TO LIVE AND DIE IN PATTAYA by Peter Nolan Smith

Pattaya isn't what it used to be in the 90s or 80s. The coconut plantations have been replaced by luxury villas. Interpol and the Thai Police hunt down fugitives and the Russians have taken over the hills, so three summers ago I moved north to Sri Racha with my son Fenway and his mom. The city was a quiet refuge from the madness of the Last Babylon, which was too quiet some nights, and one Friday night Fenway's mom suggested that I go visit old friends in Pattaya.

"I came here to be with you not them."

"I know, but farang have to be with farang sometime. Same Thai have to be with Thai." Thais understand the concept of fun or sanuk better than westerners.

"Are you sure?" Pattaya was filled with temptation.

"Sure you love me forever, no, but no one in Pattaya can love you same me." Mam knows my heart is hers and hers alone and swore that my longtime fidelity has nothing to do with a magic potion. "I not need magic to make you love me."

"You're right." I loved Mam for her and she loves me for me. No one else can handle either of our special madnesses, plus at my age I was too lazy to butterfly with a bargirl or go-go dancer.

"You want go out. Go out. Not get too drunk." Mam worried about my getting into an accident or a fight more than cheating on her.

"I'll only drink beer."

"No tequila. You have son. Not want him not have father."

"Okay, no tequila."

I called Jamie Parker and we arranged to meet at an old haunt.

I kissed Mam and my son good-night and caught a slow bus to Pattaya.

Forty minutes later I walked into Chez Michel on Soi Sahm. Jamie Parker was on his first beer. He had always been thin, but the new gauntness was worrying.

"I know what you're thinking, but I'm okay." The exiled New Yorker explained that he had gone on a six-month Ice binge with little Ort, the twenty-three year-old go-go dancer from the Paris A Go-Go. "It's all over. Ice, Ort, and not eating food."

He ate three courses; salad, steak, and dessert.

Afterward we walked to the Buffalo Bar for a nightcap at a slow pace.

Jamie was in a New York state of mind.

"Tomorrow will be nine years since 9/11. Remember everyone saying how it would change the world. Nothing's changed. Nothing at all."

He paused and a second later a woman's body hit the pavement with a soft thud. We looked up to see from where.

A second-story balcony.

A groan reverted our attention to the woman. Her fall hadn't been fatal. Jamie knelt down to help her.

"Pai ke ki."

She didn't want our help. Two women came out of the shadows. They regarded us as assailants, until recognizing the woman's face. She was no stranger. We called for help, as a crowd gathered around the woman. A pick-up appeared and two men loaded the suicide onto the back of the truck. They drove off to Banglamung Hospital and I overheard from an old lady that the jumper was one of the other woman’s lover. She had found out about her seeing someone else. Her leap to the street had been an act of love. I explained the story to Jamie outside the Buffalo Bar.

"If she had wanted to kill herself, she would have jumped from the roof."

"Have a little heart." People frequently jumped to their death in Pattaya; mostly jilted lovers and bankrupt farangs.

"She broke her arm. That’s all and you know what day today is?" Jamie dragged me to the bar.

"September 10th." I couldn't recall anything significant about the date.

"World Suicide Prevention Day." Jamie ordered two Chang beers. They were stronger than Heineken. "I read about it in the Bangkok Post. She was trying to kill herself on a day like that."

"Suicides aren’t interested in dates only a relief from their misery." Four year ago during my black period I had contemplated killing myself, although only with a gun, which I couldn't afford, and I rejected jumping as too messy.

"Then she should have picked another day. The terrorists from 9/11 did."

"9/10/2001 was rainy. Ceiling visibility in New York was a 1000 feet." No way they could have found the World Trade Towers in that slop.

"I know, but the real reason they didn't pick 9/10 was that it was World Suicide Prevention Day or maybe someone talked them out of it."

"You really think nineteen towelheads had any idea about what day it was." I had never heard of World Suicide Prevention day until Jamie mentioned it.

