The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller

by Timothy Hallinan

  “You’re a farm girl, right?” The captain’s hard little eyes skitter up and down her body. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

  “She’s . . . shy,” the mama-san says, with an edge of desperation in her voice.

  “Five minutes,” the captain says. “And then you can keep her and the deal will be off.” He goes back into the bar.

  Kwan gets up. She says, “Never.”

  The mama-san says again, “Don’t force me.”

  “Me? Force you?”

  “I didn’t want to have to say this, but you’re not giving me any choice. I know who your father was selling you to. If you don’t do this, if you don’t go with Captain Yodsuwan tonight, I’ll have two of the waiters hold you here until those people come and get you.” She lets her eyes drop to the floor and then looks out through the door, at the crowded bar. “If I call, they’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  Kwan feels like she couldn’t move if someone lit her on fire. She’s staring at the mama-san, but the face she sees is Nana’s.

  The mama-san says, “Well?”

  Kwan can barely hear her own voice. “I’ll go.”

  ON THE WAY out of the bar, fighting for breath as she edges through the crowd of customers with Captain Yodsuwan’s fat, wet hand on the back of her neck, Kwan hears a long shriek, high enough to leave a scratch on the ceiling, and she sees Oom charge out of the women’s bathroom. Oom vaults onto the stage and runs its full length, girls jumping out of her way at every step, until she reaches the far end of the stage, near the door, and she leaps off it, sailing over the women serving at the bar, clears the bar itself—two customers diving sideways off their stools—and lands in the arms of one of the tallest, best-looking men Kwan has ever seen. Oom throws her arms around his neck, both legs bent at the knees so he’s supporting her full weight, and she kisses his neck and cheeks over and over again as he slowly turns in a circle, his eyes wide open, looking past Oom. Looking at Kwan.

  Chapter 16

  Dog Tricks

  The door is open, which is a surprise. Everyone should be asleep.

  Kwan had found her way home through the bright morning, resolutely dry-eyed, without thinking about anything at all, without even feeling the rawness between her legs. She had looked at faces, at shop windows, at cars in the street, at the occasional scraggly bush clinging to life in a square of dry dirt on the sidewalk, giving her full attention to everything she saw. When she finally reached the building, after a lifetime of walking, she had hauled herself up three flights of stairs, leaning against the wall as she climbed, expecting to have to cope with the lock on the door, which sometimes sticks. She was steeling herself against the lock, knowing that if it did stick, she’d burst into tears.

  But the door is standing open.

  She starts to go on tiptoe and then thinks, Why? What can anyone do to me now? And drags herself the rest of the way down the hall and stops in the doorway and stares in, her heart swelling inside her until she feels as if it will push its way right out of her chest, and then the tears do come.

  Sitting on some folded squares of cloth on the cold cement floor, her chin resting on her chest, is Fon. She’s obviously waited all night and into the morning for Kwan to come home. In front of her is a cup on a saucer, the only matching cup and saucer in the apartment, and the cup has something dark in it. Steam rises from the cup, so Fon fell asleep only a few minutes ago.

  Kwan’s second sniffle brings Fon’s head up, her eyes instantly on Kwan. Fon gets up and runs to her and wraps her arms around her, hugging her so tightly Kwan can hardly breathe. Kwan looks down at the top of Fon’s head, and then she rests her chin on it and cries out loud, Fon patting her back like someone burping a baby.

  THE FACE SHE makes when she takes the first sip from the steaming cup sends Fon into a seizure of laughter. The two of them have been sitting on the floor, with the folded cloths—clean towels, Kwan sees—between them. Fon falls sideways, onto one elbow, laughing and pointing at Kwan’s face.

  “It’s awful,” Kwan says, but she can’t help smiling, feeling the stiffness of the skin on her cheeks, salty with dried tears. “What is it?”

  “It’s Nescafé,” Fon says. “You mean you’ve never drunk coffee?”

  “Why would I?” Kwan puts the cup down. “Why would anyone?”

  “You drink that,” Fon commands. “I worked hours to make it.”

