Page 5 of Tropical Vice
By the time he reached the bamboo restaurant marked for lunch, he no longer felt hungry. The heat had settled in full, and the air between buildings had grown close, sour with ferment and fuel. He ordered cold noodles and ate two bites before pushing the bowl away.
Across the courtyard, a family with three children sat around a single phone. The father scrolled slowly while the mother wiped sweat from her brow with a crumpled napkin. One of the boys held a bag of pork crisps, chewing loudly with his mouth open. The sound grated, but Blake stayed where he was.
When he stood, he saw the outline of the café in his mind again, the plants strung above the doorway, the slope of the roof tiles, Chili curled up just to the left of the fan. He shook his head, more a twitch than gesture, and went on foot toward the bridge.
He did not mean to return by the Sai Fa alley. He told himself it simply happened that way. His feet followed a quieter street, then another, until the red tin shutters of the tailor’s shop came into view. The alley pressed beyond it, damp and cool in the shade. Blake paused at the entrance.
The café door was ajar.
He walked past it. Slowly, deliberately, but with his eyes straight ahead. The rustling of someone inside was faint. It could have been anything, a broom, a chair being moved, someone wiping the inside of a glass. He crossed the alley and turned the corner, but the sound had already rooted itself in his hearing, and he could not undo the silence that followed.
He made no further itinerary stops that day.
Instead, he returned to the room and lay with the fan clicking above him. At intervals it stopped, then restarted, with the delay between clicks growing longer each time. He watched the shadows move across the ceiling until the outlines blurred together.
The afternoon brought rain, fine and cold, blowing in from the north. He stood at the window and watched the corner of the roof across the street where a dog took shelter beneath the eaves. It had one ear downturned, and its tail curled in a full arc to its flank. He could not tell if it was one of the same dogs from the café.
Blake took up the folder again. He laid it flat on the floor and arranged the pages by region, not by time. There was nothing particularly useful in doing so, but he felt a sense of progress once the maps had been stacked and the reference notes clipped in pairs. He wrote two new headings. Neither would make the article. He did not care.
The rain stopped eventually, leaving behind a quiet world softened at the edges—pavement slick with silver, leaves heavywith drops, and the faint scent of wet earth rising like a memory. By seven, he had showered, dressed, and gone out again.
He walked without direction, passing the shuttered post office, the quiet dispensary, and the municipal court building with its rust-stained flagpole. A man was sweeping the front steps. He did not look up.
Blake returned to the villa at nine.
On the table near his bed, he placed the folder, his phone, and a ceramic dish he had bought from the market and forgotten to wrap. Beside it lay the business card from Sai Fa, though he had no memory of taking it, and did not know when it had been tucked into the outer pouch of his bag.
The fan stopped clicking.
The rain returned, more intense this time. It deepened into a harder rhythm, steady and tireless on the corrugated roof. Blake sat on the edge of the bed. He did not undress. The edges of his shirt had dried stiff from the afternoon’s sweat, and when he moved, they pulled against the backs of his arms.
Outside, someone called a name in the street. The voice was young, carried on the water in a quick, sliding tone, and was gone.
Blake lay back. His phone glowed once—probably another text from Leon—then dimmed. He did not look. His arms remained at his sides, hands open, his eyes tracing the slow path of condensation down the window glass.
Somewhere near the square, music began, muted by distance. He could not make out the tune, only the rhythm, which repeated. Then it stopped.
A dog barkedin the distance. Blake tilted his head toward the sound. The villa had no clock. His phone lay face-down on the bed, untouched. He could write the report in the morning.
A message had come from Leon hours earlier, the preview line still visible on the lock screen;‘Keep your eye out for p…’Blake knew what the rest would say ‘…laces locals love but tourists miss. We need things that feel hidden, and authentic!.’So he had not bothered reading it.
He poured another glass, slower this time, and returned to the veranda. He sat there long enough for the condensation to soak through the linen of his shirt.
He imagined walking back down that road. Arriving again. Kit would be behind the counter, silent as before. Would he acknowledge him? Would he ask what Blake wanted? Would Blake know what to say?
He would go back. Not tomorrow, perhaps the day after. There was time enough.
He did not sleep.
THREE
SAND, STORM, AND SILENCE
The café was quieter than last time, though not entirely silent.
A low fan turned behind the counter, and someone hummed tunelessly from the back room. Blake stood at the threshold a moment longer than needed. The dogs were spread out across the concrete like dropped laundry. The brindled one raised its head—Chili, he remembered.
“Hey, Chili,” Blake said, crouching. Chili sniffed his hand, gave a half-hearted tail thump, then went back to sleep. The smaller white mutt, Mango, watched from under a bench but didn’t move. The oldest one, Dusty, lay like a rug just inside the door.
