Between her narrow brown fingers (the nails painted the same apple-red as her lips), the handle undid itself, turning until it separated into a hollow silver bone. She lifted the inner plate of the guard off its three screws and set it soundlessly down. Then by the side-edges she took the pure blade whose exposed double meetings of steel and nothingness could so easily have sliced his eyes out or slashed his wrists down lengthwise to burst open the blue arteries of his life. Her smile widened, and he began to sweat.
The photographer had sat up. — Don't tell me you're gonna let her shave you dry with that blade! That's a good way to get cut, man!
I guess I'll make her happy, the journalist replied.
Again he laid down his head in his pretty wife's lap. He made up his mind not to wince away whatever she did. But as he gazed upward at the approaching blade, he decided that it was better to close his eyes.
The first pass of the blade caught the hairs of his moustache painfully, matting them up against the steel edge as they twisted and ripped from the skin. He could almost hear the hairs roaring out. He had not changed his expression; in that respect he lived up to his resolution; but perhaps she saw that she'd hurt him because after that she shaved him in smaller, more nibbling caresses. He could not tell whether she'd cut him yet or not. He was no longer afraid. He lay quite naturally on her lap as she bent over him, uttering her little hisses of concentration and pride. At last she was finished. He opened his eyes. She held the mirror before him triumphantly. He saw his upper lip immaculate and pale, younger than the rest of him (it had not been exposed for years). He got up and looked into his compass mirror so that he could see his whole face. A pretty young boy looked back at him — the true husband of his wife.
The girl from See Sar Ket sat behind the bar with her hands in her lap. There was a long silver cross between her breasts. He bought her a drink, so she came and sat on the stool beside him and pinched his thigh.
I go Kambuja to find my wife, he said. Me no butterfly.* Oh OK, she said. Broken heart.
* Philanderer.
The woman beside him on the plane was going to Battambang, because after twenty yean of paying detectives she'd finally found her sister. Her father had been killed. One of her two children was dead, and the other would be twenty-two now; he was still missing. The woman had pearl earrings and bright red fingernails. She said she prayed every day.
My sister have three children now, she said. She is old. I want to get her out. I can work hard for money to pay her visa. But I have to wait.
He supposed that she if anyone would understand him. On a page of his notebook he wrote:
Phnom Penh was so utterly different that he began to clown around with riels and dollars and taxis so desperately that the Cambodians shook their sides while he almost cried. The bicycles were almost gone. It was all cabs and everything was new and they wanted you to pay in dollars.
In the hotel where his wife had shaved him they had mirrors now and refrigerators and toilets, televisions and bedside phones with music on hold and automatic redial. He couldn't believe it. The price had tripled, but they charged him only half again as much as before, for old times' sake. He asked for the maid he remembered, and she came to him with a cry of joy. He said to her: I came here to find Vanna. Can you come to the disco, please, and help me?
She shook her head so miserably. — I am very sorry, she whispered. I cannot go there. No good. I want to be married, so I cannot. I am so so very sorry.
Never mind, he said. I love you like a sister.
Her salary was thirty dollars a month. He slipped her a twenty. At first she wouldn't take it. She kept saying: Why you pay me?
He said: Because you are my sister.
She rolled the twenty tight in her hand and thanked him in a whisper.
He went into the nearest restaurant, where a girl sat playing some electronic game, and two men were drinking Tiger beer, so he ordered a Tiger beer, trying not to cry, and he arm-wrestled one of them and won, felt dizzy with beer after no breakfast and no lunch, and pulled out Vanna's photograph.
Her name not Vanna, said the old proprietress, whose skin was bleached gold like lemongrass. I know her. Her name Pauline. Wait.
She took the photo from his hand and walked away. He wondered if he'd ever see it again.