  “Really?” Kwan reluctantly picks up the cup and sips it again, trying not to betray how bitter it is. She gets the first sip down and then takes a bigger one, hoping to drain the cup quickly.

  “You don’t know anything, do you? It’s instant. You just boil water and put the powder in.”

  Kwan stares down at the cup. “Is there any way to get it out?”

  “Yes. You drink it.”

  Kwan holds the cup out. “I’ll share it with you.”

  “Smell it first,” Fon says. “Smell it and then drink it.”

  Kwan sniffs the cup. “It smells better than it tastes.”

  “Well, then smell it every time before you drink. Get the smell in your nose first. But drink it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you need two things.” Fon picks up the towels, and beneath them is a new, still-wrapped cake of hotel soap. “You need to get cleaner than you’ve ever been in your life, and then you need to talk. And that stuff”—she nods toward the Nescafé—“will help you talk.”

  “HE COULDN’T DO anything at first,” Kwan says. She is on her back on the couch, with her knees drawn up because the sofa is too short for her, with her head resting on Fon’s lap. Beneath her hair, wet from the cold-water shower down the hall, is a folded towel. She wears clean, fresh-smelling pajamas that belong to Fon, bright primary-school yellow, with happy teddy bears and birthday cakes all over them. It seems to be the teddy bears’ birthday. The pants come to a premature halt just below her knees, although they reach the tops of Fon’s feet.

  “I could have told you that,” Fon says. She lifts a strand of wet hair and lets it fall. “Your hair is so nice. He usually can’t. He drinks too much.”

  “Oom said the same thing.”

  Fon’s eyebrows go up. It makes her look even more like a child’s toy. “Oom? Oom actually bothered to talk to you?”

  “She asked why I was saving my hymen. Whether anyone was paying me interest.”

  Fon laughs, just a short syllable. “Our bar’s little nun. Talking you into going to work.”

  “She’s in love—”

  “With that big guy,” Fon says. “Too handsome for me. But for a while now, he’s the only one she’ll go with. He buys her out and we don’t see her for three or four weeks, and when she comes back, she might as well have stayed away. She just hangs on to that pole all night and doesn’t go with anybody.”

  “He pays her.”

  “Well, of course he does. Oom’s pretty, but she has to eat, same as me.”

  The buzz of traffic from the street below floats into the room through the open window. Kwan can feel a warm energy coursing through her, a little kernel of electricity beneath her heart. She lifts her head and takes another swallow of the Nescafé. It’s starting to taste better. “Oom’s beautiful.”

  “Beautiful is easy. Keeping a good heart, that’s hard. But you know what? In twenty years she won’t be so beautiful, but you and I—you and I will still have good hearts.”

  “You think I have a good heart? How can you tell?”

  “Kwan. You’re as transparent as water.” Fon kisses the tips of her fingers and then places them dead center on Kwan’s forehead.

  Kwan puts a hand over the place Fon touched. “I never had a friend like you before.”

  Fon is silent for a moment, but then she says, “Be careful. Lots of girls will act like . . . oh, well, you know. Nana.” She smooths Kwan’s wet hair. “Everybody in the bar wants something. They want to borrow money or they want some man who likes you or—this could happen because you’re beautiful—t
hey’ll pretend to be your friend so they can drag you into threesomes.”

  “Threesomes?”

  “Two girls and one man. Some of the girls who are ugly will do that, make friends with a beautiful girl so they can say to a man, ‘You want me and my friend over there? Two ladies? No problem.’ ”

  Kwan says, “That’s awful.”

  “It’s okay sometimes. It’s less work, and it’s a little safer. Most guys won’t try anything with two girls in the room. And if he doesn’t speak Thai, you can talk about him while you’re working, as long as you don’t laugh too much.” She runs her palm over Kwan’s slick hair again. “But,” she says, “speaking of ugly.”

  “What?” Kwan holds up the cup, nothing inside but a thick black paste on the bottom. “Can I have some more?”

  Fon takes the cup out of Kwan’s hand and puts it on the three-legged table. “No. You’re going to want to sleep eventually. Ugly. You know, Captain Yodsuwan. Talk about it. Get it all out, and then you can go to sleep.”

