15.
After two hours, Meena takes out all the fruit and starts grading them informally, breaking off the excess stem and sorting by quality—best of the bunch in one bag, middle tier in another, anything too bruised or far gone set aside.
Just a few of the roughly thirty end up on the ground.
We did some good picking. I can see the whole valley below through the trees from where we’re standing.
There are people hunched over working the rice terraces further down.
They’re working harder than we are, but still. I feel it in my shoulders and forearms.
“Is this what it was like in Mackay?” I ask.
“No way,” Thalia huffs. “We had big trucks and cherry pickers and everything. All the blokes would go up in the baskets and collect them ten at a time. Us kids were mostly just there to carry the bags when they were full, and to eat the ripe ones.”
“But these ones aren’t ripe yet, are they?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Meena says. “Maybe one week?”
Thalia takes one out of the bag and runs it under her nose.
“I love that green mango smell,” she says. “Oh!”
She smiles and gives me this conspiratorial look.
“Know what this reminds me of?”
“I think I do,” I say. “But let’s ask Meena first if it’s okay.”
Meena’s expression turns curious.
“Meena,” Thalia says sweetly. “Do you ever use cannabis at all?”
“What?” Meena asks.
“Ganja,” I say. “Have you ever smoked it before?”
“Oh!” Meena says, bringing her gloved hand to her mouth to cover her surprise. She narrows her eyes at us, but she’s smiling. “Yeah, sure.”
“Really?”
She holds her thumb and forefinger together with just a tiny bit of space between them.
“Little bit,” she says. “Just little bit sometimes.”
“Would you like to smoke together?” Thalia asks. “I have some in my backpack.”
Meena takes a moment to think about it, looking around at the trees as if calculating where we could go.
“Yeah, sure,” she says finally. “But we should be careful. The smell.”
She wrinkles her nose.
“Right,” I say. “Wouldn’t want to bother grandma. Or anybody else in the vicinity. We can keep it on the down-low.”
She gives me this quizzical look and I realize that I have to modulate what I’m saying to avoid too many colloquialisms that just confuse things.
Fluency is a funny thing, and it’s easy to take it for granted that Meena’s English is good so she’ll understand everything I say.
The reality is a little more complicated, but we’re adjusting.
“We’ll be careful,” I say.
We walk the same way back, but I have to angle the ladder differently to keep from ramming it into the hillside. I’m sweaty and my upper body is done, but I’m in a good mood. I’m going to smoke weed with both of my girlfriends in the forest with monkeys. This is dope.
I leave my flip flops at the door. Meena puts the mangos in the corner where they’ll be out of the sun and then grabs some bananas and a bottle of water from the kitchen.
She pops into grandma’s bedroom and speaks to her briefly.
Whatever she says takes about twenty seconds and ends with a laugh from the bed.
I grab the joints in their little plastic canister from the pocket of Thalia’s bag and then join her outside. Meena follows. She offers Thalia the water bottle and she takes a long drink. I take a long gulp and hand it back.
“Where should we go?” I ask.
“Not sure,” Meena says. “How about a waterfall?”
“Perfect!”
We hike out of the village, taking a different route down the mountain.
It seems crazy to go hiking in rubber flip flops but I’ve never seen Thai men wearing anything else here.
It’s the easiest and most comfortable form of footwear and it’s good in both rain and shine with no socks to make you worry about foot fungus.
Of course, if you’re not careful you can stub your toe on a rock or let a centipede crawl over the top of your foot, both of which happened to me on this trek.
“Yikes!” I say, kicking to fling it off me.
“Are those poisonous?” Thalia asks.
“Little bit,” Meena says.
“Little bit?” I repeat, grasping my chest in mock horror.
“It’s okay! Mai pen lai!” Meena says. “Bite him too. He will remember.”
We all laugh, but really—a little poisonous? Not exactly reassuring. It’s not a cobra. But still.
The path down narrows to single file in places, the trees pressing in from both sides and roots crossing the trail at ankle height.
The light gets greener and dimmer the deeper we go, and there’s a coolness to the shade here that Phuket never offers even in the forest. The air smells different too—wetter, earthier, something almost mineral underneath.
I stop once because I think I hear gibbons, but it’s just the wind in the canopy.
