Sebastian:

I don't remember the first name of the girl in bed with me. I remember that her last name is Something-porn, Chattaporn or Kattaporn, something like that, and that unlike some of the other bar girls, she knows enough English to get the joke. She has small cute tits, thick black hair down to her waist, and golden tan skin of the type Upper East Side girls spend hundreds at tanning beds to achieve. She wants to marry me, like all the other girls I've fucked here. I'm the jackpot by their standards: a rich American meal ticket who's also young, good-looking, and good in bed. This one actually took me home to meet her mother for dinner. We chatted over home-cooked Thai food that wasn't as good as the stuff in the restaurants, the mother didn't speak a word of English but the daughter translated: all compliments and questions about America, of course. I played with her pussy under the table, and the mother saw but never said a word about it. She must really want her daughter set up. In my mind, I played with the idea of a threesome. The mother was pretty hot herself, looked like Mei-Le from back home...Kathryn acted like that woman was her personal property, threatened to cut my balls off if I ever came near her, and I pretty much did give up on chasing her pussy in favor of chasing Kathryn's so the thought of ravaging her look-alike has, shall we say, a certain appeal. If Kathryn was there at that moment she'd ask sarcastically if I was aware that Thailand and Vietnam are two different countries? That's my girl, never fail to get an insult in. My mind drifted, so I didn't put my seduction plan for the mother into action that night. It doesn't matter; I already know she'll be ridiculously easy to get into bed.

A morning thunderstorm batters the bright green jungle foliage outside my hotel room's window, which suits me fine, as I've always preferred rain to sunshine. The girl shifts in her sleep. I wonder if she'd consider this scene romantic. I'd like to think she wouldn't, that she's someone with more brains than that, merely a gold-digger rather than a sentimental moron. Truth is, I'm bored with her, bored with this whole fucking country. What I really want is for Edward to call me and say, "You're missing too much schoolwork, time to come home already." That's weakness. No, Kathryn would say that's weakness. Annette would say it's normal. Then again, this is the girl who wrote in Seventeen that she fantasized about her father looking at her with pride as he walked her down the aisle knowing she was still a virgin, a sentiment I still find unutterably creepy.

In my mind I picture her broken up still, red-eyed and haunted, completely unable to get over my death. My more cynical side tells me she's probably turned into a complete slut. In the end I call Blaine to get the truth, and find that:

1) Annette, showing an initiative my old self would've applauded, used the journal I gave her to utterly wreck Kathryn's reputation. She's since become a top player in the school's social circle—not quite at the same level that Kathryn was, but close. She's refused to date anyone, though, claiming she's too heartbroken to get close to any guy for a while. Blaine calls it "playing the tragic heroine." Back in the old days, I would've automatically thought the same thing. Now I wonder.

2) Kathryn, after an obligatory stay in rehab, got sent to a boarding school in Switzerland and apparently is doing quite well there. She has a new collection of suck-up friends, and is dating another insufferable asshole. I ask Blaine if she's still doing coke. "What do you think?" he says, and snorts.

I know I'll have to go back. This place is full of loser guys who can't get a woman unless they pay, but think they're the king of everything over here just because they're surrounded by whores. I can get women for free, of course, but I'm at risk of becoming like them in other ways: laziness, lack of intellectual interest, complacent sense of entitlement. And Annette needs me. I can't imagine being happy anywhere at this moment, but at least I can give happiness to her. She can help me become the man I want to be, which I can only conceive of right now as being the polar opposite to the "falangs" I see all around me at the bars and beaches. Before I leave, thinking of Annette, I try to do a nice thing for the last of my Thai girls. I give her twice the normal sex fee and tell her:

"I'm not going to marry you. I was never going to marry you. None of the other foreign guys who come here looking for Asian ass are going to marry you either, although they might promise you that to lead you on until they find somebody younger and lower priced. If you want marriage you're better off going for a Thai guy, although from what I've heard they're a bunch of jerks too, so actually you're better off not going for marriage at all. Nobody here is going to rescue you, they'll all just do like I did and feed you line after line of BS."