  “I slept at the hotel, a little. You’re the one who stayed up.”

  “I’m used to it. You’re a farm girl.”

  “That’s what he called me,” Kwan says, and suddenly the coffee seems to be rising in her throat. “Just after he called me a whore.”

  Fon puts her hand back on Kwan’s forehead. “It doesn’t mean anything. You’re the same person today you were yesterday.”

  Kwan says, “Not exactly.”

  “Oh, well, if you never lose anything more valuable than that, you’ll have lots of tears left over when you die. Why did he call you that?”

  “I don’t know. Because I am?”

  “Oh, shut up. When? Where? What was happening?”

  “We were in the bar. The back room. I was trying to decide whether I could do it.”

  “That was the mistake. You always have to make them think you want to do it.”

  “But . . . but they’re giving us money to do it. Why would they have to give us money if we want—”

  “Doesn’t matter. They all want to believe you’re thrilled to go with them. They want to feel like they just give you money because they’re generous.” Her hand, which is still stroking Kwan’s damp hair, stops. “I shouldn’t say ‘all.’ There are a few men who hate us. They’re happy that we don’t want to do anything. They like to force us. They love to make us feel like dirt.”

  “I did feel like dirt. Keep playing with my hair or I’ll cry again.”

  “If you cry about that, I’ll slap you.”

  “You would not.”

  “I would. Listen, baby sister, this is how it is. We’re poor. We’ve barely been to school. We’re doing the only thing we can to help our families. We may hate it, but we do it, and we don’t do it for ourselves, at least not mostly. We do it for people we love. Them? They’re rich. They have houses, families. They fly thousands of miles to come into the Candy Cane or the King’s Castle so they can pay us money to fuck us. Who’s dirt? Them or us?”

  Kwan rolls over onto her side, her knees against the back of the couch, her nose inches from the warmth of Fon’s belly. “I don’t want to do it.”

  “Nobody does. Do you think this is what I dreamed about, back when I was a kid?”

  “No.” She looks up at Fon. “What did you dream about?”

  “Doesn’t matter. This is what I’m doing. Do you think it’s made me into a bad person?”

  “Oh, no.” Kwan puts her hand on top of Fon’s and presses down. “You’re a wonderful person.”

  “Coffee,” Fon says. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given you coffee.”

  “I mean it. You’ve taken such good care of me. Nobody—” She swallows, hard. “Nobody in my family ever cared about me this much.”

  “Sure they did. They just didn’t know how to show it. Kwan. You can do this job and still be a good person. You can do this job and still honor Buddha. You can do this job and keep your heart clean.”

  Kwan says, “He opened me with his finger.”

  “Because he couldn’t—”

  “He was too drunk, so he did it that way. Later he could, and he did. And it hurt. Then he drank some more and he couldn’t anymore.”

  “Did you help him?”

  “Help him?”

  “Help him do it again.”

  Kwan turns her head to look up at her friend. “Why would I help him? And how?”

  “Those are two different questions.” Fon reaches over Kwan and picks up the coffee cup, looking down into it. “Was he angry?”

  Kwan has to think about it. “I don’t know. He didn’t seem happy, but he didn’t tell me to go away. He made me sleep there.”

  “Did he say anything about seeing you tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Get up.” Fon waits until Kwan’s sitting at the far end of the couch, and then she takes the wet towel off her lap, folds it, and rises. “More coffee,” she says. “This is serious. If Captain Yodsuwan is angry with you, you could have a very bad time in Bangkok.”

  AN HOUR LATER Kwan puts down the cup and says, “They’re like dog tricks. I feel like the new puppy.”

  “Can you do them?”

  “Maybe. Most of them anyway. If he’s clean. He did take a shower last night. That’s the only nice thing he did.”

  “Get in the shower with him,” Fon says. “They all love that. And you can wash him yourself, every place you’re going to have to touch.”

  “Or eat,” Kwan says. “It’s funny, the first night Nana took me to Patpong, and I saw all the farang and smelled them, I wondered if they’d let me wash them if . . . if I had to.”

