“Trust me,” says Tuki.
“What else we do? We know you going? Girls always go.”
“Right. Khi mai ma hom. New shit smells sweet to the dog.” Brandy arches her eyebrow and gives a sly smile like Eddie Murphy in drag.
“Where we get such crazy girl?!”
“Courtesy of one sexy little Saigon bar ho.” Tuki smiles. She pictures her mother, and suddenly she knows exactly what she is going to put on for this date.
She makes Prem wait down on the street in the limo for fifteen minutes before she steps out into the street wearing a long gold shantung silk sheath with a Nehru collar. Pumps to match. Hair up off her neck in a French roll.
Pon stands waiting in his powder-blue livery alongside the Benz. When he opens the back door she hears Lionel Richie singing “Stuck on You” over the sound system. There in the shadows of the car is her tall, thin lion in a tan suit and denim button-down shirt open at the neck. His hand shakes as he reaches out to grab hers. For a second, she thinks he is going to kiss her hand like a prince in an old movie. But when she catches his eyes to give him permission, he quickly drops his gaze and guides her onto the seat beside him.
“I … I must be dreaming.” He stutters in very royal-sounding English as if he is talking to himself. “You look so lovely. Your presence is a great honor,” he adds in Thai.
There is a little sweat on his forehead. So she is already thinking that this man is more or less at her mercy. Even so, she is blushing and staring at her knees.
“You really like Lionel Richie, la?”
“All night long,” he says, echoing the title of one of Lionel’s classics. Now she can really see those dark eyes as he smiles.
He offers her a glass of the white French wine he is drinking, but she sticks with Perrier. Prem is telling her that he has been totally addicted to Lionel since the days when his father sent him to a military high school in America to shape up, learn English, and be a man. He used to make his own mixes of Lionel’s songs instead of doing his homework.
He says except for all the money and nice things he has, his life is hell. He is the only son among older daughters. The child of a man who owns a company that makes sleeping pills and ships them all over the world. A man who used to be high up in the Thai Navy. A man who calls his only son an art fag. His mother, he says, is easier. She collects. She is on the board of Bangkok’s museums, one in New York, too. Prem went to college there. He studied filmmaking. He says his father cannot understand why he spent his time in college working on music videos with a whole zoo full of Greenwich Village fairies.
But Prem does not care. One of these days he is going to get his trust fund, be independent. Then he is going to tell his father where he can go, start making music videos and other films in Bangkok. Like, goodbye, Father. But first, after all of those years in school and all the stinking plaa he has put up with from his father, he is going to suck up a little of the good life. He thinks he deserves to give himself a little vacation at Daddy’s expense. And it is starting tonight.
“Ya ching suk kon ham,” Tuki mumbles. Early ripe, early rotten.
He gives a sad little smile like maybe he agrees. But then he laughs, raises his glass of wine in a toast, and says, “To the good life!”
It is the first time she ever hears this expression. Thinks, give Tuki some of that!
TWENTY-THREE
“So now he’s here?” He thinks he has asked this question before but got no answer from her.
“He came. He is gone.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago, maybe. I don’t know, la.”
“But before the fire, obviously. You were walking with him early on the night when—”
“Three days before the fire. I thought I saw him out there in the audience. I told myself it cannot be. How did he find me here after all of these years? I wanted to die.”
“I don’t understand.”
She looks around her. They are at lunch in a fancy West End restaurant called the Red Inn. After the beach, they changed into dry, clean clothes back at his Jeep. Tuki adjusts the new pink jersey shirt she’s wearing. She can still feel the salt left from the waves scratching at her body. Michael is back in his white shirt and gray suit, ever the young attorney at law.
“I think he has come to settle some old business.”
“What happened?”
“Not important. That is very old news. Just something, la. Okay?”
He grits his teeth. She is doing it again. Holding back. Like his cousin Alicia did after the night he ran into her at a high school keg party with a ring of love bites around her neck.
“Did you see him after the show?”
She shakes her head no.
“The next day. Ruby came to me in the morning saying my boyfriend from Bangkok was in town. Alby had seen him. It seemed impossible to me that he had found me, that he had come all this way for me. I thought maybe Alby was lying to Ruby … or she had things mixed up. It could not be true. Prem could not be here …”
She feels scared. She does not want to be alone. So right after her morning rehearsal, she heads to the Slip for sunlight, breezes, and lots of company. She has been there for maybe an hour when she hears a soft, shaky voice saying her name. She opens her eyes, sees a silhouette standing over her in a white bathing suit. She squints, stares to see him against the bright sunlight. It is him, her one and only cowardly lion. Live in the flesh, after more than five years.
“Do you mind if I sit down,” he asks like they are strangers. He nods at a vacant chaise next to her, “Or are you with someone?”
