“Listen,” Aidan says, “the only ones there who spoke English were the bar girls. No fucking other idiot could say more than hello or gimme a dollar. But those girls: they had vocabularies like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh, cunning linguists, yeah?” says Kieron, always the wise arse.

“Fuck off. These girls. They could speak English better than most of us. Better than most of these Poles tending fucking bar. And they could speak Russian and German. Chinese. French.”

“Ooh la la. French,” says Kieron, mostly because it’s expected.

“Fuck off.” Aidan stops and takes a slug of his whiskey. “That’s nice, that. Anyway, these Cambodian girls were out of this world. I’d have married mine. Only….”

“Only what?” Asks Rachel, who’s been quiet until now, nursing a Paddy’s, staring at her broken nails.

“Only, she was already married with five or six kids back with her husband in some shithole town.” He throws twenty euro on the bar and gestures for another round. “Twenty-five years old, five kids, maybe six, I don’t know.” He looks pensive. “Gen. I called her Jenny. Sang to her when I was drunk… whiskey in the jar… you know. Fool. Beautiful girl though, passed for eighteen or sixteen or whatever the punters wanted.”

 

Rachel looks up, her gold/green eyes meeting his. “Slainté, Aidan. To 2004, yeah? What’s it been?  Six months away from dearest Dublin, is it?”

“Nearer to a year, Rach. Viet Nam. Cambodia. Thailand. Following Randy’s get-rich easy dreams. Some of it was beautiful so. And I didn’t miss the Irish weather one fucking bit.”

“Yeah,” says Kieron, “and welcome home. Been tested yet?”

“Ha. She was my interpreter. Meself and Randy Bright met her on our second night at Zanzi-Bar. Her English was so good I paid her for that.”

“And the French.”

“Shut it, Kieron. Show some respect.”

Kieron looks at Aidan and finishes his whiskey. “Ah, come on out of that, boy. No one believes you didn’t fuck her. No saint you.”

Rachel nods like they’ve discussed it.

Aidan turns red. “She stayed with us for three months. Of course we fucked. But…”

“But it was love, yeah?” Rachel’s voice is venom. “She couldn’t resist your wild Irish roving eyes and charms and she fell head-over-heels despite the fact she was a married sex worker, and you were paying for her time.

“Sex worker?” Kieron repeats. “Sure, you’ve gone very PC on us, Rachel.”

She barks a laugh and turns to Aidan. “So, it was love, yeah?”

“We were friends, but fuck, that’s not the point I was after making. What I was meaning was, this whole country is fucked. Phnom Penh is fucked. Horrible place. Corrupt. Everyone with a war story even if they hadn’t been born during the war. Everyone with their hand out. Not one person speaking good English outside of the hostess bars. Total waste of effort. Randy and I were planning on staying a year, trying to get the company going, but too much graft. Too much history. Too much everything. “ He looks at Rachel and Kieron. “Good to be home amongst friends, yeah.” The Paddy’s goes down smooth. “Weird vibe anyway, all these old Western guys after the young Asian girls. And boys.”

“I thought that was Thailand,” Kieron says.

“Is that why you went to Thailand, Aidan?” asks Rachel. “And how’s your Cambodian, Aidan?  Fluent are you?”

“Fuck no, I went for the beach and that. I went to Phuket.” Aidan glares at her. “I could speak enough Cambodian to get by.”

“Go on then,” says Rachel. “Impress us.”

“You’re in some state the night, eh?

“You and Kieron forced me out. I was happy in front of the telly, biting all my nails off.” Rachel crumples her hands up.

“Yeah, well, sorry.” Aidan puts a hand on her arm. “You seem to have finished the job anyhow.”

“I know,” she says ruefully. “See what love’ll get you.”

“Love?” Kieron looks at her. “Love?  You loved Jimmy Fox?  Tell me it ain’t so.”

Rachel tosses her ponytail and stretches her neck. “It ain’t so.”

“Another try, Rachel, this time with conviction,” Aidan says. “Will we have one more?”

