Red Night Zone - Bangkok City

by James A. Newman

  Carina shook her head.

  “Well give it some thought. I’ve enjoyed the cream of Bangkok society,” Joe said, “and I’ve very much enjoyed your company, but I’m itching to get back out amongst my people, the scum, and start asking questions.”

  “Thanks, Joe. Tonight has made me feel a little better.”

  Joe wished he could agree, as they got the bill from the waitress. They paid the bill, walked out into the night, and took separate taxis.

  Joe watched her car from the rear window of his, disappearing into the purple night like a ghost.

  The city was full of them.

  TEN

  THE TAXI braked at what once was Washington Square. Now it had been flattened, yet the ghosts of old expats haunted the rubble and cement. A tip of a cowboy hat, the sound of boots clicking, and the whiff of second hand bourbon and cigar smoke wafting up into the night sky. Forgotten ghosts patrolled the plains of cement with vague senile intent, unclaimed military pensions, and forgotten bar fines.

  It was the edge of the Zone.

  The air was thick and warm. The road glittered with neon lights. A sprinkling of bargirls, frog-scratchers, touts, lined the sidewalks outside the bars.

  Brown kittens stood and sat around enticing foreign booze hounds into their shameless grottos. They wore undersized shorts wrapped around stems to kill for. Brown thighs and smiles. They’d stand naked in front of a toad for a little sugar. Inside their domains, webs were spun and traps were set. They told the client what he wanted to hear, smiled and laughed at the appropriate time. Like all astute entrepreneurs, the hookers understood that customer satisfaction brought repeat customers: A John in the hand was worth two in the bush.

  In the Red Night Zone, human relationships were strictly business relationships terminating in despair and financial ruin for the deluded foreign investor. The frog scratchers always won. Joe had met body-builders brought to their knees in tears when it hit them that the small brown female they had been abusing all these years, was actually abusing them. Joe had seen psychologists baffled and green berets surrender. Some of the victims stayed in the country and became Buddhist monks, swearing off women for life. Others returned to the ruins of their former lives back west, a frail weakened shadow of their former selves. All of these men finally had to surrender or end up like Monica, swinging in an apartment, east of the city, consumed by desire and shame.

  Yom Pae.

  A homeless drunk held a conversation with a parched fig tree. The tree had grown up through a large crack in the sidewalk. The tree was bored stiff. Joe counted the steps as he walked. An elderly man naked to the waist sat on the sidewalk. Joe had seen him before. A former lady-boy who exhibited his two plump silicone breasts in the street and begged for money. Beggars and bargirls worked to exploit an area of consciousness that Joe no longer had. Vagrants and hookers and small-time criminals hustled the streets. ‘You want taxi?... sexy lady?...Shower massage?’ Vice hung in the air with the stench of burnt chillies. An invisible threat reached out and grabbed you by the throat, by the groin, and by the wallet.

  A cat padded out onto the street from inside a massage parlour and vomited onto the road. The cat stared at the nasty puddle before shaking its twisted tail and wandering back inside to get some more of whatever it was.

  Joe crossed over the road.

  The Street of Dead Artists. At the mouth of the soi stood a seven-eleven. He walked inside and received a blast of air-conditioning. He browsed the isles and then picked up a copy of the Thai Rath, and flicked through the pages. Nothing about the suicide. He asked the kid behind the counter if he had a copy of yesterday’s paper. The kid looked at Joe. He smiled, nodded, and then he disappeared to a storeroom and came back with a copy of yesterday’s rag. Joe looked through it. On the fifth page, was a close up of a woman’s face.

  Black and white.

  It was her.

  One of those crime scene shots that stole victim’s dignity as the camera flashed. Any decorum Monica had ever had was taken away the moment that picture was printed. The tongue hung out of the mouth like that of a dog. The eyes open, mad, and staring. Hair wild. Black mascara dripped down her cheeks like a Halloween mask. A snarl of sudden knowledge. He bought the newspaper.

