The sport was a national practice in not showing pain or anger no matter how brutal the punishment had been. Kidney punches landed in quick succession but the boxer didn’t lose his balance; he didn’t fall. The expression on his face was the same pitch. He fought back. A hard right to the head. The boxers had reached a level beyond pain or hurt. Body hurled at body as if the skin, muscle, and bone could endure forever. The red Lotus was a punch delivered to the kidney; the idea was always to conquer the pain by transcending the experience. The same idea that had attracted Tuttle to the Far East; that search for the healthy way to regard himself after he had been injured. From the Thais, he had learned an invaluable lesson—how to look expressionless after an opponent’s foot slammed into his face.
“Bill, this is an old friend of mine from the States,” said Tuttle.
Old Bill stood erect, holding out his hand. Lawrence felt the strong, firm grasp of his hand. “You didn’t happen to notice that new Lotus out back? ” asked Old Bill, staring directly at Lawrence.
“I have the same one in Los Angeles,” said Lawrence. “Mine is blue.”
For the first time in years, Tuttle saw Old Bill raise an eyebrow. The cars had always been ownerless; the drivers faceless. The mystery people had abandoned their luxury cars for a couple of hours, leaving street people with instructions to guard it with their lives. Never had Old Bill actually witnessed anyone getting in or out of one of these cars.
“You’re a businessman? ” asked Old Bill, as several other girls with letters inside foreign envelopes began gathering near him.
“I’m a lawyer,” said Lawrence. After the reaction he had received from George Snow, Lawrence feared another setback with Old Bill.
Old Bill glanced over at Tuttle and smiled. “Robert, perhaps that’s the “whatever” we’ve been looking for over the years.” Indeed, Lawrence was the “whatever” Tuttle had been waiting for. The huddled girls surged forth and claimed Old Bill, taking him by the arm to his place at a back booth. “Whatever, what? ” asked Lawrence, feeling excluded by this private code.
“Cement in Cornwall had been an early theory,” said Old Bill. “But Robert pointed out the obvious. Transportation cost would have been excessive.”
They watched Old Bill half carried away by half a dozen girls. “It’s a kind of word game,” said Tuttle. Lawrence was temporarily reassured.
“What does he do? ”
Tuttle looked in the booth mirror and saw Old Bill bending down to slide into the back booth. “He helps the girls write letters to the farangs who have gone home.”
“And he makes his living that way? ”
“He never charges them.”
Lawrence shook his head. “Doesn’t anyone have a normal job here? Get up and go to an office in the morning, work, go to lunch, come back to work until six then go home to a house with a wife and kids? They must have some damn structure and pattern in their day? This guy looks like Prince Philip’s double and he does nothing but write free letters for prostitutes? ”
“That about sums up Old Bill.” Tuttle watched Lawrence’s nostrils flare. As a student, Lawrence had this behavioral tic whenever he became annoyed or frustrated. He wondered how many times Sarah had witnessed the flare billow into the nostrils as Lawrence looked for a rational, logical explanation. Every trauma of life could be soothed with logic; either it was solved or ignored. Of course there was always a gram of white crystalline powder as a passport out of the disorder; needle marks on the arms were evidence of the formula broken apart and life reconstituted in a drug rush. Tuttle wondered if Sarah had ever told her husband about her thrill at the sight of a loaded syringe slowly down-loading heroin into the back of her leg? Had he ever found microscopic traces of powder on her dressing room mirror?
“What does he put in the letters? ” asked Lawrence. “Let me guess. Get me a greencard. I want to come to America.”
Tuttle snapped back from his first apartment near UCLA when Sarah was shaking, withdrawing from drugs, crying, doubled up naked in the center of the floor.
“Think of them as business letters,” said Tuttle.
“What kind of business? ”
“During the tourist high season a good looking girl collects three or four boyfriends. They come through Bangkok for a weeks or two. The guy becomes attached. Feels sorry for her; falls in love. Who knows what emotional atoms fly around inside anyone’s brain? Once back in Bonn or Brisbane or Boston, nostalgia kicks in. Time and space curve and little Noi’s shape shoots like a rocket through his thoughts. He writes her a letter. The guy’s so miserable now he gets a nosebleed just thinking about her body next to him in bed. He sends a cheque for a hundred-dollars. In Noi’s mailbox are three or four letters from three or four different guys every month. The money sees her through the low season. Old Bill helps keep the fires of their passions alive over that long stretch between May and October. Or the cheques stop coming. Old Bill isn’t much different than a lawyer. He helps his clients communicate with their suppliers. He just doesn’t bill them.”
“Have you ever read one of these letters? ” asked Lawrence, glancing back at Old Bill who had unfolded a pair of silver wire-framed glasses and slipped them over his nose.
“Many letters over the years. I’ve written a few myself.”
Old Bill had around eight to ten standard replies that he wrote in longhand; the girls recopied them in their own hand or signed their name at the end of the original. Sometimes the girl penned a flourish all her own, a personal touch, that the farang in a cold land would recognize as a shared intimacy. “Monkey you buy me. We name Nick. He die. Monkey dead. Want new monkey. Send money, please. Miss you. Miss monkey. Think of you every day, every night.”
