Short Walks in Sumatra / 5

Aya I met by chance when the proprietress and I arrived at the salon for our cream bath. She sat in her salon chair like a queen spider in the center of her straight black hair which was so long that the two attendants combing it stood against opposite walls.

She smiled at the proprietress in the mirror. “I’ve been saying terrible things about you,” she said.

“I’m sure you have.” The proprietress also smiled.

Introductions were made; both women spoke with the warmth and intimacy that only hatred can inspire.

Today’s special cream was avocado and the cream bath was as good as it could have been with a girl and pants on.

Aya I took at first to be a rich wife of power and leisure, the kind who shops and has affairs and can have people beheaded if she wishes.

Her daughters were there with her, aged ten and five. The ten year old was an exact copy of her, in miniature. “She’s already winning beauty contests,” Aya told us and we admired the photos carefully, so as not to smudge them with avocado cream as the attendant massaged our shoulders with the pale green paste.

I studied the winning costume. “She’s beautiful,” I said and meant, there’s no hope for her. She looked like a teenaged whore, nothing to her name but the scraps of clothes cowboys had left behind.

Imagine being doomed and ten.

When Aya was finished and stood up, her hair cascaded past her waist.

I wish only virtue was beautiful, but that’s not the case. Malice is a splendid ornament. Aya glittered as she bid us good-bye.

“How’s that man of yours?” Aya asked the proprietress, as if she’d just now thought of him.

I’d seen his picture in magazines: a golden celebrity of the surfing industry, on a boat ten days out of twelve.

“Good as ever,” said the proprietress.

“Be sure to tell him I’m looking for a lover,” Aya said and walked out the door.

“She’s banned from the hotel,” the proprietress said, as soon as she was gone. “She had sex with one of the guests.”

“Is that wrong?”

“She charged him 700,000 rupiyah. After I told her specifically not to.”

As the attendants sponged our backs with hot towels, the proprietress closed her eyes and smiled in satisfaction.

“She’s an evil dirty whore,” she said, so matter-of-factly it seemed a simple taxonomic classification: red-winged cardinal, rhesus monkey, Latin name to follow.