POM-POM

I watch a cockroach crawling up the cracked wall, its feelers wobbling in their search for whatever it’s searching for. It’s a big bugger, nearly three inches long, but most of them are big buggers. I’m getting used to them, in toilets, kitchens, sometimes beds.

I can smell the mattress under me; old sweat from a thousand bodies and something musky. I can also smell Eka’s sweet perfume. She lies with her back to me, curved vertebrae showing through brown skin dappled by early morning light, but her hand is in my hand. I think I should feel guilty, but nothing has happened between us and I have no one left to feel guilty towards. But it doesn’t change the fact that I think I should feel guilty, even though I don’t. I try to pull my hand free, but hers squeezes tighter over mine.

‘Stay, Mr Crazy. You must tell me how you feel.’ She rolls over to face me and now holds my hand with both of hers. Her breast feels heavy against my arm ‘You feel OK?’

She is more beautiful in daylight. Her eyes look almost too large for her face and are such a dark brown that the pupils nearly blend into the irises. Although her thick black eyebrows are raised in question, there is a slight mocking to her expression.

‘I am OK. I think.’ I take a second to check. I do feel OK. The spine-cracking has left me feeling loose. The cuddling and holding has left me feeling calm. The weighty breast on my arm is making me feel horny.

The conversations with Laura seem misty and distant now. In today’s light, sneaking in low through a crack in the faded, stained curtains, I know I didn’t talk to her. How could I? Old Me must be smiling at yesterday’s emotional joyride.

Well that’s it. Now shut up and stay quiet and keep all that emotional claptrap rubbish with you. No more tears. No more supernatural chats. She looked the wrong way; she’s dead. Now I’m getting on.

‘Look better.’ She is up on her elbows looking down at me, holding my hand beneath her chin. Her breast is now resting against my side. ‘Your face not so…’ and she scrunches her face up.

‘I feel better. A new day today.’ Corny but true.

‘Now want pom-pom. You? Pom-pom?’

I raise my head and kiss her. Her lips are soft and moist and her tongue pushes into my mouth. My arms go around her back and she climbs on top of me and her breasts squash against my chest. And New Me slips into her and Old Me whisper-shouts ‘Laura’ somewhere, but New Me drowns him out by pushing his face into Eka’s hair and the exotic smells within and his hands feel the silkiness of her skin and his eyes take in the mouth-watering colour of her, and Old Me is buried beneath the lust and the moment and the desperation of moving on.

We both lie there afterwards, smoking the clichéd après-sex cigarettes; a pretty damn good post-coital habit if ever there was one. I watch the smoke rise towards a crack in the ceiling. A sliver of sunlight shines through the smoke, creating a cheap laser-show effect.

I suppose I should get to work. I sigh a long breath of smoke out. ‘I should get to work,’ I say.

‘Yes. Be happy man at work. Think of Eka, not dead girl.’

I think dead girl plagued my dreams in the night, but I’m not sure. She certainly hasn’t plagued my mind since. For a fleeting moment I want to apologise to Laura for treating her so badly on her birthday, but I knock the idea away with a backward head-butt onto the pillow.

‘Ada apa?’ asks Eka, leaning across me and stubbing her cigarette out in the ashtray on the side table. She lies back down.

‘Nothing. Tidak apa-apa.’ I roll on my side so we are facing each other. ‘Terima kasih.’

‘Why thank me? I like.’

‘For last night. For helping. Maybe I’d be lying drunk in a gutter somewhere now if you hadn’t been there.’

‘I do not understand all you say.’ She rubs her nose against mine. ‘But I happy I help.’

‘I must go.’

I give her a kiss and go the bathroom. The floor feels gritty beneath my feet so I go up on my toes. The bathroom is a traditional Indonesian mandi: a sort of stand-up bath next to a squat toilet. I go higher on my toes, use the squat from a standing position, then get in the mandi and throw scoops of cold water from a big bucket over my body. Two cockroaches the length of my index finger watch from the corner, feelers wobbling. I come out and dry myself with a towel the size of a flannel and the thickness of a hanky and I feel dirtier than before I washed.

Eka is already dressed. I’m disappointed.

‘We take taxi? Your work and me my house?’ she asks.

‘Yes. OK.’ I pull on my trousers and the rest of my clothes. I wonder if she’s going to ask for money.

‘You want see me again?’ she asks. She climbs behind me on the bed and throws her arms around me while I try to pull on my sandals.

‘Yes.’ I do. I want her company. I want to look at her more. I want sex. I want more cheap dirty hotels and more spine walking. I want the life of a man who doesn’t care what others think. I want to go off the British Standard Kitemark rails that I’ve had under me for most of my life. I want to freewheel and not worry about things getting in my way. She’ll help in sending New Me in any direction he wants to take and she’ll help stamp on any unwanted visitors who may turn up.

‘Bagus. You find me on Friday night in Iguana Club.’

‘I will.’ I turn to kiss her but she is up and off the bed and opening the door.

‘You work now. Come, Crazy.’

I’m tired.

All these moments, all these times. I’m tired. I’ll sleep in this warm place. The beat of his heart is strong and calm. Sleep. For a while. Curl up with Laura down here. Hold all of her in my arms and in my mind. Sleep with her. Comfort her for the pain she feels while he finds comfort in another. While he tries to push her aside, ignore her and attempt to vainly move on from love. Console her while she has to watch him lose himself in the flesh of another. She has to bear the jealousy and the inevitability of his life without her. We will sleep together, with our moments. Close our eyes. Dreamless sleep. Long, peaceful, dark sleep.