Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (Cape Island Mystery)

by Randall Peffer

“What does he know? He is just trying to cover himself. He’s feeling pressure in Bangkok from Prem’s family—bring him home, keep him away from me. That is what they want. They are very powerful. They pull strings in Thailand, police jump. He is trying to scare you to do his dirty work, that is all!”

  She is walking in quick strides from the stage door in the alley toward Commercial Street, where the yellow crime tape seals off the blocks of town leveled by the fire. She’s looking up the street hoping for a sign of the cab she has already called to take her back to Shangri-La. There is a tight grin pasted on her mouth. He feels like a dog nipping at her heels.

  “Come on, Tuki. I drove the whole way up here to make sure you were okay. The least you could do is stop and look at me.”

  She freezes, wheels, stares into his eyes. “You are a sweet man, Michael. An absolute prince. But sometimes you have no idea what you are dealing with.”

  He blushes a little. “That’s what Samset said.”

  “So you see. This is the truth. You do not know—” Something snaps in him. “I know his wife and children are missing. I know the police think he killed them. I know he left something like a suicide note. Do you know this?” So much for Samset’s off-the-record confession.

  Her faces grows pale. It cannot hold the smile that she has been trying to keep on her lips.

  “Oh, la! This cannot be true. He has problems. But he is a very gentle man. And he has a big warm heart. Prem would not hurt a flea.”

  “Samset talked about your relationship.” Her eyes flash. “He knows nothing!”

  Michael purses his lips, stares at his loafers. “He called it abusive.”

  She turns away. Bites her lip as she stares out into the debris field from the fire. A pair of front loaders have it heaped in a huge pile of wood and stone and pipes.

  He knows she is having a memory.

  A taxi honks. It is on a side street across the way.

  She wades into the crowd on the street, heading for the cab.

  He shouts her name.

  She stops, looks back. “Come on … I will tell you the real story.”

  It is only after the cab has made a U-turn and is winding its way along the back roads to Shangri-La that he remembers he has left his Jeep in P-town.

  She is not yet twenty-two when she moves in with him. He is twenty-five. But even though they share the same hammock in the dark corner of the River House, even though they bathe each other every night from the large urn of cool water in the bathroom, they almost never talk of their past or a future beyond the coming weekend. He wants to. He wants to tell her about all of the places he is going to take her—especially New York and San Francisco and Provincetown—where they can live like free people without what he calls his father’s gestapos prying into their business, shaking a finger of shame and disappointment in his face. But she tells him it is bad luck to make such distant plans. She knows such things. She has watched movies like Dirty Dancing.

  So they make peace. She finds her song and dance again. Brandy and Delta begin making jokes with her at work, treating her like a real person, not their personal China doll. When she wakes up around noon from her late sleeps back at the River House, he is always gone. Family obligations, he tells her. They almost never see each other in the daylight, only in the dark.

  After a while, he stops coming to her shows. This makes it easier for her to get her groove back. He says he cannot stand watching the desire cross the faces of other men when she sings and dances, cannot stand smelling their weeping sperm. He prefers to wait outside in the limo with Pon. Every night he is there to take her to a late dinner or shopping at little places that open specially for them. Then back to the landing at the Oriental and a water taxi. A water taxi to take them up stream through the rafts of water hyacinths, up stream on the black river to love.

  THIRTY

  She has had enough, cannot talk about Bangkok a second longer. He knows there’s more to this story. He has not heard anything to rule out Prem Kittikatchorn as a suspect. The guy sounds like a whack job, but to hell with him now. Tuki is crying so hard that she cannot pay the cabbie when they reach Shangri-La. There is a party raging in the Lodge. She is clearly in no shape to meet people. He wants to get her off to bed. Then he can figure out how he is going to get back to P-town to collect his Jeep. He has to get home to Chatham sometime soon. Filipa is coming down in the morning to spend the weekend.

