Tim Roth is My God Now
/Tristan Durst
The day I flew from Seoul to Bangkok was the forty-fourth day of rain. I know it was 44 days because I kept count. On day four of the rain I put a pink sticky note on the wall of my cubicle in the teachers’ office. At the top I wrote DAYS OF THIS RAIN SHIT. By the time we left for Thailand, I had entirely filled two post-its with my mournful hash marks and moved on to a third.
The lines on the first post-it were oversized, playful remnants of a time when the office joked about how the rain couldn’t last forever. Oh, how cheerful and naïve we had been. Only ten days, two neat sets of five, adorned the first pink square. The second post-it had twenty more: smaller, but still optimistic. The third post-it had thirteen petite lines, barely longer than the dot of an I, because I didn’t know what it would do to my soul to carry my list over again to a fourth post-it.
At this point I’d lived in Korea for eight years, Seoul for four, working as a kindergarten English teacher. Summer was the rainy season, but from my Korean co-workers and the small bits of the news I understood, I gleaned this year’s rains were unprecedented. Parts of the subway had to be shut down, and passengers were posting pictures of ankle-deep water inside their buses on social media. If the rain broke for an hour or two, which happened maybe twice a week, the sun still never came out. The clouds hung low in the sky, threatening, a punch waiting to be thrown.
On Wednesday morning Jax and I were flying out to meet our friends Jenny and Mike in Phuket. Monday I had an email from Jenny cautioning that it was also the rainy season in Thailand and I should steel myself for seeing a few showers. I wrote back that if the fucking sun didn’t fucking come out I was going to fucking murder someone and I wasn’t going to be fucking picky. Jenny hadn’t answered.
Jax spent the night before the flight at my apartment, since there was an express bus to the airport ten minutes away from me. By the time she made it to my house, Jax was soaked to the knees from trudging through the pockets of standing water that had become unavoidable on the Seoul streets. I packed my backpack while Jax sprawled out on my bedflipping through the television channels. “Did your shit get wet?” I asked, gesturing at Jax’s damp rucksack.
“No,” she said grimly. “Because I wrapped all my vacation clothes in garbage bags.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. I unpacked my own rucksack and stuffed my clothes into plastic bags before repacking them. “You know it’s gonna be a good trip when you bring your own Hefty bags,” I said. We both laughed, which quickly devolved into the sort of crazed warbling that’s half tears. Our feet hadn’t been dry in a month.
By the time we left for Thailand, I had entirely filled two post-its with my mournful hash marks and moved on to a third.
I laid down on the floor next to the bed, curled into the fetal position. Jax threw her arms in the air and shouted, “I just wish Lie to Me would come on!”
This sounded so comforting to me. The most ideal possible outcome, although I couldn’t have told you why. “I just wish Lie to Me would come on,” I echoed, my voice very nearly at a pitch discernible only to canines. While several years had passed since the show’s American debut, Korea had recently discovered Lie to Me. Episodes with Korean subtitles aired every other week or so.
My hand to actual Jesus, as soon as I spoke those words, an episode of Lie to Me began.
“Oh, shit,” I said, immediately sitting upright.
“Tim Roth heard us,” Jax said with reverence.
“Tim Roth is watching over us,” I whispered in response. We were no longer crying. I quickly finished packing and joined Jax on the bed to watch Lie to Me.
My alarm went off at 5:30 the next morning, so we could catch the 5:50 bus. As we pulled on our backpacks, double-checking for wallets and passports, Jax looked upwards and said, “Hey, Tim Roth, keep the rain away until we get to the bus.”
Outside the sky was charcoal and imposing, the air thick with humidity, but not one drop of rain fell until we were safely, and dryly, on the bus. We stowed our bags in the front section of the bus reserved for luggage, settled into our seats, and watched the skies open, solid sheets of water falling. There were two more passenger stops before the forty-minute ride to the airport, and at both the travelers were soaked to the bone.
Jax and I looked at each other and nodded solemnly. It was becoming apparent some higher power was watching out for us. The whole time we were on the road to the airport it rained, but when it was time to exit the bus we were treated to a five-minute intermission in the downpour.
I don’t remember anything about ticketing or security, which means it must have gone extraordinarily well, since ticketing and security always suck and there is always something to complain about. We got bagels and lattes at the Starbucks nearest our gate and sat facing the floor-to-ceiling windows. After taking my first sip, I exclaimed, “Oh, snap, this is not a non-fat latte.”
Ordering a non-fat latte and receiving a full-fat latte is a little gift from heaven. Non-fat milk was requested. I had the best of intentions, but was thwarted by server error, and, therefore, the calories don’t count. Second of all, holy fucking shit, whole milk lattes taste so much better than non-fat lattes.
Jax tapped her cup against mine. “Cheers, Tim Roth.” We had an hour layover in Bangkok before flying on to Phuket. Walking off the plane I was greeted by the bluest sky and brightest sun of recent memory. I walked up to the windows beside the gate, pressed my palms flat against the glass, and began to weep. I cannot recall a moment of deeper gratitude in my life. Two hours later Jenny and Mike were waiting for us in the lobby of our hotel. After exchanging hugs, Jenny spread her arms and said, “Look, no rain.”
