Rush (4 page)

‘A few days,' I answered.

She opened the fridge and put a bottle of water to her lips, swallowing twice.

‘I love it here,' she told me, sighing. ‘I came here on vacation six years ago and never left.'

I asked, ‘How often do you make it back home?'

She raised an eyebrow, and I noticed how different her face seemed without glasses. ‘The States? Never. First time last week. Quick trip. I had some things to pick up
over there.' She seemed distracted and changed the subject. ‘Are you worried about your girlfriend? You haven't tried to call her or anything.'

‘I've got no number to call. And she wasn't my girlfriend, just a travelling companion.' Just somebody I thought I cared about. It's easy to forget that caring about people only leads to trouble in the end, I told myself.

She gave a shrug and said, ‘Whatever,' pushed the fridge closed and went back to the bathroom, clutching her towel to her chest. ‘Got to dry my hair,' she said with a wry smile. The door slammed, then there was silence.

After a minute or so, Hayes emerged from the room, also wrapped in a towel. His hair was dripping, plastered to his forehead and the back of his neck. He held a syringe in one hand, and I frowned when I saw it. I thought ruefully that I might have fallen in with a pair of junkies.

‘What's this?' I asked, nodding to the syringe.

‘I am HIV-positive,' Hayes explained, twirling the needle between his fingers. ‘My body produces dangerously low levels of testosterone. To counter this, I inject myself with an artificial testosterone gel.' He waved the needle, which was filled with a golden substance.

I found myself watching, dumbstruck, as Hayes suspended the needle over his bare thigh. He gave a sudden jab and the needle was in, pressed through the skin, and he injected the gel.

‘Per decilitre of blood plasma, a man can have anywhere between three and eight hundred nanograms of testosterone,' Hayes said with a grimace. He plucked the needle from his thigh and slapped the bare flesh. ‘A woman has only twenty to sixty nanograms. That's what makes us
different. Who we are, and everything we are, lies in that little syringe. But were I to overuse this drug, I would suffer excessive liver damage and my testicles would shrink. I've seen it happen to other men, because it's an addictive drug. I inject it once every two weeks. No more.'

I said nothing.

‘But unlike many drugs,' Hayes continued, ‘my body can produce this drug naturally, under the right conditions. Your body will raise its testosterone levels depending on external circumstance, like it does with adrenaline.'

‘So you're chasing a high,' I said.

‘The greatest high,' Hayes said, grinning.

‘What do you do? Run? Box? Drive fast cars?'

‘Those activities will raise adrenaline and testosterone levels, certainly. But I have a whole new way of doing it, and I don't have to expend any of my precious physical energy at the same time.' Hayes bent the plastic syringe and it snapped sharply.

‘So what do you do?'

‘I look a man in the face as he dies,' Hayes explained. ‘It's the greatest natural high, when you know that it could have been you.'

 

During the night I feigned sleep on the couch and listened to Hayes and Phoebe having mad sex in the room next to me. Somewhere else in the city there was a bed that I had already paid for and was not sleeping in. The clock in the kitchen told me it was nearing four in the morning.

I thought to myself that I didn't really know these people. During the evening we sat around the living room
drinking wine and telling stories, and I watched uncomfortably as Hayes groped at Phoebe in front of me. Hayes suggested going out and Phoebe said she was lagged from the plane trip and they could do that tomorrow. Let's just relax tonight.

In the morning Hayes rose early and showered and dressed for work. He wore a crisp suit without a tie. I noted that he was wearing running shoes. He smoked a cigarette and made coffee for the both of us. Phoebe did not emerge from the bedroom.

Hayes had mixed bourbon into the coffee.

‘Today I have to meet with some corrupt city officials,' Hayes said. ‘Big business, local government. The usual sort of scandal. Sooner or later you realise that every city in the world is Fat City. You should come.'

‘I should come?'

‘Sure. The interview will take about an hour. Then we can see some of the seedier parts of the city.' He said this last part like it was a secret.

‘I think I've already seen those,' I told him. On my lips the coffee was sweet.

‘You haven't,' Hayes said. He winked and turned away.

