* * *
CROSBY’S finishing tone of bitterness left a colorless, tasteless gloom in the air. Toom’s head lay against Snow’s shoulder, her eyes half-closed in a daze, locked into a beggar’s blank expression. Whatever roof had covered Crosby’s heart had collapsed long before. He had trained himself to live beyond the claims of heart, thought Lawrence. All around the room, as the girls drank, smoked, talked, flirted with potential customers, their aromatic perfume mingling with cigarette smoke, they performed the acrobatics of the heart on a vast stage; was Crosby right? Was the complexity of the culture poured into the hole of that single word? Certainly, a Thai fell in love with a farang, he thought. Beyond the quarters of HQ there were other fine grained truths.
“Bobby, do you believe that? It’s all a question of heart? ”
“Is that a loaded question? ” asked Tuttle.
“Load it with whatever you want to think.”
Tuttle scratched his moustache, sniffed, crinkling his nostrils. “You learn that kreng jai is one room in the house. But if you want to understand the foundation, what’s underneath there’s another Thai expression—Mai pen rai. Which means never mind. It’s okay. No problem. Forget about it. Don’t mention it. Your husband was killed on Rama IV in a motorcycle accident? ‘Mai pen rai.’ Your father was fired from his job? ‘Mai pen rai.’ Your brother’s been sent to prison for smuggling drugs? ‘Mai pen rai.’ Your husband’s abandoned you for another woman? ‘Mai pen rai.’ Your school folding for lack of funds? ‘Mai pen rai.’ Your daughter back on the street? ‘Mai pen rai.’
“There is no disappointment or tragedy larger than that phrase. It’s a Zen state of acceptance. Whatever happens you’ve earned from your behavior in a past life. You never allow the bad to pull you down. You have no other choice. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen, it comes from inside of you. The Thai language is structured to accept pain; tolerate suffering. Our language seeks the cure, the solution, the answer. English is the language of change. Of the future you can make your own. That’s why the farang and Thai can’t find a language to communicate with each other. Most of the HQ girls from the old days have married farangs. The hard-core, the ugly ones, the fat ones with stretch marks as wide as the Panama Canal, the Tommy’s, forty year-old women, all of them had a gold ring slipped over the third finger on their left hand and are living in Moose Jaw, or L.A., or Sydney. And every so often one of the girls drifts back into the town after years and years away. She slips back for a quiet holiday on her own; for old times’ sake. And the first night of the first day she’s back at HQ feeding the jukebox, halfway into peu-un pod membership. It is as if she had never left.
“I know what you’re thinking, ‘You can take the girl out of HQ but you can’t take the HQ out of the termite.’ Or ‘Silly bitch shows up looking to turn a trick for a purple.’ A currency she’s not even used for years.
“Lek who was sitting here earlier. She’s been gone for six, seven years. She’s married and lives in Rhode Island where she owns a microwave oven, dishwasher, built-in kitchen cupboards, and two car garage. Lek’s back for a two-week vacation. That’s her leaning against the jukebox at the center of the universe. She works in a cannery. She’s happy. After a couple of minutes talking with her, you keep hearing a new English word. One she had never used before. One you never heard HQ girls using.
“She keeps saying, ‘future.’
“‘Our future look good.’
“‘Future of husband’s job good.’
“‘Saving for future of kids now.’
“‘In future come back to Thailand more.’
“For all her talk about the ‘future,’ she is looking to get her ass picked up by a farang at HQ. She doesn’t need the money. There are a hundred other ways to find a sex partner. But she’s standing by the jukebox, looking at the old song chart and slipping the coins into the slot. Just like in the old days. And she sees that I’m watching and she blows me a kiss just like in the old days. Then I look at the blue numbers come up on the jukebox as she selects a song. She hasn’t forgotten. The song I have played many, many nights at HQ. The one that I try to save to the end of the night, and leave just as the song finishes. Number 132. The melody of ‘What a Wonderful World’ blares out over the loudspeakers. She’s remembered. That feeling of old times. The one that doesn’t seem to be in her future back at the cannery in Rhode Island.
