8.
“No fair,” she says, playfully, though there’s just a little testiness behind it.
“Why not?” I say. “After all, we’ve examined my romantic history in some detail.”
“Michael, you’re like seventeen years older than me. You have way more history than I have. You’ve been alive longer.”
“It’s not a competition,” I say. “It’s not like your history has to match mine. I just want to know who was there before me.”
“Ugh! Don’t ask.”
“Okay,” I say, holding up my little flat wooden ice cream spoon in surrender. “You don’t have to tell me anything that will make you uncomfortable.”
She picks a black bean from her ice cream dish and chews on it thoughtfully, rolling it to one side of her mouth.
“It’s not like my history is that long,” she says. “I mean, I don’t have no history. Just not much of one.”
“Okay,” I say. “Fair enough.”
“Guys are… weird,” she says, words spilling out like she wants to let go of them. “You know I don’t mean you specifically. I mean just in general. Toward me.”
“Weird how?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Hot and cold, weirdly defensive. I’ve had some really good guy friends who were always just friends. And then the guys who actually liked me didn’t understand me at all. Am I making any sense?”
“Sure,” I say. “I get it.”
She scrapes the last of her ice cream from the sides of the cup. It’s the gesture of someone who isn’t quite done with the conversation even though she says she doesn’t want to engage. Something’s there, something coming loose and I think it needs to happen.
“And dating is so weird now,” she says. “It’s like, there are more ways to meet but it’s still harder. Everyone wants someone better and the apps have made everything really terrible.”
“And it’s expensive,” I say.
“Exactly! I mean, who can afford to go out? Obviously it’s cheaper here, but this isn’t really normal life. We’re on holiday mode.”
“Right,” I say. “I get it. Dating wasn’t easy for me when I was your age. But it’s gotten harder now. If I had to walk up to you at a party, I don’t know if I would have. In fact, I definitely wouldn’t have because I don’t go out. If I hadn’t found you in my pool, we never would have met.”
“It is a cute story, isn’t it?” she says.
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “It definitely broke the ice.”
She turns her empty ice cream dish upside down on the table.
“Speaking of ice,” she says. “I’m out. You?”
I look at the green puddle in my cup. A couple of black beans still sit in it, but I’ve had all I want.
“Let’s see some monkeys,” I say.
I check the map on my phone to confirm where Monkey Hill is.
We stop at the base of the hill where there’s a place to park the bikes.
Street vendors are selling water and juice from the roadside, and one old guy has a cooler full of beer that nobody seems to be buying this early in the afternoon.
I warn Thalia not to stop and buy something because the monkeys will just take it once we pass the barrier and walk up the hill.
“Let me just get a water bottle,” she says.
She pays ten baht, slips the cold bottle into her bag for later. As we pass through the gate that leads up to the sanctuary, Thalia takes my hand. It’s the first time she’s done this. It’s casual, completely natural, and I decide not to say anything about it.
“So, here’s the part I don’t understand,” I say. “Why my pool? I mean, why climb up the rock face to go swimming in a stranger’s pool when you could have gone anywhere? You could have gone to a bar instead.”
“Why would I want to go to a bar by myself?”
“To meet someone.”
“I did meet someone,” she says, squeezing my hand.
“By accident,” I say. “Right?”
“Well, I obviously didn’t know you were going to come home and find me swimming with my top off,” she says. “That wasn’t part of my plan.”
“But you must have some experience sneaking into people’s pools at night,” I say.
“Of course,” she says. “We used to sneak into pools all the time, a big group of us. I never did it solo before, though. But then, I’m a grownup now. I’m doing a lot more independent things on my big trip abroad.”
“Risky,” I say.
“But rewarding.”
A monkey crosses the asphalt in front of us. I’m not a monkey expert, but I think it’s a macaque—big-shouldered, with a face that looks vaguely put-upon. Thalia makes a sound that isn’t quite a squeal but is adjacent to one. The monkey stops, looks at us. Then it looks away, disinterested.
“Just wait,” I say. “If we’re lucky we’ll see more of them.”
We walk on and more monkeys appear. They come down from the trees or we find them sitting in the road as we approach.
A whole train of them in a line, grooming each other with the focused efficiency of a team that’s been doing this a long time.
The mothers with babies are the cutest. They see people every day so some look up as we pass and others don’t bother.
Mostly they’re checking to see if we have anything in our hands worth snatching.
