Tales From A Broad (27 page)

‘Good. They can have that with me in the operating room. We are equipped with monitors so they will be able to watch you as you take your journey. But they cannot join you. So, what'll you have?' She pulls out a pen from behind her ear and a pad from her hip pocket.

‘Frank, that doesn't seem right, maybe we should go.'

‘Go now? After coming all this way? The kids will be
fine
with Dorian and Desdemona. Won't you?'

‘Yeah, Dad, I want to watch. Don't you, Huxley?' Sadie says.

‘Daddy knows you do, Pumpkin.'

Frank orders a Bloody Mary and I order a wine. We get the kids a whole bunch of things that hopefully will keep them occupied while we ‘journey'. Desdemona sashays away.

‘Another boy, Mom,' Sadie whispers.

‘Huh?'

‘Desdemona is a boy. I know it.'

‘No way,' I say.

‘Yes way.' She closes the argument.

Desdemona returns with our drinks. I look at her more closely and see the carefully layered pancake make-up, the scarf not quite obliterating the Adam's apple. She motions for us to follow her. She leads us to brain central, a small room with a few sofas and pillows and a dozen TV screens on the wall, like you'd see in the security room of a major institution.

The kids' food is laid out on a low table in a dignified, if not overly formal fashion, with pewter curlicued cutlery and cloth napkins and ice-cold water. Desdemona says, ‘You begin outside. Dorian will show you the way.'

I hug Sadie and she stiffens. ‘Go, Mother!'

I kiss the top of Huxley's head.

‘We don't have to go if you guys are worried,' I say to the kids.

They're busy eating.

Frank pulls my arm. ‘Dorian is waiting!'

‘Mr and Mrs Rittman, you are to begin here.' He shows us a staircase. ‘Otto will take you to your first room. Tarra. Have fun.'

We walk up the stairs and our world gets dimmer and dimmer. Otto is waiting on the landing. He is dressed in an old-time jailhouse uniform. He doesn't speak, but mimes for us to follow him. He opens a door, motions ‘After you', and then slams it shut. He is not in the room with us. A small bulb is swinging overhead. There is a big bed and a young girl lying in it. The bed begins to rock violently and spin. The girl sits up, turns to us, revealing a hideous grin, black-rimmed eyes and long, tangled hair. She screams; I scream. She lurches forward and vomits. I quickly make for the door – jolted, disturbed – and find it's locked. Another door on the far end is opening, revealing a shaft of dusty light. I stride toward it. Otto is on the other side; he takes my elbow. Frank is behind me. Otto leads us a few paces and opens another door. Uncertainly, I follow Frank into another room. Otto disappears in a cloud of smoke. We're in total darkness. I hear footsteps. A desk lamp comes on, framing the silhouette of a man in a sweater. He moves toward us. ‘Mother? Mother?' He stops at a swivel chair, spins it around and shows us the skeleton. Otto, at the other side of the room, motions ‘This way, this way'. I hurry.

Down the pitch-black hall we go. I hear heavy footfalls behind us, faster and faster; chains are rattling, closer and closer, hitting metal, hitting the floor, the wall. I start to run and scream. What sort of mind would come up with all of this? This is not mechanical; this is not some cheap-thrill sideshow. This is a Broadway-production horror, and while I totally appreciate the accuracy and all the great special effects and, God, just the workmanship that went into all of this, I am freaking out because, like, what sort of person devotes all his time and resources to such a thing? A person who really might want to butcher another person? I can feel the chains coming near … A person who especially likes to prey upon the children of foreign tourists? When is a game not a game? The footsteps are upon me and I see something glimmering right in front of my face. It's a huge butcher's knife. I scream and grab for Frank – who isn't there. ‘
Frank!!!
' Otto pulls me into a small closet, where a man is typing ‘REDRUM' over and over.

‘
I want to go. I want to go
,' I cry.

