Once there was a woman who was half.  She was half foreign, half-Japanese, and when it came up, that’s how she described the exotic away: “I’m half.” And as for the job, she said for years, “I’m a temp.” On the Internet she picked up a low paying temp job reviewing hotels, so one day when a company offered her South-East Asia via email, she sold or threw out the contents of her studio apartment in Tokyo and took off for Bangkok. Her name was Kane and the name meant money. Also the character for her name could be read as “Golden,” so technically she was “Golden.”
        Kane paid her own travel expenses, so she didn’t stay in the hotels she reviewed. She stayed in youth hostels or love/poor men’s business hotels all over South-East Asia, and after many months alone often lost in the big cities, she started to feel both abnormally sensitive and not entirely well. At the hotels she spent time noting the lighting and smells and feeling strange in an endless succession of lobbies while she waited to be shown a room to review.  
        One day at a midrange hotel, in a medium sized South-East Asian city, she sat down on a pleather couch and waited for reception to get a key from housekeeping in order to show her a room. On the coffee table there was a newspaper illustration of two naughty-looking hoodlums. It was titled “Bad Kids” in English. It must have been an American periodical. She was waiting for someone from reception to come and get her, but she looked close anyway. The kids’ faces were so delicately rendered that it took her a moment to notice two large detailed images in the foreground: one was a cat on a child’s lap and the other was a handgun on the other child’s lap pointed at a cat. She brought the newspaper onto her lap.
        The kids’ faces, cat face, and gun in contrast with the kids’ clothing and surroundings created a tension that conveyed both reckless joy of the instant, while also conveying a “frozen in time” moment before the impending cat violence. The faces were in black and white watercolor while the rest was rendered with flat planes of color. She noticed the line quality was in conflict. The clothing and hair were handled with loose-gestured contour lines, creating momentum. The precise lines used with the cat and the gun, made the illustration feel threateningly still. She waited for something to happen.
        She leaned over the illustration.  It wasn’t a grotesque distortion, but this kid was a caricature of himself, head larger than body—and then he began to move.  His head pushed through the flat pane of the paper, forehead first, damp. He pushed the newspaper he tore through away, and then he was on her lap. He had somehow birthed himself out of the paper. Here he was just boney assed, completely trusting on Kane’s lap, like a real child.
        She thought of course, something like this might happen.  Her life did seem like it was lacking a dimension, and that also it was special. This made as much sense as anything.
        There was a teen boy on her lap. The kind that was comfortable with being shy or had grown up smoking too much weed. Just quiet, but now smiling a little, like his mind was tucked away somewhere warm. A few moments passed, and he leaned in, rested his damp head on her shoulder. His face was closer than any face had been to hers for years.  He had blue eyes and brown skin and long eyelashes like a lady’s. They both looked down. He had taken the gun with him from the illustration and here it was now in his open palm on her lap.  
        “Killah Baby,” he said.
        “What?” she asked.
        “Baby Killah,” he said.
        Had he said “Killah Baby” or “Baby Killah?” He looked half something. Half black. Half white.  Reception was coming.
        Kane brushed a small piece of wet newspaper from the boy’s cheek and pulled back the waistband on his boxers and slipped in the gun.  Then she pushed them together up to their feet.  He leaned on her.
        Reception tried to look friendly with her mouth, but with her eyes she was trying to determine the relationship between middle-aged Kane and the teen.  They could be a couple, just a weird one. Kane shook the woman’s hand, because she couldn’t imagine explaining what had just happened, and she introduced herself out of habit. Then because of politeness she tried to introduce the boy, ”This is…” Was it Baby or Killah?  She had difficulty with American names.  She had difficulty with this name specifically. “Killah,“ he said, and because he was taller than them both, he looked around the place rather than at anyone in particular. “All we have is a queen to show today, is that okay?” The woman asked.
        “That’s fine,” Kane said, trying to move everything along.
        The room was standard. She let Killah off at the bed where he bounced slightly.  She was grateful the receptionist didn’t make much small talk while Kane took pictures of the room, the shower, the toilet—for some reason the site required photos of the toilet. Killah lay back on the bed and smiled, “I’m in heaven,“ he said, and his voice broke a little. The woman from reception listed the amenities of the place.
        When they left the hotel, Killah wanted a bag of sliced mango that came with a small baggie of salt, sugar, and chili powder for dipping. Kane was happy to buy that for him from a street vender. It seemed like a straightforward activity, and something she was capable of doing. She watched him wolf the mango down, and then wrap his hand around her hand and ask, “Where next?”
        Because she didn’t know what else to say, she said, “Across the street,” where another one of the hotels marked down on her spreadsheet existed.
