‘Why?’ I draw on the cigarette. It goes well with the beer.
‘Single-entry visa,’ says Julie. ‘Methinks you haven’t noticed.’
I’m silent. I smoke. I swig.
‘Pak only gets everyone single-entry visas. Check the small print on the visa you got. Means you need his permission to leave, and you need about a million rupiah to pay the exit. And if you leave early he doesn’t pay your flights.’ Kim laughs. ‘That’s why half the people aren’t here drinking, they’re saving or crying. They didn’t realise they’d been screwed over ‘til they got here. Bit like you.’
‘I said it before, I’ll say it again, Pak’s a cunt.’
—Ha ha. Stuck here then, numbnuts.
‘Oh well,’ I say, ‘fine with me.’ I take a deep drag on my kretek and smile. I’m here for the year. A long time baking in the oven.
—You’ll be well-baked.
—Shut it and leave.
—OK, OK. I’m going. She leans over me to give me a kiss but I turn away.
—Bye.
‘So who’s coming on tonight?’ asks Kim.
‘Me and Donald. Donald wants to dance, don’t you, Donald?’ Jussy-boy holds the end of his tie up to his face so he can ask the upside-down duck.
‘Not tonight,’ says Geoff, ‘I’m getting up to go camera shopping tomorrow.’
‘I’m up for it,’ Julie.
‘Me too,’ a knock to my knee.
‘Yeah, why not?’ says Marty.
‘I’d better try out this night life,’ say I.
So we finish our beers and queue up to pay Mei.
‘Where are you faggots off to then?’ The Canadian with the big glasses shouts across from his table. There is no humour in his use of the noun.
‘That’s nice, Barry. Nice turn of phrase.’ Kim shoves his roll of notes into his front pocket, having paid for his beers. ‘Why? You hoping to come, man?’
‘Not with you faggots.’
‘That’s good, ‘cos we didn’t fucking ask you.’ Kim heads off to the street. ‘Thanks Mei. Take care.’ He throws Mei a smile and a wave over his shoulder.
‘Have good night, Mr Utah,’ Mei replies.
I throw a glance at Barry the Canadian and he stares back without smiling.
‘Enjoy your night, new faggot.’
I say nothing, but immediately wish I had as I walk away. The confidence of the late thinker is always a gallant yet futile thing. Even New Me can’t think quick enough. But now a choice of responses flows into my mind as I step into the sticky night air; ‘Will do, arsehole,’ or ‘Better than staying here with you, dick-wad.’ Anything similar would have been better than nothing.
Geoff waves us goodnight and walks off in the other direction. We head toward the main gate to flag down a taxi.
‘Why’d she call you Mr Utah? I ask Kim.
‘Thinks I look like Keanu in Point Break. Johnny Utah.’
‘You look nothing like Keanu.’
‘I know, but I still take it as a compliment.’
‘And what is it with that guy back there?’ I ask.
‘He’s a wife-beating dick.’ Julie pulls a lipstick out of her jeans and applies it quickly as she walks. ‘He’s here to escape jail back home. Broke her arms, allegedly.’
‘He’s been hiding out here a few years. Thinks us teachers are just passing tourists and that he’s the real expat. He does some wheeling and dealing dodgy business and is sniffing after Mei.’ Kim nods at the security guards who are almost asleep at the gate.
We leave the estate and step out onto the bustling main road, where minivans, becaks and cars are still avoiding each other by inches; back in the real Medan.
‘Let’s not talk about him. Let’s just get stoned. I say we start at Hotel Garuda.’ Jussy-boy licks his hand and runs it across his hair.
So that’s where we start.
The taxi pulls up outside the hotel. Kim is in the front and the rest of us are squeezed in the back. Naomi is straddled across Marty’s and my legs. She wiggles and adjusts herself a little too much and I’m finding it more annoying than alluring.
Kim pays and we all fall out the back of the taxi. Before we’ve taken two steps away from the car, two boys with trays covered with various makes of cigarettes and lighters hanging around their necks come up to us. One of them is about eight years old and the other maybe ten. The eight-year-old has big black rings under his eyes and his shoulders sag as though he’s ready to be carried to bed. The others try to sidestep around them, but the boys move from side to side trying to block them. They look like they’re practising dance steps.
‘OK. Give me twenty kretek,’ Kim says to the smaller boy, but the bigger boy is there first with a packet. Julie also gets a pack as Marty and Jussy sneak past.
‘Please mister, buy my cigarettes. Marlboro, kretek, menthol, Davidoff.’ The young one is in front of me, banging my thighs with his tray, looking up with child’s eyes that have lost their wonder.
I ask for a pack of Marlboro and a pack of kretek. The older boy is suddenly there, jostling the younger one out of the way with his shoulder.
‘Eh. Back off. I’m buying from him,’ I tell the bigger one. He tuts and heads off to another taxi as it pulls up.
‘Thank you, mister, thank you,’ says the young boy. ‘And a lighter? You need a lighter?’ He is following us across the street to the hotel.
‘OK. Yes. How much?’
He tells me and I pay him with some notes and tell him to keep the change. I want to give him the contents of my wallet, but hold back. We go up the steps to the over-lit building. I still want to turn back and give it to him. I’m not sure if the reason I don’t is because of wishy-washy Old Me or ‘don’t give a shit’ New Me or just because I know that it won’t really help the boy.
The hotel is glass-fronted, alight with sequenced flashing bulbs, decorated in fresh paint and attended by a doorman in full London Mayfair Hotel doorman garb. The rest of the street is peeling and crumbling colonial Dutch facades, rubbish piles and potholes. The hotel looks as out of place as a diamond in a cowpat.
‘Those kids always put me in a downer,’ says Julie as we enter the hotel. The reception hall is large and wide with a marbled floor. An antique becak and a grand piano are centrepieces, reflecting expensive lighting in their polished surfaces.
I too feel on a downer, although I haven’t exactly been off one.
As the group of us climb a curving staircase to the first floor, taking two steps at a time, I ask, ‘Does that always happen?’
‘Fucking mafia-run kids, man. Always on the streets, all night.’ Kim leads us along the corridor towards the sound of Bon Jovi coming from behind double doors at the end. ‘Forced into selling cigs and then the older kids hide around a corner somewhere, take all the cash and hand it to the local mafia errand boy. He then probably hands it to his boss who then probably gives it to the Godfather or Big Boss or whatever the fuck they’re called in this country.’
‘Kids are abused all over the place here. It’s depressing but you have to get used to it.’ Naomi is walking at my elbow. Her closeness is making me uncomfortable.
‘No one should have to get used to that,’ I say and take a longer step to get ahead of her.