Meanwhile the CNN reporter directs the camera operator to focus on her for the wrap-up. “Well, as Walt Disney said in Lady and the Tramp: ‘We are Siamese if you please, we are Siamese if you don’t please.’ So far the criticism of Madame Nong Jitpleecheep’s new club is muted, and the praise high. Only time will tell if what we have here is a variation on a theme of exploitation as old as humanity, or a step toward emancipation. In the meantime, the thirty-year-old party which is Bangkok’s nightlife continues, whatever the rest of the world may have to say about it. This is Celia Emerson, for CNN, Bangkok.”
One by one the lights start to die and men in shorts, sweating in the night heat, start to roll up the cables while Nong looks on a little wistfully. It is time for all of us to enter the club. The Colonel and Nong go first, followed by Kimberley, who assumes that I am following her. Instead I pause at the door to watch a black limo draw up behind one of the media trailers.
I am wearing a four-button double-breasted blazer by Zegna, a spread-collar linen shirt by Givenchy, tropical wool flannel slacks and, best of all, patent leather slip-ons by Baker-Benjes. My cologne is a charming little number by Russell Simmons. Somehow I think my getup will be particularly appreciated by my personal and secret guest, who emerges with some difficulty from the limo, aided by two burly minders. She walks with the aid of a stick and her facial features will never be other than masculine. Her dress falls poorly, in my opinion, even though it is the very best from Giorgio Armani. On the other hand, the estradiol has done wonders for her hair, which falls in a heavy, luxurious curtain onto the collar of her dress. The minders leave her to approach me at the threshold.
“Nice threads,” Pichai says to me, using Warren ’s vocal cords and scanning my new wardrobe with her gray eyes.
Inside, our live entertainment is singing “Bye Bye Blackbird.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Burdett is a nonpracticing lawyer who worked in Hong Kong for a British firm until he found his true vocation as a writer. Since then he has lived in France and Spain, and is now back in Hong Kong. He is the author of A Personal History of Thirst and The Last Six Million Seconds.
