Phantom Lover and Other Thrilling Tales of Thailand

by Jim Algie

  Duck began crying.

  Watermelon rubbed her forehead while scolding herself for being such a bad mother and a liar.

  Just then, the taxi pulled up in front of the Watergate Hotel.

  WATERMELON TOOK a hot shower and thought about her plan.

  Another go-go dancer had told her that the best way to drug a client was to rub some sedatives into her breasts and nipples. But wouldn’t he be able to taste the drug when he licked her boobs? Seeing how drunk and horny he was, maybe not. How many capsules should she use? One? Two? Since the guy was so fat, maybe she should use all three. But would that kill him? (The pharmacist had told her that five of them would knock out a tiger.)

  Finally, she decided on two capsules, one for each breast.

  Before she rubbed the tranquilizers into them, Watermelon moved her gold necklace around so that the tiny Buddha image was facing her back, like she always did before having sex with a customer. That way, the amulet would still protect her, but the Buddha wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing.

  For lubrication, she put a few globs of Vaseline inside her sex. Then she wrapped a dry towel around herself like a sarong and walked into the cool, air-conditioned room. At the foot of the bed, she put her backpack on the floor with the open switchblade under it.

  Gorilla was lying on top of the covers, holding the remote in his hand and channel surfing with the volume turned down. Except for the little lamp with the white shade beside the bed, and the flickering shadows cast by the TV, the huge room was dark.

  She lay down beside him, smiled and giggled. “How are you, honey?”

  He stared at the TV. “Drunk and lonely.”

  “Why lonely? I am here, na.”

  “Ya, you are here for money, but you don’t like me. It’s okay. I don’t like me, too.”

  “I like you.”

  “Quatsch! Don’t speak bullshit! I don’t like people speak bullshit.”

  What was he so angry about? Was it just all the gin?

  Then it occurred to her that the tranquilizers might be seeping into her bloodstream and she’d be the one who fell asleep or overdosed. If she had murdered someone in a previous life, maybe it was this guy and now he’d come to seek revenge. Drugging herself to death while he watched would be fitting karma.

  While Gorilla went on and on about how much he missed, and still loved, his ex-wife, Karla, she looked around the dark room. Over by the balcony were two suitcases, but she couldn’t see any cameras or jewelry lying around. So maybe they were in the wardrobe? Or was there a safe in the room?

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, pretending to listen, she tried to stroke his hand, but he pushed it away.

  Now he told her about his job, working as a medic at a clinic for Burmese refugees alongside the border, and gave her a long lecture about Burmese politics and why she should never go there because tourist dollars helped to support their military regime. With only two days off a month, how was she supposed to go anywhere, except if a customer took her on vacation and paid the bar? And who would ever want to visit some poor, boring country like Burma? The only places she wanted to visit were Singapore, for shopping, Hong Kong, because they had a Disneyland, and America, because everyone looked so rich and beautiful in the TV shows she watched.

  Watermelon switched off the lamp and squeaked in her helium-high voice, “You think too much. Don’t worry, be happy.”

  He stroked her hair. “Ja, and you think not enough.” For the first time that night he laughed.

  With her on top they began kissing. Gorilla pulled the towel up over her ass, cupped her buttocks in his palms and kneaded them. His beard scratched her face. Raising herself up on one hand, Water-melon pulled the towel down over her small breasts so that he could lick them. As he sucked her nipples, greedy as an infant for milk and for love, she felt a surprising affection for him that was maternal, not sexual, because he seemed so helpless and needy. The feeling only lasted for a few seconds—until he bit her nipple and made her wince—but it was still good to know that she could feel something for a man besides anger and bitterness.

  The pain evaporated while nervousness crept into her mind. He was really licking and kissing her breasts all over, ensuring that he’d get the full dosage. Would it be enough to kill him? How long would it take before he fell asleep?

  He rolled her off of him and kissed her neck while he pushed one, then two, then three, fingers inside her. But since that night with the golfer she’d felt nothing when they penetrated her down there but a series of chills that slithered up from between her legs and settled in her stomach, like when a gynecologist put a cold, metal speculum inside her.