  But he cannot just leave her standing in the parking lot, cannot just hand her over to one of the bouncers. She is crying so hard she cannot even walk on her own. So he wraps an arm around her, guides her down a side path to her bungalow.

  As soon as they get to her place, she collapses on the bed and buries her head in a pillow. Sobs are still coming. The room is in shadows. Only the porch light is on. And he does not see any reason to change this. He just wants to let her fall asleep. Samset may have a point about her being fragile. Even Filipa, who has a Portuguese woman’s well-developed sense of drama, could not cry this long or this hard.

  He wonders what his father would do. Part of him wants to stay with Tuki, just to watch over her, make sure she does not try to hurt herself. The other part screams for him to get the hell out of here. Blow her off and bum a ride back to P-town with someone from the party or one of the bouncers. He cannot decide. But first he has to calm her down.

  Maybe a stiff drink will do the trick. A survey of the fridge and cabinets only turns up a dusty bottle of B&B that looks like someone left it here years ago. He pours them both about three ounces, takes the drinks over to the bed, sits beside her.

  “Try this.”

  She rises up on one elbow, wipes the tears from her cheeks. Her big black eyes stare at him strangely as she reaches out for the glass. The light from outside makes the sun streaks in her hair look silver. “What is this?”

  “Some monks in Italy or Spain or somewhere make this. It is a five-hundred-year-old recipe to soothe the heart.”

  She sips, squints like someone who has never felt the fire of brandy in her throat before. Takes another sip, a big one, just to make sure she did not imagine that sweet heat.

  “Careful. It’s pretty strong.”

  She sets the glass on the bed, rubs her eyes.

  “Tonight, I need strong, la!”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I was bullying you.”

  She rolls her eyes as if to remember, waves a hand to dismiss the subject.

  “I mean it, Tuki. I feel lousy about making you so upset.” He wonders why he is always apologizing to her.

  She drops her head back on the pillow. “My head feels ready to explode.”

  He takes a long drink of the B&B, says nothing, listens to the songs of the crickets and the night birds, stares at that amazing mane of braids and curls covering her face. First with his right hand, then with his left he reaches under her hair and rubs his fingers up the back of her neck, along the sides of her head to her temples. It is what his mother used to do for him when he had the flu as a kid. Rub the knots out of his thick, dark, curly hair.

  She gives a little groan.

  The nights are almost always the same; always as if they are in a movie like The Blue Lagoon or The Emerald Forest. He undresses her in the starshine until all she wears is her gaff, and he bathes her with the cool water from the urn. It runs off her body in little streams and drips through the big cracks in the teak floor. You can hear it splashing softly below in the river as he tells her how crazy he is for her … how beautiful she is … how he will always love her like this. He says that when the money from his trust fund comes through they can go away from this city, live together like real lovers, not like creatures of the night, river rats.

  He talks and talks and talks until his words are like the song of a distant flute, and her mind wonders why he always wants her gaff on during these baths, why he never takes it off until the final act … and sometimes not even then. She thinks he does not like her the way she is, she tells him. She tells hi
m he wishes she were a woman like his mother, like his sisters.

  He says never. Women like that are all the same. They just want you to suck all of the loneliness from their breasts, fill the space between their legs, and help them make the babies who will do the same thing. They do not understand what a man needs and wants. They do not understand that a man needs to feel dangerous, that he always feels like a wild animal—a cat in the night. Needs to feel like this. That for every day he does not walk on the razor’s edge he dies a little. Women like his mother or his sisters or all of the girls they have tried to fix him up with—even tried to marry him to—cannot help him walk on the razor’s edge. Danger is not in their nature, he says.

  THIRTY-ONE

  He is still massaging her. His hands are under her loose jersey, kneading her shoulders with his thumbs and fingers, when he hears a knock and jumps. There is a woman at the door. Then she is in the door, calling Tuki’s name before he can even get his hands out of those dark curls. She is the queen called Nikki. And she is crying. Jesus, it must be the season. The light from the porch catches her square in the face. The left side is swollen. She is bleeding at the lip. Her green slip dress is wrinkled, stained with blood.