As we climb the hill there’s a lookout area with overgrown trees mostly blocking the view, a bench that’s been carved up with initials over the years. We stop and rest, drinking from the water bottle Thalia smuggled past the monkeys.
“So, what do you think?” I ask.
“They’re cute, but I don’t think I would be doing this without a guy with me. I’d be afraid of them ganging up on me.”
I laugh.
“You could take them,” I say. “Don’t let them push you around.”
“I’m not a fighter,” she says.
One of our little friends must have overheard her because she comes down from her tree and approaches us warily.
I can tell she’s female once she gets close enough, and she has the air of someone who has run this particular shakedown many times.
She stands up and opens and closes her hands in quick succession.
Give it up. That gesture says. Give up the water bottle or this could get ugly.
“I guess we’re leaving that one here,” Thalia says.
“Maybe not,” I say. “She’ll probably leave the bottle. We’ll look for it on the way down.”
I take her hand and lead her away from the monkey. She tosses the empty bottle aside and watches us go, already losing interest. One of the younger ones trots over to investigate the bottle immediately, and they have a brief and apparently heated dispute about it.
The hill gets steeper the higher we climb. There’s a loose concrete path in some sections, worn smooth and slippery, and in others it’s just packed dirt and root. The exertion doesn’t bother me, but I can see that Thalia is starting to flag—her pace slowing, her breathing getting shorter.
“How’s your knee?” I ask.
“Fine, thanks. It doesn’t hurt anymore. My legs are sore because I’m not used to climbs like this.”
“We can stop again,” I offer.
“What’s at the top of the hill?”
“Some radio towers,” I say.
“Well, I can’t miss seeing that,” she says.
She wipes sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist. Then something shifts in her face—some private decision—and she sets her jaw and starts climbing again.
“Let’s do this!” she says, in what I take to be her hulking man voice.
We see groups of tourists coming down but we’re the only ones heading toward the peak.
The sun has already passed its peak intensity, which helps, though we’re both sweating from the effort of just keeping our feet moving.
The hill levels off as we reach the top.
There are a few wind-scoured trees up here that have grown sideways from years of having no shelter, and then the radio towers, which look just like radio towers anywhere.
But the view of the valley below is something.
Phuket Town spread out to the south, the bay catching the afternoon light, deep water beyond that turning a color that doesn’t have a clean English name for it.
You can see three or four other peaks from up here, each one with its own antenna.
The whole island broadcast from its hilltops.
“Victory!” Thalia exclaims.
I pick her up by her waist and spin her. She cries out and holds her arms out wide. The best part isn’t the view or the radio towers. The best part is the fact that we made it, and the fact that there’s nobody up here to see us being ridiculous about it.
We walk around the towers just to make sure we’re not missing anything.
We’re not. On the way down I see a kid collecting plastic bottles.
He’s maybe fifteen, moving along the edge of the path with a sack over one shoulder, not hurrying, picking them up with the practiced efficiency of someone who has done this route before.
He’ll get a few baht for the haul. Not much, but it adds up.
I watch him for a moment. I know he’s doing it for the income.
It’s still a good deed. Both things are true at the same time.
Thalia rests her hands on my back as we descend. She’s so tired she’s leaning on me for support, or at least pretending to.
“Hop on,” I say.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, why not?” I say. “No promises I can make it all the way down, but—“
She doesn’t let me finish, jumping on my back and wrapping her legs around me. She’s not that heavy. She’s heavy enough. After fifty paces my thighs are burning and my lower back has registered a formal complaint. She’s having a great time.
“Need a break?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I huff.
She climbs off. Then she picks up my arm and wraps it around her, tucking herself under my shoulder, inviting me to shift some of my weight onto her.
I pull her to me and kiss her forehead. We’re in that early phase where the other person’s body is just permanently interesting—their smell, the specific weight of them against you.
Both sweaty by the time we make it down, and I’m still thinking about the way she looked at the top, arms out, spinning.
“What are you smiling at?” she demands.
“You think I’m sexy,” I say.
I press my forehead to hers. She pushes back hard.
“So what?”
“So, I’m getting laid tonight,” I boast.
“Says who?”
“Says the guy who just carried your ass down a mountain, princess,” I say. “And kept you safe from monkeys.”
“My hero,” she says, in what she pretends is a mocking tone but really it’s completely sincere. “I guess I’ll have to let you have whatever you want.”
“If you know what’s good for you.”
She puts up her hands like she’s ready to fight back.
“Nah, I’m not a fighter,” she says. “I’m a lover. Which means I’m yours tonight.”