"Yeah, I do and your'e being a little anti-semitic with a statement like that. If you're going to drive a plane into a building then you want things right. Everything. They did it on 9/10 out of respect for what they were about to do. Suicide."

"You're crazy."

"Then you give me a good reason why they chose 9/11."

"It had nothing to do with 911 being the emergency telephone call letters for many countries." I sipped the beer from my glass. The ice made it nice and cold. I had actually researched the numbers once and said, "9 is the second cube and 11 symbolizes threat in numerology. Revelation 9:11 warns of destruction. George Bush Senior declared the creation of The New World Order on 9/11/2000. Eleven years later 9/11 and 9+1+1=11. September 11 is also the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11."

"Stop it before you go mad."

"Two tequilas." I signaled the bartender to make them doubles.

I had seen a man go insane on numbers before. He was trying to figure out how much a girl loved him by the times that she didn't kiss him. The answer came up zero.

Bix was found dead in a park at the northern tip of Manhattan. His fingernail had scratched arcane formulae in stone. My fascination with number came from studying Math in university. My Multivariable Calculus professor failed me in my sophomore year. He had done me a favor, but I still respected the power of numbers and said to Jamie, "Numbers are only numbers."

"So 9/11 is just a number."

"Nothing more." I wondered how many times 9/11 had been said since 9/11.

Billions of times a day. Those numbers added up to no good, especially since the Pentago construction began on September 11, 1941.

"But not if you consider GW Bush as the anti-Christ." I lifted my glass.

"And you do?" Jamie’s eyes rolled in his head like a broken slot machine. He was no fan of GW Bush, but he didn't believe in any devil other than himself.

"I don't believe in anything, other than my son, my wife, and beer."

We downed the tequilas.

"If you don't mind, I think I'll keep trying to kill myself with beer." I ordered two more Chang. "Is that all right with you?"

"It's not like we have a choice."

"Beer." We clinked glasses. "The only way to go."

On any day of the year.

RETURN TO NORMAL by Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after the collapse of the Trade Towers the westerly wind shifted and a southern breeze spread the funereal smoke across Lower Manhattan. The poisonous fumes smelled of a blazing cannibal BBQ.

Later that afternoon I caught a train north to Boston. My sister put me up in her basement. I watched the Red Sox on TV. My home team were too far out of first to gain a spot in the play-offs. My sister joined me and said, "Another year of the Babe Ruth Curse, but it looks like the Yankees might make the playoffs."

"Not many New Yorkers are talking about baseball these days."

"They will one day."

"I supposed life must go on."

"It always does," answered my sister and she went up to bed.

The Red Sox lost in the late innings.

Life did go on.

On the weekend my sister suggested a drive to Newport, Rhode Island. The yacht club was holding its annual boat show and her husband was thinking of purchasing a new boat.

"I'm not really into boats."

"I'll bring my bike and you can ride around Newport." My sister understood my mindset. We were family.

"That'd be nice." I hadn't been to Newport since the 1969 Jazz Festival. Led Zeppelin closed out the show. My older brother and I left during DAZED AND CONFUSED to beat the traffic. The bass line thundered for miles, as we drove away into the night.

That Saturday in 2001 was a tribute to a New England autumn. Clouds dotted the sky and the a cool breeze shunted summer south. The trees were changing colors. We dressed for the season.

My sister's husband sped to Newport in his three year-old Audi. Work at his law firm had resumed several days after the planes hit the Trade Towers. The cars on the highway drove 10-15 miles over the speed limit. The radio was playing Gloria Gaynor's DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY.

I sat in the back seat with my four year-old niece. Warah was talking about her doll. Its name was Shirley. I listened to every word, wishing my name was Shirley too. Anything to get the image of a burning people hurtling out of Windows of the World out of my brain.

We arrived in Newport around noon. The parking lots for the Boat Show was packed with gleaming Benzs, SUVs, and sports cars. I unloaded my brother-in-law's bike from the roof rack and my sister suggested a ride around the peninsula.

"We'll meet you back here around 4."

"It won't take him that long to bike around Newport."

