Weaponized by Nicholas Mennuti David Guggenheim

Author:Nicholas Mennuti, David Guggenheim [Mennuti, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Published: 2013-07-30T05:00:00+00:00

50.

Pang is one pissed-off translator. He holds a pack of frozen vegetables—broccoli, to be exact—against his steadily swelling cheek and lips. Occasionally, he removes the frozen food from his face and shoots Fowler a withering look complete with some lip-smacking to reinforce his already evident displeasure.

Fowler sits across the desk from Pang. He’s not in a much better mood than Pang, but at least he’s getting to talk to the two girls—Pink Hair and her partner in crime Red Hair—and they remember Robinson. The girls speak simultaneously in overlapping sentences—like a Cambodian Robert Altman movie—and then Pang translates the Khmer for Fowler.

Fowler can’t help but be distracted by their appearance. Pink Hair wears a silvery, spangled bikini that resembles Christmas tinsel and is held together with a few gold rings. Red Hair wears a structurally similar two-piece but in gold and with one breast that refuses to stay housed. Every time she bends over to scratch a series of mosquito bites on her ankle, Fowler gets a glimpse of her pierced nipple.

Fowler’s never interrogated a woman who is basically naked, much less two of them. When he first arrived in Southeast Asia years ago, as a kid, he was under the impression that the people—especially the women—were liberated and laid-back when it came to their bodies and nudity. Flesh was another fact of life; sex was just something you did. It didn’t come wrapped up with oppressive feelings of sin and guilt, like back home.

When he came back to Cambodia a few years ago, past his sexual prime, he realized the nudity here was something far sadder and insidious than he’d thought. Some of these girls working at Pang’s have been part of the sex trade since they were eleven or twelve, some even before they got their first periods. Walking around half naked is habit for them. It’s what they do at work. It’s not comfort in their own bodies; it’s forgetting they own their bodies. Point of fact, there’s nothing particularly embodied about Pink Hair and Red Hair at all—they are ghosts to themselves.

“Mr. Robinson,” Pang says, “apparently was quite memorable. He came into the club, had a few drinks, and then started a gambling binge. He played for hours, winning and losing huge sums. Tens of thousands. Betting however the mood struck him. He wasn’t there to win. He said to the girls…hold on…”

Pang consults with them.

“He said when he gambled, he played against God. Not the dealer or other players. He said some people say God doesn’t play dice, but his God does. He said on that night, he had gotten the better of God, but it didn’t always go that way. The girls liked that. Liked his attitude.” Pang raises an eyebrow. “They liked him very much.”

Fowler’s taken aback. “How do they know so much about him?”

“Mr. Robinson spoke Khmer,” Pang says. “Spoke it quite well.”

Christ, Fowler thinks. Who the hell is this guy? “When did Robinson start talking to the girls?”

Pang asks. “He didn’t. The girls came up to him because he was winning huge sums.

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