“Oh, he takes bribes? That’s just like the cops on Freak Street in the old days.”
“I don’t take bribes,” I say.
“That’s right, behave yourselves and act civil, this is a Buddhist country and Sonchai here is a yogi-he meditates every day.” Turning to me: “So you got it?”
I reach behind the bar and hand over a package about three inches by two by one, wrapped in brown paper. My mother and I both decided that no way was the bar ever going to sell narcotics, not even ganja, but Colonel Vikorn, after his first glimpse of this gang, decided that any tranquilizer was better than geriatric freaks on alcohol tearing the place apart. The old giant hands over two thousand baht (Nong took over the pricing-that’s roughly a thousand-percent markup), then grabs the package and disappears into the men’s room, together with a few others in the know. I remember that Lou Reed is a great favorite with this crowd and send Transformer blasting through the sound system. In less than ten minutes the big cowboy and his cronies are emerging from the toilets. Lalita has just arrived and recognizes the gang from last time but cannot remember anyone’s name. A brisk wave: “Hi guys, sabai dee mai?”
“Hey Lalita, just great to be here. Jeez, do you have to be so goddamned beautiful?” To Lalita with pleading eyes: “I’m suffocating over there, La, we all are. To be old and sick is bad, but suppose you ain’t sick? Suppose all your bits are still in full working order, but you got a mug so craggy and out of date, people look at you like you’re a Model T Ford?”
Now Om and Nat arrive, one in jeans, the other in a black dress with arabesque trimmings that dips so deeply at the back, you can tell she’s not wearing underwear.
Nat’s dress has sent the tour group into fantasyland. “Hey, guys, time to score the Viagra?”
Now the rest of the girls arrive.
The first thing each of them does as she crosses the threshold is to wai the Buddha statue in the corner above the cash register. He’s a little guy no taller than two feet with, according to my mother’s grasp of Buddhist doctrine, a gargantuan appetite for marigolds and incense and is liable to turn the luck off pronto if we let him go hungry.
All the girls have worked this gang before and manage them skillfully as they squeeze past hoary groping hands on their way to the lockers. They are all taking signals from me that the evening is not to start too quickly. After Chanya’s adventure there is an increased police presence on the street. The cops are all controlled by Vikorn, of course, but appearances are important at times like this.
The bald giant calls to me: “What do we do about the blue pills, Sonchai? They on the house again?”
“No, not on the house. You can get them from a pharmacy. Any pharmacy.”
“Okay, right, boys, policy change. We have to go buy our own Viagra. How about we do that, freshen up, raid the minibars, smoke a few spliffs, and come back ready to rock and roll?”
Whoops of joy at this magic phrase. It is only when they have all trooped out that I notice the stranger who must have slipped in when my back was turned. In his early twenties, big, broad-shouldered, long black pants, polished black shoes, stark white shirt, an intensity to his gaze that could be mistaken for a permanent frown. Not exactly a typical customer, especially when you take into account the black hair, pencil mustache, and brown skin.
All the girls have gone to their lockers now that the gang has left. He and I are the only ones in the bar. I switch the music back to Chopin.
The newcomer seems not to notice the distillation of high genius that emerges from the sound system in the form of infinitely tumbling and rising piano notes. He orders a can of Coke and sits on one of the stools at the bar. He looks at me, Thai to Thai.
“You’re a pimp?” the stranger says in a tone of surprise, too innocent to be insulting. I do not bother to explain the technical difference between what I do and what a pimp does.
Despite the frown, he is a handsome fellow, somewhat thickset for Thai genes. He makes no secret of his contempt for those aging punks-or for me. He glances around at the pictures of Elvis, Sinatra, et cetera, with a sneer. I find it hard to meet the purity of his gaze.
“American,” he says in a neutral tone. He knows I will not mistake his meaning.
I respond with a smile, raise my hands: what can you do?
He catches sight of the Buddha above the cash register and connects him to me with a sweep of his eyes. “They told me you were Buddhist-I mean a real one, not a superstitious peasant.”
“Did they?”
He wants to say more (perhaps he is a little young for his age-his kind often are), but his silence is judgment enough. To tell the truth, I’m caught off guard. The last time I saw such religious sincerity was in a monastery, but this is no Buddhist monk. In the near-empty bar I find myself looking around with his eyes. Not particularly uplifting, I guess, a tad too earthy for a pure soul. (But then look what pure souls have done to the earth, I remind myself.) I refuse the unspoken invitation to repent, and we are in a kind of silent standoff that I do not believe he can win (my bar, my street, my country, my religion-I belong to the majority here), when he fishes in the pocket of his pants to pull out a piece of A4 paper, folded into four. He spreads it out on the bar, watching my expression carefully. It is a digital picture of the farang Chanya murdered. I’m not able to control the flash of paranoia that passes across my face. The Muslim notes and records my wild-eyed moment, but there is no opportunity for explanation or discussion because the rest of the girls have begun to arrive, one by one.
7
Homer listed ships. Should I not similarly honor the vessels of our salvation on the wine-dark sea of market forces?
Nat: Most of the girls keep their work clothes in lockers at the back of the bar, but Nat likes to dress up before she arrives. She claims it’s because she needs time to work her way into her role, but Chanya once told me she tries to find customers on the sky train on her way to work. It’s true she calls in sick more than the others, usually just when she would have been on the sky train on her way to us. That’s okay, every girl has her idiosyncrasies, which probably make her unemployable in most professions. Look at Chanya, for example. In the circumstances, what other employer would have been so forgiving?
Marly: At twenty-seven, Marly is one of our smartest practitioners. Like most true professionals, she sees repeat business as the best way of evening out the violent sine curves of the trade, and that means setting her sights on the middle-aged and older. The charms of younger customers are more than offset by gentleness, generosity, fatherly kindness, wealth, and a tendency in the aged to go to sleep early, thus leaving her free for a little moonlighting should she need the dough.