Bob was my roommate from East St. Louis. That was how he introduced himself. “Hi, I'm Bob, your roommate from East St. Louis.” Bob had been a teacher for about four weeks, then went traveling around India for a month. Now he was living with me.
Bob showed up one evening a little after midnight. His backpack was full of rugs. Indian rugs. He was anxious to show me the rugs and tell me how much he had paid for each. I nodded politely and said things like “Really?” and “In the States, you'd pay a lot more,” because what the hell else does one say? Bob walked around in the middle of the night laying his rugs in different locations around the house. He didn't want to lay one in the kitchen because someone might spill food on it. He didn't want to lay one in the bathroom because it might get wet. I went to my room and read “The Lives Of The Artists,” but I couldn't get through a single life without Bob calling from downstairs.
“Say, John, could you come down here for a minute?”
So I'd put down the Lives and walk downstairs and a cockroach would run across my foot and there was Bob, now shirtless, hands on hips, staring at one of his new rugs. This one lay in front of the sofa.
“What do you think?”
“Looks good,” I said, and started back upstairs.
“You can give me your honest opinion.”
I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to take an interest in his rug. I wanted to say, “It's a rug! Wear it around your ass for all I care!” But I didn't. I thought of my mother and how happy she was to bring home pieces of junk at discount prices. Bath mats, tape dispensers, pieces of plastic that went around a light switch, wind chimes, coasters, vibrating back scratchers, statues of boys and girls with big, scary eyes; all these things gave her a weird joy. Take them away and she would have been lost in the universe. So I swallowed a little of my ill will and mumbled something about the pattern reminding me of dead goldfish in green aquarium water.
“You don't like it then? All right. It's settled. This one will go in my room. We'll put the other one, the reddish one, out here. Thanks for your opinion, Chief.”
“What did you say?”
“I said thanks for your opinion.”
“Chief.”
“Sorry, John, I have a habit of calling people I like “Chief.”
Bob picked the rug up and threw another one down in its place. This one looked just like the first one, only the colors were reversed. Perhaps one day we would have a couple of Indian rug weavers over for dinner and they could sit on our sofa and say “Now, that's a rug!” then go on to explain the social / religious / political / cultural / sexual significance of the pattern. Perhaps then I would walk among the enlightened and write a book on twentieth century Indian rugs. I'd sign a copy and present it to my Indian dinner guests. Then we'd all get down on our hands and knees and throw up on the damn thing.
As I made my way back upstairs, I heard Bob yell out “Good night, Chief!” Standing down there with his hands on his hips, admiring his choice in floor wear; a small barrel with arms and legs. I realized then that it wasn't Bob's rug that I wanted to throw up on.
It was Bob.
§
Bob wasn't always an English teacher. He used to be a professor at a school in Cairo. Over breakfast, he gave me the full story. Back in Cairo, he held what was considered a respectable position. He had money, friends, an apartment of his own, even a maid who would scrub his floors once a week.
“You kept a maid?” I said.
“Hey!” said Bob, shrugging his shoulders and holding out his hands, palms up.
Bob went on to tell me about his girlfriend who was considered the most beautiful girl in Cairo, though she wasn't from Cairo, she was from The Philippines. Everyone, according to Bob, was after her. He guaranteed that I'd never meet a girl like her in Thailand. She dressed with style. She knew how to cook. She could cook just about anything, you name it, and it was delicious. And when Bob would do something funny, she'd say “Ooh you car-azy!” Just like that. “Car-ay-zee!” Bob used to enjoy rubbing his whiskers on her tummy. She'd laugh so hard. Thinking back on it all, Bob supposed that he really loved her.
“You're one of those “talking” guys, aren't you?”
“I like to talk,” Bob admitted. “You seem to be the type that enjoys listening. I think we'll get along just fine.”
I washed my dishes while Bob told stories of Cairo. One of them had something to do with a camel and a foul lunch and a trail of diarrhea across the desert. Then there was another story. This one had to do with India. Whenever one of Bob's tales ended, the only thing I could say was “Huh!” It was the endless chatter between human beings that left a bad taste in my mouth. The endless stories, the nonstop gaze into the mirror, racking up one's glory. I didn't have any glory. I didn't know what glory was. Bob seemed to have an abundance of glory. Even his shit, strewn across the desert, was glorious. He was still talking when I went out the back door to take a shower. The shower was an enclosed cubicle without a ceiling. I pushed open the wooden door, stepped in, closed the door, and dropped my shorts. There was a large spider on the wall. It was the biggest spider I had ever seen. I pulled my shorts back on, opened the shower door, and closed it again.
