Bliss (6 page)

“We're so proud of you,” trilled her mom. “If Stacy were here, she'd be so proud of you, too.”

“Don't talk about her, Jesus,” she snapped.

Dad frowned, as he always did when Mom brought up Stacy. “We have something for you,” he said, thankfully changing the subject.

He presented her with an envelope. She tore it open, and pulled out a flight itinerary, a hotel reservation voucher, and $3,000 in cash. She scanned the paperwork, struggling to read with bloodshot eyes. The destination seemed to be spelled Phuket. “You're sending me to fuck it?” she asked.

“It's pronounced poo-ket,” said her dad, annoyingly jovial. “Thailand's beach haven. The Phi Phi Islands are supposed to be the most beautiful spot in the world.”

“The pee pee islands in fuck it? Thank you, guys, soso sososo much.”

Leandra didn't mean to sound ungrateful, but her head was throbbing and, frankly, it was just the way she related to her parents. Her parents spoiled their only surviving child way past rotten. Her salesman father had always encouraged her inate desire for more. When she haggled for another cookie, he said, “That's my girl!” At twenty-one, Leandra's greediness wasn't as adorable as it used to be (if it ever was), but it was her default setting.

She'd hinted heavily about her graduation gift, dropping the phrase “exotic and expensive” many times. Her parents had done well. She would have preferred Tokyo, but whatever, Thailand was close enough. Fighting her hangover, Leandra got up—slowly—and hugged each of her parents. Her mom cried. Her dad kept a stiff upper lip, and said, “My baby is leaving the nest.”

Leandra itched to fly. Going to college in Toronto wasn't far enough. She loved her parents, really. But she bore the heavy weight of their neediness and overprotectiveness. It was understandable, considering. Leandra empathized, but she had to break free of it all and start over somewhere far away.

“When do I leave?” she asked.

“Tomorrow night!” said her mom. “First, you fly to New York, then Dubai, then Phuket!”

Mom was overselling it to mask whatever real emotions she was dealing with about losing another daughter, this one to wanderlust. Leandra played along, and spent the rest of the dinner talking excitedly about her grand adventure. Her real life would begin the minute she boarded the plane.

*   *   *

Leandra sat in a window seat in coach for the Emirates flight from New York to Dubai. She was wedged in, trapped next to a Middle Eastern man who smelled like BO. His hefty wife didn't speak a word, but he wouldn't shut up. From takeoff until now, several hours into the thirteen-hour flight, he'd babbled about his job in tech and how he knew a guy in Mumbai who ran a Bollywood movie studio. “You're much prettier than any of those girls,” he said. “If you give me your number, I can introduce you to my friend. You can live with me in Mumbai while you become a star.”

Leandra iced him, but he refused to take the hint. Even if he really did know a guy in Bollywood (doubtful), she would never want to do that. She knew from watching Sophia that acting was hard work. Leandra had no intention of working at all, even a glamorous job. “Please move your face,” she said when he leaned too close. “Your breath is rancid.”

She took two Ambien and passed out. When she woke up, Leandra crawled over her seatmates to go to the bathroom. The man was now asleep, thank god. His wife was awake, and shot daggers at her. She was used to being despised by wives and girlfriends, and didn't take it personally.

In leggings, a blouse from Anthropologie (so ethnic!), and Silence + Noise heels, Leandra walked forward up the aisle to stretch her legs, hoping to sneak a peek at the legendary first-class cabins on the double-decker Airbus's top level. At the very front of the plane, she found a staircase leading up. It was blocked off with a red velvet rope and guarded by two stewardesses in red pillbox hats. For a woman like Leandra, velvet ropes were optional.

“What's up there?” she asked.

One of the stewardesses said, “First-class cabins and lounge.”

She peered up the stairs and saw a circular bar with bottles arranged on mirrored shelves. “Can I go up there, just for one drink?”

“Only flight crew and first-class passengers.”

“Just a quick look?”

A man in a suit approached. “Is there a problem?”

The stewardess said, “The young lady is returning to her seat.”

“What's the big deal?” asked Leandra. “I'm just curious.”

The flight attendant leaned closer to say, “If you don't leave this area now, the air marshal behind you is going to arrest you.” The edge in her voice made Leandra believe it. Okay, no need to start an international incident. She used one of the economy-class bathrooms and went right back to her seat. If she got in trouble, it might delay her adventure, so best to stay out of it.