“Without someone,” she smiles. Then she remembers Alby. “At the moment!”
He says maybe he should just leave her in peace.
Yes, please just do that, she thinks, because she has been on one crazy ride with men in general, and him in particular.
She stares out at the bay where the water is a deep blue.
He says he is sorry. He has come a long way. He just wants to see how she is getting along.
“Now you see,” she says in this totally neutral voice. Then she lies back in her chaise and closes her eyes. She can feel his eyes on her.
He says that he has started working again. He thinks they should talk about a movie project he has in mind that would involve her. He wants to make a serious film about the queens in the Patpong. He wants her to come back to Bangkok to do it.
“I will make you a deal,” she hears her voice saying, and is already regretting her words for about a thousand reasons. “Maybe you understand why I am still feeling more than a little hurt, and I will try forgetting about how you just stopped calling me. I will try not remembering how you, your pung chao, and your nonsense about always and forever danced on my heart and rubbed my soul in the mud. And … and … then the River House—”
“Forget about the house. It is not important,” he says. “Look, Tuki. I have been a fool. My father made me stop. My mother said he would disown me, turn me out on the streets. I still loved you. I always—”
“No,” she almost shouts, “you cannot do this!”
Then she closes her eyes and covers her ears and counts to about fifty in Vietnamese, which is not easy for her. When she opens her eyes, her mind is telling the rest of her that they have no past with this man. They have no interest in this coward. What they think they remember is just a sad movie with people who look like them.
“I never knew you,” she says. “Okay? I have a new life now, la. An important boyfriend and boss. He will send you back to Thailand in a body bag if he finds you here.”
He says he knows. He rubs his ribs as if they are sore.
For a second he looks like he is going to cry, but he does not. The more she thinks about the film project he is describing, the more she thinks exploitation. And cheating heart, too. Now that the blush is off his marriage, rich boy, big-shot film director wants to walk on the wild side again. He is thinking a film project is maybe just the bait he n
eeds to hook into her heart again.
“So, where are the wife and kids?” she asks. She think this shot to the chest will send him running … and she will soon be chilling in solitude once again, free of any illusions about a film he will never really make.
He says they have rented a place on the beach at Phuket. His marriage is a big mess. He walked out last month. “That’s not my problem!”
The man looks beaten. But he is not standing up and walking away from her tongue. So maybe he really is not here for revenge. Maybe it is not a mistake to give a care again, she thinks. Especially because she suddenly gets this strong sense of pain from him as she drowns in his black eyes.
“She does not know about you? She thinks you are straight?”
He shakes his head, right. And she knows he is trying to tell her marriage and kids have not settled his restless heart. He feels locked in a golden closet, afraid of what will happen if he tries to break out again.
“Oh, la,” she sighs. “You need a big shot of courage.”
He gives her a sad smile. She cannot help herself. She just slides over onto his chaise and hugs him. Fifteen minutes go by before he comes out of his daze, shakes his head, asks, “Will you come back to me?” He sounds so sad, so sincere. She does not yet know he is already stirring up a whole pot of trouble with Alby.
“Do the police know about all of this?” asks Michael.
“No. It is no matter now. Leave him out of this. You find the real killer. Prem is gone. This time maybe forever.”
TWENTY-FOUR
She should remember every detail of her first dinner on the river terrace at the Oriental, but she does not. All she recalls is the heaviness of the water glasses, more forks than she can use, the waiters in white jackets, tables full of farangs glittering with real diamonds, the sounds of a string quartet, the smell of grilled shrimp, a sunset swirling with violet in a sea of crushed roses. Mostly what she remembers are Prem’s big dark eyes taking in every inch of her, like she is the rarest angel in all of Bangkok. She thinks about the lime scent of his cologne and how she might take a bite of that long, hard neck and feast on his golden skin.
He says that until he sees her at the Underground, he has been lonely since he has come home to Bangkok. He has spent the last ten years in America and Europe. He misses New York. The long nights, the Village, the clubs, the outrageous queens. The laughter of gay couples on Christopher Street. The crazy bums in Washington Square. And other things, like the subway musicians and the street-front restaurants of Little Italy, Chinatown. He finds himself coming to the Patpong to look for the things he misses in New York. He does not mention the drugs. Not yet.
The next thing she knows, dinner is over. Prem is holding her hand like it is a jewel, begging her to not let the night end here. He is asking her to go for a ride with him up the river and look at the lights of the city.
She loves the river, so they hire a water taxi and ride for hours. They go so far up the river they go beyond the Krungthon Bridge. Then they come back down to the Royal barge sheds where the boatman stops and shines a light so they can see the golden dragon heads on the King’s barges. They detour through all of the klongs in Thonburi, watch the charcoal fires going out, and the windows turning black in the stilt houses built out over the water. All this time Prem is asking her how such an exotic flower as Tuki Aparecio came to be in his city.