The minor detail created intimacy, or as close to that edge as a Zeno girl was willing to go. That was the high end of the market, Tuttle explained. Most of the girls were content to let Bill do the thinking, organizing, and writing for them.
“Old Bill’s probably written about a thousand letters,” said Tuttle. “He’s the man for your sixty-thou-a-year job.” He caught a glimpse of Old Bill from his booth mirror: unscrewing the cap of an expensive fountain pen a group of girls had chipped in and bought him three years ago. Old Bill had a formula for the girls; one that worked, kept the cheques coming in, and they showed him pictures of their children, mothers, fathers, sisters, and shared the simple landscape of their dreams.
“Funny we never wrote all these years,” said Lawrence, stretching out his legs under the booth. “Not even a Christmas card. And now we’re in Bangkok talking about letter-writing for prostitutes.”
“Who knows. If you were to hook up with a girl, she might end up sending you a letter that I drafted.”
“Like what? ” Lawrence moved closer to the rim of where Tuttle had been waiting for him all those years.
Tuttle smiled, for years he had been writing a letter in his head for the girls. A new formula that incorporated all of the formulas in one.
“You want to hear it now? Before you’ve even met the girl? ”
“Now, what are you going to have her tell me? ”
“Okay, Larry. Remember it’s from a bar girl. A working girl. And not from—” he broke off before mentioning Asanee’s name.
“The girl you want me to meet,” said Lawrence, as their eyes locked for a moment of recognition.
One of the girls dropped a couple of two-baht coins in the jukebox, and punched #168— ‘One Night in Bangkok’ and the paragraphs of Tuttle’s standard form letter registered inside his mind. Some of the thoughts belonged to her while others came from him. The letters became a combination of multiple voices and tones. Where did the sex worker leave off and the expat letter-writer fill in his own perception, language, and voice? He looked around the room, kick-boxers on TV, sleeping HQ girls, waiters smoking cigarettes, and a couple of old-timers at the bar, and he knew this was the one place a letter-writer could never get writer’s block.
* * *
; Dear Larry,
Bill, who normally writes, is out of action so I asked an old friend, his name’s Tuttle, to help write this letter to you. Perhaps you might like a quick update on HQ and the scene since you left in March. What are Tuttle’s credentials, you ask? Old Bill is a reliable war-horse, I hear you saying. Is this Tuttle a lover or what? Don’t be jealous, my darling. I met Tuttle five years ago when I worked in a massage parlor. It was around the corner from the New Fuji Hotel on Surawong Road, up three flights of red-carpeted stairs. All of us girls wore small red plastic badges pinned to our white uniforms. We sat inside an enclosure of glass waiting to be picked. The manager, a very attractive Chinese woman collected the 100-baht fee from customers at the front desk. She asked Tuttle to write a sign in English to put in every cubicle. He wrote: Please check that you have taken your valuables with you. We are not responsible for any loss. Thank you.
My mind floats around inside the cubicle. A farang groaning and moaning under the touch of my fingers on his calves, thighs, shoulders. My eyes would look up at Tuttle’s sign. And I thought to myself. I remember Tuttle. I remember the night he wrote out those words for our manager. And I remembered him from before. On the strip. In Patpong and Cowboy. Our paths always seemed to cross. Listening to some English broadcast on Radio Bangkok in a farang’s hotel room, I’d hear an English voice reading the news, and I’d think, maybe that’s Tuttle.
Since you’ve gone back, all that is left are farang with bad hearts. Cheap Charlies who not buy you drink. They bargain girl. I no like. Some hunt in wolf packs. Some are like boys collecting and trading baseball cards. They cross-index us according to our badge numbers from our dancing days. All of us have done the go-go bar gig. One resident farang named Richard went through a six-month period taking only girls with the numbers 22 and 46. He said it was the quest for the perfect 22 or 46 that was his goal. After nearly a year, he find her in Patpong. She a perfect 22. Those days gone now. At a clinic on Sukhumvit Road, one little clinic out of thousands, I hear doctor say 200 girls have AIDS. I have friend who die of AIDS.
At Malaysia Hotel—I been on the second and third floor so many times that I have memorized every room by heart—someone else said the needle users have AIDS much, much. My friend she work in the local pharmacy tell me she sell gallons of saline solution to the junkies. They make heroin with needle in arm. Dirty people. Not like. Larry, if you can send your little Noi an extra two thousand baht, I won’t have to go out at night. I’m afraid of these farangs who no have a good heart like you.
Some girls no work bar. They go to Zeno every night and to find a man. Go to hotel. These girls no wear number. They have good body. Go with man two, three times each night. Not good so many men. Farang call them HQ girls. Man from Toronto call them “Termites.” My friend explained that this was a term of affection, but I don’t know whether he is joking. He says like termites we bore straight through all the wooden hearts that come here. He also say HQ girl like termite, once you get one they very hard to get rid of. Think he bullshit me. All I care about is your heart isn’t wood. Because you are going to send me that extra two thousand baht so my father can have the operation on his throat. He has trouble breathing since his accident in the tuk-tuk. But I not worry you, so I won’t say anything more about Papa.