The plane landed a few hours later. At the arrival gate, Leandra noticed a large family group exit the plane. The women wore black burkas, covered head to toe. The kids, including the girls, wore Western clothes. They ran around the women standing in a tight circle. One man with a white headpiece, like a sheet, on his head seemed to be in charge. He spoke in Arabic to two other men in black suits and earpieces (bodyguards?). She took them for a sheik and his multiple wives, and their many offspring. It was so foreign, so exotic; she gawked. Couldn't help it. When the bodyguards noticed her and glared suspiciously, she scurried off to find her connecting flight to Thailand.

The family must have been in first class. She would have noticed them in coach. Leandra did the math. The Middle Eastern man told her that first-class suites—with full-size beds, hot showers, unlimited delicacies—from New York to Dubai cost $20,000 each. For a family of ten, one flight would run $200,000. Why didn't the sheik just buy his own plane? Maybe his was broken? No matter. Dude was insanely wealthy. It was hard not to be awed by that. Vast riches and mysterious men were what she'd come for. One day in the not too distant future, she would find herself in an Emirates first-class cabin, and take a hot shower at 30,000 feet. That fantasy kept her smiling for the last leg of her twenty-four-hour journey to Phuket, including a sickening forty-five-minute taxi ride from the airport along the construction-clogged one-lane “highway” to her hotel on Karon Beach.

“This can't be it,” she said when she arrived at the street-side entrance to Sawasdee House. The website photos sparkled like a jewel, but in reality, the hotel resembled a crumbling Holiday Inn tightly sandwiched between a yoga studio and a pharmacy. Leandra paid the driver in baht the exact amount on the meter. She'd read that Thai people didn't believe in tipping.

Leandra lugged her own bags into the small lobby, and had to wait a few minutes before a woman came to the desk to check her in. The whole process—filling out forms, giving her credit card—was a letdown. Where was the champagne cocktail, Thai mini-massage, the bowing-and-scraping she expected? Her room, on the first floor facing the street, was a disappointment, too, but she wasn't in Fuck It to sit in a moldy room. Leandra put on her skimpiest bikini, walked through the lobby and a shabby dining room, and out the hotel's back glass doors to the beach.

Karon Beach was glorious. Pink sand, teal blue water, sexy Asian surfers riding waves at the crest of the horseshoe shoreline. Sawasdee House might have a trashy façade, but it was right on the beach. She stationed herself on a lounge, ordered a Singha from a passing waiter, and let the Thai sunshine soak into her skin. It was divine. Heaven. Rapture.

Except.

It was kind of boring just lying there, waiting for her fabulous life to begin. She looked up and down the horizon, and caught the eye of a woman trolling the beach selling sarongs out of a plastic bag. “No!” she had to repeat five times before the woman stopped pestering her.

“They're rather persistent, aren't they?” asked a stranger on a nearby lounge in a posh English accent.

Leandra smiled at her. It was hard to guess her age with her hat and sunglasses. Asian women looked like they were twenty-five until age seventy-five, and then they looked one thousand. She was exceptional with a kitten-shaped face, a preciously pointy chin, impossibly thin with golden skin and red lips. A Chanel tote bag (that probably cost $5,000) was on the sand at her feet.

“Do I look like I want to buy a crappy sarong?” Leandra asked. The woman laughed and smiled.

“I'm Sari,” she said. “Just get here?”

“Leandra. Yeah, I got in an hour ago. Isn't it obvious? I'm so pale!” But she wasn't. She'd prepped for the trip with a brown-sugar body scrub and spray tan.

“American?” asked Sari.

Why did everyone assume she was American? “I'm Canadian, actually. You sound Australian.”

“I'm from Singapore,” she said.

Singapore! A dot of an island off the coast of Malaysia, the epicenter of crazy rich Asians, where the streets were paved with gold and diamonds dripped from trees, or so she'd heard. “I've always wanted to go there,” said Leandra. “I hear it's incredible, like the Garden of Eden.”

Sari nodded. “It's just home to me.”

“Oh, yeah, same for me with Ontario. People say it's one of the most stunning places in the world, but I fail to see the appeal.”

“First time in Thailand?” she asked.

“First time in Asia,” said Leandra. “It's incredible, obviously, and so spiritual. I counted like five hundred Buddhas just in the airport.”

“Did you notice the Big Buddha?” Sari pointed down the beach to a mountain behind them. At the top sat a gigantic statue of Buddha in lotus position. It had to be a hundred feet tall.