  “Read it,” he said to the shop attendant. Joe had learned how to speak the language but the Thai script still eluded him.

  The boy looked at it, smirked, and explained the basics; twenty-four year old woman found dead in apartment building. Then he said something Joe didn’t understand “len maya kon.” He picked up the paper, paid for it, and took it to a bar three units along the road.

  The Office Bar turned a blind eye to free-lancers. It wasn’t a knocking shop. More of a meeting place. Australian management. Joe ordered a soda water and thought about suicide. Not about committing it, but about why they do it. Where is the point you reach and how do you reach it? Is it a snap decision, or do you build up to it? He drank his soda water. That mischievous smile and that eyebrow that moved of its own accord. That tiger scratch tattoo, the beehive, the make-up, and the dreams. He drank to the ghost that spoke of demons. He drank his water like it was booze, quick and desperate with closing time approaching. Still he didn’t get it. He tried to recall anything that Monica had said, anything to suggest that she had dark thoughts boiling over, anything at all that would give him somewhere to start.

  Nothing.

  A freelance bargirl aged north of thirty, slid up to the bar stool next to Joe’s, caught his eye, and winked with her’s. She wore a German Gestapo set-up with her long hair stuffed inside the black leather pilot’s cap. She smiled. Dimples materialized on a pair of generous cheeks. Maybe the Nazis weren’t all bad, Joe decided.

  “Why you so sad?” She asked.

  “Mayan empathy,” Joe showed her the rag. Said in Thai, “What do you think?” She looked at it, wrinkled her nose, and then commented:

  “That lady played with fire, like a stupid lizard she got burnt, she was from the jungle,” she pointed with her lips outside the bar; her eyes showed her disapproval of people who lived in the jungle.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You speak Thai well for a foreigner,” she said.

  “Snake, snake, fish, fish,” Joe smiled.

  “It says here,” she pointed at the article with her finger this time, “she messed around with black magic.” She stroked a section of the print with a painted green fingernail, and then shook her head.

  “Black magic?” Joe asked.

  “Yes, it’s no good, brother. I never like to hear about people messing around with these things. Some people from the jungle, buffalo people, lizards...dogs behind the mountain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For many years, the jungle people have practiced black magic. The other week in the newspaper, one man played a magic trick on his boss, it backfired. Lizard found his boss sleeping with minor wife. The worker cut boss’s tongue out. The tongue was then used in another black magic spell to make the wife take a tumble, a motorcycle accident. She died like a buffalo, slowly and painfully. Later, the worker died in the monkey house like a dog. Then there were another group of medicine men upcountry, they took children from the border villages, killed them, and used their body parts to make potions and candles. Little children, six or seven years old. People like that are like lizards, buffalos, dogs...Frogs in a coconut shell…”

  “Sure, sister.”

  “Happens all the time up there in the jungle. People who mess about with black magic, something bad happens or they end up dead like this lady in the newspaper. What’s her name? Monica. They think black magic will make them lucky. Is that good luck?” she asked pointing at the picture. “Is it?”

  Joe had no answer.

  ELEVEN

  THE NAZI bargirl lit a cigarette and asked for a drink, Joe said yeah, and ordered her one of
those coke-a-cola cocktails that you pay through the nose for. He took a sip of water and waited for it: “Listen, brother, if she hadn’t messed with black magic, maybe she’d still be alive. And maybe all those men would have loved her anyway,” she said.

  “What men?”

  “She wanted rich boyfriends, customers or whatever, she wanted all the money in the world, you know? She heard about the other girls. Nobody knew how some girls got lucky and other girls didn’t. There are rumours and stories about ways to make men love you. I’m from the city. I’d rather take my chances doing things my own way. I don’t want to hand over my fate to some jungle medicine man who takes my money and uses my body as part of the deal.”

  “It says that in the newspaper?”

  “No, not in here,” she said waving the paper, “in here,” she pointed to her head and smiled. She jerked her chin back and stared down her squat nose with a look of mock eastern wisdom.

