Carl had once been asked to explain ‘Thainess’, which had become the fashionable word to explain everything that was unexplainable to expatriates and tourists. He answered that the foundation of ‘Thainess’ was a desperate ambition to make it from birth to cremation without encountering serious embarrassment. He knew it was an oversimplification and therefore he was doing the Thai people an injustice but the audience had loved it. Carl played to his audiences and knew that they liked the shorter answers.
When the parking boys around the corner saw his Porsche they started shoving cars around until there was a big enough space for him to park. They usually required people to leave their car keys but Carl never did. He handed them a red hundred baht note and went to the back of the building. There were queues of people at the front door and an entry fee so he went through the back door. Carl used a lot of back doors.
Bar on Eleven was very busy and the customers were wall to wall. The club was constructed of smooth grey concrete. The walls were thick to keep in the noise, which made the outside of the building resemble a Second World War pillbox. The ground floor had a DJ and the music to match. The second floor was more laid back. It was not Carl’s kind of music but the downstairs was a mix of actresses, models and high-class prostitutes so he sometimes put up with the noise.
He found a space at the bar that was big enough to stand in as long as he kept his elbows tucked in. Carl made a cramped hand signal for a drink and looked around the bar. The usual crowd was there, plus some ordinary people playing at being movie stars. Men with dyed hair and Botox faces wearing skin-tight Versace shirts and looking for the best love that money can buy. The women had spent the whole afternoon and early evening preparing their appearance in the hope that they might get noticed and win the lottery of life and get somebody to buy them a house. If it was all so wonderful why did so many of them ended up so miserable? Carl knew that they weren’t all as happy as they pretended to be. Some of them had been his clients.
The girls were dressed to kill. These were women and not the young girls you saw on Patpong, Nana and Soi Cowboy. They were hand polished, wore skimpy designer clothing, mostly bi-lingual and well-travelled. Carl called them the Bangkok Hurricanes because they arrived with a lot of sucking and blowing and when they left they took your house. Most of the Bangkok Hurricanes didn’t like him very much. Carl had been around way too long for their liking. Even the ones who didn’t know him stayed away. Something in his attitude and body language told them he didn’t own a house.
Eddie the DJ moved in beside him. He looked middle-aged Californian, probably because that was what he was. His hair was dyed blonde and he wore wire-rimmed glasses on a tanned face smoothed with designer creams and massages. There was an aura of naive optimism about him and his face looked younger than his body. Californians had something different, a perpetual youth that was typically spiritual rather than physical. Possibly something to do with the air in California or maybe the copious amounts of marijuana they had smoked at school.
Carl had got him out of jail once and Eddie had had been eternally grateful. He had failed a urine test and his future had looked bleak. Eddie was scheduled to appear in court and advised to plead guilty to using drugs. Police would not be seen to involve themselves in assisting in drug related cases for fear they would be suspected of involvement in the trade. There was a war on drugs and it was not wise to be on the wrong side of it so the senior police were not available. Carl also didn’t ordinarily touch drug cases but he had a soft spot for Eddie.
Carl had been made aware of Eddie’s predicament the day after his arrest and he had done the only thing that he could think of. He paid thirty thousand baht to a police private to drop a tray of urine-filled glass beakers on the stone floor of the police station. This was performed with much overacting and an almighty crash. Without evidence the case against Eddie and five strangers had been dismissed.
Somewhere in Bangkok five people who had never heard of Carl Engel woke up every morning and thanked police clumsiness for not having a criminal record. Eddie knew it was art.
“Hi Carl, good to see you,” he shouted.
“How’re you doing Eddie?”
“Same old, same old. If you need some coke it’s on me. Just let me know, man. Anything you want,” he said in a shout that was only a tone down from the last shout. It was lack of discretion that had got him arrested the last time.
“I’ll pass on the Columbian marching powder. I need my sleep.”
“Yeah sure. Hey what do you know about this serial killer? Fuckin’ scary shit man.”
“Not much Eddie. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve never had it so good man. If they catch him I’m seriously fucked,” Eddie said in his low shout.
Carl studied him for a while and asked, “What do you mean, you’re seriously fucked?”
“Hey man, everybody’s scared and none of the girls in here want to leave with a stranger. They all know me in here. I’ve never had so much pussy in my life, man. There’s a queue of them just hoping for a chance to buy me a drink or slip me a free E.”
Carl laughed. “Never thought about it that way.”
“Surprised the hell out of me as well, I don’t want it to end. That’s for damn sure. Don’t get me wrong Carl. I still hope they catch him. You know what I mean, right?”
“Sure Eddie, I know what you mean. If you’re trying to make them all happy be careful mixing coke and Viagra. Remember what happened to Gianni?”
“Yeah, I remember. Fuckin’ Gianni man. He was only thirty-three.”
He had been following the progress of the music as he talked to Carl and he made a quick dash across the packed dance floor to the DJ booth. He always made it back to the turntables just in time to avoid an embarrassing silence.
Carl picked up his drink and started to look around the place. She had spotted Carl before he had noticed her standing in a raised corner with a group of the beautiful people. She was already looking at Carl when he saw her across the heads of the crowd. Her name was June and she was a marketing executive at one of the five-star hotels, which meant that she spent most of her working day in Starbucks drinking coffee and talking to her friends. Like a lot of beautiful women she was extremely insecure although you wouldn’t know it to look at her.
Carl knew her without her clothes on and people say things when they are naked and it is three o’clock in the morning. It is not unusual for women in Thailand to have experienced some kind of sexual abuse whilst growing up. There are claims that as many as half of the women in Thailand have been raped or physically abused. It is a society built on levels of power and bullying is all part of the norm. June had her unfair share of dark secrets. The dynamic of abuse is the victim’s need to cover it up. June lived behind a mask but Carl had seen what was underneath.
He was very fond of her but he knew a lot of that was because she made him feel like a hero due to her emotional dependence. He made damaged women feel safe, June had once claimed. She had told him he made her able to sleep without having bad dreams for the first time in her life. She always said such things when she was lying down and looking up at him with her big brown eyes. The relationship was made in heaven as long as they were lying down. When she stood up it was a whole different story and she was a very different person. It always ended badly, but such relationships typically do.
She separated from the group and pushed her way through the crowd. She was all perfect white teeth and waving arms as she got close to him. The people standing near to him moved away to avoid getting hit by her flying hands. June threw her bangle-adorned arms around Carl’s neck and kissed him on both cheeks. The dress she was wearing was loose and shiny with a very low back that showed the top of her bottom. Maybe there was a sale on, thought Carl, remembering the dress the young Russian girl had been wearing in the club. When June leaned forward to kiss him he could see all the way down to her little G-string and bare buttocks.