The city was alive at eight in the morning. I had not showered or changed my clothes. There was a tape playing ‘Exile on Main Street' in the deck as the car idled slowly in traffic. Hayes kept a cigarette behind his left ear like an architect might wear a pencil. He had removed his jacket.

He sat behind the wheel and seemed largely oblivious to the other cars packed tightly around us. He was busily singing with Jagger, out of tune. After a while he gave up.

‘Where we are right now,' Hayes began, ‘was once a part of the kingdom of Funan. This was sometime during
the second century, of course. Funan no longer exists.'

‘Thank you for the history lesson,' I said. I was tired and hungover and in no mood to play Encyclopedia Britannica.

Hayes continued: ‘The French captured Saigon in 1859. Long story short, Ho Chi Minh led communist guerillas in a resistance against French domination. He declared Vietnamese independence after World War Two. Eventually Vietnam was divided into two zones, one for the Communist north and the other for the anti-Communist south, which was supported by the US. There was a great deal of political opposition which eventually led to what you and I affectionately know as the Vietnam War.

‘I tried to write a novel about the war,' Hayes said with a laugh. ‘That was during my first few years out here. I gave up after the first chapter.'

‘Crying shame,' I sympathised.

‘Shit is shit,' Hayes said. ‘No point denying your own doesn't stink.'

I shrugged.

‘You're not much of a morning person,' Hayes observed.

I wanted to amend his statement.
I am not much of a person.

While Hayes met with the corrupt city officials in a tall glass building with reflective windows, I sat in the car with my feet on the dash and the newspaper open in my lap. All that I could taste were fumes from passing cars. I wanted to gag.

After about ten minutes a policeman came up to the car and leaned in through the open driver's side window. He began to jabber away at me and I simply stared. I had no
idea what he was trying to tell me. He was all arm signals and violent neck movements. Some of his spittle landed on my upper arm, and I thought that he was pretty good to make the distance over the driver's seat.

‘I don't understand a word you're saying to me,' I told him.

He continued to talk in his own language and I smiled and nodded. I was getting the vague impression of what he was trying to tell me: You can't park here.

‘Nothing you're saying is making any fucking sense to me,' I said.

I ignored the man for long enough and he wandered away.

When Hayes returned, the cigarette was still sitting behind his ear. I had been drifting into unconsciousness when he opened the door and dumped himself behind the wheel.

‘You've got to love politics,' he declared.

I yawned. He seemed on edge.

He said, ‘During my first year in London I stumbled across a policeman getting a blowjob from a homeless girl in a dirty back alley. Eight years old, this girl. He paid her ten pounds.'

He said, ‘When a crack addict has a seizure in the bathroom and hits their head on the sink, it can take weeks before anybody finds the body. You've never smelled anything like it before. My opinion, crime scene reporting is the worst.'

He said, ‘The Rex Hotel was once the quarters for American officers, but that was during the war.'

‘Thank you for that, Mr Tour Guide,' I muttered. I lit a cigarette.

At the Rex Hotel there were several Vietnamese men in expensive suits lunching with another group of Asian men who didn't seem to be Vietnamese. Hayes told me that they are
thuong gia
, which basically means that they are trading people. A lot of big business happens at the Rex, Hayes said. Certainly not all of it above board, either.

There was a beautiful woman playing something classical on a cello in one of the lounges.

‘We can't smoke at this bar,' Hayes said.

I grumbled. It had taken a while to convince the doorman that I was dressed appropriately for entry.

We sat at the bar drinking rum with ice and Hayes nodded toward a group of men seated at a table in the far corner. He said, ‘The fat one-eyed man is a big player in organised crime in this city. He runs a bareknuckle boxing racket in District Six. It used to be martial arts deathmatches but that's changed over the last five years or so. It takes place in registered dance halls, believe it or not. Apparently there's a lot of money to be made in that sort of thing. He imports furs and exotic jewels, too. Owns several gas stations. He was acquitted on several charges relating to murder and manslaughter about two years ago. The police haven't touched him since.'

After our drinks Hayes said it was time to go.

‘What? Now?'

‘I don't like to sit for long in one place. I get like this for the first couple of days. Restless. I can't sit here. We have to go.'

