Salty (2 page)

It wasn't easy for him; he was a rock star, after all, his entire life spent in a
catalytic environment
, but Turk had
learned to control his destructive urges. He'd been surprised at how good it felt to have some power over his desires. His therapist had suggested that the behaviors and compulsions came from his having low self-esteem, and indeed, controlling those behaviors made him feel good about himself. In other words, Turk had discovered that denying himself a good piece of ass actually made him feel like a worthwhile human being. Go figure.

On top of that he'd taken a vow to be true to his wife and he was going to do it, even though it'd been the longest year of his life.

“Are you starting a new band?”

The Swiss-German girl seemed genuinely concerned, so he gave her an honest answer.

“I don't know. For the time being I'm just going to drink a beer.”

The boy arrived, grabbed the baht from Turk's outstretched hand, and then went sprinting off down the beach.

Sheila was on her way to ride an elephant. It was something she'd always wanted to do. She didn't know what attracted her to the massive animals, but there was just something about them that she found adorable. She collected small statues of elephants, photos of elephants, and paintings of elephants. She hosted a fund-raiser to ban the sale of African ivory. She marched in a protest against a scrimshaw exhibition at the Museum of Folk Art. Last year she helped organize a “Rock the Habitat” concert. Elephants were her raison d'être. When she wasn't tending to the needs of her infantile rock star husband and his countless petty demands, she was doing something to make the world a better, safer place for the elephant. She even had a tattoo of pastel-colored elephants marching trunk to tail around her ankle.

Now she was stuffed in a battered Land Rover with four other tourists, careening down a dirt road in the forest, on her way to spend some quality time with the largest land mammals in the world. According to the brochure she would get to touch them, feed them some bananas, and ride on top
of one as a group of them meandered through the tropical rain forest.

Her husband had made fun of her. Why did she want to ride some big smelly animal when she could stay in bed with him? Sheila had bit her tongue. She'd been tempted to say that being in bed with him was like riding a big smelly animal, but she didn't. If he didn't want to come along, well, it was fine with her. Better even. She was tired of listening to him complain; the big rock star bitching because it was too hot, the humidity was ruining his studded leather belt, why couldn't he have ice in his drink? Why was the food so spicy? Why was the toilet paper so flimsy? Sheila shook her head. Here they were on the trip of a lifetime and he was complaining about toilet paper. Why'd he have to complain about that? Why couldn't he just wipe his ass and enjoy the sights?

Sheila tugged on the ends of the red bandanna that was holding her hair up. It was growing steadily heavier from absorbing sweat, and she wanted to keep her hair from falling down. It was hot; she could agree with Turk about that. But instead of moaning on the beach like some half-dead walrus, she was out and about, seeing the sights, shopping—you'd be surprised at the number of small carved elephants she'd acquired already—and going on a jungle safari.

She looked out the window of the Range Rover as it rolled its way through the tropical forest. Catching her reflection in the glass, she unbuttoned one of the buttons of her special jungle-tested safari shirt; just because you're in the tropics doesn't mean you can't show a little cleavage. Christ, back at the resort nobody wore a top; it made her halter dresses, tube tops, and khakis look practically Islamic. Sheila didn't know why she balked at going topless. She had a great
figure, and she knew it. But she didn't have anything to prove. She was beautiful, with green eyes, a wild spray of sandy blond hair, and smooth pale skin that came standard with her Nordic ancestry. She was graced with fine, delicate features, except for the large fleshy lips that seemed to turn outward for no better reason than to show off their lusciousness, like some kind of wildly succulent orchid.

Sheila had been a model since she was fifteen. She'd been topless in
Vogue, Glamour
, and
Women's Wear Daily
, and in countless ad campaigns. Maybe that was it. She was used to getting paid to show her breasts, not just give the view away.