“You're not even wet,” said Bob.
“No shower today.”
Bob stood and stretched. There was glory in that too. He dropped his shorts and went out to shower. I heard the water. I heard him sing an old Wings tune. Then the water stopped and Bob emerged dripping wet. I waited for him to towel off and go upstairs to dress. Then I quietly went to see whether the spider was still there. It wasn't.
“Hey, Chief!” Bob yelled from the top of the stairs, “Would you mind handing up my underwear?”
Bob's underwear sat on the floor, much like the spider had sat upon the wall. I was about to pick them up when I stopped and thought, what the hell am I doing?
“You come get your own goddam underwear!” I hollered.
Bob came down in a T-shirt. “You pissed off, Chief?” He picked his underwear up and put them on. I watched a spasm shoot through Bob's tree stump body. His face turned blue. His eyes rolled up into his head. A sick tongue rolled from his mouth as he grabbed hold of his throat and fought for air. Then he crashed to the floor, flopping around like a carp on the dock, until the poor bastard jerked his neck almost completely around, killing him dead. Dead as a neutered dog's dick. Dead as Grandmother Moses' wet bacon lips. Dead as a fish with one eye charcoal black in the midday sun. My friend the spider shimmied out of his shorts, winking seven of its eight eyes in my direction.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Chief?” asked Bob, pulling his pants on.
“Huh? What?”
“You've got a crazy look in your eyes.”
“Do I? Sorry. Just thinking.”
“Yeah? I was thinking too. Maybe we ought to invite Monty over for dinner.”
“Now why would we want to do that?”
“He must get lonely over there with no one to talk to.”
“It's good for him,” I said. “Builds character. Or in Monty's case, takes it away.”
There was a noise. Someone was at our door. “Mister Jow-won! Mister Bow-ob!” We went to see what the racket was. About six teachers, along with Madam Gamonwan herself, stood on our front porch. There was a lot of smiling and waiing as they marched in. Yai held her video camera plugged into her eye. She pointed it at us, then at Madam G., then back at us. It felt like a very friendly drug bust. Then a fellow came in carrying a television set with a pink ribbon wrapped around it. All the teachers clapped their hands. Yai didn't clap her hands. She wanted close ups of our faces. Bob played the clown. He raised his hands and stood on one leg. When it came around to me, I put five fingers over the lens and told her to go easy. The fellow who carried in the TV made room for it on a table I had set up as a bookshelf. He set the books on the floor, then plugged the set in. Everyone gathered round while he made the final adjustments. The suspense was incredible. Finally, he switched it on.
Was there a picture? There was a picture! All the teachers clapped their hands. Madam Gamonwan laughed and bowed. Yai pointed the camera at what was on TV. It was an episode of “Baywatch” dubbed in Thai. There was more smiling, more waiing, and everyone left. Bob switched channels and played with the antenna.
“Well,” he said. “We've got a TV. How about that?”
I took a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and cracked the top.
“How about that? That's awful nice. Four channels. Four channels are better than nothing.”
Upstairs, the “Lives of the Artists” was open on my bed. I couldn't read it anymore. It all seemed too ridiculous now. Faith in a higher power. Undying, often mad passion. Years of study and practice to attain perfection. Hell. Who needed any of that with four channels and one of them showing “Baywatch?”
I tossed the book to the floor and went to bed.
§
Then the carnival came to town. It wasn't so much a carnival as an excuse for a market. There were bumper cars and a Ferris wheel and games, but mostly just the same old plasticware, clothes, hardware, and furniture that was available in every other market I'd been to. I tagged along with Bob, who had confessed to feeling blue a little earlier in the day.
“It hits me once a month, like a woman's menstrual cycle,” he said. “It's a good thing you're here, Chief. I'd probably be sulking in my room if I didn't have someone to talk to.”
The truth was, I needed it too. The English language. The act of speaking and listening and being understood. Despite my feelings toward Bob, I knew we were stuck with each other, at least until one of us cracked and took an ax to the other.