“I’m on to the Guinness,” says Kieron, “Three? My shout.”

“All right, twist my arm.” Rachel’s small white teeth gnaw at her left pinkie and the only nail remaining.

“Yeh, me too,” Aidan says, “And stop that, Rachel. It’s no way for a little lady to behave.”

She laughs, sweet-sounding this time. “Those days in New York seem a hundred years ago. Me being a nanny feels, aye I don’t know, like some kind of dream or something from some dream sequence or Shane McGowan’s song or something. It doesn’t seem real. And what the fuck was I doing minding that wee girl, taking her to the Plaza Hotel so that she could be just like Eloise? Every week. Christ. Put me right off having me own. I haven’t kept up with anyone who’s still in New York. You said you do.”

“Well, thanks to the internet and world wide web and Al Gore and the persistence of certain young ladies, who remember me fondly? Ah, thanks, Kieron. Cheers.”

“They wouldn’t be so young anymore now, would they?”Kieron frowns. “What’s it? Twelve years ago we came back?”

“Aye,” says Aidan. “Ready to grab the tail of the Celtic tiger. Following mad Randy like he was the pied piper of Bray or some such.”

“How is Randy?” Rachel asks. “Aside from being put out that he’s not going to make cheap copies of Italian fashion in Cambodia?”

“Not changed. Still mad. Still got a zillion idea all at once. Being around him is like being on acid at four in the morning even when you’re sober and its noon. Great. He’s great. A gasman.” Aidan studies Rachel. “And single. Very single. Wife number two is gone. Moved to Maui. You should give him a bell or email him, Rachel.”

“Christ, I’m forty years old. I don’t fancy feeling like I’m taking drugs and dancing in the moonlight underneath the bright morning sun.”

“Why not?” Kieron asks. “Better than shagging Jimmy in his old student lodging on that crap sofa he’s had for a couple dozen years.”

“Manners,” Rachel says, but not sharp now. The foam off the Guinness making a mustache on her face. She sees them looking and licks it off: her tongue pink and cat-like. “Why didn’t you bring Randy back with you?”

“He stayed in Thailand. Gonna give fashion a try there. And then he wants to go to Australia. I don’t know. He’s great craic and all, but exhausting. We’re none of us young anymore, eh?”

“No.”

“I’m only thirty-eight,” says Kieron, “In my prime.”

“That’s not what she says,” Rachel and Aidan chant together.

Kieron looks at his watch. “Actually, she’s going to have a fair bit to say. And none of it something the kids should hear.”

“Fuck. I keep forgetting you’re a family man, now.”

“And another one on the way.” Kieron stand up and strikes a pose. “Virile, me.”

“Did you say viral?” Rachel asks.

“How many is it now?” Aidan asks.

“Three, plus the one in Maggie’s belly. The two from her first marriage and Belinda, my little star.” He pulls out his phone to show a picture of a blonde tot with masses of curls.

“She’s not yours, surely?” Aidan says quickly, so Rachel doesn’t.

“Dunno. Don’t care. She could be the milkman’s’ or the lad from next door, but I say she’s the spit of me when I was two.”

Rachel looks at him. “Okay, then.” She starts looking for her jacket. “Always the gent,” she says as Aidan helps her into it.

Kieron leans over and kisses each of them on the cheek. “Great having ye back, Aidan. Give us a jingle soon. And good seeing you, Rachel. Leave your poor nails alone and thank your stars your shut of Jimmy. He’s a wanker.”

She laughs. “Safe home, Kieron.”

Kieron turns to Aidan and says, “And be kind to this woman here.” There’s a hint of a warning in his voice.

They watch him leave. “Will I walk you?” Aidan asks.

“I’m a bit locked,” Rachel says. “Not used to whiskey. Really, not used to leaving the television. Fucking saddo, me. Yeah? You can put me in a taxi, Aidan, don’t trouble yourself. I know you wanna get home and skype your own darling Gennie.” She cackles.