"BS?"

"Bullshit. It means lies."

"Ah."

"If you want to support your mother long term, save up whatever money you make at the bars and use it on a college education. Unless you want to be fucking old assholes until you age out of the business, which would be at, let's say, thirty-five if you're lucky."

"You done?"

"Yeah."

"OK. I think you good person. I think you say this because you good person, you want me do OK. But words no good. You want help me, give me money for college. No give me words. Words is, how you say, bullshit. You want help me and mother, give money for me and mother. OK?"

The entire time she's delivering this angry speech, she keeps her face fixed in that famous Thai smile.

I give her my own famous grin and another large tip. She'll do fine.

Back home, the cold hits me like a knockout punch. An unseasonably cool summer has turned into a fall that feels like winter minus the snow. My ribs hurt. I stagger home and shut my townhouse door with relief against the wind. Then I go upstairs, where Annette is waiting. She sits on my bed but refuses to let me touch her.

"How could you do this? We were all so worried about you."

"Who's 'we'? I know you were worried, but the rest of them..."

"That's not fair. Practically the entire school turned up at your funeral. You really are loved, Sebastian, and you don't even appreciate it, it's like you just spit in the faces of the people who care about you."

"I know I've wronged you, and believe me, I'll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. You'll see that I'm very good at apologizing." I reach around to play with her tits, but she just pushes me off. "Annette, look at me. Do you believe that I love you?" She nods. "Well, okay then."

"After this, I don't even know if I want to be with you anymore."

"You don't mean that."

"You're right, I don't." Her voice is bitter, and she seems to curl up even farther into herself. "Do you realize how fucked I am because of you? I'd probably want to be with you even you were, I don't know, a serial killer or something. You really are the best, Sebastian, congratulations."

She used to make funny faces, tickle me out of nowhere, whatever it took to make me laugh. She used to pity me for being so serious. Now it's my turn to be the lighthearted one, to snap her out of her self-pity. "No, you're the best," I tell her. "I heard about that production you did at the funeral. I know you're not the kind of person to do those things just for fun, but when you want to be bad, you're brilliant at it. Enough to impress even a jaded old soul like me."

She blushes, just like I wanted her to. "I just hope Kathryn's learned something from the experience. Rumor is she went to rehab, so maybe they were able to help her. Maybe now she's come to understand that you can't just treat people like they're disposable and get away with it." She sighs. "Well, except for you. You always get away with it."

"I didn't get away. I came back. For you, angel."

I lift her chin up to mine, and give her a deep kiss. This time, she doesn't resist at all. I'm about to start turning the kiss into something more when a thought occurs to me.

"You know, Kathryn isn't going to just let this be. Sooner or later, she'll want to come back and take her revenge." I find myself getting hard at the thought. Picturing Annette curled up in fetal position and soaked in tears because of Kathryn's machinations, Kathryn finishing her off with a few choice quips then stepping over to me to seal the deal, because sex for her is never sweeter than when it's over a fallen enemy's corpse. I'm disgusted with myself. Luckily Annette doesn't see anything, the only thing she notices is my protective gaze and the tender way I stroke her hair.

"Don't worry," she says. "I'm not afraid of her."

She doesn't know what she's talking about. "Be careful, though, okay?"

"It's sweet that you care so much about me." She smiles and pulls me in to finish what we started. I'm a bit rougher with her than usual that night, and though she doesn't love it, she doesn't complain either, just takes it like a sweet little martyred saint. In the morning, she tells me:

"I'm not mad at you anymore for disappearing the way you did. You've been going through a lot, and I get that. But I really do want to know, why did you do it?"

Because I didn't have a clue anymore who I was, and still don't. Because death didn't really seem like something to fight against. Because she left the room without a single word of insult or innuendo, without even one dirty glance, and didn't come back to visit at all after the obligatory first time.

"I don't know," I tell her. "I really don't know. I'm sorry."