“How did I miss that?” she asked, dumbfounded. She tried to imagine a colossal statue of Jesus, say, looming over Niagara Falls. Would never happen. Overt religiousness wasn't the Canadian way.

“Are you staying at Sawasdee?” asked Leandra.

Sari looked taken aback, as if the very question were absurd. “No, my brother and I are at the Baray on Kata Beach, about a mile that way. We were walking along Karon and stopped for a drink here.”

“Your brother?”

“Here he comes,” said Sari.

Leandra followed her eyeline, and saw a man emerge from the ocean. No, not a man. A god. His short hair was black and wet around an angular face, high cheekbones, a strong chin, and light blue eyes. Rippling abs dotted with seawater, a V-shaped hairless chest, leg muscles bunching and relaxing with each step as he strode along the sand. Leandra felt tased by the sight.

Sari giggled. “I know. He's a freak of nature.”

“Sorry!” Had her awe been that obvious?

“No worries. He has that effect on women.”

He came to the lounge between Sari and Leandra and reached for his towel. As he dried himself, Leandra quickly assumed the position. Back slightly arched, one knee up, the other leg straight, toes pointed, an arm thrown over her head, the other playing with her bikini strap. She'd learned exactly how to hold her body to draw the male gaze.

Sari said, “Nick, this is Leandra from Canada. She just arrived in Phuket and it looks like she could use another beer.”

He smiled at her. “Welcome to Thailand,” he said, sounding like an Aussie god and looking like Sean O'pry. If he were rich, too, Leandra was madly in love.

Nick signaled the roving waiter and ordered drinks.

“How long have you been in Phuket?” Leandra asked.

“A few days,” said Nick. “We're here for a family wedding.”

Sari added, “Nick refused to stay at our cousin's private island. Too much family togetherness, isn't it?”

“You're sharing a room?” asked Leandra.

They laughed pretty hard at that. “It's a villa,” said Nick, his onyx eyes sparkling. “Like a little house.”

She got the feeling their digs were more like a little palace. Leandra smiled, laughed along, as if she knew exactly what they meant. “Of course. Because a sister and brother in the same room would be freaking weird.”

When the waiter came back with their drinks, Nick gave him a thousand-baht note, which was the equivalent of thirty dollars. He said, “Keep the change.” Leandra bit her lip. Maybe she should have tipped the cabdriver? Oh, well. What was she going to do now? Hunt him down over five baht?

Nick settled on the lounge between the women and closed his eyes. Sari lay back, too, giving Leandra the chance to study this dynamic duo. She decided that the secret to her happiness was to make them her new best friends—and, if possible, get them to invite her to stay with them at their spacious villa so she could get out of this dump. Her mom and dad meant well, but they couldn't comprehend Leandra's vision of “the good life.” Her mom would take one look at the peeling paint in the hotel lobby at Sawasdee and say, “Cozy!”

Leandra drank her beer and tried closing her eyes, too. But she was just too jacked up from sleeping on the plane and being in this splendid place with Sari and Nick. She decided to take a dip. She waded into the clear, warm ocean, and walked pretty far before the water reached her prominent hip bones. She thought,
This is the first hour of my real life. I've arrived.

Something big swum in the water near her, a dark shadow. Then Nick surfaced a few feet away. She splashed at him. “I thought you were a shark!”

He laughed. “I just wanted to tell you that we're going back to our villa now.”

Leandra glanced toward the beach. Sari waved, and went about packing her book and hat into her Chanel tote. Leandra pouted. She barely had a chance to get to know them and now they were leaving? Before she could subtly hint that she had no plans for later, Nick said, “We'd like to invite you to dinner … if you're not too jet-lagged.”

“I love dinner!” she blurted, way too eager.

Nick laughed. “I love dinner, too.” He gave her the details about how to find their hotel, and instructions to meet in the lobby at seven. Then Nick swam back to the beach, his crawl seamless and speedy as a dolphin. Sari waited for him on shore. When he reached her, she gave him a towel and waved again at Leandra. The most glamorous siblings she'd ever seen strolled down the beach, looking like a travel poster for paradise. Leandra watched them until they were too small to see, then she raced back to the beach and up to her room. Her plan: a shower, nap, and then blow away the Singaporeans with her wholesome white-girl sexiness. Honestly, she didn't care which one of them she ended up with—or both. A sibling threesome? How Asian
Game of Thrones
could she get?