We waited together for the doctor, the midday movie muted on TV. I stroked Ian’s hair as I knelt beside him. I turned my face towards the screen and watched the film in silence – two beautiful people I didn’t recognise were dancing. I watched their faces, I watched their lips moving, but I couldn’t tell whether they loved or despised one another.

Beyond the TV was the razed monstera. I wouldn’t be here to see it revive. But I liked to think of Ian convalescing on the couch, watching the plant as it came back to life. I liked to think of it creeping along the side of his house and worming in through the windows and under the doors, dropping new roots as it went. I liked to think of Ian seeing the new leaves uncurl and turn to the sun, broad and glossy, content in their ugliness. I thought with great pleasure of the shadow they would cast.

Frogs’ Legs

Even the sunsets are dirty here.

I’ve taken to smoking in the swimming pool, floating on my back with my ears underwater, keeping out the sounds of the traffic. The colours are all there, as glorious as they’re supposed to be: gold and fuchsia and tangerine. But between me and them there’s a tacky, brown-grey film, like something you’d wipe off a bar.

At least smoking repels the insects. Some nights I swim to the side of the pool and flick ash at them, watching the tiny sparks fly through the air.

I stopped taking my malaria tablets weeks ago.

I prefer to have the pool to myself. It’s a perfect circle, white with stripes of grime and rust. When I’m floating in the middle, I feel like the pupil in a bloodshot eye.

But there’s a man who joins me in the evenings.

He swims a languid breaststroke around the perimeter: once, twice, maybe a dozen times. Then he sits on one of the ladders and lets the water lap at his belly, which is taut and round and hairy, like a coconut.

Some nights I sit on the pool’s edge and watch him swim. He kicks his skinny legs like a frog.

I’ve eaten the local frogs. There isn’t much meat on them, but I like to throw the bones to the street dogs. When the dogs approach I stroke them and scratch behind their ears, despite their sores, their limps, their stink. ‘Good boy,’ I murmur as they wag their tails. ‘Good boy.’

I was supposed to get a rabies shot before I came here, but I didn’t.

One night I was sitting on the edge of the pool and the man was sitting on a ladder. He asked for a cigarette, and I used the tip of mine to light it for him.

We sat in silence, smoking, flicking ash at the mosquitoes.