  Worried that her body, and Gorilla, were both dying on her, she resorted to one of the tricks she used when sleeping with a really ugly customer: rerunning erotic fantasies from her adolescence. Closing her eyes, Watermelon pretended that it was Johnny Superstar fingering her. She saw the pop singer’s effeminate face appear in her mind and silently asked him: “Why do all the men that I’m most attracted to always turn out to be gay?”

  Johnny, smiling, said, “I used to be gay, my lovely sweetheart, but you turned me into a normal man and now I want to marry you. I’d also love for us to have a child together and—”

  Gorilla crushed that fantasy by climbing on top of her, burying Watermelon under his prickly bulk after she’d only felt a few pangs of heartburn for her lost and silly dreams of teenage love.

  Automatically, she moaned and sighed with false passion when she only felt sweaty and claustrophobic. But Gorilla was not like her more aggressive customers who wielded their cocks like killers armed with knives, stabbing her with violence and vengefulness. The German knew that he was too big for her and slowed down. He whispered in her ear, “You are like a fine piece of china, the most beautiful girl I ever touch. I don’t want to hurt you in any way.”

  She wished he hadn’t said that because, for the first time that night, he became a real person to her, not a customer, not an animal, but a human being. The drug, combined with all the gin, must have been really kicking in now, because Wilhelm’s voice took on a new undercurrent of softness, “Karla, do you still love me?” Some of her customers had requested a “girlfriend experience,” but no one had ever asked her to play their ex-wife before.

  Acutely aware of the sweat pooling in her stomach and needling at the corners of her closed eyes, Watermelon hesitated. She had not been hard-wired to provide any automatic responses to a request like this. Half-heartedly, she said, “Sure, baby, I always love you.”

  His sweat, salty as tears, dripped on to her closed lips and eyelids. “You will never leave me again, will you?”

  Not daring to open her eyes, but with a little more sympathy, she cooed, “No, never. I always stay with you.”

  Reassured, he began moving his hips again, but slower, gentler, like a man making love to his wife, seeking an intimacy and a connection above and beyond the merely physical. His consideration penetrated a deeper part of her that few of her customers had ever accessed before. Vignettes from her marriage, beginning at the age of sixteen, to a southern Thai Muslim and livestock trader, flickered across her mind like scenes from a grainy film shown at a Buddhist temple fair. Resplendent in his white fez and striped sarong, Vinai smoked tobacco wrapped in a nipa palm leaf. Each time he spilled an ash he licked the tip of his index finger, picked it up and put it in the ashtray. It was a small gesture that had grown larger in time, because she’d never seen anyone else do that and probably never would again. It also said a lot about how neat, gentle, and meticulous he was. Unlike her previous boyfriends, he did not expect her to clean up after him, not even a single cigarette ash. After his daily reading of the Quran, her darkly handsome husband always kissed the cover of the book before putting it back on the shelf. Then he would teach her another expression in Arabic that made both of them laugh. “Trust in Allah, but keep your camel tied up.” He also enjoyed teasing her about the more extreme elements of Islam t
hat he did not believe in. “You know, sweetheart, by law I could have four wives, but since you’re like ten different women rolled into one, I’ve already got about eight more than I can handle.” Water-melon sat down on his lap and tweaked his nose, “If you even have one other wife I’ll cut your dick off with a machete and feed it to the pigs.” It was the most offensive thing she could possibly say to a Muslim man, but instead of taking offence, his long, feminine eyelashes, which she thought was his most attractive feature, fluttered as he laughed. “Oh, you’re such a country girl with all your passion, intensity, and terrible manners. You’ve got more spirit than all of those prissy, boring office ladies in Bangkok and Had Yai put together.” Watermelon answered a phone call from his brother informing her that Vinai, barely twenty, had been killed in a motorcycle accident while visiting his family down south. According to Muslim tradition, they had to bury the body immediately. She would not have the chance to see him one final time or attend his funeral. That, more than anything else, had continued to haunt her.

