Salty (29 page)

Takako was also pissed because she ate a lot of that spicy food that Heidegger had ordered and now her guts were burning like she'd swallowed a lit hibachi.

As she was typing up her e-mails, Takako had a brainstorm. She didn't care if Turk and Sheila got divorced; she didn't care if Sheila hated his guts. All she needed was for Turk and Sheila to stay together—at least in the short term—for a couple of photos and an interview or two. What's that? A month? Maybe six weeks? Takako realized she'd have to sell the idea to Heidegger, not to mention Turk and Sheila, but she thought it could be done. Why throw away a great story? What was the point of that? Where was the upside? What did Turk and Sheila have to lose by pretending to stay together
for a little while? People in Hollywood did it all the time; marriages of convenience, marriages for promotional purposes, marriages to hide the fact that both the husband and wife would prefer to be with members of their same sex. She just needed to convince them to stay together until Turk's CD was recorded. Then Takako would craft and manage the announcement of their separation and divorce and blame it on “post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her abduction.” Oh, yeah. The world's eyes would fill with tears, hearts would pang, and Kleenex stock would jump over that one. Turk's CD would leap ten spots on the
Billboard
chart and Heidegger could negotiate the official, as-told-to, ghostwritten autobiography of Turk Henry for mid-six figures. Heroism and heartbreak went well together. Just not on the same day.

…

If beer goggles really existed, if they were a kind of ocular device that balanced on your nose and warped your perception of the world, then Turk was wearing a pair that was as thick as a Coke bottle.

After Wendy and Marybeth had kissed him good night and gone off for a reunion of their own, Turk sat in the bar and ordered what might as well have been his two hundredth beer.

He had decided to get drunk.
He had his reasons
. He drank to silence the swirl of questions, the jumble of thoughts and dog pile of feelings in his head. He drank to numb his body; he had a variety of aches and pains from wrestling with a wet suitcase and a mangrove swamp. He drank because he was beyond understanding what was happening. Whatever
Sheila thought or felt, whatever made her want a divorce; it didn't matter. A couple is a pair. Both people have to want to be in the partnership or it won't work out. It's not a tulip or a daffodil; you can't force it to grow. You can nurture it. You can urge it forward. But ultimately it has to happen because both people want it to.

Turk drank because he was relieved. The marriage thing, the monogamy, it just wasn't his thing. Sheila asking for the divorce had saved him the trouble of having to ask for one himself. The relief he felt made him feel guilty. Was he finally succumbing to the
catalytic environment?
Was he falling off the sexual sobriety wagon like a big bale of hay?

It was too much, too fast. Too many questions with answers that were difficult or painful or just out of his reach at the moment. Turk realized—with the woozy lucidity of the beer-goggled—that beer itself was a kind of answer to many of life's questions. Unless, of course, the questions were about weight loss.

Heidegger sat with him, drinking a tiny thimble of hot sake. Turk let out a long, low, extended beer belch solo. Heidegger shook his head. “Nice.”

Turk grinned. “Remind you of a song?”

“Not one I care to recall.”

Turk finished his bottle of beer and wiggled it in the air to get the waitress's attention. When she looked at him he flashed two fingers, not in an effort to buy a round for himself and Heidegger, but to get the waitress to save herself a trip and bring him two at once.

“I've got some new songs.”

Heidegger sat up in his chair. “Really? That's excellent news. Did you lay down some tracks?”

Turk pointed to his head. “I've got 'em up here.”

Heidegger laughed. “Well, don't wash them out with a beer tsunami.”

Turk looked at him, suddenly serious. “Don't joke about the tsunami. Not around here.”

Heidegger, who was three sheets to the wind, waved his hand in the air. “My apologies to the people of Phuket. I'm truly sorry. I meant no harm.”

Satisfied, Turk put a beer to his lips and nursed like a starving infant. Heidegger leaned forward. “What are you going to do about Sheila?”

Turk goggled his head around. Belched. “Sheila?”

“Yeah, your wife.”

Turk thought about it. “I'm gonna do what I always do.”