“It’s because of Tim Roth,” I said.
“He takes care of us now,” Jax added.
Over a dinner of curry, noodles, and spring rolls, eaten at a picnic table in the sands of Kata Beach, Jax and I tried to explain our newfound devotion to Tim Roth. Jenny and Mike were unconvinced.
“All of those things sound really lucky,” Jenny said, “but I don’t think that makes Tim Roth, you know, a god.”
Jax and I smiled at each other, amused by Jenny’s agnosticism. Over the next few days the benevolent hand of Tim Roth extended itself into our vacation, gently nudging us away from annoyances, clearing our path of nuisances, so that we wandered in a slightly sunburnt, started-drinking-at-11, stumble free of the obstacles one normally encounters on vacations.
The Elvis impersonator Mike had read about on the internet was playing at a bar we happened into. We got the restaurant’s last order of mango sticky rice, much to the chagrin of the table beside us. The all-you-can-eat waffle bar at the buffet breakfast had both caramel and butterscotch sauces.
It didn’t rain.
I don’t remember anything about ticketing or security, which means it must have gone extraordinarily well, since ticketing and security always suck and there is always something to complain about.
Jenny was finally convinced the afternoon we discovered Royal Milk Lattes. First: a short detour into the world of Thai coffee. The accidental full-fat latte has nothing on the unmitigated glory of a Thai coffee, brewed with cardamom and doctored with a generous spoonful of sweetened condensed milk. On its own, the coffee is as bitter as your first breakup; regular sugar and creamer are no match for it. Only the condensed milk can coax it into drinkability, but miles past the border of drinkability and into the realm of pure, transcendental joy. You literally have no idea how delicious a cup of Thai coffee can be.
“Wouldn’t it be hilarious if they made an entire latte with sweetened condensed milk?” she asked, as we looked at the menu in the coffee shop closest to the beach. “Like, two shots of espresso and then, like, six ounces of condensed milk?”
“Oh, yes,” said the helpful woman behind the counter. “That is Royal Milk Latte. Very delicious.” So much like two shots of espresso and six ounces of condensed milk, it turns out, that’s exactly what it was. Even being in the same room as a Royal Milk Latte makes you pre-diabetic. We each drank two.
After taking her first sip, Jenny raised her hands towards the sky, halfway between a Pentecostal church service and Christina Aguilera belting out a high note, her eyes fluttering shut in delight. “Tim Roth,” she whispered in a reverent exhale.
That afternoon, Jax and I took a cooking class in the kitchen of a properly upscale resort. The only other students were a married couple, half of whom looked like David Duchovny’s younger brother, tanner and less haunted by personal demons.
“Sure, we’ll go with that,” the man said with a wink when I reported my observations.
“He’s not actually David Duchonvy,” Jax told me as our guide led us through an open-air market looking for the perfect papayas.
“I know he’s not David Duchovny, because if he were really David Duchovny he’d be Tim Roth,” I replied.
“That’s fair,” Jax was forced to admit.
On our last day together, Jenny, Jax and I took a tuk-tuk up to the Big Buddha, a 45-meter tall marble statue on a high hill overlooking Kata Bay. Few temples in Southeast Asia have the placid tranquility associated with American or European holy places. The haze of incense makes the air powdery and warm. You can hear monks chanting, but also tinny pop songs and merchants selling plates of offerings. The statue placidly surveyed his corner of the world, but the ants of humanity scurried and screamed and schemed beneath his feet.
At the time of our visit, the buildings surrounding the temple were still under construction. For a dollar, we could purchase a small slate tile that would eventually be used in one of the temple structures. Beside the tiles were Sharpies, so we could scribble our blessings and prayers into the temples themselves. We wrote messages to our families, love for grandparents and nieces. Before returning to the tuk-tuk, I ran back to the temple and purchased a second tile, which I dedicated to the watchful grace of Tim Roth.
On our way back down to the city, we passed a man feeding bananas to an elephant. A real, live elephant was what Jax had wanted most from our trip, but had put that aside as Tim Roth showed his love in smaller, more beneficial ways. Yet, here, on our last afternoon in Thailand, was the very thing Jax had wanted most. Our driver obligingly stopped so Jax and Jenny could feed and be photographed beside the elephant.
Elephants are not my thing; they don’t smell great. Instead I walked to the edge of the hill and stared down at the beach below. A film of grime seemed to cover the beach, like when you spill water on your smartphone.
“Rain,” the driver said, stopping beside me and gesturing down to the water. “It’s raining on the beach. We are lucky up here.”
By the time we got back to the hotel, the rain had stopped, the only rain I saw all week.
Tristan Durst graduated from the MFA program at Butler University, where she served as fiction editor for Booth. Her work appears in Slush Pile Magazine and Ghost City Press, amongst others. She looks forward to one day meeting Tim Roth and telling him of his good works in her life.