  How could she have ever explained to him that she’d slept with hundreds of men but only ever made love to him? And that grief can don many disguises indistinguishable from madness and not-giving-a-damn depravity.

  Watermelon was making love to Vinai. Wilhelm was making love to Karla. How could two people performing the most intimate of acts be so completely lost to each other? This was not sex so much as a form of psychotherapy and mutual grieving. In that it was preferable to grieving alone.

  The ghost of her husband, now inhabiting this man’s body, pushed his way deeper into her, conjuring a recurring nightmare…at opposite ends of a bridge made from the stretched umbilical cord of their daughter stood Watermelon and Vinai. They called out to each other but the wind whipped their words away. Holding on to the ropes on each side, Watermelon walked towards her husband, foot over foot, on a swaying ribbon of flesh as slender as a tightrope. Vinai walked towards her. But the more they walked the farther away they got. The wind hurled dead owls and palm leaves at her. Digging grit out of one eye, Watermelon watched as the wind grew arms that picked him up and threw him over the ropes. Limbs flailing, he plummeted into a black pit. She let out an ear-piercing scream. Thinking, perhaps, that she was having an orgasm, Wilhelm quickened his pace and, with their thighs slapping together, they filled each other with the desolation of their lovelorn lives, boiled down into the most primitive elements of bodily secretions and saltwater tears.

  Wilhelm lay down beside her, panting heavily and groaning.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  He put his hand on his heart. Ghostly, blue-white images from the TV flickered across his sweaty face. “I feel terrible pain here,” he said and patted his heart. “Maybe I am having heart attack, ja.”

  Watermelon swallowed noisily and it sounded to her like an admission of guilt. When she looked over at him his eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. She tried to wake him up but couldn’t. Oh no! Watermelon grabbed his wrist and felt his pulse beating. But for how much longer?

  What should she do? She wasn’t a murderess. She didn’t want him to die. So maybe she should call security and make up some bullshit story; they wouldn’t know she’d drugged him.

  Chewing on her long, sparkly silver fingernails, Watermelon thought about her daughter (“Mom, are you really a prostitute?”), and then Dog and his golf clubs (“Look in mirror!”).

  No, she had to stop being a whore. She had to do it for Duck.

  Quickly she got dressed and turned on the lamp beside the bed. Gorilla was snoring. Good.

  Watermelon crept over to the two suitcases by the balcony, opened the big one and riffled through the contents: shirts, jeans, socks and underwear. Then she opened the smaller suitcase—and hit the jackpot! It was full of plastic bags containing gold Rolex watches, diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. But her smile went flat when she realized they were probably fakes. Either that or this guy was a robber, too.

  Stealing from a thief?

  “Wen gum [That’s karma],” she muttered.

  A hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back until it felt like her neck was going to snap. Looking up, she saw a dark beer belly.

  “You stupid bitch,” he said in a groggy voice. “You think you fool me with this drugging trick? No, I fool you.”

  Gorilla tried to pull her to her feet, but only tore out a clump of Watermelon’s hair. Her scalp on fire, she scurried across the floor on all fours to grab her Snoopy backpack and groped for the switchblade, only to hear it click open behind her. “I have your knife,” he said.

  Watermelon ran for the door in the dark hallway. Feeling around on the carpet for her high heels, she grabbed one of them and stood up to see the silhouette of a monster lumbering towards her. With her fingers wrapped around the toe of the shoe, she pulled it back over her shoulder, took a step forward, and smacked him in the face with the stiletto heel.

  “Sheisser!”

  Watermelon dropped the shoe and tried to whip the door open, but it banged against the chain. Just as she slid the chain off and opened the door, he flicked on the light in the hallway. The sudden flash blinded her. She blinked rapidly and looked over her shoulder. Standing there naked, his beer belly hanging down over his cock, he stared at her with tears seeping from one blue eye and blood weeping from an empty socket. His other eye stared at her from the palm of his hand.

