Rush (11 page)

He takes me to a motel that isn't anything more than a red doorway in a wall in the street. There's a radio nearby playing The Rolling Stones, ‘Paint It Black'.

Inside, there's a sallow old man at the desk, and the boy does the talking. The two nod and give hand gestures, the boy pointing to me, jabbering. The man nods and gives me a smile, like he's involved in my conspiracy. He sees this sort of thing frequently and hands me a key, and I give him some money.

The room is along a hallway where the wooden boards betray your every step with an echo. The room itself is small, with a table and a set of drawers and a dirty bed, a tall cupboard. There's a lamp on the table, and out of curiosity I check the drawers to see if Gideon has been here, check the cupboard. The boy starts tugging at my belt, eager to get started. I'm bewildered for a moment.

The boy reels from the slap I land on his head. He doesn't understand.

I shake my head. ‘No. No.'

He doesn't understand.

I point to my belt, my pants. ‘No. Not this.'

He frowns and then thinks he understands, and begins to take his own pants off.

‘No,' I say, shaking my head, waving my hands. ‘No. No. No.'

He pauses with one leg outside of his pants and stares at me. He mouths a blowjob to me and grins, nodding. He says, ‘Yes? Yes?'

I curse and pull the gun from my jacket.

The boy sees it and lets out a cry and makes to run, tripping over his own pants as they fall to the floor. I grab him by the shoulder and throw him to the bed, and he calls out something in Khmer that I can't decipher. I've got the gun in his face and his eyes are wide, and I'm
telling him to shut up, just shut up. ‘You don't understand what I'm asking,' I tell him.

‘Let me show you,' I say. Popping the chamber, I show him that there is only one bullet in the gun. I say, ‘See? See?' Then I spin the chamber and snap the weapon shut with a flick of my hand, just like a cowboy. The boy is frowning the whole time, his eyes continually flicking to the door as if he thinks he might make the distance before I shoot him.

He doesn't understand that I don't want to shoot him.

With the gun pressed against my own temple, I say, ‘I'm not going to shoot you. See?'

The boy is wide-eyed with fear and confusion and when I go to pull the trigger he struggles against me. There isn't a bullet in this chamber, and the boy looks up at me as if I'm crazy. He just doesn't understand.

I hand the gun to him and say, ‘Your turn. You understand? Your turn.' Then I mimic the action of putting the gun against your own head and pulling the trigger.

Even if he understands what I'm asking of him, he does the wrong thing.

Close-up on the boy as he points the gun at me; get the pistol in the frame as he lifts it level with his eyes, then focus on the barrel of the gun.

‘Bastard,' I mutter. I'm waiting to see if he pulls the trigger. His hands are shaking and his aim is very unsteady, and I'm not really looking forward to a bullet tearing my stomach open.

The boy is saying something in Khmer, speaking so fast it just sounds like noise. At the same time, I'm telling him to put the gun to his head, I'm saying, ‘Shoot yourself, not me. You're breaking the rules. You, not me.'

He pulls the trigger but I don't flinch. There isn't a gunshot and he doesn't get enough time for a second try because I've hit him and I wrestle the gun from his hands, then knock him to the ground. All the while, I'm not thinking that he's just a boy. I'm thinking now that he's a nuisance.

So I shoot him.

It takes three pulls on the trigger before the hammer hits home on the bullet, and I catch him in the neck. He's dead inside of thirty seconds, sprawled out on the wooden floor, choking on his own blood, twitching and trying to stem the flow from the wound with a hand that eventually loses strength.

I'm standing over the corpse, shaking my head and saying, ‘Stupid.'

‘You're stupid,' I say. I shout. ‘You're so fucking
stupid
.' I can barely hear my voice over the rush of blood from my chest to my ears, pounding like tribal drums.

Outside, in the hallway, the manager is approaching the door. He's heard the gunshot and he's called the police. He's approaching the room warily when I come bursting through the door, stumbling in the hall. Behind me he can see the pantless dead boy and a lot of blood. I thrust some crumpled notes in his direction and say, ‘Here. This should cover the cleaning bill.'

I'm gone before the police arrive, and I am alive again.

 

What I know is that I'm at a bus stop on Street 63, minding my own business, smoking a cigarette. There's a gun in the waistband of my pants, hidden beneath my jacket. I don't remember how I got here, it's like there's a
blank space in my mind. I'm not even sure which bus I'm waiting for, or where I want to go.

There's this United Nations worker waiting for the same bus, and I guess because I'm a Westerner he starts talking to me after a while. He's telling me that to legally own a firearm in Cambodia you need a permit. He's not saying this because he knows I'm armed, he's just talking about it because he's an American and they're always talking about gun control, no matter where they are.

He's telling me that Cambodian gun control dates back to 27 January 1920. Lobbyists for freedom to bear arms argue that if this law had not been in place, the tens of thousands of people would not have been killed during the Khmer uprising because they would have been able to fight back. ‘But,' he says, ‘that's just what the firearms lobbyists say about it.'

I nod and smile and tell him, gee gosh that
is
interesting.

He's telling me about landmines and guerillas, and he's asking, ‘Do I know you from somewhere?' He's looking at me like he knows my face but he can't quite remember how.

I'm not going to tell him that I've been on the television, that I've been in the newspapers and in magazines. I tell him, ‘I don't think so.'

He says, ‘I could swear I've seen your face somewhere before.'

I shrug, and after a while I tell him that I can't be bothered waiting for the bus, I think I'll just walk instead. I'm hurrying back to the hotel, telling myself I have to get out of this country.