Or maybe not. I decide not to look up in case I’m wrong.
At the base of the mountain we come to some rocks that open up into a small clearing.
Water threads down the face of the rock behind it, no more than a meter wide, pooling at the base in a dark green basin.
No tourists, no garbage. Just the water and the sound of it and the birds going about their business in the trees above us.
We find a big flat rock and sit in a circle. A bright yellow lizard is basking on the rock opposite us, doing its slow push-up display.
“Gingka!” Meena says, pointing.
“Cute!” Thalia says.
I take the little plastic joint canister from my pocket.
I’m glad Meena thought to bring water. I always get so cotton-mouthed when I smoke.
Lighting the end of one joint so that it burns evenly, I take a quick puff and then pass it to Thalia.
She accepts and takes two deep puffs, letting the smoke waft from her nostrils before sending it out through her mouth.
It dances on the wind and is carried away. Thalia sighs.
“Yeah,” she says. “I can really taste the lemons.”
Meena accepts the joint uncertainly. It’s the way she grips it that tells me she doesn’t have much experience with weed—holding it with three fingers, keeping the burning end away from her face like it might turn on her.
She inhales gently and lets it go fast, the way you do when you’ve only ever watched other people smoke cigarettes.
I take it back and take a puff and hold it in my lungs. Not correcting her, just showing through demonstration. I hold the smoke as long as I comfortably can and then let my head drift back, sending a cloud of it up into the canopy.
“I was so scared the first time I got high,” Thalia says. “It wasn’t the feeling itself. I was just afraid of getting caught.”
“How old were you?” I ask.
“Sixteen,” she says. “It’s not that easy to get in Australia. Not for girls in secondary school. We felt like such rebels.”
“I never even tried it before college,” I say. “Meena, when was your first time smoking ganja?”
“Actually, I just try last year the first time in Phuket,” Meena says. “Before the law change ganja is not interesting for me. But when I see now the law is different my thinking changing.”
“Was your first time enjoyable?” Thalia asks.
“Yes!” Meena says, laughing.
She pauses to take a hit as the joint passes back to her. She nurses it gently this time, lets the smoke out slowly. Getting the hang of it.
“I went to a cafe on the mountain,” she says. “Near your home, right?”
“Really?” I say.
“Yes, near Chiang Mai Coffee,” Meena says.
“Oh, Grandma Jazz!” I say.
“Grandma Jazz?” Thalia says. “That’s what it’s called?”
“Yes, that one,” Meena says. “I love it. The music is so good and can see the mountain also. The view is beautiful.”
“I love that place,” I say. “My favorite smoke spot on the island. We’ll have to go when we get back. It’s in Kamala.”
“Okay, awesome,” Thalia says, accepting the joint from me.
She takes a couple puffs and passes it to Meena, but she waves it away. I take it, have one more hit and then put the lit end out carefully against the side of a rock. It goes back in the little plastic canister and into my pocket.
We all sit for a while, listening to the forest sounds filtering through our senses just a little bit differently now that we’re stoned.
A bird calls somewhere above us, one I haven’t heard before.
Nobody moves. Thalia’s eyes look a little glassy, but that’s not what I focus on.
Her beauty, completely effortless and without any hint that she’s aware of it, is so enticing to me.
I just want to curl up next to her, bury my face in her hair, maybe kiss her behind the jaw.
“What?” she says, noticing me staring.
“Just admiring,” I say.
“You know, before every drug we worry because the government will make problem with us,” Meena says. “Antahrai. You remember what does it mean, Mike?”
“Dangerous,” I say.
“Yes,” Meena says, giving me a thumbs up.
“But people in your village don’t smoke weed, right?” Thalia says.
“No, never,” she says. “But when I am a kid, our village did not grow mango a lot. Only poppy.”
“Poppy?” Thalia asks. “You mean, to make heroin with?”
“Yes,” Meena says.
“You ever heard of the Golden Triangle?” I ask. “That’s where we are now. This whole region was part of the drug trade. Some parts still are, right?”
Meena nods.
“Not good,” she says. “We worry about the government come and burn everything. Now we grow fruit only. The money is not a lot but we can protect our culture.”