She wants to lie. She thinks he wants her to be something more than a common little Patpong luk sod. She is still scared that he only loves her illusion, that he is too straight for anything but dinner with a girl like her. She wants to make up a story about being the child of wealthy Vietnamese movie stars who the communists murdered. She wants to say Tuki is the survivor of the Killing Fields, the adopted foster child of a jade merchant … who tried to rape her when she was thirteen, so she ran away to the Patpong to do what is in her blood—sing and dance and …
But she cannot lie, and she cannot admit the truth. So what she does is nuzzle her head deeper into the shoulder of his suit jacket. She says, “Kiss me.”
He hesitates. Then he pulls his head back and looks at her with those black eyes that are soft and full of a thousand questions.
She feels a rush of panic stiffen his body, and now she is wishing that she had listened to Brandy and Delta and never come out with this man. She closes her eyes and braces herself for whatever is coming … maybe a defeated little sigh or a look of disgust or the sting when he hits her, tells her to swim home with the rest of the river rats.
But then she feels his breath on her cheek and his thin lips brush against hers.
Does she remember her first real kiss? Does she remember the lightning bolt of electricity that stings her lips and tongue, races to the tips of her fingers and toes, and finally settles into a low buzzing between her legs? Does she remember thinking that she is suddenly born again, and the past is nothing more than a handful of dry rice scattering before the winds of a typhoon? She remembers every detail. She still remembers how it felt to have the most beautiful young lion in the world glued to her lips … in her twenty-first year … on that river in the city of angels. The colored spotlights blazing on the towering prang of the Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn. With Lionel Richie singing “All Night Long” in her head.
And she knows how it feels to discover that by stepping into that river taxi with a young lion, she has cut herself free from her family. Whatever happens now—whether she is wounded or killed or becomes a movie star—it is only her business. No one else will know what she knows now. After this kiss she wants to cry and sing!
TWENTY-FIVE
He is down at the fish pier in Chatham watching the long-line boys and the lobstermen unloading their catches at suppertime. He knows how hard their life is, knows the sorrow, shame, frustration of coming home with an empty hold, a busted trip. But he misses it, wonders where his father and Tio Tommy are right now in the Rosa Lee.
It has to be better than this mess he is in. He started today with high hopes that he might make some progress toward unraveling his client’s secrets, finding some alternate suspects, picturing his defense strategy. But now he is more confused than ever. This ex-boyfriend, this Prem Kittikatchorn, sounds like just the kind of obsessed son of a bitch who might do anything—like burn and murder—to make her his again. A stalker. Why is she still defending him? Is she still carrying a torch for the guy? And what’s with the passing allusions to heroin? Is there some kind of narcotics trade going on here? Another thing. This lying by omission is virtually pathological.
So he is thinking that he has to start talking to people other than his client. He is starting to psych himself up to call Varat Samset tonight, when he feels an arm curl around his back.
“Hey, sailor. Looking for a good time?”
It is Filipa. He feels her soft, large breasts slide against his rib cage as she pulls him against her. He loves the way she feels. He cups the back of her head in his hand, draws her lips to his, probes for her tongue.
“Wow! You want to go for it right here, big boy?”
“I’m thinking the beach.” He is already feeling out of breath, kissing her again. One hand on her butt cheek. He can tell she is not wearing any panties. The fishermen are starting to notice the show, watching when she breaks the lip lock.
“Take me to bed, or lose me forever.” It is Meg Ryan’s line from Top Gun that he has always loved.
“You don’t have to ask twice.” He is thinking that there is nothing better than frisky sex to pull him out of his funk. Screw the case. Screw the dragon ho. Screw the stalker. Screw the call to Bangkok.
They clamber down a trail to a narrow beach in front of the swank cottages of Chatham Bars Inn. It is still hot. The mid-eighties. The water looks like a field of golden leaves in the evening sun. He peels off his jacket and shirt, throws them on top of a thicket of beach plums. She clamps him in a bear hug, feels for him with her right hand. Sweat is soaking through the back of her green cotton shift. H
e drops to the sand and pulls her on top of him. Ten seconds and he is in her. She is riding high. Her eyes close. Head tilts back, rolling on her neck to the rhythm of their lust.
“Jesus Lord, forgive me,” she chants. “Holy Mary Mother of God, I love this!”
He closes his eyes, too. Thinks he can do this until the sun sets, pulls her hand to his mouth and sucks her fingers one by one.
“G-g-g-goddamn it. H-h-h-have you no shame?!” A man’s voice rips him from a dream of dolphins swimming belly to belly.
He feels Filipa freeze.
His eyes pop open.
Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues Page 10