“What's that?”

“Give her what she wants.”

…

Roy had been enjoying his life of leisure. With Ben away on some kind of cloak-and-dagger mission, he had nothing to do. He'd convinced a colleague to take his backup ID card and swipe it through the time clock for him. That way it looked like he had come in on time.

With the annoyance of punctuality taken care of, Roy would spend his evenings drinking beer and dancing at discos and clubs before rolling into his brothel of choice, where he would stay drinking whiskey and having sex with Chinese prostitutes—for some reason Roy refused to pay a Thai girl for sex—until sunrise. Then he'd grab a fortifying breakfast of thick congee or Vietnamese
pho
before rolling into the
embassy around ten o'clock. He'd spend his workday in Ben's office, the door locked, sleeping on the couch.

He knew that this minivacation from work wouldn't last forever, but he was hoping he could stretch it for a few more days. So he was understandably grumpy and annoyed when Bussakorn—everyone called her “Nat”—banged on Ben's door around noon. Roy blinked awake and stumbled forward, taking a moment to blast a shot of breath freshener into his mouth, before opening the door. Nat informed him that the Defense Attaché Office had been looking for Ben and, when the search had proved futile, decided they needed to talk to Ben's assistant. Nat looked at him and asked in Thai, “What are you doing?”

Roy scratched his head and replied in English, “I was sleeping.”

It's one thing to be sent to the principal's office for talking during a lecture or making out with a girl in the closet of the biology lab; it's another thing to be called into your boss's office and asked what the hell you were doing sleeping on the job; but it is a unique and rarefied kind of torture to be riding the crest of a crushing hangover, with only two hours of sleep, and find yourself in a conference room with a team of pissedoff military professionals who want to get to the bottom of something you know nothing about. The latter situation was the one in which Roy now found himself.

After three hours of grilling by the Americans—during which Roy was accused more than once of sniffing glue on the job—it was finally decided that he would be sent to Phuket to retrieve his boss. The DAO case officer had traced Ben's credit card to a hotel there. They assumed he had met some girl and gone on a bender. It had happened to others before.

Despite the uncomfortable chair, intense glares, and bad breath of his inquisitors, Roy had somehow managed to not tell them about the tactical kit, the hand grenade, or Ben's strange blathering about “black ops.” Roy really didn't know what Ben was up to, but he was sure it had nothing to do with a woman.

…

Marybeth woke to find a lithe brown arm wrapped around her. She felt Wendy's warm, firm body pressed against her back. The heat of the two women spooned together under the covers—their pores opened, their sweat mixing—was a moist, reassuring sensation. Marybeth smiled as she remembered making love with Wendy. How they were tender and rough with each other. She remembered licking the sweat off Wendy's neck; it had tasted salty.

Marybeth studied Wendy's arm—the smooth skin, the simple bracelet studded with aquamarines looping over her delicate wrist. Wendy's long and graceful fingers were capped by fingernails cut clean and short, recently manicured and coated with a pale gold polish that made her brown skin look like it was glowing. Wendy had the most beautiful hands she'd ever seen. Marybeth reached over and interlaced their fingers. Wendy let out a low, sweet moan.

Marybeth sighed contentedly. She'd never felt so relaxed, so comfortable in her own skin. She was deeply happy, ecstatic. So grateful for having found someone she could love that the emotions welled up inside her and manifested themselves as a little tear that appeared in the corner of her left eye and rolled down her cheek to be absorbed into the soft pillow.

…

Sheila opened the paper parasol, shading her face, and stepped out of her cabin. She had purchased the parasol at the gift shop and, at the time, hadn't even noticed the brightly colored geometric designs on the stiff paper; she'd just wanted to keep the harmful UV rays off her face. Now that it was open, pulled taut above her head, she saw that the parasol glowed in the sun like an illuminated manuscript. She congratulated herself on being fashionable as she adjusted her long-sleeved cotton shirt, tugging the cuffs as far down as they could go, stretching them to cover her wrists. She set out for a walk along the beach, streaks of SPF 60 sunscreen still visible on her face and neck.

