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By Root 267 0

Cambodia, a blurry film strip of temples, wats and mini-bars, transit lounges, buffet breakfasts, noodle shops, maimed beggars, stone-faced soldiers, brown-skinned children in mud and rags calling "hello!" "bye-bye!" from riverbanks and stilt-supported houses. He'd seen moon-faced whores and eager cyclo-drivers, smoked opium in a tin-roofed shack under a driving rain, stayed in cheap neon-lit hotel rooms: bed, fan, TV set showing only Thai kick-boxing and MTV Asia, "karaoke-massage" in the lobby and someone else's hair on the complimentary plastic comb and everywhere the smell of wood smoke, the overripe camembert odor of durian fruit, fish sauce, chicken shit and fear. The soundtrack to the new not-so-improved Bobby Gold Story was the sound of a million throbbing generators, the endless droning of yet another pressurized cabin, the whoosh of turbines, the low-throated gurgle of turbo-props, the admonitions in pidgin English, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese and Chinese that one's seat cushion could be used "as a flotation device" and to refrain from using cell phones or electronic devices.

He'd bought a gun in Battambang — an old Makarov pistol with extra shells. Partly for self-protection, as what constituted a crime in these parts depended largely on how much money one had in one's wallet and who one's cousins were. But also with the half-formed idea that one of these days he might want to put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. It seemed a romantic place to die, Siem Reap, in the shadows of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thorn — to be found dead under the big stone heads at Bayon; the reports, if any, of his demise to read something like, "found dead of a gunshot wound in Siem Reap." It just as well might read Battambang, or Pailin, or Vung Tau or Can Tho or Bangkok. It made little difference, as there was, really, no one left back home to read or care or be impressed by such a romantic demise.

"Oh yeah, the dude with the pony tail? The guy who used to work security? He was fucking the saute bitch, right?" was what they'd say in the kitchen

"He was doing Nikki, right? Whatever happened to her, man? She was good on the line," was what they'd say. Then someone would notice a song they didn't like on the radio and go to change the station and then they'd talk about something else.

It was a very nice hotel — though an empty one. Black-and-white tiled floors, ochre colored walls with mahogony and teak moldings. The ceiling of the bar was decorated with finely drawn murals of elephants and Khmer kings and the agreeable waiters wore green and white sarongs and knew to a man how to make a proper Singapore Sling or a dry martini or vermouth cassis.

Bobby was well liked at the hotel as he was neither Russian nor German and didn't insist on bringing whores to his room like the other guests. He spent his days at the temples or at the riverbank and his evenings at the bar slogging through Malraux and Greene and Maugham and Tim Page, trying to absorb their enthusiasms. Their lives so different than his own. "I love you," she'd said and squeezed him tightly, her fingers sinking into his back. He'd kissed her and tasted blood and then she'd slipped —as Jim Morrison once put it - into unconsciousness.

He'd been drinking too much . . . and smoking bad weed — the rough-tasting Khmer smoke that cost only a stack of worthless riels per kilo and the anti-malarial pills he'd been taking once a week were putting the screws to his head, giving him nightmares. He'd wake up, middle of the night with his chest pounding after a particularly violent dream, smelling blood, his arms actually aching from fighting off full-color phantasms.

Here's one dream Bobby had:

Bobby Gold at eight years old, in blue jeans, high-top sneakers and pale blue T-shirt, standing in the schoolyard, a ring of faceless children around him in a tightening circle. It was dodge ball they were playing — and Bobby was it —the bigger kids, pale and dead-eyed, aiming the big rubber ball at his face. Suddenly the action switched and it was Eddie Fish standing in the perfectly round