Lost in Pattaya Read Online Free PDF Page B

room, he was accompanied by a seemingly ordinary clerk, but
whose presence was orchestrated, in matters that one wants to remain above
board on. What put me out was the confined space, since the room did not have
any access to the welcome externality of day, like what windows provide, or
daylight itself, on a beach, or in an open meadow. The room wasn’t ventilated
at all, discounting of course the steady hum from the draught that the strong
air-conditioner spewed its processed air in. I simply hoped that the sweat and
its sheen under my clothes, despite the low temperature, were not evident to
the manager of purchases and his silly clerk, revealing to them my long
hung-over week end.
    If you cannot tackle prolonged highs, stick
to alcohol because all other mixed in stuff leaves you in waves, well beneath
the high and the exhilaration, the crash of it being particularly violent,
needing fortitude that only a few are blessed with.
    With long indulgent years, it is the heart
that gets stained with the sin of life, eventually arresting.
    “Are you OK?” Ortega noticed my unease
under the grey silk suit and the silk-brown Buddha neck-tie around my neck, the
knot of which I reached for and loosened.
    “Actually no,” I said, tears suddenly
streaming in torrents, triggered by his stupid question. The rest of my body
was held business-like, funnily, as if I were completely normal.
    For a lone and desperate man, the company
of strangers assumes a magnitude that one would fake as if he were with
relatives and friends, who normally help work through the psychological detail
of life and the loss it all holds. The detail of each passing day is buffeted
on the foam of family and friends. Folks like Fang Wei and Georgy, in at least
where I was then, a kite, cut-off, adrift, seeking the mooring of anything
around me. Strangers, like the commonplace manager of purchases at the bank in
front of whom I wept, childlike, letting my loss flow like a river in the spate
of its own flood.
    It was the clerk who moved first, towards
the door before looking at the manager, who simply nodded in bunched brows,
signal enough for the clerk to leave us alone.
    Ortega too got up, and walked out before
re-appearing with iced tea and bottles of water in a few minutes.
    “I am sorry Mr. Ortega, I have been
un-elegant,” I said; face still damp, with t ears that became the failure of
that afternoon.
    “It’s ok, may I offer you some water?” he
asked gently in a very decent Pilipino accent.
    “Yes, No, I mean, can I get some air,” I
said, wanting to escape from the little room on the thirtieth level of the
bank’s tower, a building that rose like a needle from the earth, swaying
perceptibly, depending upon the strength of gale.
    “Come let us take a break for a smoke,” he
grabbed a bottle of water, barking instructions in Pilipino, across the office
space before descending through the moving horror of the elevator, the shaft of
which still retains the vision of hell in my mind. It was simply a metal box
attached to cables and pulleys, moving through the building’s arteries; yet it
was ghastly, churning the vertigo of fear in my stomach. Finally the elevator
jerked to a stop, its doors opening, through which I jumped, even before they
slid completely open.
    Outside, we were street side, with jeepneys and the local, urban-provincial people, contrasting the suits that we wore, as
we stood there with them.
    “Here, you can have some of mine,” Ortega
thrust his pack of smoke sticks towards me.
    “No, thanks, I don’t smoke,” I simply said.
Ortega retracted his hand with a smile, “Feeling better?”
    “Yes,” I was better, feeling infinitely
freed of the musty office that had contributed to my claustrophobic misery,
even though we were now standing in a haze of street-side pollution that he
smoked his noxious cigarettes further upon.
    Afterwards, back inside his office, I asked
if we could simply settle in the café on the lower level of