  Feeling as stunned as he looked, she stood there, muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

  Watermelon ran down the hallway and slammed the button for the elevator.

  One of them was on floor 18, the other on 12.

  “Hurry up! Hurry up!”

  Down the hallway she saw Gorilla, a towel around his waist, lumber out of the room and bellow, “Vake up everybody! Vake up! There is a thief in our hotel!”

  Watermelon bolted for the stairway.

  Holding the metal railing to propel herself around the corners, her bare feet slapped against the concrete stairs while the numbers of the floors flashed by: 6, 5, 4, 2….

  Out of breath, she stopped on the ground floor, her heart drumming against her breast. What if he had caught the elevator and was waiting for her in the lobby with one blue eye in his hand? What if he’d called security? But she couldn’t stay here and waiting would only increase the chance of her getting caught.

  Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she walked across the cool marble floor of the gleaming lobby, feeling very suspicious in her bare feet. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be around except for the doorman and the front desk clerk. She smiled and politely asked the desk clerk for her ID card; it was a fake, so it didn’t matter if he’d written down the name and number. For once, she was grateful for the condescending way he dropped her ID on the counter without so much as a word or even a glance.

  Quickly she strode towards the front door, shooting glances over her shoulder at the blinking numbers of an elevator descending (6…5). Up ahead was the doorman, who stared at her bare feet and frowned (4…3). The doorman was dressed in this old-fashioned Siamese costume of bright silk. Earlier, when she’d walked in with her customer, he’d opened the door for them, but he made no effort to do so now.

  Just as she put her hand on the door, she looked around to see a young Asian guy walk out of the elevator.

  Watermelon exhaled audibly and smiled.

  When the taxi was six streets away from the hotel, and she hadn’t seen any police pick-up trucks or motorcycles, she figured she was in the clear.

  It was sickening to remember how she’d knocked his eye out with her high heel, though. If she didn’t make a decent donation to the temple in her village, the Buddha was going to be very, very angry with her.

  After she’d visited her daughter and family for a couple of months—Gorilla and the police would’ve given up looking for her by then—Watermelon knew she’d have to come back to Bangkok to work in another bar. Since her parents could only afford to send her to school for six years, she did
n’t have many other choices. Obviously, she couldn’t go back to Patpong; but some of her roommates worked at a new go-go bar called Bad Girls in Nana Plaza, so maybe she’d work there and finally meet some rich guy who wanted to marry her.

  Watermelon let out a yawn that made her lower jaw tremble and slumped down in the back seat. She could still feel Wilhelm’s bulk (or was it all the guilt and disappointment?) pushing down on her chest, along with the deadweight of every customer she’d slept with over the past four years. How many had it been? Two hundred? Three hundred? As many as four hundred? She wasn’t sure, but it felt as if she had that invisible Siamese ghoul, who sits on the stomachs of dreamers while they sleep and slowly suffocates them to death, sitting on her chest, right now.

  If she kept saving her money, however, and stayed away from drugs and gambling like she’d done so far, then maybe in another year or two she’d be able to set up her own little beauty parlor and bring her daughter to live with her in Bangkok.

  Whatever happened, Watermelon swore to herself, and made a promise to Vinai’s spirit, that their daughter would never end up as a prostitute.

  When the taxi stopped at a red light the driver looked back at her and sharked a grin that made Watermelon shiver and look away. Using a slang term for a one-night stand, he said, “Do you want to go up to heaven? I have a big rocket that’ll take us there in a very short time.” Even though the driver was at least fifty, he laughed and laughed like a teenager.

  Resigned to her bad karma for the next few years, but none too happy about it, Watermelon pushed herself up in the backseat with her elbows and smirked at him in the rearview mirror like Rabbit had once done to her. “How much are you willing to pay, Mr. Rocket? So you can go up to heaven and I can go down to hell.”

  THE LEGENDARY NOBODY

  For Jody Penhall (Based on a true crime story)