She'd enjoyed being a supermodel. She'd made gobs of money, traveled the world, dated movie stars and movie directors—done all the things the super-beautiful get to do. She'd been to raves on Ibiza, had cocktails on Martha's Vineyard, sunned in St. Bart's, hiked in Greece, Carnivaled in Rio. She was a regular at Davé in Paris, where he always had her favorite vegan noodles ready for her. When she wasn't working she lived a vampire life, sleeping all day and spending all night in the VIP rooms of whatever club was currently the hotspot. She traveled in private jets, private cars, with private chefs. It was life in a luxurious bubble world, and when the bubble occasionally popped, she could take the edge off harsh reality with a hit of X or a line of blow.

Sheila had been a card-carrying, hard-partying member of the in crowd. But after a while, the drugs, the drinks, and the passage of time took their toll. The makeup artists and photographers had to work a little harder to hide the lines and the dark circles under her eyes. In an industry powered by taut glowing skin and youthful sex appeal, Sheila wasn't so young anymore.

The drop in her bookings coincided with a kind of lifestyle crisis. The in crowd had become insular, incestuous, boring in its fabulosity. Night after night it was the same people, the same places, the same drugs. It was a static life, like being stuck in place, frozen in time. Nothing ever changed and nothing ever happened. Only the constant reassurances of their mutual fabulousness gave Sheila and her friends any comfort.

At her thirty-second birthday party, Sheila realized she needed to change. This insight crystallized for her when she found herself stoned on the same mushrooms, having sex with the same Brazilian DJ, in the same hotel and in the same position as she had the year before. Sheila realized that if it was always going to be the same, she might as well be married to some rich guy, grab a little slice of security before gravity took hold of her body and her breasts and butt headed south like a bad junk bond.

While it used to be fun to drink champagne and do coke all night, to club and carouse until dawn, now she found herself exhausted, her body paralyzed with a profound weariness. At first she thought she might have chronic fatigue syndrome or perhaps a newer, trendier virus that had yet to be named, but after a detoxifying vacation at an ayurvedic clinic in Mexico she realized that she was just tired.

She met Turk at the rehab center. She was there for cocaine; he was there for some kind of sex addiction. They bonded right away; somehow they had an innate understanding of each other's addictions, and ended up dating for a year—as Turk struggled with his addiction—before the doctors finally declared he was cured, and he proposed. They were married a year ago.

Being married to a rock star, being Mrs. Metal Assassin, hadn't turned out to be as much fun as she'd hoped.

…

A sunburnt American woman sitting next to Sheila tapped her shoulder.

“Do you mind? I'm trying to get a picture.”

Sheila leaned back, out of the way, as the woman stretched herself over her and tried to focus her camera on the dense jungle whipping by. The woman's shirt was soaked through and Sheila felt her skin crawling slightly as her shirt absorbed the woman's sweat. It felt clammy, foreign, and unclean.

Sheila was relieved to hear the digital click and whir of the computer chip as the woman finally took a picture. She could only imagine the image. A blur of deep green.

“Just one more.”

The woman persisted, leaning a little more on Sheila, pressing her dampness into her. Again the excruciatingly deliberate focusing of the camera, the waiting for the exact moment; and then, finally, she pushed the button.

“Thanks so much.”

“No problem.”

Sheila looked down and saw that the woman had left a large, moist splotch on her. She shuddered.

There were six of them crammed into the car: two couples—one British, from London; the other, the sweaty ones, from Seattle—herself, and the disinterested Thai driver who handled the car with the nonchalance and fearlessness of someone playing a video game. Sheila realized that the car was meant to accommodate three couples, but she was glad
Turk wasn't with her; she could hear him complaining about the uncomfortable jump seats already.

The couple from Seattle began to brag about their shopping expertise. Southeast Asia, according to them, was a bargain hunter's paradise. Anything could be had for a price—from rare antiques to souvenir tchotchkes—and any price could be haggled down. It was, according to them, your duty as a representative of the industrial world to pay as little as possible to the citizens of this developing nation. The Seattleites looked at the locals as if they were cunning used car salesmen, rip-off artists gouging the wealthy Westerners with their inflated claims that the meticulously hand-carved Buddha statue was actually worth the suggested price.

