He arrived at Joy's with his heart in his throat, and knocked, seeing light under the door. At least they weren't sleeping.
Joy? he said. Sawadee-kap.*
Yes, she finally said listlessly.
* Thai greeting.
He went in and said: My friend no angry you. I worried you. You drink too much. No problem. OK?
Pukki's face had lit up when he came in, but now it dimmed. - You no come for me?
I have something for you, Pukki, he said, giving her his last twenty dollars.
For me? Why?
I sorry maybe you have baby.
OK. No problem.
The girls were not their bar selves. They sat sweating and trying to rub away beer headaches. Two Thai boys (whom they vehemently assured him were not their boyfriends, and he thought: Why does it have to be my business? Why can't they
be your boyfriends? We have no claim on you; we're only sick butterflies) were lying on the futon. Soon Pukki began to pay the journalist his due attentions. She sent one of the boys out to get lunch. When he came back she spooned the journalist's food onto the plate for him, just right. She peeled the skin off his chicken. She poured his water while the boys ironed his shirt and bluejeans. She had him lie down, and she sat fanning him. - Time to work. He wrote: Article about a whore who kisses a locket with her (dead?) boyfriend's photo before every sex act. -You good wife, he teased, and she laughed in delight.
You marry me?
Maybe next time.
When you come back?
I don't know, Pukki. I no lie you. Maybe never. I no good. I butterfly. I butterfly you forever.
But later, when she snuggled against him and the boys massaged his legs, calling him Papa-san and bumming ten bhat off him (he gave them twenty), he thought: Well, I could do worse than marry Pukki; Pukki is really a dear, dear girl. .
The photographer came and made up with Joy. The journalist stayed and stayed. - I really should cable something to the newspaper, he thought. Well, maybe I shouldn't; if they know how to get hold of me they may tell me I'm fired. Shit. Maybe I'll write something. What I need's an idea… an idea — by God, I have an idea! That means LIGHT BULBS!
Finally Pukki said to him: OK you go hotel now.
You come with me?
No. I go see friend. You come bar nine o'clock, say goodbye me. I buy you beer from money you give me.
OK.
But at nine o'clock, rolling into Pat Pong on a tuk-tuk with the photographer, who should he see but Noi, the short girl he'd bought all those drinks for and hadn't seen since, and Noi ran up and grabbed his hand, crying: I wait you, I wait you — every day I wait you!
Noi, I don't have any money left.
No matter me. Mariée say you save your money come looking me; you have good heart -
I can't even buy you out of the bar. How much is it, three hundred bhat?
How much you have?
The journalist turned his pockets inside out. He gave her everything he had: a hundred fifty.
OK, she said. No problem. I love you. .
She paid fifty bhat for the drink he'd bought her. She paid another fifty for the tuk-tuk.
It was raining again. She was very little and frail; she barely came up to his waist. He took off his raincoat and gave it to her. She squeezed his hand. She draped the raincoat around her like a cloak. He put the hood over her.
You have raincoat at home? he said.
No. I am poor.
I give you.
Thank you. It rain Bangkok every day; sometimes I sick. .
They reached the Hotel 38, and Joy was standing on the balcony looking down. She called his name.
Pukki little angry you, she said. She see you. She say she love you. She cry little bit.
I don't think she really does love me, Joy. She hardly knows me.
Oh? OK.
Yep, said the photographer, his hand on Joy's ass, I get the feeling old Porky's used to disappointment.
Joy kept showing skin for the journalist, looking at him over the photographer's shoulder, making sure to herself that she could still cast her spell on him even when he had a new girl. She was only twenty-one (she said), but looked older, though she was still gorgeous. The smoking and drinking were working against her. - You like my girl, Joy? he said. - She shrugged. - You like her I like her OK no problem, she said. (Later she told the photographer that Noi was no good.) — Lying in bed with Noi, the light still on, the butterfly fluttered excitedly knowing that Noi's vulva was going to open up for him like one of those Ayutthaya-style gilded lacquer book cabinets: — gold leaves and birds and leaf-flames on black, every line in black; it was almost as tall and wide as a tomb; and like a tomb the doors could not be opened to just anyone; that was why it was so neutral and pretty like Joy's face, its birds bright and open-beaked, a tense-antennaed butterfly questing below, more leaf-flames, like swirling golden kelp, enclosing a lion, an elephant, dragons, horses dancing, their manes scaled like leaves and butterflies' wings; monkeys clutching at branches, a bird gobbling berries, a bird feeding her little ones; all gold on black, gold on black. . but on one side the gold had been worn half away, as if a black night-fog were streaming down poisonously; it was the same black that had been so beautiful elsewhere. That was her wizened old face, her wrinkled belly. He saw himself, though, as some old white palace with gilded lacquer doorways and windows, the courtyard still and green, his bamboo hearts curving up from a common hillock, his stonewalled pool rippling green. Inside him there was definitely room for Noi. Inside Noi there was room for him.
It was the best yet. Noi let him eat her out to his heart's content and didn't make him use a rubber. It felt so good inside her that he almost went crazy. When she left he was very sorry. - When Joy left, saying goodbye to him forever, she kissed him on the lips. (He'd told her to tell Pukki that he was sorry.) He said to the photographer: Joy really has class. I hope you do marry her. - Aw, yawned the photographer, I doubt I'll see her again. I never cared about her one way or the other.
THE END
~ ~ ~
The photographer had gone out with Joy, to buy her some shoes with bells on them that she craved; the madam could give the photographer a good price. Probably she was leaning up against his belly on the bar stool right now (supposed the journalist), his hand on her ass which was bathing-suited, hence multicolored like a baboon's, and there'd be a gleam on the shot glasses and the liquidlike ceiling, a shimmer on her silver bracelet and gold earrings; he knew; he'd seen a bar or two by now… He came to the Hotel 38 at the beginning of a rainstorm. The men at the first-floor landing gazed at him with contemptuous hate-filled faces. When he got the key from the office he said kap hum kap, and one of the men sneered kap hum kap falsetto. - Thank you, the journalist said to him wearily. Thank you very much. He climbed the two flights of stairs. When it was cool and damp like this, the sweat still dripped down the back of his neck; the only difference was that he didn't mind it because it wasn't hot sweat. Sometimes a breeze blew so softly that he could not feel any motion from the air, only a faint coolness where the sweat was. In the halls of the Hotel 38 there was never any breeze, of course. He let himself in, turned on the light, closed the door, and sat down on a chair. Giant red ants swarmed on him. He got up. The rain was coming down harder now. He turned off the air conditioner, unhooked the screen window over his bed, and pushed the shutter open. Then he stood there watching the rain spear down, rattling on tin roofs, splashing on streets, waxing and waning with gravel sounds beneath the thunder, making new unsteady vertical bars between the bars of windows, solid bars of rain nailing themselves down to concrete ledges and lower roofs from which they instantly ricocheted and then puddled like softnosed bullets, falling faster and faster now so that the air darkened; a flicker, then it thundered directly overhead. .