Five hours later we were still flying over Australia, over the inconceivably bleak and uninviting landscape of our demented country. You can’t believe how it goes on and on. To appreciate the harrowing beauty of the interior you have to be in the middle of it, with a well-stocked escape vehicle. Topographically it’s incomprehensible and terrifying. Well, that’s the center of our country for you. It’s no Garden of Eden.

Then we were flying over water. That’s it, I thought. The stage on which our unbelievable lives played out has slipped away, under the clouds. The feeling ran deep inside my body until I felt it settle in and get comfortable. All that was left to think about was the future. I was apprehensive about it; it didn’t seem to be the type of future that would last long.

“What does he want with us?” I asked Eddie suddenly.

“Who?”

“Tim Lung.”

“I have no idea. He has invited you to be his guests.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how long does he want us to stay?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“He’s looking forward to meeting you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Christ, Eddie!”

We were giving ourselves up to the mysterious Tim Lung. Having used Dad to filch millions of dollars from the Australian people, did he now want to thank Dad for playing the sap so amiably? Was it curiosity- did he want to see how stupid a man could be? Or was there some darker purpose none of us had thought of?

The lights in the plane were turned off, and as we flew across the planet in darkness, I thought about the man I’d be killing. From media reports I’d learned that frustrated detectives in Thailand, unable to locate him, made assertions that he was the embodiment of evil, a true monster. Clearly, then, the world would be better off without him. Nevertheless, I was depressed by the realization that murder was the only utilitarian idea I’d ever had.

III

“There’s no one here to meet us,” Eddie said, scanning the airport crowd.

Dad, Caroline, and I exchanged looks- we hadn’t known there was supposed to be.

“Wait here,” Eddie said. “I’ll make a call.”

I watched Eddie’s face while he spoke to someone who I assumed was Tim Lung. He was nodding vigorously, bent over in an absurdly servile posture and with an apologetic grin on his face.

Eddie hung up and made another call. Dad, Caroline, and I watched him in silence. Occasionally we gave each other looks that said, “Things are out of our hands but we have to do something, and this knowing look is it.” Eddie hung up again and stared at the phone awhile. Then he came over, rubbing his hands together gloomily.

“We have to spend the night in a hotel. We’ll go to Mr. Lung’s place tomorrow.”

“OK. Let’s get a taxi,” Dad said.

“No- someone is coming to take us.”

Twenty minutes later a small Thai woman arrived, so wide-eyed it seemed she had no eyelids. She stepped toward us slowly, trembling. Eddie just stood there like a cow chewing its cud. The woman wrapped her arms around him, and as they hugged, low sobs escaped through her small mouth. I knew Eddie was lost in the moment because he suddenly ceased looking slippery. Their embrace went on and on until it became monotonous. We all felt painfully awkward.

“I have long wanted to meet you,” she said, turning to the rest of us.

“You have?” I asked doubtfully.

Then Eddie said, “Ling is my wife.”

“No, she’s not,” Dad said.

“Yes, I am,” she answered.

Dad and I were thrown into shock. Eddie was married?

“Eddie, how long have you been married?” I asked.

“Nearly twenty-five years.”

“Twenty-five years!”

“But you live in Australia,” Dad said.

“Not anymore.”

Dad couldn’t get his head around it. “Eddie,” he said, “twenty-five years. Would that mean you were married when we met in Paris?”

Eddie smiled, as if that were an answer and not another question.

We left the airport bewildered. We were not just in another country but another galaxy, one in which Eddie had been married for twenty-five years. Outside, the heat hit us forcefully. We all piled into an old olive-green Mercedes and sped off to the hotel. As it was my first time in a foreign country, my eyes soaked it up- but I’ll save you the travelogue description. It’s Thailand. You know the sights, you know the smells. You’ve read the books, you’ve seen the movies. Hot, sticky, sweaty, it smelled of spicy food, and everywhere there lurked a hint of drugs and prostitution, because like most travelers, we had brought our preconceived notions with us on the journey and did not check them, as we should have, into immigration as hazardous materials best suited for quarantine.

In the car, Eddie and Ling spoke quietly in Thai. We heard our names mentioned several times. Dad couldn’t take his eyes off Eddie and his wife. His wife!

“Hey, Eddie. You have any children?” Dad asked.

Eddie shook his head.

“You sure?”

Eddie turned back to Ling and continued speaking softly.

As we checked into the hotel, careful to sign our new names and not the old ones, it struck me that the strangest thing for me was not just to be traveling, suddenly well and truly out of Australia, but to be traveling in a group. I had always imagined leaving Australia would be the ultimate symbol of my independence, and yet here I was, with everybody. I know you can never escape yourself, that you carry your past with you, but I really had. Small mercy that I wound up getting my own room, which looked down on an eviscerated dog’s carcass.

That night I paced the hotel room. All I could think of was that by now news of our escape would be all over Australia, in every last watering hole, and despite our furtive exit, someone was bound to trace us without too much difficulty. I could easily imagine Australia’s reaction on hearing that we had absconded, and at around three in the morning I felt hit by what I was sure was a hot wave of loathing that had traveled from our homeland all the way to our air-conditioned hotel rooms on Khe Sahn Road.

I went out into Bangkok wondering how to buy a gun. I didn’t think it would prove too difficult; in my head this was a sordid metropolis, a Sodom and Gomorrah that served really good food. I was in a semi-delirious state, only looking at faces, and more specifically at eyes. Most of the eyes I saw were irritatingly innocent; only a few cauterized you just by looking. Those were the ones I wanted. I thought about murder and murderers. My victim was also a criminal; who would cry for him? Well, maybe many people. Maybe he was married too! I thought with a gasp. I don’t know why I should’ve been so surprised; why shouldn’t he be married? He wasn’t notorious for being ugly and unsociable, only for being amoral. That’s attractive in some circles.

It was four in the morning and still oppressively hot and I hadn’t yet found a single gun. I walked on, thinking, “Tim Lung- should I kill you straightaway, without even offering you an aperitif?” As I walked, I lit a cigarette. Why not? It’s not the number one preventable cause of death in the world for nothing.

I was tired and leaned against a post. I felt a pair of eyes on me. There was something frightening yet strangely invigorating about these eyes. These were the eyes I’d been looking for.

I went over to the young man and we spoke at the same time.

“Do you know where I can buy a gun?”

“Do you want to see a sex show?”

“Yes, please.”

He whisked me down the street and took me to Patpong. Large groups of Western men were going into strip clubs and I thought immediately of Freud, who believed that civilization develops in an ever-increasing contrast to the needs of man. Clearly Freud had never been to Patpong. Here the needs of man were scrupulously taken care of, every need, even the needs that made him sick.