Robert and Sophal parted ways by the Psar Rus and he headed back down to the river in a quiet mood, eventually turning along 106 and walking up in the drizzle alongside the lawned gardens. To the right, by shambolic tin walls and shaggy trees, the girls stood at the corners waiting for people like him and men slept inside waiting tuk-tuks as if the night was already over. Higher up the street turned to rubble and grit and litter and the dogs stood there watching him, assessing his strengths and weaknesses. An alley swung to the right toward 102 and as he passed into it he saw a young woman ahead of him picking her way gingerly through the long oblong puddles and scattered refuse from the day market. Thrown together inside the claustrophobic alley they walked a few yards apart until she turned left at the large trees and into the pool-like darkness around them and up toward the golden lights of the Mansions. He hung back a little to let her ascend the steps and then followed her into the lobby, where she didn’t stop at the reception desk, breezing past into the corridor that led to the stairwell.
He went the opposite way, up to his apartment, but on the first floor he stopped midway and waited for her to reappear on the floors above him. Something about her was unusual. Not the shiny black dress or the heels, nor the tight white summer blouse and the careful pinning of the hair. It was that something about her was not unfamiliar.
When she did appear it was on the third floor. Her hand was on the rail and then she stopped as well, halfway down the landing, and she saw him standing below her, looking up. When their eyes met he recognized her and she him and she flinched and stepped back from the rail, but not entirely out of view. Sothea, for her part, was astonished more than anything else and she didn’t know what to do but go forward until she was at Davuth’s door. Robert turned toward his own door, unlocked it and hung back, wanting to change his mind and go up and speak to her.
He couldn’t think of any conceivable reason that she had appeared out of nowhere in his own building. He glanced back up at the third floor but she had slipped from view.
Feeling rash, he decided to go up and find her. Once on the third floor, however, he found himself in an empty corridor with no Sothea. He walked down it slowly and peered through the windows of each unit and as he did so he felt a sickening giddiness and inertia. Here was a person who could expose him easily, but whom he could expose as well. And if Sothea was there, wasn’t Simon likely to be there, too? Perhaps even in one of these units on the third floor!
There was only a faint echo of old Chinese music coming from one of these units and he went down to the ground floor and out into the street to wait for her. He went across the street and sat on the bags of cement that were stacked outside the Korean construction site and waited for some time until it was late enough for the motodop drivers to sullenly drive off empty-handed. The long wait began and as one o’clock came he heard, as if hours in advance of themselves, cocks crow in the gloom behind the embassy. The silent lightning kept him company, but even so Sothea did not reemerge until well after three. She was obviously still shaken and nervous because as she stood at the top of the steps she looked up and down Street 102 and when she saw that it was empty she started off down the same alley through which she had come a few hours earlier.
He followed her, almost in disbelief, and they walked briskly onto the long, humid lawn bristling with crickets. She slipped into this darkness so effectively that he could barely see her until they came out on the far side. There was a bar there with a few drunken old Frenchmen sitting outside on cane chairs with their women and Sothea darted to a corner just behind the market, not looking behind but seeming to know that all was not well. He caught up to her as they turned into the smaller street and when he was a few feet away she turned and saw him and her eyes went wide with horror and she began to run. He called out, “No, wait!” and ran after her and to his surprise she relented almost at once because she couldn’t run in her heels.
She slowed and then stopped and turned a second time, and this time she was composed and cold and ready to hit back.
“It’s all right,” he said, and held up his hands, and she saw that he was not nearly as angry as she had expected.
They took each other in for a while and then she sat down on the curb and he sat down as well and he felt the sweat massing on the palms of his hands. He had prepared nothing to say and now that he had to say something he couldn’t find any words at all. It was pointless demanding explanations, they both knew what had happened. Moreover, he knew that Simon had done all the planning and the execution. She had had nothing to do with it. Finally he said, “So where is Simon?” and left it at that.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I know he’s at Colonial Mansions—I followed you from there.”
“He’s not there.”
“I think he is. I need to know which apartment he’s in.”
“No, it’s someone else. Simon and me broke up.”
“Then where did he go?”
She shook her head and there was something final about it that was very real.
“So you really don’t know?” he said.
“Maybe he’s dead.”
“What about my money? What about my passport?”
“I dun know about that.”
“You must have been with him when he spent the money.”
“He spent some…We spent some—I am sorry.”
He suddenly flew into a small repressed rage.
“You two—you really fucked me over.”
“Yes. It was bad thing.”
“So now you say it was a bad thing.”
It wasn’t even really my money, he thought.
“I think you better make merit,” he said, half joking.
“Yes, you right. It was bad thing.”
“It was bad thing and now we’re here in the same city.”
“Yes, it crazy.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“I said it crazy.”
“You think it’s just crazy and that’s that?”
