At night in my dream I see a white hospital room. I had seen it many times before. It was a recurring nightmare: I was lying on a bed with a fever. In the darkness under the ceiling there is a white ball that looks like a pale moon. I want to get up, go to the bedside table at my feet, take a decanter and pour water. But I can’t get up. All I can do is bite my parched lips, hoping for blood or a little saliva. I’m terribly thirsty. I fall asleep, and when I wake up in the morning, I would see a glass of water on the headboard, and I know it has always been there, all night long, while I was thirsty.

When I woke up in my room in the morning, Irene was gone.

Maybe it was for the best, I thought; otherwise she would have started flirting with me again – I know these women’s tricks very well! Before you know it, you’re tied up hand and foot.Behind the wall, the British hurriedly packed up and left the “Sands”.

I took a shower and went for a walk. The beach was fresher after the night storm. The leaves and petals of the hibiscus glistened with pearls – the waking sun had not yet dried them, and the air was full of the sweet scent of flowers. It smelled like the roses in my grandmother’s garden at dawn.

Birds whistled in the bushes. The sea was cool. Bare footprints stretched along the surf line, which meant that the lovingly French neighbor had been on the beach – he had recently taken up jogging, apparently to sublimate his libido. Afraid of getting his sneakers dirty, the Frenchman usually carried them in his hands. I don’t understand what prevent him from leaving his shoes at home.

A trio of old men appeared – Angry Thai, Strict and Laughing. Angry looked like an albatross frowning in the rain, Strict never smiled, and the third, Laughing, the oldest of them, always walked with a stick. A woolen scarf was tied around his waist, but despite his lameness and sciatica, he enjoyed life like a child.

The old men were replaced by “treasure seekers”. They were not interested in shells, they were looking for gold. They’re always digging in the sand like moles. In fact, after the storm, the beach was littered not with treasure, but with all sorts of garbage – rotten coconuts, unpaired slippers, and scraps of fishing nets – so I used to call the treasure seekers trash seekers.

But maybe some of them were lucky. Once I overheard one of club’s visitors, a bald-headed bandit, complaining to another that he had lost gold the first morning he dived into the sea with a hangover – his finger-thick chest chain had been washed away by the wave.

During the day, peddlers in broad-brimmed hats and baggy shirts roamed the beaches.

Their dark faces were wrapped in cloth, and they wore knitted gloves on their hands to protect them from the sun. Each man carried a stick with two plywood boxes over his shoulder. One was full of small watermelons, boiled corn, pineapples, and mangoes, and the other contained the rinds the vendors peeled off the fruit for the lazy farangs.

An ice cream vendor waddled past the tourists, dragging his load across the sand.

“Hati-mati-i,” he sang sadly, which apparently meant “ice cream”.

On his chest hung whistles, figurines of monkeys and cranes, skillfully carved from copra.

As an old journalist’s habit, I sometimes bought newspapers from peddlers, where the most interesting ones were criminal chronicles. For example, an article about a German couple who decided to ride an elephant. After a few steps the elephant slipped, the tourists rolled down head over heels, and the fat burgher crushed his wife to death with his carcass.

The police did not prosecute the poor animal – it was not its fault that it stumbled, in general it was not the elephant that flattened Frau…

Another note was about an Australian man who was riding his motorbike home from a Full Moon party. He stopped at a supermarket along the way, bought a beer and rode tipsy back to his hotel. But he didn’t make it – he crashed into a lamppost and blew half of his scull off.

“The victim was clutching an unopened can of beer in his left hand,” the reporter wrote. And then, with manic meticulousness, he listed the things the police found in the pockets and bag of the corpse: documents, some cash, a sandwich, a dozen chicken eggs, which the chronicler noted with surprise, were not damaged in the accident.

When I opened the latest issue, the first thing I did was find my favorite column.

“Amateur photographer blown up by landmine” read the big headline. It was further reported that the young man, who had rented a bungalow on Samchang went on a self-guided excursion to a neighboring country where the recent military operations had taken place, in search of rare footage. Ignoring the barbed wire fences with warning signs, he entered the uncleared area of an ancient temple, where he died.

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“Isn’t that our Pole?” I had a thought.

That night, as we were cleaning up and getting the club ready to open, I showed Randy the paper. The bearded man ran his eyes over the article and nodded in satisfaction:

“He wanted fame, he got it. What’s wrong?”

