“Sonchai, why do you hate me?”
“I don’t.”
“But you pretend not to find me attractive? A stupid woman would decide you were gay-lots of women protect their egos that way-but I’m not stupid. You’re not gay, sometimes you’re attracted, at least on a physical level, but you veer away. Time after time. Like a wild animal that sees a trap. I’m curious.”
I cast my eye over the other patrons. Three middle-aged Western couples who were probably staying at the hotel, and at least four tables consisting of a young Western man and a Thai girl. What a good life we must offer to any young farang with a little money. An evening spent trawling the bars will secure you that beautiful young goddess of your dreams for as long as you care to rent her, and you may play out a romantic evening or two with her in an expensive restaurant under the stars with the certainty of bedding her afterwards. And all without petulance or temperament, or obligations which stretch into the future. Tip her well and she will even come to say goodbye to you at the airport. Love à la carte must surely be an improvement on the fixed menu?
“I don’t want to feel like an ice cream.”
“Huh?”
“Look at them.” I wave a hand at the other tables. “Those girls don’t speak English as well as I do. They don’t surf the Net. They’ve probably never been abroad. They don’t realize they’re a new flavor from Häagen-Dazs. Anyway, they’re professionals.”
Jones swallows hard. I feel sorry that I’ve brought her close to tears. She’s tough, though. “That’s how you see me? Another Western sleazebag, just like the farang men?”
I don’t say anything for a beat or two. Then: “No one escapes their own culture. It’s hardwired in us, from birth onward. A consumer society is a consumer society. It may start with washing machines and air-conditioning, but sooner or later we consume each other. It’s happening to us too. But you see, the Buddha taught freedom from appetite.”
“Him again.” A sigh. Now she is determined not to let me off the hook by changing the subject, or even talking at all. I start to grin. “What are you laughing at?”
“The beauty of the Buddha. Look how perfectly he described cause and effect. Your ego is injured, so you won’t talk to me. Perhaps I will retaliate by not talking to you. Then we become enemies. If we had guns perhaps we would shoot each other, over and over again, in lifetime after lifetime. Don’t you see how futile it all is?” I’ve made her unhappy, far more than I expected. It is as if I’ve kicked her in the pit of her stomach, just when she was offering love. A crime against life. “Kimberley-”
“Don’t.”
“Kimberley, when my mother was sixteen years old she offered herself to a mamasan she’d been introduced to in Pat Pong. Nobody forced her to do so, her parents were not those kind of people. Nobody was going to stop her, though-they were dirt poor. The mamasan put her on display at her club every night, but postponed selling her until a good offer came up. Virginity is supposed to be most highly prized by Japanese and other Asian men, but the highest bid in my mother’s case came from an Englishman in his forties. There are plenty of men who would understand the special pleasure in deflowering a child, but I don’t. He paid forty thousand baht, an astronomical sum. My mother insisted that her best friend accompany her so she would not feel so terribly alone. The friend sat in the toilet while the event took place. He was kind to her, in a manner of speaking. He used a lubricant, tried not to hurt her too much, and burst into tears when it was over. My mother and her friend stared with great wonderment at this man who was more than twice their age. As the Third World said to the First World: If it makes you feel so bad, why do you do it? They felt sorry for him. It was my mother’s blood on the sheets, but the agony was all his. He did not appear to be rich, so he must have saved up. Forty thousand baht was a lot of money, even for a Westerner. It was a very special occasion for him, a kind of feast. Perhaps it was his birthday. When we are in the grip of hunger we think only of eating. Then, when the banquet is over, we see the evidence of what we really are.”
Something is happening behind her eyes. I wonder if I’ve succeeded in reaching her latent Buddhahood. A Thai woman would simply have thrown a tantrum and walked out, but there is American Will here, that grim hanging on.
Quietly: “You’ve never slept with a Western woman?”
“No.”
“If you did, you would be that virgin on the bed, being raped by a pig?”
“She wasn’t raped. She knew what she was doing. She was proud that she commanded such a good price. Of course, she gave almost all of it to her family. That’s what innocence looks like over here.”
“The legal age is eighteen in this country. In the States it would have been statutory rape. He could have been sent away for twenty years.” A long silence during which the atmosphere freezes and I realize how naÏve I’m being. No latent Buddhahood in the FBI, merely the cold fury of a will deflected, an appetite frustrated: no ice cream in the fridge tonight: damn.
“Did you ever think your meditation might not be such an asset in the craft of detection?”
“How so?”
“NaÏveté. A luxury no cop can afford, frankly. The way you see it, Warren, Bradley, what they did to Fatima, what they did to the Russian whore-what they planned to do to a bunch of other boys and women, that’s peculiarly Western, isn’t it?” The expression on my face says: Yes, obviously. “That kind of existential crime without meaning, without profit motive, has to be just an extension of Western self-indulgence, doesn’t it? A variation on the theme of the guy who raped your mom? Let’s get the bill, I wanted us to eat here tonight for a reason. Let’s say it’s reality sandwich time for both of us.”
She makes no attempt to extract the arrogance from the gesture when she calls for the bill. She pays with a gold AmEx card and I follow almost at a trot as she strides across the floor, leading me around by the pool between great mountains of bougainvillea, crimson hibiscus nodding in the evening breeze. We wind up at the Bamboo Bar, the hotel’s famous jazz venue. Jones checks her watch before leading me inside. She asks the maître d’ for a discreet table for two near the window. The seats are woven wicker with luxurious cushions, the air-conditioning glacial, the margaritas perfect with viscous ice, salt glittering around the rim of wide glasses, generous shots of tequila. We are just in time for the first act. The maître d’ anounces “the incomparable, the spectacular, the truly magnificent Black Orchid.” Enthusiastic clapping from the old hands in the audience, the small band plays a couple of bars and she walks on.
The song had to be “Bye Bye Blackbird,” didn’t it? Corny perhaps, but wonderful, too, with a depth of melancholy I’ve never heard before. I wouldn’t have guessed she could even sing like a woman. Jones is enjoying the shock on my face.