  “So, you knew her?”

  “I’d seen her around. Never spoke to her. I thought she was a lizard, buffalo, she worked alone. She thought she was better than everybody else. She struck me as a false person. Like a frog in a coconut shell, she wasn’t the full baht, brother. In a way, I’m glad what happened. Now some of the other girls can wake up and leave the jungle men alone. Serves her right – Som nom na!”

  “In what way was she false?”

  “Well, you can’t work in a bar and pretend to be some kind of high society queen, you know, brother? Once a woman has put herself in the bar, that is it. No going back to little miss innocent,” she said bitterly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Once a woman makes the decision to work in a bar, her life is changed forever. That’s it. She will rarely, if ever, go back into real society. And if she does, never as a real person again. Foreigners have guilt, you don’t understand. Us Thais, we have shame. You ever felt shame?”

  “Sure,” Joe shuddered.

  “Well, maybe you think you have felt shame, but real shame stays with you the moment you accept money for sex from some old drunk foreigner, who sweats, smells, and treats you like the piece of shit that you are. That shame stays with you until you die. Once you do the kind of things bargirls do for money, you have the heart of a beggar,” she said, “just like a beggar on the street, brother.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I know it. You have any idea what it feels like to have the heart of a beggar, to know whatever you do, you will never be the same after making that one crazy decision?”

  “Maybe we aren’t that different, we keep going back to the bars even though we know it’s wrong.”

  “The thing is, these girls work the bar to send the money back behind the mountain, you understand? By selling their body, they are making merit and will be given good luck in the next life. Monica had no family to support and she couldn’t wait for the next life. She wanted everything now. She became a bar lizard, buffalo.”

  “She lived for the moment.”

  “I know who I’d rather be, mister. My name’s Joy,” she said, offering Joe the hand with green fingernails. “You want to go with me?” Joe let go of her hand.

  “Okay, Joy, charmed. Listen, Joy. My name’s Joe. That girl in the picture. Monica. I knew her, you understand?”

  “I’m sorry, big brother. I didn’t mean anything by what I said. She wasn’t really a lizard lady, a buffalo. I work in a bar, you understand?” Joy turned red with shame. Beneath the Nazi cap and the black leathers, there was something human trying to get out.

  “It’s cool, you know anyone else that plays with black magic?”

  “No, not me. I’m from the city, I don’t mess around like that,” she said, her face transforming into the innocent puzzled deer that they both knew she wasn’t. It was a routine she probably perfected in front of mirrored surfaces and Johns. Most of the bargirls had the same routine. Gimmick. The routine hinged around the John taking pity on their unfortunate circumstances. Callous bastards were immune from the trick.

  “Thanks, Joy.” Joe drank up his water and put down a purple five hundred baht note, indicating that she keep the change.

  “I’m sorry, Joe.”

  “That’s okay, it happened. Honestly, you may have just helped me. Can you do one more thing for me,” Joe took out another purple five and folded it underneath his business card, “you think you can find out anything more about this black magic?”

  “Okay, Joe, I’ll do that,” she pocketed the card and began scanning the Office bar for another customer to latch onto for the night.

  Joe hit the street.

  The Red Lip bar blasted. It took all he had not to go in. The purple smog was alive with traffic. Neon lights shone in all directions. He hailed a taxi, got in it, and instructed the driver to head west back toward the heart of the Zone. Outside, kaleidoscopic streetlights danced in the oily sky. Streams of colour rotating like clock hands spiralling around the moonless sky. Yellows, blues and purples. Angry bruises. Shapes of storm clouds from behind skyscrapers. Buildings shot up surrounded by building cranes. Colours merged together.

