part0006

Ana Logan stood outside the hostel bedroom she shared with her sister Rachel and Paul Cook, Rachel’s boyfriend. She put an ear to the door, listening to Rachel’s laboured panting and Paul grunting like a rutting stag.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ sighed Ana as she ambled back down the crooked wooden stairs, her backpack slung over one shoulder. All she wanted was a shower; was that too much to ask?

The pair of them had been at it for over an hour now. Just thinking about it made Ana feel tired. She wandered into the hostel bar and settled herself onto a stool at the far end, ordering a vodka-lemonade. She looked around in dismay. They had flown twelve hours from Scotland to Thailand and here she was, surrounded by white people getting drunk. She could have left her house back in Edinburgh, wandered down the street to a pub and seen exactly the same thing any night of the week.

It would have saved a couple of thousand pounds too.

A German couple next to her argued boisterously in their native tongue while a group of English boys who didn’t look a day over sixteen downed shots and cheered at the Premier League football on the big plasma screen that hung over the bar. Every time the commentator said the name Kane they downed their drinks and picked up another from the tray that balanced delicately on the edge of the pool table, almost daring someone to knock it over. In the far corner a lone guy in his forties, his hair tied up in a man-bun, danced erratically.

Drugs were pretty easy to come by, apparently.

The same faces every night for the last week, and the only thing that changed was how increasingly tired they looked. Ana caught her own reflection in the glass behind the bar and quickly looked away. Mirrors always made her feel vulnerable, and she avoided them wherever possible. They reminded her of—

‘You know, you’d be pretty if you smiled,’ said the barman in a thick Australian accent, giving her a toothy grin, his pearly whites a sickly pink under the flashing neon HAPPY HOUR sign.

She gave him a withering stare. ‘So fuck off and give me something to smile about.’

His grin faded and he slammed her drink down, the liquid spilling over the lip of the glass.

‘Must be on the rag,’ he muttered, shaking his head and turning away.

Irritated, she considered going for a walk, but decided against handling the ‘Looky-Looky’ men, those guys who followed you up the street trying to hawk sunglasses or towels or fried cockroaches or magic beans.

‘Looky looky miss, finest bracelet for you! You have husband? You want to see ping pong show? Looky looky!’

It was too hot to make the effort, so she pulled a battered Richard Laymon novel from her backpack and laid it on the counter, the dog-eared pages stained with sweat and suntan lotion. Going on holiday to a warm climate was the cruellest fate a good book could possibly face.

The noise from outside bled through the thin walls, interrupting her concentration. The roar of engines, the peel of laughter from the drunk and the terminally high, the techno beats from the clubs and twenty-four-hour shops. Bangkok wasn’t just a city that never slept; it was a city that never shut up.

‘I never signed up for this,’ she said to herself, re-reading the same paragraph for the third time.

‘Excuse me?’ said a guy standing next to her, a nervous expression on his face.

‘Oh, no, I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Ana.

‘Oh.’ He smiled and turned back to the bar, trying to get the Aussie’s attention, but the barman was too busy chatting up a group of young girls in bikini tops who looked like they just wandered off the set of a rap video.

‘So who were you talking to?’

‘Huh?’ Ana looked back up at the man. He was handsome in a baby-faced way, a scraggly beard like wisps of smoke and a barcode moustache she imagined was his pride and joy. It was the facial hair of a classic Gap Year student. ‘Oh, right. I was just talking to myself.’ She smiled and lifted her book, the international signal for ‘Leave me alone’.

‘That’s a sign of madness,’ he said, really laying his American accent on thick. She sighed and put the book down exaggeratedly.

‘Talking to yourself. It’s a sign of madness.’ He smiled at her.

‘Well I’m not mad, thank you. The voices in my head would have told me if I was,’ she said curtly and he laughed and held out his hand.

‘My name’s Ricky.’

She gave in and shook his hand. It was clammy and sweaty, but so was hers so she couldn’t complain. Even with the air-con on full blast there was no escaping the pervasive tropical heat.

‘Ana,’ she said. ‘Look, I don’t want to be rude, but I’d rather just sit and read if you don’t mind.’

‘Understood,’ said Ricky. ‘Excuse me, can I get a beer?’ he called to the barman, who was having none of it, his shirt pulled up so that one of the bikini girls could press his rock-hard abs and squeal in delight.

‘You need to get your tits out,’ said Ana, not looking up from her book.

‘Best way to get served, apparently.’

‘Yeah well, I don’t look good in a bikini.’

Ana nodded. ‘I bet they make your arse look big, aye?’

Ricky laughed. ‘They do, they really do.’ The Aussie reluctantly left his makeshift harem and handed Ricky a bottle of Singha, snatching the payment from his hand and heading back over towards the girls, but they had already left to find the next muscular blonde Aussie barman. In Bangkok’s backpacker district, they wouldn’t have to go far to find one.

‘You look like you’re having as much fun as me,’ said Ricky, taking a sip of his beer.

