“When you come back to Bangkok?”
“Not until the end of next week. Friday. I’ll meet you at the bar, OK?”
“OK, Pat. See you then.” There was a pause, filled with static. “Everything good with you?”
“I’m fine except that I wish you were here with me.”
“Want me to come up-country to see you?”
I laughed at her enthusiasm. “No, no. I’ve got to work, and this place would be pretty dull for a gorgeous girl like you.”
“If you there, not dull,” she said firmly. “We make excitement together.”
“You’re certainly right on that score, young lady. But no, I’ll see you in Bangkok. Maybe we can go down to Pattaya and hang out on the beach.”
“Crazy farang,” she laughed. No Thai girl goes to the beach. Make us black.
“Well, whatever. Maybe we’ll spend the whole weekend in my room.”
“Mmm,” she sighed. “I like that.”
Another moment of staticky silence. Finally, she spoke, so softly I could hardly hear. “Pat? I love you.”
“I love you, too, Lek,” I heard myself say. I realized I meant it. “See you next week.”
The last week seemed even longer than the previous two. Then, when Friday afternoon finally arrived, and I was packing for the trip south, my boss dropped by. He needed me to stay until tomorrow, he said, to supervise the grading of the site. “Can’t Charlie do it?” I asked, a bit testily.
“Charlie’s sick. Got some stomach bug or something.”
As soon as the boss left, I tried calling Lek’s bar. This time the phone rang and rang, unanswered. I tried again, around eight o’clock, and again near midnight. No response. I prayed that Lek would not be worried, or angry with me for standing her up.
The grading went like clockwork. I was headed toward Bangkok by 2 p.m., driving one of the company Jeeps. My spirits rose with each kilometre that brought me closer to her. I pulled in at the hotel around six, took a quick shower, and then immediately set out for the Butterfly.
The place was already jumping, full of men in white naval uniforms. Maybe that was why no one had picked up my call the previous night. I sat down with a beer and looked around for Lek. There was no sign of her.
“Hello, mister. Remember me?” I recognized the round face and pixie haircut from my last visit.
“Hello, Ao. Of course I remember.” She looked delighted. “Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, thank you.” As she was leaving, I grabbed her hand.
“One moment, Ao. Do you know where Lek is? The tall dancer with the long hair?”
She shook her head. “She not here tonight, I think.”
A bolt of panic surged through me. Did she think I had abandoned her? Had she left the bar with some other man?
“You ask the mama-san,” Ao said, pointing to a woman behind the bar. “Maybe she know about Lek.”
I picked up my beer and sat down at the bar, inches from the spike heels of one of the dancers. I gestured to the mama-san.
“Excuse me, but do you know where I can find Lek?”
The woman looked me over critically. She was a well-preserved 40, with short-cropped hair and glasses, wearing a fitted hot pink suit.
“Lek buy herself out of the bar tonight. Today her birthday. She want to take the night off, celebrate with her friends.”
“Do you have any idea where she might have gone to celebrate?”
“Why? Who are you? You her new boyfriend?”
I blushed, but then nodded. “Yes, I’m Pat.”
The mama-san’s suspicious manner changed abruptly to friendliness. “Oh, Pat. You call her last week?”
“Yes, that was me.”
“Oh, Lek very much in love with you.”
My heart did a little flip of gratitude. My dear girl was not angry with me.
“I love her, too.”
The mama-san took my hand. “That is so good, mister Pat. She looking for someone to love her for such a long time. Ever since her operation.”
Some vague uneasiness gripped me. “Her operation? What was wrong? Is she ill? Did she have an accident?”
The mama-san laughed. “Oh no, no accident. But last year, she have operation to make her a real lady. No more katoey, lady-man. She always want that, save her money for five years to have operation.
“Lady-man?”
“Yes, you know.” The mama-san gestured toward one of the dancers, a long-legged, sultry-looking temptress. “Like Nong. Before, Lek a man but look like woman, dress like woman, want to be woman. Now, after operation, she really a woman. No more pretending.”
My stomach lurched. I thought for a moment that I would vomit. Lek, sweet, delicate, feminine Lek, was a man! I was in love with a man. I had had sexual relations with a man. The flesh of my penis was crawling, as if loathsome creatures swarmed over it. I was filled with shame and disgust.
“No!” I yelled. I jerked upright, spilling my beer all over the bar. It made a little pool around the heels of the dancer looming over me. She watched me curiously, surprised and shocked by my outburst, wondering what the crazy farang would do next.
“Mister, never mind. Lek good girl. She love you. You lucky man.”
“Lucky?” I roared. “She played me for a fool. She defiled me! She’s a devil in angel’s guise!” I stormed out of the bar. The girls cringed and shrank away from me as I passed.
Without knowing how I got there, I found myself in the shadowy cocktail lounge of my hotel, gulping down a double bourbon. I lay my head in my hands and sobbed. The Filipino band was warming up. I hoped that I would pass out before they started playing their set.
Suddenly there was warmth next to me, and a faint hint of jasmine. Cool, slender fingers touched my arm. I opened my eyes.
“You!” I hissed, jerking away from her hand. “Get away from me, you filthy whore!”
“Pat,” she said softly. “Please forgive me. I want to tell you, last weekend, but no time. Always we were laughing, or making love.”
A vision of her taut flanks straining back at me. A recollection of the dark scent of her butthole. “Get out of here. Don’t touch me, you, you abomination!”
I could see tears gathering in her eyes, making them shine even more than usual. I felt a brief pang of guilt, and something else I could not name.
“Never mind, Pat. You love me. I know you do. Man, lady, lady-man, same-same. All human, all love. Please, Pat.”
She looked tiny, suddenly, frail, crushed like a wilted flower. My anger left me, but I still came close to retching when she took my hand. “Look into my eyes,” she said softly. “Look at me, and tell you don’t love me. Then I go.”
I took one last look. Her raven hair shimmered in the multicoloured bar lights. Her ivory skin glowed golden, stretched firm across her high cheekbones. Wet traces of tears streaked her face, but her lips smiled that same luscious, sensuous, loving smile that I first saw across the room, three weeks, a thousand years ago.
I looked at her, and I wanted her. My cock stiffened even as my gut turned over and tried to expel its contents. I was more terrified than I had ever been in my life. I wrenched my hand away.
“Go away,” I whispered. “Leave me alone. I don’t love you.”
She did not hesitate any longer. She turned on her heels and walked to the door, an epiphany of grace. I bit my lip, and wondered what I had done to deserve this hell.
My work on the dam will be finished in another two months. Meanwhile, I don’t bother to go to Bangkok on the weekends any more. Charlie keeps bugging me to join the rest of the guys. He knows that something happened between Lek and me, though of course he doesn’t know the whole story.
“Come on, Pat. Forget her. You’ve got to be a phee-sua, as the bar girls say, a butterfly flitting from flower to flower. I just shake my head and turn back to my Orson Scott Card novel.