“I listen to the lyrics of the music. The same words I have heard for what seems like half a lifetime. And I look around HQ and see from the faces of the regulars—a number of them our students—what Thai words have formed the texture and shape of their lives. And I realize that I know all the songs—both Thai and English songs—by heart, every last Iyric of every last love song. And somehow over the years the songs have become the internal private language. The bridge drops down and we cross over to find each other. At least for the night. And the HQ girls are mouthing the words to the song, and before the night is over, Lek will return to the table and will kiss me long and hard on the lips. And for a moment, we will sit at the still point of the turning world. Where the past and future are gathered, and where no words are moving in or out.
“Crosby puts it down to class. Snow puts Lek down as a Valley girl with a Thai accent. But I know why she’s back. What drew her to HQ tonight. There’s a library inside the jukebox, and every volume is right-side up, and every song feeds some dream, some hope, or feeling that connected her to a life before she learned the word ‘future.’ Before the word ‘future’ replaced the Thai phrase— Mai pen rai—never mind. Never mind the present; never mind the future. Most of all, never mind the past. Time had vanished from her life and she came back to HQ looking for that thing she had lost; the thing that she had forgotten because she lived in a place where it had no name. Mai pen rai.”
Someone behind the bar had turned up the volume of the music. Two girls danced with each other, singing to the music on the makeshift dance floor. “And you think I came to Bangkok for the same reason? ” Lawrence asked, resting forward on his elbows, his head turned toward Tuttle.
“I think we are all looking for the same question,” replied Tuttle, tapping his thumbnail against the half-empty Kloster bottle.
“You mean answer,” insisted Lawrence.
“The same question,” said Tuttle with a glint of a smile, as he raised the beer bottle to his lips.
9
Lawrence slipped on his jacket and pushed out of the booth. “I’m working tomorrow,” said Tuttle, swallowing a yawn. A moment later and they would have gone. But Dan, an old hand and HQ regular, spotted Tuttle from a distance, and dragged a chair to their table.
“I’ve gotta talk to you, Tuttle,” said Dan.
“We were just on our way out.”
“Shit, this is important.”
Tuttle nodded and sat down. Lawrence had the feeling that Tuttle had difficulty disengaging himself from the people who had come to HQ to seek him out. Lawrence didn’t bother to remove his jacket as he climbed back into the booth opposite Tuttle.
Dan held a bottle of Singha beer in each large, meaty fist; the light brown hair on his arms was matted with sweat. His heavy jaw, short-cropped hair, and small eyes made the top half of his face seem like a distorted, abridged edition of the bottom half. His features were out of balance—like the rough sketch of a face that had been abandoned, and he had the nervous tic of rolling his head from side to side, as if the muscles in his neck ached.
“I know, I know. I was goin’ back to the States for six months. And I’m back! I lasted one month, three days and six hours. I came to HQ straight from the airport. I just said to the driver, bpy! HQ—go to HQ—that’s all the fuckin’ Thai you ever need to know. America’s murder. I ain’t ever goin’ back. I was so depressed, I just sat in my room, watched TV, and ate pizza. Shit, I was afraid to go out! Fucking murders and gangs and shoot-outs on every corner. Bloods and Crips patrolling the streets between shopping centers. TV movies about date rape.
You ever hear of such a thing? Any of the termites ever hear of date rape? Not a chance. And they ain’t dumb. Most of them have graduated to Bangkok straight from Water Buffalo University. And they ain’t ever heard of dating. They don’t know what a goddamn date is.
“Tuttle, you wouldn’t believe San Diego. I got a piece of property near the sea. They ain’t making any more ocean front. That’s all there is. Unless there’s a goddamn earthquake. So I am offered four hundred thou. Shit, I only paid fifty thou for the place. And this guy says, wait until July. The price is still goin’ up. And I’m sayin’ to myself, shit, that means I gotta go back in July. And I get all depressed again. Someone finds out I’m having a hard time and they invite me to a barbecue. They think my trouble is I’m not meeting any women.