She strolled past the palm frond
palapas
lining the beach, past the early-morning sunbathers stretched out topless and oiled on the chaise longues like appetizers broiling on a grill. The soft sand was sticking to the sunblock she'd smeared on her bare feet, giving the impression she was wearing socks made out of sand.

She walked down to the end of the beach and stared out at the horizon. Somporn was out there somewhere—her pirate, her Captain. She hoped he'd gotten away. That he was safe and en route to Hong Kong or Singapore, wherever he was headed. She had to see him again, that she knew for certain. He was the only man she'd ever met who didn't want her as some kind of accessory. He didn't desire her because she made him look good, important, or virile. It wasn't about his ego; Somporn desired her for who she was. It was plain, simple, and pure. She'd given him her e-mail address, and
wondered how long she would have to wait before he contacted her. She hoped it was soon.

Turk sat on a chair on the beach and watched as a group of pelicans hunted for fish, swooping a few feet above the water, rising and falling with the waves. Every now and then one would dive into the water and come rocketing out with a bill full of raw fish.

The thought of sashimi for breakfast sent a fresh jolt of nausea through Turk's beer-battered intestinal tract. A low buzzing pain had taken up residence in his head, and the gentle sloshing of the ocean wasn't helping. It wasn't the worst hangover he'd ever had to deal with, but you don't drink that many beers and not pay for it somehow.

You'd think I'd know better
.

Turk sipped some bottled water and waited for the tropical heat to open up his pores and sweat the toxins out of his body. That was the best plan he could think of, and it required no effort on his part.

He adjusted his heavy sunglasses and saw Sheila walking along the beach. She carried a brightly colored parasol, decorated with some kind of vibrant Thai design, and appeared to be dressed for dinner. He saw her look up and see him, so he raised his arm and waved weakly. He didn't want to talk to her. Not that it would be painful or open up deep wounds or send him back to rehab. It wasn't anything like that; it would just be kind of a drag. Better to leave all the details to the lawyers and tax accountants, the appraisers and adjusters, the mediators and judges who would soon be swarming all over their shit like a hundred hungry flies.

Sheila strolled up to him and took a seat in the shade of the
palapa
.

“I suppose I owe you an explanation.”

It hadn't occurred to Turk that there was anything to explain. To him, the feelings that he had were just part and parcel of the natural human experience. He assumed that Sheila's feelings would be the same as his. Why wouldn't they be? Marriage was a socializing agreement between two people. It had nothing to do with biology or human nature or the ways of the world. Turk supposed that, at the beginning of civilization, men and women got married to pool their assets, protect against invaders, and produce a line of heirs to either work the fields or inherit the wealth. Monogamy and marriage were for survival. It was a very practical invention.

But he'd come to realize that people weren't necessarily built for that. Not in the modern world, anyway. It wasn't human nature to be trapped with only one mate. In fact, marriage was a kind of denial of human nature; that's what caused all the problems between men and women. Turk was beginning to believe that marriage was a setup, a con, a game of three-card monte with your heart and genitals. Marriage had an inherent design flaw; a built-in poison pill clause. It was made to fail because it didn't take into account our very unmonogamous animal instinct. People expect to be monogamous and then when they're attracted to someone other than their spouse, they overreact. They decide they must be in love with the other person, that the new infatuation is “the one.” Betrayals, heartbreak, recrimination, finger-pointing, and divorce follow.

Turk was coming to feel that if people would just be honest, just admit that they're attracted to someone else, that it's a natural thing and has nothing to do with marriage and
everything to do with biology and chemistry, maybe they wouldn't get divorced. Maybe they'd say, “Of course I want to fuck her, she's hot,” but they wouldn't have to do it. They would understand that it's not “true love,” or the fault of their spouse, or a midlife crisis; it's normal. Why else would Internet porn be so popular? So married people could indulge their innate, animal urges, without consequence.
It's life
. We are all sluts; we just don't want to admit it.

Turk had come to understand this, but he didn't know how he could explain it to Sheila, and didn't even know if he wanted to.