‘Why did you bring me here?' I asked him on the way out. We had paused to light cigarettes in the lobby where they were playing cheesy instrumental music over the speakers.

‘I wanted to show you that man,' Hayes said.

I didn't question him. I stared at him over the length of my cigarette and I nodded like I understood. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I get it, baby.

Hayes laughed because he knew I didn't understand.

 

‘If you're HIV-positive, does that mean that Phoebe—' I started to ask.

‘No,' Hayes answered. ‘She's not. Two people can be involved in a sexual relationship with one partner HIV-positive, and it is possible that the other won't contract. We practise safe sex, of course.'

I nodded. We were standing in the living room of Hayes' apartment. I had been back to the hotel for a change of clothes, and that dirty bed had seemed the most inviting place on the planet. Sleep is a dream for insomniacs.

‘Cambodian prostitutes,' Hayes said, answering my next question before I could even ask it. ‘More than half of Cambodia's prostitutes are infected. One hundred and twenty thousand people in Cambodia have AIDS, the greatest number of any one country in Asia. I was drunk, I wasn't thinking.'

Phoebe emerged in a short black dress. Her hair was up.

‘Are you talking about me?' she asked.

‘I don't want you wearing that dress,' Hayes said immediately.

‘Why not?' she asked, smoothing it down. ‘I just bought this two weeks ago.'

‘You'll get us into trouble if you wear that,' Hayes told her. ‘Go and change.'

‘No way,' she said. ‘I'm going out in this dress.'

‘Okay,' Hayes said, seeming to give in. He turned to me. ‘You ready to go?'

I shrugged.

Phoebe said she just had to get her wallet.

Hayes gave a sigh and said, ‘Sometimes it's better just not to argue with them.'

Through the bathroom door I saw her snorting lines of cocaine from a tray like Miranda's ghost.

Hayes said, ‘Phoebe there thinks of herself as something of a feminist. In her mind, a dress that short and revealing is empowering. Shows she's not ashamed of her body, knows how to use it. She doesn't consider the idea that she looks like some kind of slut, or anything.'

She came back to the door, said, ‘Are you talking about me?'

Hayes said, ‘Get your wallet.'

We went to a nightclub on Mac Thi Buoi Street. The bright lights and loud music were hell on my aching head, but I tried to ignore it, sitting at the bar smoking cigarettes and ordering two drinks at a time. I watched Hayes and Phoebe on the dancefloor among a sea of young backpackers and manic Asians. A young British girl asked me to join her on the dancefloor. She frowned in disapproval when I declined.

Hayes came to the bar for drinks, laughing and slapping people on the back. ‘After a testosterone injection you're riding the high for about three or four days. Your mind races, your attention span is shot. I act impulsively. I'm filled with more energy than I know what to do with.' I noticed that Hayes was tapping his foot incessantly. He gave me a wink.

He took his drinks and slunk away, back to Phoebe. I watched them with envy, bodies entwined and moving rhythmically together. The sharp pulsing pains in my head seemed to strike with each beat of the music. I felt very short of breath, like the world was closing in around me.

I crunched ice from an empty glass between my teeth.

I wanted to leave, to walk down to the hotel and just collapse.

I watched Hayes and Phoebe dancing.

By midnight I had lost count of how many drinks I'd had. Hayes was at the bar again, ordering. He shoved a glass in my general direction with a grin, nodding and saying, ‘Drink up.'

‘Looks like somebody's trying to muscle in on your girl,' I told Hayes, pointing to the dancers. There was a tall man with long sideburns dancing provocatively with Phoebe. She seemed to be enjoying the flirtation immensely. Hayes frowned. He said, ‘Fuck it. I told her that dress would get us into trouble. Hold this.' He handed me his glass and disappeared.

I saw Hayes stepping between Phoebe and the tall man, grabbing her by the arm and moving her away. She looked shocked at his rudeness. The tall man reached out to stop Hayes, who turned on him. They might have been shouting, but I couldn't make it out over the music.
Beat, beat, beat
. Their movements caught between the flashes of bright light.
Red. Green. Orange. Purple.