“It’s no bother to see you home. I’m staying at my sister’s flat. She’s only a few blocks from you, yeah?”

“Oh, yes. Okay. Not far. How is Fiona? Why didn’t she come out tonight?”

“She’s in England. Doing a six-month exchange thingy. Flat was sitting empty, which is great luck for me since my lease ran out.”

“Okay then. It’s too late and I’m too jarred to argue. But no funny stuff, mister.” She puts on a New York accent for the last.

“Right, then,” Aidan says, taking her arm. “Straight home.”

 

In the morning they don’t look at each other. Rachel is in the toilet getting dressed and Aidan’s in the corner of her bedroom trying to get his trousers on while wrapped in a sheet. His head is clear though, so he cannot blame the drink. It’s frosty in the flat and he doesn’t think she’s going to make him an omelet and coffee like Gen always did. Fucking mistake and his eyes briefly meet Rachel’s, when she walks into the room. She looks away, and he knows she knows it as well.

“Yeah,” he says. “So.”

Rachel rubs her hand across her face. “Not up to your usual high standards, eh?  Maybe if you leave me a tenner there on the bed table, ye’d feel more at home with yourself.”

He’d punch her, if he hit women. Wipe the fucking superior smirk off her face. Fuck knows what possessed him last night: she’s a right bitch and not that good-looking. And old. And no charm and no skill and not Gen. “Wouldn’t be worth that, Rachel. Maybe five.”

She winces. “Bastard.”

“Yeah,” he says. “No. I’m just tired of you going on about Gen. She’s a lovely person and you’ve no call to make these snarky remarks.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t sound it.”

“Well,” she says, moving towards him, hands on hips that are much less boyish than they’d been the last time he’d seen her naked, “I don’t mean it.”

Aidan rolls his eyes and starts buttoning his shirt.

“We just had sex, Aidan, hours of it as I well recall. And now you cannot even look at me, not the decency of a bit of chat, not a kiss or a hug or a high five or nothing. Just standing there looking like I was the dog’s sick. I’m sorry I don’t measure up to your married Cambodian sex worker girlfriend, all right? Truly, I am.”

“Ah, shut it, Rachel.” Aidan pulls the jumper over his head and looks around the room, eyes focused on the bed, coverlet barely disturbed. “And the sex lasted about ten minutes. And it was a mistake, you know it.”

“Well, I certainly know you think so. And not like it was good for me. Kieron and you can say what you want about Jimmy, but he’s a better fuck than you are.”

“Right, angel, I’m out of here before we completely destroy our friendship. Whiskey and nostalgia are not a good combination for us. And we’re not a good combination which, as I recall, we figured out back in Woodside a donk’s age ago.”

Rachel eyes burn into him. After a long silence, in which Aidan gets his shoes on, she asks, “You want a coffee? Or a cuppa?”

He says yes, because, because, he cannot think of a reason to say no. They sit drinking tea with too much sugar and too much milk and too little to say. Aidan finds his thoughts drifting out of this white and gray flat and back to the little yellow house he’d shared with Randy and Gen. It has always been warm there, the smells of fried food, gasoline and Gen’s perfume which was Channel Coco Mademoiselle. Aidan sighs into the silence and says, finally, “Tell me a story you’ve never told anyone.”

Rachel rears back as if he had slapped her. “What?”

“Ah, go on then.”

She pushes her dark hair behind her ears. “Have you heard something then, Aidan?”

“No.”

Rachel bites down on her thumb. “All right, so.” She looks at her teacup. “I could use something stronger.”

Aidan smiles encouragingly.

“When I was nine years of age, my sister, Maire and I came down to have our breakfast, before school. It’s strange, yeah, but I can remember that morning out of all the mornings in me life. It was a Thursday and I was expecting toasted brown bread with blackberry jam. I loved my jam.”

There’s silence. Aidan takes a sip of the tea. “Is that it, then? Jaysus, Rachel, that’s some story.”