  “Oh,” she says when she sees Michael.

  Tuki pops up, tears all gone.

  “Nikki … oh, la!” She does not bother to introduce him. It is like he is not even in the room. She jumps to her feet and sweeps her friend into a big hug.

  Nikki gives a sob.

  “I hope you killed him, la.” Her voice is growling. “Because if you did not, I am going to!”

  The two queens hold each other in a tight embrace. He is thinking this is his moment to split, snag a ride back to P-town, then the Russian opens her eyes and shoots him a tormented look.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Michael, my lawyer.”

  Now he is on his feet, too.

  “I was just leaving.”

  Tuki gives him a little shake of her head. No, don’t leave. She says, “Give her some of the monks’ secret.”

  He goes for a glass and the B&B.

  “Where is the John who did—”

  Another sob. “You don’t understand, padruga.”

  One night, they are just lying there in the hammock together while he drinks his rice whiskey and rambles on and on. This is the night he tells her all about how he discovered trannies in high school. He says most of the guys in his American military school were a bunch of racist white boys. The few minority kids all stuck together for protection. He made a friend named Robert, a black kid on scholarship from Memphis. After their first year, they chose to be roommates. Robert was a football star, an amazing runner, ball handler. The whole school respected him. They stayed out of his face when he came on with the eff-you-white-boys attitude. So for three years until they graduated, no one bothered Robert or his sidekick Prem. In their room, in their free time, they had a separate and private life apart from all the young storm troopers.

  After one vacation, Robert came back from Memphis with some wigs and dresses he said that he had stolen from his sister. At first he dressed up for fun, danced around the dormitory in drag singing along with Roberta Flack tunes and flirting with the other boys. But after a while, Robert started to change. After lights out in the dormitory, Robert began to wear bras, stockings, garter belts. His voice changed. He said he was Bobbi. Prem liked it.

  They flirted in the dark for months. Then they did more. Then they did everything. They liked the idea that at any minute one of the boys or the hall master might catch them. Sometimes Bobbi came out of the closet, and they sneaked around the dark school. Had sex in places like the library and the chapel. Once they even stole into their hall master’s apartment and did it on his bed, leaving skid marks to prove it. Then one vacation Prem’s mother let him and Robert use the family apartment in New York by themselves. Prem and Bobbi discovered Christopher Street—Silicone Alley—and all the tranny clubs in the Village. They split up, picked new partners.

  “We screwed our brains out,” sighs Prem against her neck. “I think my parents knew it. But all through college they kept trying to throw these rich Chinese-American chicks at me. I played along. I cannot handle my father’s anger. I was actually engaged once. But in my heart, I never came back to the straight—”

  “Screw MY brains out,” she says because she has heard more than enough. She definitely does not want to know even one more thing about his other loves … especially rich Chinese-American girls.

  Then she takes his hands and draws him outside to the stairs leading down to the klong, where they make love in front of Buddha and the world with a fury that stops their hearts.

  THIRTY-TWO

  She gets Nikki to lie down on the bed, and she cleans her face with warm water and soap. “Who hit you? Your date?”

  “No.” Nikki mumbles as Michael gives her a glass of B&B and some ice wrapped in a towel to bring down the swelling around her eye. “Duke didn’t beat me.”

  “Duke? What are you talking about, la?”

  “Duke. I was with Duke tonight. I have a thing for Duke, padruga! I don’t know. He is so sweet and kind … and maybe I am in love. How in hell would I know? How in hell do girls like us ever know where the sex stops and real love …. But he didn’t hurt me, okay? Not Duke.”

  “Duke?” Tuki asks again.

  He is trying to remember who Duke is, has heard Tuki talk about him, knows he has seen him. The guy has something to do with the Follies.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Seriously? Since July Fourth weekend, since you and Alby—”

  Tuki’s hand is up with the stop sign.