It’s hard to imagine Meena as a little girl playing alongside fields of poppies, but I suppose it must have seemed completely normal at the time. They are just flowers, after all. Beautiful ones, actually. That’s the thing about opium poppies—they’re spectacular. All the worst things tend to be.
“I did not think I would ever go to another place,” Meena says. “Now my family is all—“
She waves her hands in front of her to signal dispersal. Her brother here, her cousins somewhere else, herself in Phuket until now.
“Does the village feel smaller since you’ve come back?” I ask.
Meena tilts her head.
“Kind of,” she says. “I miss Phuket. But have to take care Grandma.”
It may just be because I’m stoned, but the statement hits me differently somehow.
I’m reminded of the fact that we have to leave tomorrow and I can’t bring Meena with me.
Why didn’t I start a relationship with her earlier when I had the perfect chance?
Of course, it had to happen this way. I wasn’t ready, and besides—if I was in a relationship with Meena first, would I have ever gotten the chance to be with Thalia?
How would discovering her swimming topless in my pool have played out differently if Meena had returned home with me?
And speaking of swimming, Thalia is now tugging off her harem pants. She’s not the most coordinated, pulling them down and then raising up her butt like she’s about to do a crab walk.
“Can I help?” I ask with a smile.
Rising to my feet, I offer her my hands and she raises herself up and slides her baggy pants down.
She takes off her overshirt but leaves on her top to swim.
She holds her hands out as she steps gingerly across rocks covered in green slime.
I start shedding clothes and folding them on the flat rock.
Meena seems to be in her head. Then I realize that I’ve just taken off my clothes in front of her and that she might have a reaction to that.
I keep my boxers on, of course. But still, this is more of me than she’s ever seen before.
“You wanna get in?” I ask Meena.
“Later, okay?”
I follow Thalia in and the water is warm and nowhere near clean enough to let my head dip under. We meet in the middle of the pool and kiss, but it’s deep enough that we have to keep kicking to stay afloat. We look at each other, private messages passing between us using just our eyes.
“Isn’t this awesome?” and “I love that we’re here together like this” and “I’m so stoned!”
When I look over again, I see Meena has tied up her hair and is taking off her clothes to get in.
It’s the first time I’m seeing this much of her.
Her body is amazing, small and lean but perfectly proportioned.
When she’s down to her underwear, she finds a flat spot on the edge and lowers herself in slowly, careful of the rocks.
I tread water, drifting toward her. I get close enough that I can stand on the rocks but she can’t quite.
It’s one of those moments where I register how much taller I am.
The average Thai woman is maybe five-four and Meena is probably a little shorter than that.
I’m not especially tall by American standards, but standing in front of her I feel like a giant.
She tilts her chin up to look at me, which doesn’t make the size difference any smaller.
We look at each other for a moment. I want to read her mood.
Weed can make you introspective, eager to stay in your own space and not interested in being touched.
Then again, it can have just the opposite effect.
Meena’s eyes are telling me she would like to be touched, so I move closer, wrap my arms around her and pull her to me.
Her breath is smoky and so is mine, but just holding her in the water, touching my lips to hers, feels so right. Thalia floats by and touches my back gently, as if to say, don’t forget I’m here too.
I turn my head and kiss her too. Then she comes around and puts a hand on Meena’s shoulder.
Then she leans over and kisses Meena just below the jawline.
None of us was expecting it, including Thalia, I think.
But it just happened. Meena giggles, not ready to kiss her back but not upset that she did it.
We float there, tangled up with each other. We’re a triangle, a unit. None of us is really sure how this dynamic is going to work, but this feels like the right way to explore it.
“I feel so good, you guys,” Thalia says.
“Me too,” I say.
“We could have shotgunned into each other’s mouths!” Thalia laments. “That would have been cool.”
“What?!” Meena asks, confused and slightly alarmed.
“She means we could have blown smoke in each other’s mouths,” I explain. “There’s no actual shotgun involved.”
We separate and float around. Meena swims toward the waterfall’s mouth. It’s just a trickle in the dry season, but she sticks her palms under the stream and lets the water slide down them. She holds them there with her eyes closed, perfectly still, the way she was against the elephant’s side.
I swim back and sun myself on a rock. If it weren’t for the mosquitoes buzzing around everywhere, it really would be paradise.