The hotel is about sixty years old, one of those grandiose old buildings with high arches and wide hallways, the outer façade crumbling under the weight of years. I'm led to believe it was once a diplomatic building of some sort, during French occupation. My room has a small balcony that overlooks the crowded street below. If I were to leap from up here, the third floor, I imagine the impact of the fall would be fatal. Several years ago I saw a crime scene photograph, in colour, of a jumper. His bowels had been forced out of his bottom half and spilled all over the street. His joints were skewed: all angles and no direction.

Standing on the balcony, I watch the world go by, cigarette in one hand and nerve-calming drink in the other. Each breath I draw is slow and I close my eyes and listen to the world. I've been standing here readying myself for departure. It isn't that far to street level, really. I'm almost ready to do it when a man knocks on the door of my hotel room.

I know it's a man because I've heard the footfalls in the hall, three sets of heavy feet in fact, and the harsh rapping of knuckles against hard wood doesn't sound feminine either. A woman would go, tap-tap-tap. A man gives two, maybe three, heavy thumps.

The man's name is Michaud. He's a representative of the State Something Department Something Consul Something. He carries himself like a politician. He's a gangly man with curly grey hair and spectacles. He shakes my hand, of course. He uses a skin cream on his hands, some kind of moisturiser; they are pleasant to the touch.

There are two goons flanking him; one on either side. Big men without names, wearing dark suits and sporting
buzz cuts. They're Secret Service rejects stationed in Cambodia.

Michaud says, ‘Mr Hayes, we have something of a discrepancy.'

I raise my eyebrow in mock shock. ‘Oh? Oh my. Do go on.'

Michaud has furrowed his brow. His spine must be like a ruler because he's standing so straight. I notice now that he's carrying a folder of papers and a big yellow envelope. He consults them briefly, and then I'm thinking that he doesn't seem as much like a politician anymore. Now he's a cop on a routine interrogation.

‘Well,' Michaud says, ‘we've come across some differences in the statements given by both you and Miss McKinley.'

‘Miss McKinley?' I ask.

Michaud says, ‘Yes. She's, ah, changed her story.'

I say, ‘No, no. Who is Miss McKinley? That's what I'm asking.'

He looks me in the eye as he plays his trump card, and I almost laugh. ‘Miss McKinley. She's the woman you kidnapped and dragged over the border.' Michaud is very pleased with himself as he says this, and I can tell he's been thinking of how to throw this at me.

I act unfazed. ‘You're talking about Phoebe?'

Michaud nods. ‘Yes, Phoebe McKinley. You didn't know her surname, did you? She's telling us now that you dragged her over the border at gunpoint. That you drugged her and coerced her into coming with you.'

‘I knew she'd crack,' I mutter to myself.

Michaud says, ‘Mr Hayes, you're under arrest, under suspicion of fraud.'

‘No I'm not,' I retort, like a child.

Michaud's goons are making like they're ready to grab me and pin me down, and Michaud loses that smugness from his face for just a moment and says, ‘What? What did you say?'

‘I said, am I allowed to make a phone call before you take me away?'

‘You can do that once you're in custody, sir. It's been explained to me that I'm to read you your rights, and these gentlemen,' motioning toward the two goons, ‘will take you to a detainment cell at the embassy. We'll be negotiating with the Cambodian government. I'll be your liaison, and we'll be attempting to deport you. There will be no trial under Cambodian law, as yet.'

I smile and say, ‘Well, that's a relief. Diplomatic immunity.'

I explain to Michaud that I'll come along quietly, just allow me to gather my things.

I'm pretending to get organised and I'm standing near the phone, so I pick up the receiver and dial 2B swiftly. Michaud says, ‘I didn't allow you the privilege of a phone call.' He motions for one of the goons to grab me.

Phoebe answers the phone. I say, ‘Bitch. You said you loved me.' Like that means anything to me.

She answers and her voice is calm, her brain unencumbered by the cocaine now. ‘I was wrong. I just thought that I did.'

The goon is about to place a hand on my shoulder when I step away and say, ‘Woah. Okay, settle down. I'm coming now.'

But I'm not coming. Instead I'm on the balcony and then I'm over the edge.

What Michaud hadn't noticed is the surprising lack of sheets on my bed. He doesn't know that I ordered new sheets this morning and nobody took away the old ones. I've taken six bedsheets and tied them all together, making damn sure my knots hold. I've tied one end of my bedsheet-rope to the balcony railing, ready for my escape.

What I do when I rush to the balcony is grab the loose end of the bedsheet-rope and then I vault over the railing. I struggle to maintain my grip. I've leapt, knowing that the jolt at the end might tear my arm out of its socket.

This is a whole different rush compared to watching a man die or killing a boy. This is something else, hurling yourself through the air and then dropping like a stone. It's like leaping from the factory window to avoid Interpol, only this time it's much higher; the danger factor is slapping you in the face. The pavement flies up to you and people gasp below as they see you coming down fast.

I don't get to see the startled look on Michaud's face.

I feel myself wrenched to a sudden stop and my grip on the sheets almost fails. The pain in my arm when the rope reaches its length, eighteen feet above the ground, barely registers over the beating of my heart. It's in my ears like thunder now.

I'm hanging suspended over the street below, swaying back and forth.

Then I hear the sheets begin to tear.

It's eighteen feet, and then it's seventeen feet, and then it's sixteen feet, and then it's the street. There's a pain that flares up through my sides as I land on my ankle and fall to my knee. I'm cradling my aching wrist, which has gone almost numb, and it feels as if I've torn a hole in my armpit.

I look up to see Michaud staring over the balcony in disbelief.

I'm hesitant to stand but there isn't a lot of time, so I stumble to my feet. My stomach is probably still somewhere up there on the balcony. My head is pounding. Each step brings me a new sensation of pain.

The people around me have stopped to stare and I walk through them. I'm like Moses parting the sea as they move and stand to the side like statues lining my path. It doesn't help me to seem any less conspicuous with the bystanders behaving this way.