Elizabeth Lerman’s “Railay: Part Two”

“Verdict?” Lena asked when she heard Sam hit the mattress.

“Very sleepable,” Sam confirmed, “better than I expected, actually. What’s the bathroom deal?”

Lena reported her findings, assuring Sam that there was a toilet and shower head. 

“It’s a pail flush,” Lena clarified, showing Sam how to scoop the water from an adjacent bucket and pour it rapidly into the toilet, efficiently draining the bowl. 

“And what do we do when…?” Sam trailed off.

“Pour faster,” she said, handing Sam the scoop and leaving her the small tin roofed room.

“Should we find the beach?” Sam called from the bathroom as Lena dug through her bag, searching for something fresh to wear. She smelled like plane and people and sweat that wasn’t hers. She pulled her wrinkled shirt up over her head and slipped out of the denim shorts she had hastily put on in the airport bathroom upon arrival.

“Yeah, you want your suit?” Lena asked, locating Sam’s red bikini from her bag. 

“Toss it in,” Sam responded, opening the door with her foot as she stuck a toothbrush in her mouth. 

“We didn’t get water yet,” Lena said, looking at the toothbrush in Sam’s mouth. Her friend shot her a confused look. 

“Are you brushing your teeth with tap water?” Sam’s mouth opened and her eyes went wide.

“Oh shit.”

“Exactly,” Lena said, laughing at her friend’s furiously furrowed brows.

“Is it really bad?” Sam asked, panic washing over her. Lena thought of the time she had accidentally brushed her teeth with tap water from her father’s Bangkok apartment. She had been on the bathroom floor for three days after, stuck on a steady diet of saltines and ginger ale.

“It’ll be fine,” Lena said, not sure if she was lying. “Just use bottled water from now on. We‘ll get some big ones at check in. Here,” she tossed Sam her suit and slipped on her own before stepping out onto the hut’s small porch. Her beer still sat on the plastic table that held a glass ashtray in its center. Lena stared blankly for a moment, contemplating another cigarette. After another breath of the thick summer air she darted back inside to grab her pack. She could tell herself not to worry, that she was allowed to indulge on vacation, but really Lena smoked with the same urgent tendency back home. She could justify her vices anywhere she went and though she hoped she would grow out of it, the years kept passing and her justifications did not. In Los Angeles she had liked to smoke in her car, in traffic to ease the pain of stillness, on the empty suburban streets of Griffith Park, and especially on the Pacific Coast Highway, as she flew up towards Malibu to swim in quiet waters, always less crowded than the beaches of Venice or Santa Monica. She would drive with such eagerness, towards the cliff-ridden stretch of sands, where she would sit and smoke some more, dripping from the ocean and tasting the saltwater on her lips mix with the nicotine in her throat. In college, Lena had like to torture herself during the Vermont winters by seeing how long her body could stand the cold, sitting out on the roof with her pack of Camel Blues and a bottle of red wine, watching her breath dance with the smoke in the pitch black bliss of a freezing night. She would stay up there until the air swayed around her and her head went heavy, wired with wind and wine. Lena had a habit of slipping, very subtly, into states of excess.

She climbed into the hammock and lit her cigarette. Her beer bottle left small, steady drops of condensation on the table and Lena fingered the pool of liquid at its base before dragging the water against the back of her neck, letting the stream saunter down her sweltering spine. She smiled at a young couple who bobbed down the path past her cabin. They waved at her as they talked quickly to one another in a language Lena guessed was Swedish or Swiss. There was a Nordic ring to their voices, a sing-songy sound that Lena liked very much. Both women were tanned and blonde, their muscular bodies accentuated by barely there bikinis, the type of suit Lena did not dare wear herself for fear of over exposing. 

As if on cue, Sam sprung from the doorway in the smallest bikini Lena had ever seen.

“Does my ass show too much in this?” She asked, her earnest expression making Lena laugh, because she could see so much of her friend’s rear that the question should have been a joke. 

“Isn’t that the point of bottoms like those?” Lena asked, giving Sam’s exposed cheek a light slap. Sam leapt away from her, guarding herself against the railing, tugging at the lack of fabric on her body with notable worry. 

“You’re fine,” Lena assured her, “I just saw two women wearing the same thing, and theirs were white.” She raised her eyebrows, emphasizing her point.

 “Oh, how daring!” Sam explained, exaggerating her shock. 

“Ready to go?” Lena asked, clumsily removing herself from the hammock’s clutches. 

“Sunscreen, then we’re good to go.” Lena took the bottle Sam held out and silently thanked her friend for enforcing the rule. Left to her own devices, Lena usually tended to ignore the laws of nature and risk the brutal burn. She breathed in the scent as she rubbed the sun block into Sam’s back, the smell settling into her senses and making her feel light and wonderfully at ease. 

“I love this smell,” the girls said, their words landing together in a perfect unison that sent their smiles soaring. 

- Elizabeth Lerman