Ana smiled. ‘Sorry. It’s just that this has not quite been the holiday I’d planned on. I’m stuck here in tourist purgatory while my sister’s upstairs riding her boyfriend all night, and if I go outside everyone wants to sell me sarongs or touch my skin. It’s weird. ’

‘They want to touch you?’

‘Aye, something about the combination of ginger hair and the Scottish complexion makes the locals want to poke and prod me to see if I’m real. This kid yesterday walked up and jabbed his stubby wee finger in my belly and said, “Look! She fat like Buddha!”’ Ricky burst out laughing. Ana raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, you think that’s funny do you?’

‘I do, I’m sorry,’ he said, but he didn’t sound it.

‘I mean, it’s true. When I see how skinny most folk are here, and then I see my decadent Western arse in a mirror, I’m almost ashamed.’ She sipped her drink. ‘Almost.’

Ricky smiled again and Ana found herself smiling back. He raised his glass.

‘A toast, then. To decadent Western butts.’

Ana clinked her glass off his. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

There was a cheer from behind as one of the football teams scored, followed by the smashing of glass as the tray finally fell from the ratty old pool table.

‘Mind if I sit?’ asked Ricky.

‘What a gentleman,’ she said sarcastically. She sighed. ‘Sorry, sometimes I can’t help myself. Go ahead. I can’t stop you anyway.’

He heaved himself up onto the stool, his legs dangling off the floor like a garden gnome on a toadstool. Ana called the bartender over and ordered another round, packing her book away for safekeeping.

‘My sister says I use sarcasm to keep people at a distance or something. She reckons she’s a fucking psychiatrist, but really she’s just seen too many episodes of Frasier.’

‘Ha, I do the same. Humour as a defence mechanism. Only problem is I’m not very funny.’

‘That is a problem.’

‘Well, your crippling anxiety didn’t seem to affect you when you strolled up to me like ol’ Johnny Big-Baws out on the pull.’

Ricky raised his eyebrows so high they almost popped off the top of his head. ‘Well, I’ve never been called that before.’

‘So what sets you off, you great big bag of nerves?’ asked Ana wryly.

‘Are you making fun of me?’

‘What do you think?’

Ricky smirked. ‘Fine. You know what I can’t stand? Someone walking behind me in high-heels. The clicking sound stresses me out so bad I have to stop and pretend I’m checking my phone until they’ve gone past.’

Ana nodded. ‘I can understand that.’ She took a sip of vodka-lemonade and could only taste the vodka. The measures here were out of control. ‘I hate when someone behind me on the bus is laughing. I always think they’re laughing at me, or putting gum in my hair or gluing me to the seat or…’

‘You’ve given it a lot of thought.’

‘A girl should always be prepared.’

‘Speaking of being prepared, I’m early for everything.’

‘No,’ said Ricky, getting quite animated, ‘I mean really early. Like, an hour early for everything. Cinema, drinks, whatever. I’m about five hours early to the airport.’

Ana laughed. ‘Yeah, I’m like that! And then you get annoyed when your friends turn up on time even though they are arriving exactly when you arranged to meet.’

‘Precisely! I’m here with this pair of hippy assholes, and they refuse to turn up to anything on time. Just getting them to the airport was the greatest test of mental strength I’ll ever face.’

‘They sound great,’ said Ana, making a face that said otherwise. ‘Why the fuck are you with them?’

Ricky chuckled and stared into the bottom of his glass. ‘Long story.’

‘You got somewhere to be? I don’t. I have to wait for Robocock upstairs to finish getting his end away with my sister. Apparently that takes…’ She checked the time on her iPhone. ‘Almost two fucking hours.’ She opened her eyes wide in mock enthusiasm. ‘So far!’

Ricky laughed. ‘You swear a lot, don’t you?’

‘So what? Don’t tell me, you think it’s unladylike?’

‘No, no, it’s just back home, you don’t hear too many girls dropping the f-bomb.’

‘You should visit Scotland sometime. We use “fuck” as punctuation. Now stop avoiding the subject and tell me why you’re shacked up in Bangkok with two arseholes before I lose interest and go back to my book.’

Outside a car alarm screeched and they heard someone loudly haranguing a tourist who stood on the roof of his car, refusing to get down. ‘No wonder people hate us,’ muttered Ricky. He turned back to Ana. ‘So anyway, umm, yeah this was supposed to be a couple’s holiday. Three weeks away with my girlfriend and her two buddies. Then a month ago she tells me she doesn’t love me anymore and dumps me. So somehow I ended up going on this holiday with her two friends, who, by the way, I really can’t stand. And that’s it, I guess.’

Ana nodded. ‘That your idea of a long story?’

Ricky grinned. ‘Jeez, I just can’t win, huh?’

‘I’m kidding on,’ she said. ‘Listen, I’m in the same boat. No break up for me though, I’ve been single for awhile, so I guess that’s why I’m on holiday with my sister and her fuck-monkey. The eternal third-wheel.’ She hoped Ricky believed her. He didn’t need to know the truth.

‘Wow. We’re a real pair of losers.’

Ana laughed and raised her glass. ‘Another toast? To the two biggest losers in Thailand.’

‘To the biggest losers.’