“So I’m sitting by the pool, and this guy comes up to me, and he says, ‘Look at Sue’s legs. She’s got great legs.’
“I look over at Sue. She’s got legs like rural telephone poles. And he keeps saying, ‘Christ, would you look at those legs. Man, I’d love to have them wrapped around my ass.’
“I look at this guy, and I say, ‘But she’s got four kids. Forget about the legs, her guts are all fucked up from all those kids.’
“You can’t believe these assholes. They’re lining up to fuck these forty-year-old sweathogs. I’m shaking my head. I’m so depressed I want to dive into the swimming pool and drown.
“I say to this guy. ‘Yeah, I see Sue. But I ain’t sure you see what I’m seeing. She’s old meat. You gotta be kiddin’. In Thailand, they’d toe tag her. Take her to the morgue.’
“Then I said to him. ‘Have you talked to her? Sue’s not sailing with a full sea bag. She’s either brain-dead or stupid.’ And so they say to me, ‘Okay, smart guy, what kind of women have you been screwing? ’
“I told him straight, man. No bullshit facts of life. ‘You want to avoid screwing any woman over sixteen.’
“Now he’s backing up a little, eyes all big and shit, telling me to keep my voice down. ‘You can go to fucking jail for fucking kids. A congressman was convicted for bagging a sixteen-year-old. Don’t you have newspapers in Thailand? You can get five years in the slammer for screwing kids.’
“And I try to tell him, ‘These sixteen-years-old Thai girls ain’t kids. It ain’t a crime. Taking Sue on, now there’s a crime against nature. Where I live something that old doesn’t even expect to get fucked.’
“Then he starts going into this creepy moral shit. ‘Man, how can you fuck a kid young enough to be your daughter? ’
“This is coming from guys who think nothing of climbin’ on one of these old sweathogs and pumping something with an ass the size of a first-class plane seat. They’re judging me. So I give them my standard answer.
“‘These girls gotta eat, don’t they? I’m putting bread on their plate. I’m making a contribution. They’d starve to death unless they sold themselves. Not something you can say about an old sweathog like Sue. Man, a broad like that can go without gassing up for months and she’d still have an ass the size of the Hollywood Bowl.’
“I couldn’t stand it, Tut. I was going nuts in California. Man, it was fucking awful. I was phoning the airlines two weeks in. Get me the fuck back to Bangkok. Can you believe they were fully booked? I was fucking stranded with sweathogs, barbecues, roaming youth gangs. Psychos on my right; psychos on my left. In front and behind me. And I didn’t get laid once. I had no appetite. Just pizza and TV. See that sweet girl at my table? There, she just turned her head. She’s a Cambodian. I’m taking her tonight. She’s a little animal. I animalized her two months ago before she turned seventeen. Went straight down on her pie. Then went for the brown. Packed her mud. She didn’t say boo.
“Tonight, I’m gonna pay her well. This is her lucky night. I’m so glad to be back, I’m paying her double purples. No short-time screw either. I’m keeping her the whole goddamn night. Until noon tomorrow. We got a contract.
“Man, I hope I sleep tonight. I’m having goddamn nightmares from a month in San Diego. These fat-assed broads ordering their husbands around. These guys don’t know any better. You try to talk to them, but they’re lost. They don’t believe you when you talk about HQ. They can’t imagine it. They think everyone in the world is fucking some battleship named Betty. They think that’s normal. They can’t imagine there’s any choice in the matter.
“So the old bitch yells at them, and you hear them saying, ‘Yes, darling? What can I do, sweetheart? Rub more suntan oil on your fat ass? Say no more.’
“And in my dream, I roll over in my bed and I’m staring eyeballto-eyeball with an old, gnarled sweathog with the skin like tree bark. Sweat is rolling off her like boiled fat. She’s got fucking stretch marks from head-to-toe, and she’s got her hand on my dick.