We wandered through the crowd, blew twenty baht on a ring toss, then another fifty at the shooting gallery.
“What do you know about Miss Sucheeda?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Sucheeda. She's a teacher. Long hair, slightly curled. Kind of a pointed nose.”
“Good looking, right?”
“Yes. Good looking.”
“I know exactly who you're talking about. I was after her myself for a little while. I think she's crazy.”
“But she's single?”
“I don't know. Are you sure you want to get involved with a Thai girl, Chief? Don't get me wrong. They're beautiful. I pay to get into bed with them all the time.”
I stopped walking and looked at him.
“You do?”
“What I'm saying is the cultural difference makes the Grand Canyon look like a crack in the sidewalk. Say, I've got an idea. Let's ride the Ferris wheel.”
“Why don't we find a bar instead?”
“Let's ride the Ferris wheel first. Come on, I haven't been on one of those things since I was a kid. It'll be a great view of the city.”
“No, it won't.”
“Come on, I'll pay.”
The man running the Ferris wheel was a dwarf with long arms and huge shoulders. The problem seemed to lie in his lower half, which had stopped growing in proportion to his upper half. His legs worked, but they were small and looked as if they gave out easily. He pointed at Bob and I as we approached, pointed to the spinning wheel, and pulled a lever. The wheel came to a stop, carts swinging and creaking.
“Bob, I said, “There's no one on this thing.”
Bob wasn't listening. The little boy lights were blinking on and off in his head. The dwarf lifted the safety bar in one of the carts. Bob got in. They were both waiting for me.
“It's empty,” I said again. “Can't I at least get my own cart?”
I pointed to one of the seven other carts. The dwarf shook his head. I pointed to another. I was screwing with him. I knew he wasn't going to break whatever sacred rule had been driven into his head regarding Ferris wheel operation. It mattered little that we spoke separate languages. There were some arguments that were universal in man's blood. This was one of them.
“You can't do that!”
“Why?”
“Because!”
“Because why?”
“Because I say so! That's why!”
I could have pushed the fellow over and taken control of the ride myself but what was the use? Bob moved over in the seat. I got in next to him. It was a tight fit, made even tighter when the safety bar was in place. The dwarf pulled one lever back on his control panel, a second one forward. The cart jerked, then slowly moved forward and up. From the top, we could see the streetlights above the marketplace tents. We could see the trash that was being piled up in a ditch. We could see the shooting gallery and the bumper cars. The dwarf spun us around eleven times, reversed direction, and spun us eleven more times. Then he parked us at the top and made us sit there.
I said; “This was a particularly bad idea, Bob.”
“Oh, it's not so terrible. Say, did I ever show you a picture of my first girlfriend?”
“You carry a picture of your first girlfriend?”
“You've got to understand. We were together for nearly six years.”
“Huh,” I said. “Isn't that the Big Dipper over there?”
“Her name was Lynn.”
“Aw, hell, Bob. Maybe you should save this story for later. Like when I'm drunk or asleep or something. Not on a Ferris wheel.”
I looked over the edge of the cart. The dwarf was still down there.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Pull that lever, yeah?”
“I never cheated on her,” said Bob. “Not until the very end. But what's cheating? If you think about sleeping with another girl, isn't that just as bad as actually doing it?”
“You down there! Hello!”
Then the dwarf did something wholly unimaginable. He walked away. I couldn't believe it. I tried to think of some heinous act I had committed and was being punished for. Meanwhile, Bob was telling me all the good and bad of his six-year, near-marriage. All I could do was sit and listen. With women, this kind of talk is a necessity. Women grow from it. They learn from their soiled sheets. They share information the way mobsters do when casing a town. Men, on the other hand, learn less than a dog being tortured by the neighborhood bully. We grow, all right. We grow sleepy or horny depending on the details. Nine times out of ten, women got the better end of a break up. Still, one had to preserve one's dignity. And the way to do that was by not talking about it.
“I'll admit, I could have been a better boyfriend in a lot of ways.”
“Look, Bob, I don't think that dwarf is coming back. I think he's gone off to get some action from the bumper car lady. I'm going to try to get someone's attention. All he's got to do is pull the left lever down, then the right lever up. That gets us going. When we reach bottom, he pulls the right lever down again. That'll stop us. Do you know the Thai words for up and down? Left and right? Bob, do you know any Thai words at all?”