She bites her thumb so hard she draws blood. “No, that’s not the whole story, you arsehole. Maire and I came downstairs, and our mammy was gone. Just gone. We looked everywhere for her, although the house was small and she wasn’t one to hide, then we looked for a note or some such. And there was nothing. So we went off to school like nothing had happened.”

Aidan yawns.

“And when we got home there was still no mammy. Nothing for the tea. Nothing.”

“What did you do then? I’ve to tell you I’m hoping for a little action here.”

“We did our school work and we brushed our teeth and we went to bed. And later that night we heard our Da’s car pull in and we went running downstairs to him. I’m sure he thought we were mad. In the morning he went out early and came back with buns for us to eat and when we got home from school, the mammy was back, toasting up the bread for our tea.”

“Ah,” says Aidan and yawns again.

“When she turned around her eye was blackened and when her sleeve rolled up you could see welts along her arm.”

“So where had she been? What happened?”

Rachel shrugs. “We never asked her. I kept looking from her eye to the jam and I ate me toast plain. Never touched any jam, since.”

Aidan finishes his tea and smiles weakly. “Well. Well.”

Rachel examines her bloody thumb. “Sure, I have a better story for ye, Aidan. I was twenty-two years of age when I went to New York just for a holiday like. Maire and I went over and we…” Rachel trails off.

“Are we finally going to see some action?” Aidan asks, not looking at her.

“We went out to some dodgy pub in Queens and I let some Irishman sweep me off my feet.” Rachel gnaws on a finger.

“Mmm,” says Aidan and stares into his empty cup. “I hope he was good to you.” Their eyes meet and he breaks the stare first.

Rachel shrugs. “For a bit. And then he wasn’t, was he? Now shove off, Aidan. I’ve to get to work. Some of us have to do the nine to five.”

At the door to Rachel’s building, they shake hands which is somehow both awkward and nearly perfect.

Aidan shivers in the Dublin winter thinks of sweat crawling down his brow thinks back to Gen. He remembers a story she told him one night.

She spoke so softly that Aidan had turned his back to her so she could whisper into his ear. “My grandparents lived in Phnom Penh. They were teachers, educated persons. Refined. When Pol Pot came to power he sent them to the countryside, the whole city was sent off to become farmers.”

Aidan felt her tears tickling his ear but had remained still.

“My grandparents were sent to a camp. So many of their friends, relatives died, but they somehow survived it. My grandmother was so beautiful, Aidan. After the grandparents were released they became farmers. There was never enough. And they were not made for farming. When my mother was three her father died.” Gen was sobbing, her tears dripping down on Aidan’s back. “When she was ten her so refined so educated so poor mother sold my mother. She was thirteen when I was born.” She sat up abruptly. “So I come from a long line of whores.”

Aidan had pulled her down and kissed her. “And a long line of beauties.” He realizes now that was a stupid thing to have said. It feels imperative that he go to Cambodia and apologize to Gen say the right thing. He should have said he loved her. Maybe he should have said she wasn’t a whore. He didn’t fucking know.

He thinks of Gen’s silky black hair cut just below her shoulders and the rainbow-coloured suits she’d wear when she came with them to business meetings. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m a bar girl,” she said and repeated often. “I’m not someone you can rent for two hours.”

Randy dragged Aidan down Street 51 riding their motorbikes until they came to T-Bar where the beer and the girls were inexpensive. Randy looked at those girls with their short red dresses and long bleached hair and would lick his lips like he’d just passed into sweetie heaven. It disgusted Aidan, seeing Randy like that, seeing the girls with eyes turned green and violet with contact lenses they didn’t need.

They spoke English, which always came as a relief after a day of no one having a fucking clue what anyone was saying, but Aidan had no interest in what they were offering. His eyes his mind his heart were back in the yellow house with the crumbling walls where Gen was preparing dinner. He deserves a kick in the arse for ever having left her. He deserves a beating, kicks to his head could only help.

