Other Earths (collection)

Since my arrival in Phnom Penh, the changes (flickerings in the sky, subtle alterations in urban geography, etc.) had grown more frequent or, due to an increased sensitivity on my part, more observable. The episode with the taxi girl and the vanishing mirror was the first evidence I’d had that anyone else noticed them, though the evidence was impugned by the possible use of drugs. If the changes were observable by others, if this were other than a localized effect, and if it occurred in a place less disorderly than Phnom Penh, it would be the lead story on the news. I expected that when I reached Dong Thap the changes might be even more drastic. The prospect unnerved me, yet it held a potent allure. Like the narrator of The Tea Forest, I was being drawn to complete the journey and I wanted to complete it. The previous night’s incident had convinced me that I was undergoing a transformation like the one documented by Cradle Two in the novel. I had taken undue pleasure in the exercise of control over the young Khmer in the Heart of Darkness, and I wondered if the person for whom he had mistaken me could have been the alpha-Cradle, that secretive, powerful figure, the Platonic ideal of Cradles everywhere. The notion that I was evolving into such a ruthless and decisive figure was exhilarating. I had never possessed either quality in great measure, and the proportions of the man, the fear he inspired, were impressive. Yet I was being pulled in another direction as well, and that was why I had returned to the Undine and sat in the stern, the satellite phone in my lap, ignoring the faint, sweetish reek of sewage, gazing at the barge and at eddies in the brown water.

When I called Kim, she answered on the third ring and told me this wasn’t a good time. I asked if she had company. She was noncommittal, a sure sign that one of my colleagues, or one of hers, was lying in bed beside her. I said it was important, and she said, “Hang on.”

I pictured her slipping into a robe, soothing the ruffled sensibilities of her lover, and carrying the phone into the living room. When she spoke again, her tone was exasperated.

“You don’t call for three weeks, and now you just have to speak to me?” she said. “I got so worried I called Andy [my agent], and of course you’d called him. This is so typical of you.”

I apologized.

“Are you in trouble?” she asked. “Do you want to run off to Bali with some teenage nymph and jeopardize everything we’ve built together?”

“It’s not that.”

“Because if that’s the case, I’m sick and tired of having to coax you back. I’m ready to give you my blessing.”

“It’s not that! Okay? I want you to do me a favor. Andy was going to make copies of The Tea Forest. Did he send one to me?”

“I don’t know. You have a package from him. I put it with the rest of your mail.”

“That’s probably it. Could you take a look?”

While she checked, my eyes returned to the barge. A number of women were kneeling on the foredeck, painting signs for a protest, and others had gathered in the bow, listening to a speaker who was talking into a hand-held megaphone, doing a bit of consciousness-raising. Now and then her high-pitched voice blatted out and there was a squeal of feedback.

“It’s here,” Kim said. “Do you want me to express it?”

“I want you to read it.”

“Thomas, I don’t have the time.”

“Please. Read it …as soon as possible. I can’t talk to you about what’s happening until you’ve read it.”

There was a silence, and then she said, “Andy told me you were developing some worrisome obsessions about the book.”

“You know I’m a …”

“Just a second.”

A man said something in the background; after that I heard nothing. When Kim came back on, she said with anger in her voice, “You have my undivided attention.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not important. You were saying?”

I’d lost the thread, and it took me a second to pick it up.

“I’m not the kind of guy who’s likely to lose it,” I said. “You know that.”

“Are you doing a lot of drugs?”

“Did Andy say he thought I was?”

“Not in so many words, but …yeah.”

“Well, I’m not. There are some strange correspondences, very strange, between the book and what’s going on here. I need another point of view.”

“All right. I’ll read it Wednesday night. I can’t until then. Tomorrow’s a nightmare.”

A drop of sweat trickled into my eye, and I wiped it away. Not even eight-thirty, and the temperature was already into the nineties. I felt a sudden upsurge of emotion and realized how much I missed Kim. Though I had tried to throw my heart in a new direction, though Lucy was an interesting woman and, without doubt, more sexually adventurous than Kim, I was ready for some home cooking, and I asked Kim if she was planning to meet me in Saigon.

“If you still want me to,” she said.