My brother-in-law liked doing things fast. He was a Yale graduate.

"I'm in no hurry." I had finished BC without any honors. I took my time, plus these days rushing around seemed senseless.

"Uncle Bubba, wear a helmet." My niece was well-trained in safety measures.

"For you always." I tugged on the plastic brain basket and waved good-bye.

I looked over my shoulder passing Brenton Cove. The Jamestown Bridge gleamed in the sunlight. The long span had replaced the old ferry.

I circled stone walls of Fort Adams. Several families picnicked on the lawn. The aroma of hot dogs wafted through the park. People were having fun.

Farther along I passed the Country Club. Men and women stood on the fairways dressed in colorful clothing. A solid whack signaled a good drive for an older man. The ball flew through the air to land on the green. The golfer wore a broad smile, as he handed his iron to the caddie.

Upon reaching Ocean Avenue I biked east along the rocky shore and wheeled into Goose Neck Cove. The shimmering white sands of Gooseberry Beach were empty. The lifeguards had retired for the summer and swimming was prohibited by law. I ditched the bike in the dunes and swam in my underwear. The cold waters of the Atlantic brought back memories of childhood visits to Newport with my parents. I toweled dry with my teeshirt and continued on my route past the summer cottages of Gilded Age.

My mother loved viewing the rich people's mansions.

Surfers dotted the break beneath the Marble House. The waves stretched like corduroy to the horizon. I ate fried clams at Floe's Clam Shack. The crisp fried batter complimented the Ipswich clams and I washed down the traditional New England repast with a Narragansett beer. It was 3 and I returned to the Yacht Club.

The Boat Show was winding down and many of the visitors relaxed around the tables with a Bud. I rested the bike against a chain link fence and sat at a bar. The nearby conversations were mostly about boats, but a trio of overweight men in their 40s were discussing 9/11.

The subject quickly narrowed to revenge.

"We should go over there and kill them all," a bald-headed man spoke in strident tones. He looked as if no one in his family had left the USA since World War II.

"Why go anywhere?" His jock friend was red-faced from either drink or sun. "Press a button and nuke them to the Stone Age."

"Who are we attacking?" I asked the men.

"And you are who?" The bald man regarded me with suspicion.

"A fellow American curious about your choice on who we should attack."

"The president says Al-Qaeda and they're in Afghanistan."

"That's a start," his friend added, signaling for a round of Bud-Lite beer.

"And then Saddam in Iraq. He tried to kill the president's father. The Afghanis and Saddam." The more athletic of the group pointed in my direction with suspicion. He wanted more than an eye for an eye from the perpetrators of 9/11

"How many Iraqis and Afghanis were on the planes in 9/11?" I knew the answer.

"Ten."

"None. Not one."

"Bullshit." He was convinced of their guilt by the wrath of politicians and TV news commentators. America was out for blood. Whose blood didn't matter as long as the red flowed from a Muslim.

"Not bullshit. The truth. The fifteen hijackers were Saudis and the four pilot came from anywhere else, but not Iraq or Afghanistan."

"Saddam financed it those towel-heads in Afghanistan." The jock had a TV sense of geo-politics. "The Taliban were sheltering the enemy."

“Why do you think we were attacked?”

“It’s unimportant. Fucking the Arabs is what we have to do. Tora Tora Tora just like the Japs at Pearl Harbor."

"No mercy."

I was into revenge too. The buildings had fallen less than a mile from my apartment on East 10th Street, although I wasn't giving the president a carte blanche for total destruction of the Middle East.

"They deserve whatever they get."

They clinked plastic champagne glasses and hooted like owls on steroids. I strangled my responses. No one in America wanted to hear any arguments against a rush to judgment. Everyone's blood was up.

Mine too, but for different reasons.

My brother-in-law motioned for me to join him. I left the bar without any good-byes.

"You have a good ride?" His hand was filled with brochures.

"It was a good day for it."

And so were the days after it, because I was alive and alive was a good thing for anyone who have lived through 9/11.

There were billions of us.