“And she’s calling out, ‘Dan. Dan, you’re my man.’
“And I’m frozen, I can’t fuckin’ move. And she’s got pizza on her breath. My goddam pizza with double cheese, the bitch. And the phone rings, it’s a woman on the other end. She’s saying that she has a piece of bad news for me. Meanwhile this sweathog with a thick bush on her upper lip is kissing my neck. I’m ready to puke.
“And the woman on the phone says, ‘Dan, the man, all flights to Bangkok have been indefinitely cancelled.’
“The line goes dead. I break down and cry, bury my face in this sweathog’s gray hair. And she asks me what’s wrong, Danny? So I tell her the truth. All I want is one of those little termites from HQ. She doesn’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. I no longer speak English that anyone in America understands. So I translate the best I can. I describe a little hilltribe girl I had from HQ. Her eyes spring wide open, and she goes nuts. She starts hitting my head against the fucking wall. Calling me a pervert. An asshole. She’s threatening to cut off my balls. She’s gonna call the cops and have me locked up in the pervert wing of the state prison. She’s going to having me branded as a fucking public monster. Testify at my trial. After they throw me in the slammer and she is gonna pay a big nigger with AIDS to fuck me up the ass. I’m telling you, it was the worst goddamn nightmare I ever had.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to be back. You’re smart. You’ve never gone back. Take my advice, don’t. They’re crazy back there. They won’t listen to reason. They’re lost. The whole fucking country is just fat and ugly and mean. I’m lucky to be alive. And still sane. I got fat eating all that doughy pizza. There were times in the middle of the night when I gave up hope. I never thought I’d see another termite in this life. Next time I go outta here, I will be wearing a toe-tag and riding inside a body bag.”
* * *
IN the foyer of the Bangkok Regent Hotel, Lawrence and Tuttle occupied one of the dozen or so round tables covered white linen tablecloths and garlands of fresh white and mauve orchids; HQ was light-years isolated, existing in a separate universe. Lawrence waved over a tall, slender waitress, not a single hair out of place. She smiled, nodding her head gracefully and glided across the vast foyer. Within minutes of taking Lawrence’s order, she returned, walking in that lush, catlike way, where no sound is made; the way servants walk around the rich; the way predators stalk their prey. She arrived with two tall, cool drinks on a silver tray.
As she turned away, an elegantly dressed farang couple walked past holding hands. His black dinner jacket lapels had a dull shine in the overhead light; her silver evening dress a thousand points of glittering light. He held her hand and smiled as if she were the only woman on the earth. Lawrence thought of Sarah. At the firm’s last Christmas party, he had worn a dinner jacket and she had bought an expensive silver-sequined evening dress. They might have walked off the cover of a magazine devoted to the rich and famous. Did that man know how lucky he was? That his wife was alive; that they were in Bangkok together; and that their evening had been populated with people like themselves who shared and valued privilege, the sweetness of success, and the secret belief that they were the elite because they were the best and most sk
illed.
Tuttle sipped the high-priced drink; Lawrence had insisted on treating him, and he liked the awkward way the drink looked in Tuttle’s hand. It was Lawrence’s way to even the score for the cab from HQ. During the taxi ride, Lawrence sat gripping the front seat with both hands, as the Isan driver shifted in and out of traffic at high speed, running lights, racing a bus three blocks, nearly colliding with a tuk-tuk: the normal Bangkok late night journey. Tuttle had been totally relaxed, joked with the driver; and never once suggesting that he might slow down or drive more carefully.
“Talk about an asshole, Bobby. Dan-the-man doesn’t have a lot of competition,” said Lawrence, wiping the sweat from his neck with a hot towel brought by their waitress.
“But if they can’t speak English, Dan-the-man is the guy who pays the bill. The girls working here wouldn’t give him a second look. They don’t have to. They wouldn’t understand him. Dan talks in a new form of English language. One you won’t find spoken outside of the rough bars,” replied Tuttle.
A Killing Smile Page 15
