They were in a Japanese restaurant on the ground floor. Pi Nok swallowed his mouthful of sushi and said nothing for a while. His fine features registered a moment of choked sadness, enhanced by the pungency of the wasabi dip. He had been explaining to Nong Maew, who sat in attentive silence, how he had met her “Darling” Khun Taworn two years before she did, what had gone on between them and how they had parted company.
“He went to China, on business, and the club was closed down overnight while he was away. That’s why we lost touch, and after that I never saw him again,” he said, continuing his tale and addressing these words to his own reflection in the window as if reminiscing a private and painful episode. If Nong Maew was surprised by what she was hearing, she managed not to show it. She had long suspected Darling of being bi, but she had not expected her intuition to be confirmed by such a personal connection. With her best friend, of all people! And now Pi Nok was trying to paint what must have been a professional encounter into some kind of grand love affair. She kept her composure on the outside, but her mind was swirling, especially when he had the nerve to try convincing her to share Darling with him.
“Come on, he’s got enough for both of us,” he pleaded unashamedly.
Nong Maew, who had hardly touched her food, took this as the cue to comment on what Pi Nok had been saying. She chose her words with care and put on a fine show of well-tempered indignation. In a high-minded tone she told Pi Nok that the supposed romance between him and Khun Taworn had taken place in a gay brothel, albeit a high-class one, but a brothel nevertheless. And how dare he try to muscle in on her good fortune when she had done all the running? But even as she was discouraging him from making a play on her Darling, Nong Maew was well aware that Pi Nok, given his hunger and lascivious nature, was probably already planning his moves. Khun Taworn, one of the wealthiest industrialists in Thailand, was a prime catch for any ambitious hustler. Nong Maew herself could not believe her luck when, true to his word, he installed her in the condo by the river, because she had not made any effort at all to lure him exclusively to herself. He had picked her in the “Twilight”, an exclusive private club where she was one of the part-timers who worked there for extra cash. You had to be both beautiful and discreet because the clientele consisted of the very rich and powerful of the land. Khun Taworn had chosen her out of a roomful of young women who looked like starlets, and in their first sexual encounter in the VIP suite he seemed pleased with her services. After three visits he asked her out to dinner, which was quite normal and encouraged by the management since it reinforced the illusion that the girls were not professionals but companions who were sufficiently attracted to accept the invitation.
That night, in a candlelit French restaurant, Khun Taworn had explained that he was thinking of returning to politics, reminding her that ten years earlier, when she was only a young girl, he had been tipped to win the election to be leader of his party. But he had been betrayed, he was quick to add. Now he was ready to return to the fray. Because of this he could no longer risk being seen anywhere that could cause a scandal for him or his family. He had decided not to go to places like the “Twilight” anymore. But he wanted to continue seeing her. And that was when he asked her outright to become his mistress. Without letting her have time to think about his proposition — as though, in the style of men used to having their way, he was sure that she would not resist — he went on to give her the details of the arrangement that he had worked out and which, in fact, were so generous that she would have been foolish to have refused.
Nong Maew had been overwhelmed by his offer. It meant the end of having to make all the effort of going to work and worrying about paying off the debts that she had accumulated and living in shared, cramped accommodation. It would give her time to go back to finish her university degree, if she chose to do so. And if she played her cards well, she could even set up her own business one day. Suddenly the future was wide open. Everything was possible, and all she had to do was to give pleasure to a man whose vanity, with the help of Viagra, was soothed by possessing her firm, trim body. So, without thinking of the consequences, she accepted.
At first she had been drunk with her new life. Moving out of the small rented apartment she shared with two other working girls into a pad in an exclusive condo with its own small swimming pool on the balcony and a view of the city spreading out in all directions was like arriving in the Deva realm of the angels. Khun Taworn visited her three or four times a week, often bringing a bottle of champagne and a little gift. They never went out again after that evening in the French restaurant, but delicious, elaborate meals were ordered in from the best establishments in Bangkok. In those early days, when he had finished talking about himself, he would ask her about how she was spending her spare time and whether she was happy. But as the months rolled slowly by, he became less and less interested in what she did or thought or felt. He would arrive and take his pill and wait for the effect to kick in and then fuck her as though he was offloading some pent-up aggression. Then, afterwards, while she massaged his back, he would ramble on about politics or his family life. Often he would tell her how difficult his relationship with his wife was. It seemed that she hated him. Once Nong Maew made the mistake of giving him her opinion about his dysfunctional marriage, but the way that he cut her short made her realize that he required neither her response nor her sympathy. He merely needed her to be there as a beautiful trinket to bolster his selfesteem and as a receptacle into which he could pour his artificially stimulated desire.
Now, two years later, she was desperate with the sheer boredom of her existence. Darling’s visits were less frequent, and when he dropped by, she found it harder and harder to play the role of dumb listener. In short, she had discovered that the routine of being somebody’s mistress just did not suit her character. Being a sex object made her feel like an idiot. Her cocooned comfort did not compensate for the sense of despair that overcame her with growing frequency. There were days when she wanted to pack up and leave. But then she could never forget the money and all the perks that came with her status. She had become used to the ease and luxury, and she knew all too well that to regain her freedom, she had to be prepared to give up this honey-coated lifestyle that everyone she knew and probably most of the country dreamed of tasting. For them it would always remain a distant dream. But for her it was what she awoke to every morning. This was what made it a tough choice. While he was waxing lyrical about his affair with Darling, Pi Nok had spared no details, as if to prove that he, as a man, could do a better job at satisfying Khun Taworn’s desires than she, as a woman, could ever imagine. While she listened to his lurid descriptions of her Darling’s likes and dislikes, Nong Maew’s mind was busy weighing up her options. And later, when she was trying to dissuade her friend from competing with her for Darling’s favours, and even going so far as to say that, if he decided to do so, it was going to mean the end of their friendship, she knew that her efforts at dissuasion would only challenge him to go ahead and run after her man as soon as the opportunity arose.