“Yes, it crazy.”
“Then it’s OK, it’s just crazy and not, you know, evil or malicious or anything really bad?”
She shrugged and looked down at her feet and soon he calmed down and it was he who felt sorry for being a bully. He ought to have known—it was a small country, you ran into people again quite quickly, and Phnom Penh was small as well, for all its secrets.
It was Simon he needed to find. But then again, did he really need to find him now? What would he do?
“I see,” he ended up saying, and his hands went limp.
She, however, roused herself and began to get up.
“I’ll walk with you,” he said.
They went slowly through the dead city and he asked her what she was doing now. She looked a lot more elegant than she had upriver, more composed and in command of herself, and she said she was working in a club and living with a friend of her mother’s in Toul Kork.
“Why were you at Colonial Mansions?” he said.
“I have a friend there. You know what I mean.”
“It’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Lot of people live there.”
“Yes, but still…”
It was vexing, but he couldn’t push the issue. She strode on ahead of him and he had to quicken his feet to keep up with her.
“Where are you going now?” he said.
“Home.”
“But—when was the last time you talked to Simon?”
“Some time ago. I not gonna see him again.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I know.”
“But if you see him—”
She let him come up level with her and she looked at him carefully and she felt sorry for him, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. She had felt sorry for him when she saw him at the river house, so lost and clueless.
“What?”
“Well, I want my stuff back.”
She sneered, “You never get it back. Get new stuff.”
“Can’t you help me get it back?”
“No.”
“Maybe I’ll go to the police then.”
Finally she stopped.
“Maybe,” she said, “the police are already near you. Did you know that?”
“Why shouldn’t I go to them?”
“I’ll say you liar. You won’t go to them—they are after you.”
“They are? Why are they after me?”
“I don’t know, do I? I think they are.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He was bluffing and they both knew it. She suddenly stepped into the middle of the street and raised her hand—she had seen a motodop far off under the glistening wet trees.
Then, as if relenting, she turned back to him.
“Where you stay?” she said.
“At the same place we were. The Colonial.”
She seemed immensely surprised, though it had been obvious enough.
“You better leave there,” she said adamantly.
“Why should I?”
“I said you better leave. I’m giving you advice.”
“I won’t leave.”
“All right.”
The motodop swept up and, almost without stopping, scooped her up onto the backseat where she sat sidesaddle and flashed him a parting look before the bike turned and roared away toward the boulevard. She stared at him as it did, and she smiled and waved and there was a strange innocence and fatalism in both the smile and the wave. It was as far as he was going to get with her, even if he did see her again. He gave up and walked back to the Mansions, defeated by her agility, and went up to his apartment and stewed in his brooding uncertainty for a long time, smoking cheroots and eating pistachios as he often did late at night. He walked about the room spitting the shells aimlessly and he circled around the great and ominous idea that his enemy was only a few yards away from him on the third floor, incredible as it seemed. Simon, asleep on a bed identical to his own and under the same roof. But it was not clear what he should do. He could ignore him and they could carry on with their exchanged identities for as long as they needed. Or he could go up now and confront him and they could have it out and bring it to an end and go back to being who they were really were. He could get his passport back and return to Elmer and nothing would be said about it. He could do that, but as soon as he understood that he could do it, he didn’t want to. It was just that he was forced to. He couldn’t ignore Simon for long. They would meet in the street, word would get around and everything would be ruined. It wasn’t much that would be ruined, but it was something he had created by and for himself and he didn’t want to let it go so easily. He began to feel agitated and paranoid the more he thought about it, and soon he had wandered into the kitchen and picked up a knife from one of the drawers. He wrapped it in a tea towel and slipped outside onto the landing. Then he went to the stairwell and up to the third floor. He then went along the third-floor landing, past the flowering balconies with their French-style iron tables, and past the series of darkened and curtained windows where not a single light was on. He had a feeling that one of these doors would suddenly snap open and a confused and sleepy Simon would stick his head out and he would have him—for a moment—at his mercy. But since he didn’t know which door it was, he could only pass it, and then pause by the stairwell at the far end and feel his hand shaking. The sweat dripped onto the floor and a cloud of moths crazed by the landing lights danced around his head while he collected his thoughts and realized that he had better go back down and replace the knife in its drawer. He locked his door and turned off the lights then sat by the window and looked up at the third floor. But then again, maybe he had leaped to an absurd and exaggerated conclusion.
Sothea—he knew nothing about her. Perhaps she had told the truth.
That bitch, he thought more calmly.
The following day, when he called Sophal, he told her that they ought to leave the city as soon as possible, even if it was only for a few days. In fact, having gotten up late, he went down to the lobby for his coffee and found Davuth almost at once. The policeman was dressed in a pale blue shirt and he looked much more handsome than he had the day before.