“Never pay what they ask. Never.”

They were especially proud of the fact that they had negotiated some local craftsman down to half the asking price for a beautiful cabinet that they planned to ship back to the States. According to them, you were really doing the locals a favor by securing the lowest possible price. As if getting less money secretly made the Thais happier. Sheila wondered about that. How is it that people with lots of money get poor people to lower their prices so they're poorer? How is it that a rich man who makes his money selling “branding strategies” and “marketing concepts” can hardball someone who actually makes something real? What kind of world do we live in?

The woman from Seattle turned to Sheila.

“Just today, we had lunch at this little restaurant.”

Her husband chimed in.

“A little place. Way off the beaten path.”

“You could order fresh seafood. Really fresh. And they charged you by how much it weighed. But the best part is,
you got a bowl of rice and this great coconut curry sauce with the meal.”

“And a mango salad.”

She turned and corrected her husband.

“Green papaya. With the peanuts. You know?”

Sheila nodded. She was familiar with the green papaya salad called
som tum;
in fact it was everywhere, served at every meal. It was like chips and salsa in Mexico, ubiquitous.

The woman smiled at Sheila, rubbing her hands together in glee.

“You know what I did?”

Sheila shook her head.

“What?”

The woman leaned in, looking like she was about to divulge some lucrative insider-trading tip.

“I ordered one shrimp.”

Sheila blinked.

“One?”

The husband came to his wife's defense.

“They were real big. Prawns. Really. Bigger than shrimp.”

The wife smiled.

“I had one shrimp.
Prawn
. The curry, rice, and salad came with it. You know how much it cost me?”

Sheila shrugged.

“Remember, they charged you by weight. How much does a shrimp weigh?”

“Not much.”

The woman nodded.

“I had lunch for less than a dollar.”

The husband beamed at his wife.

“I did the math. All that food for seventy-nine cents.”

The wife nodded, sharing her husband's excitement.

“We love Thailand.”

Sheila smiled at them, tuning them out, as the Seattle couple continued their story. They also drew a hard line when it came to tipping. It seemed that giving gratuities to waiters, porters, cabdrivers, or various other helpful people actually perverted the local economy. It made the locals reliant on tourists and could destroy their self-sustainability. The husband, a man who was comfortable talking about anything with great confidence, began to lecture about this at length.

Sheila never haggled or bargained with the locals. She always overtipped. It was, she felt, the least she could do.

…

Sheila rolled down the window—the air conditioner in the Land Rover was hardly working—and tried to let the breeze dry off her shirt. She looked out into the forest as they flew down the road. Although it was morning and the hot sun was blazing above the canopy, there were sections of the forest that were pitch black, places sunlight had never visited, primordially dark, like something out of a science fiction story, gateways to another dimension. It gave her the creeps.

Eventually they pulled into a clearing, the dirt crunching under the tires as the Land Rover skidded to a stop, and the tourists began climbing out. Sheila immediately began stretching her legs as the couple from Seattle bickered about who packed the trail mix and the couple from London took turns applying heavy doses of sunscreen to each other's faces. She walked toward some kind of structure made from small tree trunks and topped with palm fronds, like a primitive
carport. There were two picnic tables placed under the roof. The driver was already there, sitting in the shade, gazing out at the trees, whose lower branches had been mysteriously stripped of leaves and bark.

Sheila stood and flexed her legs, grabbing her foot and pulling it up behind her until it touched her ass, stretching the quadriceps. The driver gave her a look that made her want to button her shirt up, and lit a cigarette.

“You like elephant?”

Sheila nodded.

“Yes.”

“You ride elephant before?”

“No. This is my first time.”

The driver laughed and shook his head. He turned and blew a plume of tobacco smoke into the thick humid air.