Otto nods. He smiles. It's going to be all right. He's just a bloke. It's just a summer job. He takes my hand. We're moving along a hallway. He drops my hand. A screen slides open, revealing a window, through which we see the broad shoulders and head of a man. When he turns, we see he is wearing a hockey mask. ‘It's Jason, Frank. Ha ha, it's just Jason, Frank. And it's not even Friday 13th. Get it? Get it? Frank?' I make a weird laugh. At this point, Jason is warm and fuzzy, especially behind the glass. But then he takes his hockey stick and smashes it through the window. He reaches out for me. I run in terror. I have to find a way out. I look around for light from a window, anything. Instead, I crash into Otto, just as I hear the first pull on a chainsaw cord. Frank crashes into me and we find ourselves in an old-fashioned elevator. It takes us to a basement full of scientific experiments, bubbling test tubes and Frankenstein, I presume. It is indeed a detailed laboratory complete with the good doctor mixing potions and the big guy himself getting electrocuted. I remember the monitors. Why exactly do they have monitors? Maybe in case a tourist escapes?

‘Otto – Frank –' I pant, ‘really – I think it's – like – time to go. The kids and all …'

Otto points to a door with an EXIT sign. A trap?

‘Come on, Frank.'

Frank just stands there.

‘Come on, Frank, please! What are you doing? Please!'

‘I think we came in this way, don't you?' he asks Otto, pointing in a different direction.

‘Yeah, but this is the way back to your kids,' Otto answers in a real normal voice.

I crash through the doors and hug and kiss my children. Sadie is giggling madly.

‘We saw you screaming, Mommy. Daddy was laughing the whole time behind you.'

There are still no cars in the lot when we get out. I open my side. There is a horrible stench in the car – rotting, sewagy, definitely not old milk or stale crackers. The kids won't get in. We roll the windows down but it barely helps.

We get back to our hotel and Frank and I sit outside on the balcony. I tell him about how truly petrified I was. ‘I mean, all the great things we could have done today – together – the pearl diving, the rubber tapping, the waterfall, the gibbons, the kids would have loved the gibbons. All the things Thailand is known for …'

He flicks his lighter. ‘Oh well, that's not
all
it's known for.' He pulls on a big fat joint and we look out over Relax Bay.

We're all knackered the next day so we hang at the beach and the pool and wait for Jumper. I say goodbye to Mel and Bernie and the girls.

They're on their way east, to Thmptst. Frank and I decide to get a babysitter for our last night. We'll go to a restaurant the concierge recommends in Patong after doing a bit of barhopping. Bar-hopping is not wandering. It is structured. It's not about finding the perfect place, it's about hitting them all. The car smells worse and I didn't believe that possible. We check between the seats and under the car mats and find nothing.

After we've hit the Rock Hard, Alice, Moonshine Joint and Tequila, we arrive at a cabaret.

‘Hey, that seems like fun. Let's go in.'

‘But what about your five-star, five-course …'

‘Oh, come on, let's just check it out.' We walk in and sit down at a small, round cocktail table near the stage. I feel good, buzzed, happy to be with Frank and, to be honest, happy that we're going home. After four days on the other side of the looking glass, I will relish straight old Singapore. Phuket is a beautiful place, but it casts a very strange spell – surrounded by sea but living on burgers, men dressed as women, Rittmans addressed as Markses. I can't even think about what might have happened without Mel … Hux drowning, Sadie choking. Sea lice? Deadly razor burn? The psycho house … but nothing – nothing – can prepare me for what happens next.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. Our show is about to begin.'

The waitress gets our last order before the show. In a few moments, all is quiet in the room – except for a quick, loud sniff. And then a guttural hawking, followed by productive hacking, a couple of snorts and a loud hoot. The footlights come on. We see six
ladies
dressed in red sequins. They are swaying, Motown style, humming softly.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the wonderful …'

Two spotlights converge on a man who has taken his place between the ‘girls'. He is wearing a green, crushed-velvet dinner jacket. His hair is slicked to the side, he has topaz-coloured glasses and a moustache. He sings the first words to a Chinese heartbreak song. The audience begins excited applause …

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I present … The Sensational Sebastian Gok and the Go-Gos …'

‘Think lovely thoughts … Think lovely thoughts …' I start the chant. Sadie joins in: ‘Think lovely thoughts … think lovely thoughts …'

‘Singapore!' I say.

