up from his bed like Frankenstein's monster.
"Nurse! More anaesthetic! Fast!" The needle was slid into Ali's arm and he sighed away into peaceful slumber. But then as the preliminary cuts were made and the cancerous growth throbbed clearly in sight, purple and defiant,
"Aaaaah! Nnnnnnnnooooo!" Ali again implored, arms flailing to each side, sending surgical implements clattering to the floor.
"Nurse! Anaesthetic!"
"But he's already beyond the safe level of dosage!"
"Never mind! Just do it!" Each member of the team had to abandon their task to hold Ali down while vast amounts of sedative were plunged into his veins. Even then, he came back to life two more times during the worst day of everyone's year.
"Whatever." Ali replies, thoroughly uninterested in chat about his state of health.
They sit together as silent audience before the growling ocean, perhaps waiting for the next act in this mirror of the curious comedy of life. The typical serenity of this coast has the rainy season as its somewhat temperamental guest and everything is astir. Before them the sea churns in defiance of their judgement and sea birds struggle with their passage as they scan the water for small, glinting vessels of flesh. Behind them rises the sprawling urban development of Pattaya, a new-comer to modern prosperity and too young to have acquired any taste. Awful blocks of concrete blotch the horizon and usurp the traditional local ambience. The cafes are no longer terraced by delicately woven bamboo shade above each table: The graceful triangle hats have been ousted by the conquering armies of Coca-Cola plastic umbrellas. Much better, the locals feel, casting off the shame of authenticity, proud that they're finally getting somewhere.
B jangles his car keys in his hands with a hinting cling. Ali cocks his head with a grin that is no stranger to this trick.
" Going somewhere?" he asks, tongue in cheek.
They look an odd couple. B's hair is well-brushed in international playboy brilliance and dressed in a fine, dark suit that matches the sleekness of his superior vehicle, at which he continues to cast nervous glances. Beside him, Ali seems a near-naked bum with no signs of worldly wealth about him. He looks like a refugee from some European holocaust with his scarred head, decrepit gums and a big black hole inside his chest where his heart ought to be - it's not visible in itself to the observer's eye but it sucks in all the surrounding warmth and light just the same.
"Not just yet." D replies, his gaze somewhere else. There are wounds about him, too, that aren't apparent upon the surface. But his past is far from his mind just now.
"What's her name?" Ali teases.
"I can't remember exactly but she has the sweetest ass I've ever touched!" He laughs at his own dementia, "I'm utterly enslaved to my desires! Maybe I should take up Buddhism!"
"Those itches won't go away until you scratch them!"
"I didn't know I had so many to get my claws into!
"Aah!" Ali acknowledges, eyes opening to full, alarming diameter. D separates himself from the subject with a tilt of his head and asks in a change of key,
"So you're going out to swim in that?" throwing his chin in the direction of the swirling grey soup, muddied by the disturbed sands.
"Absolutely."
"It doesn't look so inviting. The big waves don't bother you?" Upon cue, the ocean spits forth white water in challenge.
"Nope. It's actually hard to do anything other than stay afloat in something as salty as that. And then it's just a case of propelling yourself around in a dimension that ought to be quite friendly and familiar to us! All that can go wrong is if you should somehow swallow half the ocean and die from arteries clogged up with salt!"
"Still, people do drown…"B dissents mildly with the ballast cynicism that holds his reality in check.
"Yes, but that only usually happens when a person enters a panicked state of 'Help! Help! Somebody saa-ve me!'" Ali demonstrates in mock falsetto.
"Still, I do sometimes wonder if you might not come back one day when you go out testing the depths." Again, the keys jangle. Ali leans forward.
"If I don't, D, I'd like these seagulls to be witnesses that you can inherit my towel." Ali assures him with comic seriousness.
The sun breaks free of the haze and greets our two Buddhas on the wall with a blinding cascade of brilliance Ali winces and D reaches for his Ray-Band shades.
"The water is waiting!" Ali announces and stands up, his muscles snapping to grim attention. "If you remember her name, give her my regards!" He says with a wink and then turns to march down the sands to the edge of the Earth. D clasps his keys and ambles over to his car, slips inside and rests back on the plush driver's seat. Slipping in the keys, he luxuriates in the flow of the air-conditioning and watches through the darkened windscreen as Ali takes his first few steps into the froth: He scoops it up in his hands to introduce water to his wrists, mouth, nostrils and ears as all Muslims are required to do before worship.
B waits for Ali to take full immersion and then reaches for his keys but hesitates to start the engine. He needs a moment or two more of the silence that drifts between he and Ali in the unspoken understanding that exists between two walkers on the same road. He hopes his best friend will return today.
His reverie is broken by an impatient sniff to his right. A smile rises to his lips as he remembers the presence of the girl beside him. His eyes swivel to savour her pouting beauty.
"You left me without any air-conditioning!" She whines with the capacity of the very-spoilt to include italics in almost every sentence. "And can we go somewhere now?"
B leans closer to her and whispers reassuring promises in her ears whilst his hands run their own dialogue on her thighs. He consents to the satisfaction of his slavery which is, after all, a luxury that may not last forever.