  “The answer is yes.” Fon lights another cigarette. She’s begun to look tired. “It’s a way of paying attention to them. They’re always happy when you pay attention to them. The point is to make them happy, from the minute they buy you a drink in the bar until you leave and the hotel door closes behind you. You want to be their best memory.” She rolls over onto her side, up on one elbow on the floor. “Okay. Here’s a quiz.”

  “Like school.”

  “Just like school. Where do you get undressed?”

  “Wherever he wants me to.”

  “But you put your clothes . . .”

  “By the door. The side with the doorknob, not the side with the hinges. Fold them and stack them. Put the shoes on top so I can pick up the whole stack one-armed while I’m opening the door, if I have to get out of there.”

  “When do you put them there?”

  “When he’s in the shower, if I can. Then I can get in with him.”

  “What would make you run?”

  “If there’s another man in the room when we come in, or if one comes in while we’re there. If he hurts me. Pinches me, slaps me, pulls my hair, even if he acts like it’s a joke. If he wants to tie me up or put things on my wrists or anything, I tell him I want to go to the bathroom first, and then I grab my stuff and run.”

  Fon yawns smoke. “Where?”

  “The fire stairs.” She points at the sign Fon lettered in English on the back of a menu. “There’s always a sign that says ‘Stairs’ or ‘Fire Stairs’ near the elevator. I look at it when we arrive and see what direction I have to run in.”

  “You remember the tricks?”

  “Yes.”

  “One more time. Can you do them?”

  Kwan looks down at her lap. “I can try.”

  “Good. Because you’re going to have to.” Fon gets onto her hands and knees and crawls into the other room. When she comes out, still on hands and knees, her cell phone is hanging from a cord around her neck. “I love waking her up,” she says, dialing. She waits. “Mama-san. It’s Fon. Yes, I know, sorry. Kwan’s here. She wants to go with Captain Yodsuwan again tonight.” She listens, holding the phone away from her ear. Kwan can hear syllables but can’t string them into words. “No, not too good,” Fon says. “But we’ve been working on it, and she wants to see him again, to make everything right. For the bar. Yes, she
was a virgin. Hold on.” To Kwan she says, “Did you bleed?”

  Kwan says, “Yes.”

  “Yes,” Fon says into the phone. “So he should be happy about that. Maybe you could call him and tell—” The mama-san is talking again, and Fon points her index finger straight up and makes circles in the air. “It’ll be fine. Yes, she will. And then, later, if he’ll let her—if he doesn’t want to keep her to himself for a while—she’ll dance.”

  Kwan says, so softly she barely hears it herself, “I’ll dance.”

  Chapter 17

  A List of Won’ts

  Four nights later, with a grinning Captain Yodsuwan cheering paternally at a corner table, Kwan stepped onto the stage for the first time and discovered it was helpful to be nearsighted. She couldn’t see the men’s faces. She could hear them, even over the music, and she could smell their sweat and their cigarettes, but they were a blur, and she could dance in front of a blur. She remained close to Fon on the stage, sharing a pole with her and keeping her distance from the women she didn’t like. After a few nights, she realized the women weren’t paying any attention to her; they were focused on the men. So she just danced and let her eyes roam the blurred faces, relaxing her own face whenever Fon said, “You’re squinting.”

  On the sixth night, since Oom hadn’t come back, the mama-san put Kwan on the chicken-feed pole, near the door. A few of the girls muttered about it, but most of them accepted it just as they’d accepted her presence on the stage. To her surprise, over the next few weeks her life acquired a routine, one she could never have imagined in the village but a routine nevertheless: wake up at three or four in the afternoon, shower, eat something light with Fon, try to smoke a cigarette without coughing, go to see Tra-La to listen to scandals and have her makeup applied, pick up something else to eat, and go to the bar around six. Most of the girls did their makeup while they ate and talked, but Kwan just sat with Fon and a few of the other girls, talking, sharing food, and learning to smoke. She found she liked the bar when the regular lights were on. It was a little run-down, a little dirty, a little rubbed and scarred, with the ugly bits exposed, like a poor person’s house. It became familiar. She found a table she liked to sit at, a length of leatherette couch she liked to lie down on. Women she liked to be with.