‘Transextypes,' Sadie says.

‘Dino-Park!' Huxley says.

‘The corporate, non-transferable discount we received for being the Markses!' Frank suddenly joins in.

‘My new ring!' I say.

‘The starfish!' Sadie says.

‘The starfish?' Frank and I look at each other.

‘Yeah, the one we put in the trunk of the car.'

The smell – a dead,
real
starfish.

‘Jumper!' says Huxley.

‘The Go-Gos!' I say.

‘A happy ending.' Frank and I clink our fifth or sixth glass of champagne.

Simon and Melanie are bringing their kids over to avoid Pearl's holiday mark-up. Their daughter, Natalie, is a tawny-skinned girl with dark, soft curls and wide-set almond eyes. She is Sadie's age. Charlie, pink-skinned and bald, is barely any age at all. They are supposed to come at eight, then we'll get the little ones set up with Posie before shooting out. My bed is wearing the contents of my closet. Nothing seems right for New Year's. New Year's won't even
be
New Year's without my leather pants. They make me dance, make me want to stay up late. They even tell a good joke. They speak to me with their last vestiges of animal spirit. But it's so hot here I'll never make it out alive if I wear them. And while I want to be buried in my leather pants, I do not feel ready to go yet. Ah well, the Daisy Duke shorts will have to do – they make me yodel, swig beer and kick butt. Getting dressed for New Year's, to me, is like picking out the best stuffed animal to sleep with, the right song to have sex to, the right topping on your pizza. You have to be in touch with your mood-goals.

I blow out my hair real big and am generous with my make-up. The tiny faces of Sadie and Huxley, watching everything I do, get a make-over too. Frank hates that I let Huxley wear lipstick, but he also hates that I paint Huxley's fingernails. (I never told Frank that I taught Sadie how to put cream on Huxley's penis after his bris. He would think it had something to do with Huxley's unflagging fidelity to Sadie.) Anyway, I would rather see Huxley dolled up than left out. Huxley doesn't think it's perverse to acknowledge his feminine side. I unpack from Phuket, and finally relinquish the bedroom.

‘Frank, it's all yours. They'll be here in five minutes.'

I pop in a video for the kids and wait and pouf my hair a little more. I make myself a gin and tonic. By 8.30, I am still waiting for them, and Frank. I'm looking forward to seeing Frank in what I strongly suggested he wear (suggestion being to lay it out on the bed): a black Jacquard silk shirt, black slacks and his signature cowboy boots.

Back in the days when Frank first started flirting with me, he didn't make too much of an impression until I noticed his boots. And how he'd walk in those boots. I met him at my first job in New York. He was on the cc list of every memo I had to type. My guess, from typing his name several times a day, was that he was an esteemed person of advanced years. So when my girlfriend, another secretary in the subsidiary rights department at M Publishing, introduced me to him, I was surprised by his youth and standing. We were all headed into a meeting. I was to write down everything that was said, and there was that tacit understanding that there would, of course, be no quotes attributable to myself in my notepad. That was just one reason no one laughed when I asked if the book title
Sniglets
was pig Latin for ‘little Negro'. Another reason no one laughed was because
Sniglets
was a sacred cash cow. Mostly, though, they didn't get it and they never laughed anyway. But Frank did. He even riffed on
Sniglet
and Margaret Mitchell, using two cash cows in one irreverent joke. Everyone else was dead silent, looking at the dipshit Shelley Sherstein, the head (giver) of the department. She was the one who clicked by on stiletto heels and Heather-Locklear-circa-Melrose outfits. She was the one who snapped my bra while I was typing a memo, probably just at the FSR, Esq. part, and said, ‘None of my girls will have their bra straps showing.'