  Joe made it to his dive and fell on the bed fully clothed. His eyes felt heavy and his head ached. He closed his eyes:

  You open them inside a dungeon. ‘Hey, Pops!’ Shit. Your ankles and wrists strapped into a frame. Monica, your princess, dancing with the stylized movements of a temple dancer. She’s a celestial nymph from the Khmer dynasty resuscitated by song. How you watched out for her. Wearing a latex cat-suit with a leather cat-o-nine tails in her hand. She stops dancing, runs the whip through her fingers, smiling…That bitch, that whore…

  “Yeah, I bet you like that, huh? It’s called a rack, it’s where men like to go when they’ve been naughty boys. Have you been a naughty boy, huh?” She laughs loudly. “Relax. People do this for fun all the time. You want to see what else they do in here?” Monica looks around the fetish bar coolly pointing out torture devices… “Let me tell you the story, Pops. When I first came to Bangkok, I was just a little girl, right? I used to be a little girl once. I played in the canal, not far from here, I had an auntie live down there that taught me a few things about the business later on. But of course you know all this right, Pops? You were there. She was your wife…How often you pass her the soap, Pops?...Too young, huh? Too fucking young…One day near the canal it was paper boats sailing down it and the next we had our little secret… I was like you, Pops, all tied up… Do you remember? I never told anyone about that did I, Pops? I lied for you…Protected you… After that, I knew that when I grew up I would work the bars, the tricks, the game... You see I was spoiled goods. You spoiled me, Pops, you spoiled me real bad…What decent man would want me now? Auntie showed me how it was done, ‘Singing a song for the buffalo listen.’ ‘Taking money from the dog…’ She knew all the tricks and I listened to her while you were drinking…Listened to her fucking tears… I knew I would get revenge, and when I saw my chance, well you know it was too good to turn down. You know what I mean, Pops? Sure you do...”

  “It was our secret, Monica?”

  “What secret, Pops?”

  “The secret, in your room.”

  She chuckles. “Pops, I have a new secret now…You wanna see it?”

  TWELVE

  A GIANT red pool… A bottle of wine… You dive into it… Drown in it… The dream is neon liquid, reds, blues and greens…Lizards swim… You remember an old story told to you by an old man a long time ago…A Buddhist monk… Cheated death, elevated himself to Nirvana in a five room cinderblock house… A woman with long black fingernails and magic in her hair…

  Hair, white skin, a smile and a lie…

  The room begins to shake, slowly at first and then it rattles… Sunlight streams through the window and hits your eyes like an axe to the mind…

  To escape back to the dream impossible…

  Every
thing lost.

  THIRTEEN

  7th October 2010

  JOE AWOKE sweating.

  He felt hung-over. Not from all the alcohol he hadn’t drunk, nor the drugs he hadn’t taken.

  Hung-over from the dream.

  Past girlfriends had confessed to him that he told cut-up stories while he slept. He swore and named names. He remembered a line from Burroughs.

  Thou shall not be such a shit that thou doesn’t know they are one.

  Safer to live alone.

  He made it to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Careful not to drink from the tap, as Bangkok water could drive you mad. Madder. Joe had seen it. One expat known as French Francis was convinced the water was fine. He drank it every day. Last anybody saw of Frenchy, he was singing in the rain wearing women’s ballerina shoes, while talking to buildings outside the P.S.I. It could have been the water. It could have been the city. It could have been a cocktail of the two. Or perhaps the frog had a weak constitution.

  Needed scratching.

  Joe looked at his slate grey eyes in the mirror. Grey eyes with touches of green and hazel like cracked marble. Eyes that used to be red every morning, but now shone with animal alertness. There was a touch of blackness around the edges, but nothing a java wouldn’t amend.

  He remembered the conversation with Monica:

  “Ask for Abbot Adjarn. He’s a teacher and a monk, I think you will like him. He’s a little bit crazy just like you. I think he can help you, Joe.”

  An hour later, Joe sat on the ferry squeezed between a group of school kids and a lottery ticket vendor.

  Early morning.

  Didn’t feel like gambling.

  The tropical sun lay crouched beneath the horizon like a predatory animal. Children dived from piers and docksides into the brown waters of the Chao Phraya. They rose to the surface and spat out water that looked like Joe’s grandmother’s chicken soup.