There was a sudden jerk, and we were moving. The dwarf had returned. That little son of a bitch. I couldn't decide whether to tackle him immediately or cold cock him when he wasn't looking.
“You see, Chief. You just have to have a little patience.”
I undid the safety bar and got out of the cart. The dwarf was eating a hot dog bun with two scoops of vanilla ice cream inside. There was ice cream on his lips and chin. He gave us a grotesque smile and went back to his controls.
Bob bought an ice-cream for himself and ate it as we walked back to the school.
§
A couple of nights later, it was my turn to be sick. It came as no surprise. I had been told I'd get sick, and I expected to get sick. It was the degree of sickness I was unprepared for.
What I had was food poisoning. Imagine the worst hangover of your life and multiply it by ten. It started in the middle of the night. I awoke around three a.m. with a strange feeling in my stomach. I made it downstairs in time to vomit into the toilet. I'm a terribly loud puker (pronounced pyu-cker). I sound like I'm trying to turn inside out via my mouth. It wasn't long before Bob woke up to find out if I were dying or not.
“You sick, Chief?”
I made it back to bed with a bottle of water.
“Better not drink that, Chief. Your stomach needs time to settle. You drink that and you'll probably throw it right back up again.”
“Thanks, Doc, I'll remember that.”
Bob yawned, scratched his nutsack, and went back to bed.
I drank the water.
Then I started to laugh. No more than half a minute had passed before the water in my gut was throwing a tantrum and demanding to be released. Only I was suddenly too weak to get to my feet again. This struck me as godawful funny. I fell out of bed and, still laughing, crawled across the floor of my bedroom. I must have sounded like a madman.
“Ah ha ha ha ha! Shit! Oh ho ho ho ho! You mother! Hee hee hee! Wastebasket!”
I made it to a standing position at the top of the stairs. All I had to do was make it to the bathroom. Things weren't too funny anymore. Bob came out of his room behind me.
“Did you drink the water, Chief?”
I opened my mouth and out it came — flew, actually. The first splat hit the bottom stair while the follow-up stream covered the rest. I finished, smiled at Bob, and collapsed.
I stayed in bed for three days. On the third day, Sangwan wanted to take me to the hospital. I told her I was too sick to go to the hospital, that if I stood up again, I'd just puke and fall down. She left and came back with a pair of workers who offered to carry me down the stairs, into an awaiting car. She had obviously prepared for a refusal. I didn't want to be carried. I dressed myself slowly and let one of the workers guide me down the steps. Everything seemed to be falling backward into space. Closing my eyes didn't help. Closing my eyes sent me falling backward into space.
By the time we reached the hospital, my last remaining molecules of strength had deflated like a spent balloon. Yai found a parking spot. Sangwan opened the back door and looked at me.
“Go doctor,” she said.
I moaned aloud.
Inside the hospital were more sick people. They sat looking at a television, quiet as mice except for an occasional cough, which everyone regarded with suspicion. They were sick people, but no one acted sick. Not like me. I was a portrait of bad health. I made it to one of the plastic seats and collapsed. No more than two minutes went by before my name was called. I had somehow made it to the top of the list. I went into an examining room and lay upon a cot. The doctor was young. He was quite possibly the youngest doctor I'd ever seen. He wore a white coat that was too big for him and a stethoscope around his neck. He listened to my chest and asked whether I had diarrhea. Then he wrote a prescription and told me to wait outside. I slowly made it back to my plastic chair while Sangwan had the prescription filled. There were five sets of pills, all very colorful and divided in small plastic baggies. The labels on the baggies said things like:
Take three (3) tablets after morning, on evening.
And
Take one (1) tablet three (3) time after meal.
And
Take one (1) tablet one (1) time before sleep. Stop if dizzy become present.
The instructions made me a little bit nervous. I decided to take all the pills three (3) times a day until I got better. Or died.
I didn't die. I was feeling good enough to walk after a couple of days. I bought Sangwan some flowers for taking care of me and a jar of peanut butter for Bob.
“What's this for?” he asked.
“You cleaned up my puke,” I told him. “I don't think I'd have done the same for you.”
Bob dipped his finger into the peanut butter and stuck it in his mouth.
“Sure you would!” he said.
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