I worry much about my thighs. Farang don’t like stretch marks on a girl’s body. They have these red spectrum flashlight eyes that see the smallest ripple, any slight hint of a line on our thighs, upper legs, or bellies. Always asks us, do you have baby? They think girl have baby, then bad for stretch marks. I no have stretch marks. My baby now three years old and is very smart. He need some new clothes. I hope you can send extra two thousand baht so my baby has some clothes. I lose my face if my baby wear old clothes like rags. Everyone say, Noi is a bad mother. Cheap. No put good clothes on her baby. Let her Papa stay home with no operation on his throat. Maybe Papa die. Maybe baby die.
Be glad you no live in Bangkok. Farang sit around talking about bar girl’s wearing pasties. Call them tiny fluorescent hearts that glow a bright orange in the overhead lights. They all worry now that maybe HQ gonna change. Now HQ a good bar. It’s in between the old man’s bar and the young man’s bar. Maybe HQ become an old man bar. No more young. Talk about the past. Old men talking about why someone lost one war and won another.
These old men on the down escalator with only one more stop to the basement floor. Maybe that’s why Tiger fled to the Philippines to start over. He couldn’t stand running the major old man’s hangout in Patpong. It started to get to him after awhile. No farang ever moved on from the Tiger bar, they merely died. You come back soon, okay. You young man. HQ need you here. I need you in my arms every night. Maybe extra two thousand baht I get doctor to fix little, little stretch mark on my tummy.
Last night, my friend me go Silom Road shopping. Street food vendors sell us pineapple, mango, and grapes. We pick fruit laid out on blocks of ice. It keep real yen, yen—cool—inside a glass case. Little fluorescent light inside make me sad. Think of your hotel room. No like you gone. Why you no take Noi with you? Maybe you send me airplane ticket.
Thai man move old cart on old bicycle wheels in street. His tires all worn down. Noodle stands in the alleyways. A few tables and stools. The pavement full Thai people and some farang. Go-go dancer from Patpong going to cheap hotel for short-time business (but me like you all night. I true! True!), beggars with rented children. One baby missing hand; one have chewed-up face. See gangsters in expensive suits, cops in military uniform with blackhandled pistols in leather holsters, tuk-tuk and taxi drivers showing farang picture of girls for sale in massage parlors and whorehouses. See many farang women with white skin (I wish my skin not so black) and I think they sexy girls. I feel very sad, and jealous for you. I think now you go home, maybe you like farang woman and no like your little Noi. You forget about me in Bangkok. Maybe you no care about your little Noi now. Not think about me.
In Bangkok, farang women come up to me in street or HQ and say, why you a whore? Why you go with old man for money? We only fuck men we like, and they fuck us good, make us happy or get new man. She say Bangkok no good for lady. Man just take, take, not give. She say she not go for money. That a bad thing. I think she bullshit me. I ask her, who want to fuck you here? In Bangkok? You got man here? Farang take you to dinner, movie, hotel? She first get hot heart, very angry with me, then she cry.
She say to me, I don’t understand. And I say she no understand Noi. I frightened here. Noi all alone. No one take care of me or baby. I stay in Bangkok. Why mem no understand Thai lady? Girl sell T-shirts, maybe give body massages, blowjobs, handjobs, stuffed PingPong balls, bananas, and Coke bottles up her pussy. She no like but she do. Must have money. No money cannot eat.
Mem says over and over, what it all mean? This Bangkok, I tell her. Merchants of sex coming out of every alley and lane. You no escape tuk-tuk driver who got his fold-out glossy brochure with pretty smiling Thai girl in a bubble bath. He shove it in every farang male face dozens of times. Until it became a subliminal message. Always sexy Thai girls perched like songbirds in a glass cage with the numbers on their chest smiling into the camera. Pick me. I need the 500 baht. I will make you feel good. Promise. Come fast. I need the purple very much. Come quickly. You have good heart. My child wake me up at nine this morning. I get no sleep. I so tired. But I make love with you. Make you feel good. You have a good life. You get lots of sleep. You get money. I make you feel good. You like me?
I explain her what we must do. She no like to hear me speak. Girl at twenty-four, she old. She no good anymore. Farang want young girl. Sixteen, seventeen, maybe twenty. I tell her, Noi now twenty-three. Young one more year. I know you no care because you got good heart. Cool heart. But farang in Bangkok they only want young girl. Farang woman she get red in face. Say she twentyeight, and she say she very young girl. Says she’s still a baby. No good with man forty, fifty. No good. Too old. I say, never mind. You not understand how we think in
Bangkok. But never mind. It okay. It’s up to you. You think whatever you want. Not up to me to tell you. No one stop you thinking bullshit.
Farang woman run away down Silom Road crying and beating her fist on tuk-tuk driver’s head. He duck around vendors stretched out behind their wooden tables on beach chairs, sleeping, curled up like cats. Dirty soles of their feet pointed at traffic jam in street. Above them the swallows of Silom Road motionless in trees. I last see her chasing tuk-tuk driver down Convent Road. Then my friend and me go back shopping for jeans.
A Killing Smile Page 10