So I was right, this is the same photographer who pulled the ticket!

“Do you think he meant that kind of fame?” I asked Randy.

“Dude, how am I supposed to know what he meant? Didn’t he dream of being in the papers and on TV? He was even willing to give his life for it, remember? His got his wish. What’s the problem?”

“He’ll be forgotten in a week!”

“Of course he will, but today he’s a star, right?”

“Randy, don’t you feel sorry for him?”

“Dude, I feel sorry for all the time I wasted on him. I’ve been looking for the Golden Ticket for years, but every time I find someone I can use, some dunce comes along and ruins it. I’m tired of these ragamuffins and their endless narcissistic chatter about themselves. They could take their prize and walk away quietly, but no, they want to talk. They are willing to talk for hours about their precious personality, and they don’t care if I listen or not. You won’t believe this, but not one of them has ever asked me my name or who I am. And I’m supposed to feel sorry for these narcissists? You saw me trying to get rid of that annoying youngster, but you have no idea how many of them there were!”

“And they all wanted fame?” “Not all of them. One lady liked living on the Island so much that she wished she’d never have to go home. A week later, a coconut fell on her head. She had no family, so the urn with her ashes never left the Island. Another woman was upset with her neighbors for playing loud music at night. Instead of moving out, she wished they would die and stop disturbing her sleep.

“So what happened?” I was curious.

“Nothing unusual – a fire; the wiring in the bungalow short-circuited during the night, and the music lovers were burned alive, but the fire spread to the neighboring house… So now it’s very quite where the lady sleeps forever. Another guy wanted to make a quick buck for his family. Well, the widow and kids got a big insurance payout, because the applicant drowned or got eaten by sharks, I can’t remember.”

“Are you saying that every wish is doomed to failure?”

“Of course not. If you can do it yourself, but instead you want others to do all the work for you, then I’m sorry…

“I see,” I sighed, although it was strange to hear it from a guy who had no objection to profiting at the expense of others. But I didn’t dare say it out loud, I just asked:

“Will you take me hunting again?”

“Sure, no problem. By the way, what was that mess at the “Sands” last night?”

“How do you know that?” I asked suspiciously.

“It’s my job,” the bearded man grinned.

I told him about Hans and the British couple. Randy listened attentively and casually asked me where the troublemaker had gone, if I’d seen him again. I answered that I hadn’t and decided to ask him about Irene instead.

“Did you like the girl?” Randy patted me on the shoulder. “I know, dude. I’d like to have some fun with her myself, but she won’t let me. And she won’t let you either. So forget about her.”

“Why?” His words hurt me. “This girl doesn’t look like a virgin.”

“Did I say she’s a virgin?” The bearded man chuckled. “She’s the hottest chick here, but we can’t deal with her. Irene is only interested in the living, you know? So you don’t stand a chance, dude. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“Listen,” I hesitated. “How can dead people like you and me do that? You know what I mean.”

“Pills,” Randy replied without blinking. “Or Butea, a local tonic herb. We just have to get started, and then the mediator will adjust and pump those bitches dry. The key is not to miss, not to stick your dick in a dummy like you, otherwise you’ll lose. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to make love on credit.”

So that’s why the local hookers shied away from me! Randy’s girls, as dead as I was, had nothing to take from me. I wasn’t attracted to them either. But Sarah? I was attracted to her. Although it was only a fantasies, my body worked perfectly. And I was attracted to Irene as well, though I’m embarrassed to admit it. Something was obviously wrong.

“Randy, tell me, if Irene is a dummy, why were you hitting on her?”

“Dude,” the bearded man threw the rag on the counter. “When have I ever said that?”

“But she’s one of us, right?”

“So what? Irene is special. Not only can she take someone else’s energy, but she can also share it with others.”

“What does that mean?”

“Get her into bed, and you’ll find out.” Randy chuckled again. “But that won’t work, dude. What can you give her? The boy is poor as a church mouse. I’m sorry, but she doesn’t even look at men like that.”

Oh, really? I wanted to tell him that she stayed at my place last night. Yes, we didn’t make love, but it would be cool to see his surprised face. But I didn’t. What if Irene was just playing with me?

I looked at my watch, it was time to open. Just in case, I asked:

“Do you know where I can find her?”

“I have no idea,” Randy shrugged. “This pussycat walks all by herself.”

Of course he was lying. He knew everything.

To be continued