  “Richie doesn’t know?”

  Michael is starting to make the connections. Richie runs the club. Duke is his main man, a bartender. Mr. Clean.

  She nods.

  “So Richie hit you and—”

  “No, he cannot stand up to Duke. He just called in the KGB to do his dirty work.”

  “Like Immigration? For real, la?” She nods again.

  Tuki’s breath just plain stops for a while. She stares out the picture window of her bungalow into the dark.

  “About six of them. They found us in bed together in Duke’s room at the Follies about an hour ago. Like we were … you know. Duke reached for his gun on the nightstand. Some guy hit him with a chair before he could even stand up. Knocked him cold for a second. I grabbed one of my heels, tried to poke out his eyes. Then another guy started on me with an open hand. But Duke got to his pistol, took aim, told them all to get the fuck out.”

  “Jesus!” Michael cannot believe what he is hearing.

  “Really? This is not another bad date that Ruby made for you?” Tuki is still in disbelief, too.

  “I got to pack. Duke’s waiting for me up in the car. Those bastards will be here next. I know it.”

  She says Duke told her tonight that he loves her. He is going to stick by her. No matter what. Forever. He used to work some clubs in San Francisco. As soon as Nikki and Duke salvage what they can from here, the wagon train heads west.

  “Maybe we all should go,” says Michael. He is actually half serious. He has this terrible feeling that he has sunken so far into this pool of crime and drag that he may never get out. Filipa and the wedding seem like someone else’s life. What is happening to him?

  Sometimes she tastes the tears on his face, knows they cannot go on like this forever no matter what he says. Then she cries, too.

  She tells him they see too much of each other. They have been together more than a year. Maybe there is nothing new about these nights. Maybe he is getting tired of her. Maybe they would be happier when they make love if she did not live here, if she had her own apartment in the city.

  He says he cannot stand this idea. But he does not beg her to stay, as she wants him to. Instead, he talks about his own crying. More problems with his father. Then he says he is deathly afraid that she will meet another man. He coul
d not live with it.

  Men, she says, are a dime a dozen. But a River Lion is a treasure to death. She makes love to him until the sun rises over the wats across the river. They look like strange, dark pyramids. When his long, thin body can no longer move, and his eyes are like glass, she dresses. Then she hails a boatman on the klong and pays him twenty baht for a ride across the river to Banglamphu. She is going to find an apartment. She does not know about the pung chao yet, but she knows he is into something bad.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Last night still feels like a nightmare to him when Filipa pounces into his bed at noon on Saturday. Really. He feels like total shit. It was not until after sunrise that he found his way back to Chatham.

  And his sleep has been riddled with images of standing before a tribunal of uniformed men. They want to know how long he has been helping a bunch of foreign flits and hookers avoid deportation. That is the Sisterhood’s game. He sees it now. All these queens like Tuki, Nikki, and Silver, are from overseas, illegals. After Alby Costelano set them up with jobs and a place to stay at Shangri-La, he and his stooges like Richie kept the harem in line by threatening to turn them in to the INS if they did not put out for the customers. Sweet. There’s motive for you. The suspect pool has just gotten larger.

  When he feels Filipa’s tongue in his ear he is wondering about the hostess, Ruby. He wants to talk to her. What is her role in all of this? Is she foreign and illegal, too? Under Alby’s thumb? It’s beginning to look like a lot of folks might have wanted the Great One dead.

  “Rise and shine, sleepyhead.” She nuzzles his neck. “And brush your teeth. You reek of booze. Where were you last night?”

  “Shut up and kiss me!”

  He rolls her off the bed and onto the floor. Pins her wrists to the hardwood, devours her face with his lips and teeth. She struggles for a while. Finally yields. Then he takes the rest of her. God, how he loves this zest intimacy, the way it beats back the rest of the world.