Aidan passes an Allied Irish and pulls out his card. He cannot resist checking the balance and when he finds it greater than he expected, more than he dared dream of, he sprints towards Fiona’s flat to use her computer to book his ticket back to Cambodia. Staring at the screen, Aidan wonders if he’s gone stark raving mad. He has no job to go back to in Phnom Penh: no flat: no address for Gen. He’s not heard from her since they said good-bye.

Aidan thinks about being back to Cambodia, taking a bus into the hills and abducting Gen, taking her and all the kids back to Ireland with him. They could run a translation company or hook up with Randy to sell fashion to Irish women.

He dreams of Kep Beach and the weekend he and Gen had spent holed up in a bungalow at Bird of Paradise. Every morning they talked about heading to the beach and then they’d end up back in bed. It had been the most glorious three days of Aidan’s life. As he walks down O’Connell Street, he has no idea why he ever left. What the lure of Thailand had been and what in the name of everything holy had ever persuaded him to return to the drizzly, desperate, nightmare of Dublin.

He’d rescue Gennie and they’d live at the beach, supping on love, and fucking until neither one of them could do anything but lie in the other’s arms, laughing from the sheer mad joy of it. And he’s say to her, “Tell me a story no one else has heard.”

And this time Aidan would say the right thing. All the right things. And he’d be kind.

He imagines sitting on a plane, easy-peasy, Fiona’s keys dropped off with Kieron. Aidan would smile and wink at the stewardess as she slips him little bottles of booze without charging. He thinks he’d chat her up, ask her out. She won’t have a wedding ring. She will have small round beasts underneath her starched white blouse. She might take him along to the crew hotel with her and ride him until both are worn out and smiley.

Aidan’s half locked already and too tired to fall asleep. Dreams of Gen keep dancing behind his eyelids. Dreams of Gen and himself and the imaginary stewardess keep him up for a long time.

The next morning, staring at the British Air website, Aidan stops himself. What the fuck is he thinking of? Flying back to godforsaken Cambodia to search for some woman who is never going to leave the country? He lets the dreams drift away and goes back to bed.

Half asleep Adan half wakes. Someone is pressing the buzzer. Over and over again. He thinks it’s probably kids messing but goes down and opens the door. Opens the door to a bedraggled band of gypsy children and their mother who says, “We’ve come Aidan.” She is holding a baby and she pushes it towards him. “Your daughter. I’ve called her Anna.”

Aidan takes the child who stares at him with eyes as blue as his own.

“Can we come in?” Gen asks. “It’s pouring rain and we’re all so cold.” Aidan rubs his eyes and looks again.

No. It’s just Kieron balancing two coffees in one hand and a bag from The Bakehouse in the other. “Were you at least nice to her?” Kieron asks as they stand in front of the flat.

Aidan takes a sip of the coffee and says flatly, “You’ve already spoken to Rachel, have you?”

Kieron half-laughs. “Aye, well. She’s having a tough go of things. Don’t make it worse.”

“She should get back with Jimmy.” They are standing on the stoop, drops of rain falling against their heads and into the coffees. Myself, I’m going back to Cambodia,” Aidan says with great assurance.”

“You haven’t got a prayer, boyo,” Kieron says, inhaling his cigarette. “You’d be going in blind trying to find this girl. Sex worker whatever you’d want to call her.”

“My girlfriend. Christ. I dreamt she’d had my child, a daughter with eyes as blue as my mammy’s were.”

“Catch yourself on, Aidan.”

He frowns. “I don’t want a life here. Drinking too much. The cold. The wet. The dead drabness of Dublin. In Cambodia I felt alive. It was alive. The people. The smells. The noise.”

“Fucksake.” Kieron stamps out the cigarette. “The other night you were after telling us how much you hated the fucking place.”

“Aye, I know. But.” Aidan stares down the street at the puddles forming. “I had the nightmare time with Rachel. And I cannot go backwards. I dream of Gen and Cambodia.”

Kieron shakes his head. “Right then, off you go.”

“I will,” says Aidan. “I will so.” And for the moment he believes it.