        It was a backpackers’ hostel, and while she talked to a woman at the front desk, Killah touched things in the lobby: a stack of board games, some paperback books, until he came to a crude little diorama nailed to the wall.  Someone had formed clouds out of torn apart cotton balls, and when she made her way over to him, the diorama was empty except for those clouds. “He’s ours now,“ Killah whispered and opened Kane’s hand to drop in a tiny, living, milky-white mule face with a rabbit body. Its pink, meaty tongue did not fit entirely in its mouth, and when reception came, Kane pocketed the diorama animal in her jeans. It licked her hand.
        Eventually, the three of them went back to Kane’s business/love hotel where Killah made a small bed out of a washcloth for Bule (he said it was short for bunny-mule) and tucked him into the sock drawer. He fed Bule left over mango from his pocket and rubbed him behind the ears until Bule fell asleep, tongue out. Kane lay down on the queen bed and tried to think while Killah took a shower. Killah came back with a towel around his waist and slept on the other side. His gun was dropped on the ground with his pants. He was taller than anyone she had ever known, but then there he was curled up just like a baby when he slept. She locked the door, took a shower, and came back to bed wrapped in a towel.  Over the course of the night she noticed that where they hadn’t touched for hours his outlines began to show.  His color was no longer saturated, simply a line drawing.  She touched his back to bring the pigment and life out.
        In the morning Killah slid his foot up her ankle as if he wanted to have sex. She let him touch her long enough to get turned on, to feel his erection behind her through the towel, to know that she liked the feeling of being near this stranger more than she had being near anyone else ever, but then she felt scared about what was real and what was right, and she got up. He slept for a few more hours, and then when he awoke she announced the next hotel they needed to review. He put on his pants and woke up Bule. He handed the little creature to her for her to keep in her pocket.
        In the inside of the third hotel they went to together, everything was white. White chandeliers, and orchids, and plush fur carpets. There were mirrors everywhere in which Kane caught glimpses of herself sitting on an overstuffed, white couch in a cavernous room while they waited for reception. Killah was examining and eating chunks of durian and lychee from a baggy while Kane’s eyes darted around the place.
        But who wouldn’t have been afraid of the art in this hotel? In the hallway on their way to the showroom they passed a porcelain, headless human torso covered in hands that had apparently ripped an empty spot where the human heart should have been. Kane saw only a finger move and she kept walking.
        After they visited the room where Killah stood on the balcony and shouted, “I’m in heaven,” and she and the concierge laughed nervously, they took a different way back to the lobby.  Kane thought maybe they would make it out of the establishment without picking up some kind of hurt piece of art suddenly come to life. She felt relieved.
        And that is when, as they were trying to wrap up their conversation with the concierge in the foyer, she noticed an entirely white feather covered baby-form reaching from the wall toward Killah. Its baby fist reached toward him, and he gathered it from the under arms down to his chest where he naturally patted its back and bum in long strokes where the feathers were large, and he used his finger in tiny strokes on the face where the down was delicate. He was soothing the baby.  In his arms he ran his finger along the closed eyes, the ears, and the lips. He exited quietly through vaulted glass doors while Kane listened to the concierge. The concierge was talking on about the chain of hotels. It was special, he said. Exclusive. What she had just witnessed made her feel as if hands had opened a hole in her chest.
        Through the glass she saw Killah retrieve a half smoked cigarette from an ash tray, bum a light from a bellhop, and smoke it on a bench like a joint with one hand while he coddled the feather baby, their feather baby, she could tell by the cut of its feather covered features, with the other. He rocked it gently like he knew what he was doing: this was a horrifying love.  
        She thought about exiting the vaulted glass door and slipping down the path away from them forever. She had not asked for any of this. Why would she be called on to be the caretaker of art suddenly animated? But when she put her hand in her pocket, the feel of Bule's meaty tongue stopped her.
        She pushed her way out of the glass enclosure and walked to Killah on the bench. He winked over his shoulder while he blew smoke away from their baby. She lay down and flopped her legs over his thighs, the feel of her calves bringing his lap to life. She enjoyed the possibility she was both turning him on a little and saving his life while she looked up into the coverage of the bamboo grove.
        Her breast rose and fell with her own breath until their baby struggled toward her.  When Kane received the weight of the baby’s body, the beat of the baby bird-heart quickened her breathing.  It was warm out, but the baby seemed to be searching for warmth in Kane’s heart with the nuzzle of its feather covered face.
        Along with the baby, Killah passed off the cigarette and the gun. Kane took it all. She didn’t know this place, but she suspected it was going to rain soon and rain until it flooded.