20. #2
The next phase is to convince Meena to abandon her sick grandmother and come away to play in the sun with me so that I won’t be lonely in paradise with only one girlfriend.
Okay, it’s not actually that bad. But I don’t feel great about it.
She’s not living up north in her home village by choice.
She’s part of a support system with people she cares about relying on her.
But while grandma needs help, she isn’t an invalid.
She can’t function on her own forever, but someone else can surely fill in for a few days.
That’s what I’m hoping at least when I raise the subject with Meena.
I ply her with a description of a resort on the beach, carefree days hanging out, maybe going parasailing.
When she asks where we’ll stay, I realize I have no idea and get online to check hotels.
There’s one on Kata Noi beach not far from here called Mom Tri Villa Royale.
It’s boutique, very tony and with Thai interior designs that blend.
The designer is even the descendant of Thai royalty, I learn from Wikipedia.
Also, his name is Mom Tri, he’s not a mom named Tri.
The resort was his summer home and he designed the entire resort personally.
Thai antiques alongside contemporary landscape paintings, wood ceilings and floors, and bamboo screens: they’re all his.
I send Meena pictures and she jumps at the chance.
Her neighbor can check in on grandma. I hunt around for a deal on a direct flight from Chiang Rai and book a villa for two nights.
My budget is really taking a beating. It was easier to keep costs low when I was single, but what are you gonna do?
Better hope my readers keep turning pages.
My lifestyle is in their hands. God bless every one of them. They’re paragons of men.
I’m genuinely excited in a way I haven’t been since I arrived here.
The older you get, the fewer things fill you with that sense of childlike anticipation.
But for the rest of the week, my thoughts are dominated by the three of us at that resort—both of them on the sand, by the sea, wearing bikinis, wearing nothing but a towel on the massage table, wearing not even a towel as my hands move all over their bodies.
I’m beating off a lot in anticipation. That’s the long and short of it.
Finally, the big day arrives. I worked it out so that both of them land on the same day, their planes arriving only two hours apart. I drive up to Phuket International and wait in the arrivals hall next to kiosks advertising taxi services and currency exchanges, the same airport energy everywhere.
Thalia arrives wearing her big travel bag on her back.
In place of the harem pants, she’s got on a cute little pair of shorts in the same Thai elephant design with a halter top to match.
She rushes over, swaying with the weight of her bag, and jumps into my arms. I grab her around the waist and lift her up.
She wraps her legs around me and kisses me.
The guy at the currency exchange gives me a look, silently judging our PDA before returning his attention to his keyboard.
“I’ve just been through the most hellish line!” she exclaims when I let her down. “The immigration queue was a disaster.”
“Yeah, they’ve been making improvements to the immigration process, so it’s slower than usual.”
“Aren’t improvements supposed to make it go faster?”
“Where do you think you’ve landed? Because this is Thailand.”
She laughs, we kiss.
“Welcome back.”
“Thank you.”
We’ve got a little more than two hours until Meena arrives, so we go to Sirinat National Park, maybe fifteen minutes away.
The park is famous for its beach where you can watch the planes rolling in overhead.
We sit in the sand and watch them come every few minutes, guessing the next airline: Emirates, Qantas, Air Asia, Singapore Airlines.
We eat from the gift Thalia brought back for Meena and me, macadamia nuts from Mackay, still in their brown almost perfectly spherical shells.
A laser has cut a line around each one so that when you twist a thin piece of metal inside it, the nut splits into two clean halves.
Just like cracking walnuts, although the mechanism is different.
The little metal openers come in the bag.
I guess they’re disposable, which seems like a waste.
But they’re also very satisfying to use, so I’m not complaining.
“Which one is Meena on?”
I take out my phone and read off the flight number, FD287. Thalia feeds it into an app and watches the plane move in real time on a map of the Andaman Sea.
“There she is!” she says, handing me the phone.
Ten minutes later, her plane passes over our heads and it’s time to go pick her up. Same setup, we meet her at the gate. Lots of hugs and kisses. I catch the eye of the currency exchange man, who is probably wondering if I’m going to come back for a third helping of girlfriend.
“How’s grandma?” I ask.
“Okay,” Meena says. “She miss you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! Talk about you a lot,” she says. “Want to learn English so she can speak with you again.”
“See that?” Thalia says. “You might end up with three girlfriends.”
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
“Hey, what happens, happens.”
“I’m just glad to spend two days with my two favourite ladies at a beautiful resort.”
“Dtun den mak!” Meena exclaims.
“What’s that mean?” Thalia asks.
“Actually the meaning is wake up dancing,” she says. “But also, excited!”
We can’t all fit on my motorbike, of course.
So I put the girls in a taxi and ride down to Kata Noi myself, taking the western coast road with its views of the Andaman opening up below the cliffline.
I arrive maybe ten minutes after they do and find them already waiting at the entrance, Meena examining the terracotta pathway that leads up through the gardens, Thalia looking at a large ceramic sculpture of a seated figure half-hidden in the bougainvillea.
The woman at the front desk seems genuinely pleased that we’ve arrived, as opposed to the practiced version of that expression you get at most places.
She walks us through the property herself: the main pool terrace overlooking the bay, the saltwater pool cut into the rocks lower down, the path that leads to the beach.
Mom Tri’s Kitchen is just up the stairs, she says.
Dinner is served on the terrace and there’s live piano from six.
She says this last detail and Meena’s eyes go wide.
Our suite is in the Beach Wing. Everything about it looks very expensive and is.
The door opens onto a teak-floored room with a king-sized bed.
There’s a six-panel painting above it that fills the whole wall.
The private balcony faces the sea, two rattan chairs angled toward it, a ceiling fan turning slowly overhead.
The bathroom has a freestanding tub and a shower with a window that looks into the garden. Even the toilet smells like lemongrass.
Thalia sits on the edge of the bed and bounces on it twice, testing.
“This is the best bed I’ve ever been in,” she announces.
“You said that about mine,” I say.
“Yours smells better,” she says. “This one is objectively superior from a spring standpoint.”
Meena has gone straight to the balcony and is standing at the railing looking out at the bay. I come up beside her. Kata Noi stretches below us, a clean white crescent, the water going from pale green at the shore to deep blue out toward the headland.
“Beautiful,” she says, quietly.
“Yeah.”
She turns and looks at me, and I can see in her face that this is everything that she’s been hoping for, a gesture she’s been dreaming about. I put my hand over hers on the railing.
We unpack, change into lighter clothes, and take the path down through the gardens toward the beach. The gardens are something. The trees has such deep roots that they’ve cracked the terracotta tiles that form the pathway in places.
Meena takes her sandals off and carries them.
Thalia links her arm through mine on the left and Meena falls in on my right, close enough that her shoulder presses against my arm as we walk.
We’re taking the path through the upper garden, the one that passes the doors of the other Beach Wing suites, when I hear voices ahead of us.
Two women coming the other way, heading toward the beach path we just came up.
One is tall, wearing a loose white linen shirt over a dark swimsuit, her brown hair down.
She’s laughing at something the other one just said.
The other is smaller, in a deep green sundress, dark glasses pushed up on her head, gesturing with both hands.
I stop walking.
The path is narrow. There are maybe fifteen feet between us. The frangipani is dropping petals on the terracotta. Somewhere above us, the piano has started up in Mom Tri’s Kitchen, playing something slow and unhurried, the notes drifting down through the warm evening air.
Nobody says anything.
Thalia’s hand tightens on my arm. She doesn’t know who they are. But she can read my expression and she’s about to find out what it means.
Olavia has just crashed the party.