They bumped glasses and downed their drinks, the booze going to their heads but neither minding.

‘You know,’ said Ricky, ‘You’re pretty when you smile.’

He sat back, pleased with the compliment.

‘Oh don’t you fucking start,’ she said. His smug grin vanished and she burst out laughing. ‘And you were doing so well too.’

With a final gasp, Paul Cook screwed up his face and ejaculated, his body collapsing onto Rachel, limp and spent. His clammy, hairy chest chafed her breasts and she wanted him off, but he lay there panting, his breath hot and sticky against her neck.

‘Paul?’ she said. ‘I need a shower. Ana will be waiting for us.’

‘Don’t kill my buzz, babe. Not yet,’ he replied. ‘Don’t talk about your sister while I’m still inside you.’

Rachel bristled at his choice of words. ‘Well, there’s another way to solve that problem.’

‘Just a moment longer babe. It feels so good.’

Rachel sighed. ‘Paul, kindly extricate yourself from my vagina.’

‘Fuck,’ he said, pulling out too fast. Rachel winced. ‘You know I hate when you get all clinical on me. ’

‘It’s what it’s called, Paul. My Va-gi-na,’ said Rachel, as if she were teaching phonetic English. Paul sat up, sweat glistening on his back. She pulled the thin blanket over herself, listening for the snap of the condom coming off, only relaxing once she heard it.

‘You can be such a bitch sometimes,’ he said, getting up and padding his way towards the shower.

‘Hey, I’m first in there,’ called Rachel.

Paul ignored her and stepped into the glass cubicle.

‘Arsehole,’ snarled Rachel, checking her iPhone. Quarter to nine. Ana had probably been waiting for at least an hour.

‘Can’t she get her own room?’ called Paul from the shower, the water dribbling pathetically down his body.

‘What?’ Rachel found her deodorant and sprayed it around the room to hide the musky odour of sex. She considered opening the window, but that would mess up the air-conditioning.

‘Your sister. At the next hostel, y’know, to give us some privacy?’

‘Paul, we suggested that but you wanted to save money.’

‘Yeah, well I didn’t think she’d be hanging around so much.’

‘You’re a real dick, you know that?’

‘You love it, babe.’ He peeked out the shower. ‘Wanna join me?’

‘I’ll wait til you’re done, thanks,’ she said, the patented Logan sarcasm lost on the post-coital Paul. She thought of her sister, alone in Bangkok. It had been Ana who suggested she go for a walk, either to give Rachel and Paul some alone-time or because she was sick of Paul and his attitude. Though she had never said as much, it was obvious that Ana thought Paul was a jerk who wasn’t good enough for her. Sometimes Rachel thought her sister might be right .

Tonight, she had lain beneath Paul, weathering his thrusts and licks and pillow talk, and thought about the past, throwing in the occasional moan and whimper for good measure.

‘That’s right, yeah, you love it you whore,’ he would say.

‘Yes, that’s it, you’re so good,’ she would coo back while thinking about what to have for dinner. It wasn’t that he was bad in bed, just that sometimes she needed a break from Paul’s insatiable sexual appetite.

The air-con cooled the film of sweat that coated her naked body and she wrapped the blanket tighter around her. In the shower, Paul sang ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,’ changing the lyrics to ‘Don’t Let Your Son Go Down on Me’ .

Rachel sighed, something she found herself doing with increasing regularity these days. She shivered under the blanket and waited for him to finish.

In a way, that was the story of her life.

By the time Rachel and Paul made it down the stairs it was dark, and Ana and Ricky were properly smashed. They were exchanging numbers when Rachel spotted them, Ana squinting at the phone like Popeye and pressing one key at a time. The football had finished and the TV now displayed the Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man , the sound muted while a DJ in the corner pretended to mix records while actually skipping between two knock-off iPods. The bar had filled up, drawing the usual crowd of backpackers and prostitutes.

Ana was laughing and Rachel couldn’t suppress a grin. It had been a long time since she had seen her sister this happy. Or happy at all.

The four of them drank long into the night, and for once it was Rachel who suggested they wrap up and go to bed. Before they did though, she presented Ana with the idea of attending the Kho Phangan Full Moon Party, a monthly night of outrageous revelry that took place on the beach of a small island. Rachel almost fell out of her chair when Ana agreed to go along, provided Ricky and his friends came too, of course. They downed the last of their drinks and said their goodbyes.

‘See you at the party,’ slurred Ricky as he and Ana parted. ‘Bring your bikini.’

‘Only if you bring yours,’ said Ana, shouting the words into his ear over the music. He leaned in to kiss her and missed and somehow kissed the bridge of her nose and then he was gone, weaving his way through the crowded streets as Rachel helped Ana up the stairs to their room.

By the time they got into bed it was 4am and the sun was threatening to rise before their heads even hit the pillow. Rachel sat under the covers in her tee shirt, clamping her thighs shut to fend off Paul’s drunkenly amorous advances. She looked over at her sleeping sister and her heart filled with love for her.

Everything’s going to be okay , she thought. It’s been a rough year, but we’ve gotten through the worst of it and everything is going to be fine now.