PR04 - Queen of Patpong

by Timothy Hallinan

  She stayed where she was, so he sat and began to draw. After a moment she got onto the chair again, leaving an inch or two between them, and watched the pencil as he sketched a litter of puppies gathered around the dog she’d drawn.

  “That one’s Donder and that one’s Blitzen,” he said, indicating two of the four. He wrote the names above them. “You name the other two.”

  She took the pencil, still feeling the agitation in the air. Trying to find her way back to the feeling of a moment ago, she said, “This one name Dog.”

  “Write it,” Howard said.

  She wrote “D-O-G” slowly above the puppy.

  “And that one?”

  “This one name Howard,” she said. “Because he bite.”

  Howard took the pencil and drew exaggerated fangs on the puppy named Howard. Then he took a new piece of paper and covered it with squares and filled the squares with a comic about a dog named Howard, the meanest dog in the world, a dog who was so mean he bit rocks, and ten minutes later they were both laughing.

  But that night, dropping off to sleep, she saw again the look in his eyes.

  THEN THERE WAS the drinking.

  Howard didn’t drink often, but when he did, he became someone else, someone sullen and quick to take offense. Twice they left a restaurant without paying because Howard, who had been drinking, said the food was bad and the dishes were dirty, although they’d seemed clean enough to Rose. She’d blushed furiously as he berated the waiter and pushed back his chair, and everyone in the restaurant stared at the two of them. The walk to the door seemed to take hours.

  And then, the next morning, he apologized and told her he wouldn’t do it again. Weeks passed before he did.

  Other than the one time, he never aimed his fury at her. It was always something else—a taxi driver, or someone who bumped Rose on the street, or, one time, a shirt that had come back from the hotel laundry with a button missing. Howard had put it on and buttoned it most of the way up when he came to the empty space, and all of a sudden he was swearing and yelling, and he grabbed the shirt at the bottom and tore it open, sending buttons bouncing across the carpet.

  “Goddamned fucking people!” he shouted. “Can’t do fucking anything right!”

  Rose said, “Which people?”

  He’d whipped his head around as though just realizing he wasn’t alone in the room. “The . . . the laundry,” he said in his normal voice. He swallowed and steadied his breathing. “They’ve ruined half my clothes.”

  “That shirt,” Rose said. “You ruin.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking down at it. “I did, didn’t I?” He grins at her. “I’m a jerk.”

  After a moment she returned his smile.

  So yes, there were signs, but she chose not to look at them. To be with one man, not to work, not to have to lie all the time, to know that her family was taken care of and her sister was safe. She wanted all those things. She wanted them too much.

  Chapter 19

  The Rocks

  Men have taken her to Pattaya before, and she hated it: the bars, the noise, the streetwalkers, the dirty water. But she’s never been to Phuket. All the girls have told her it’s much better than Pattaya, that the beaches are clean and the water is clear and the hotels are palaces. At any other time, she’d be excited about it, but she can’t be, because she’s focused completely on the second half of their trip. After five days in Phuket, Howard has promised her they’ll go to the village and he’ll tell her parents they’re getting married and pay them the dowry.

  She hasn’t been back to the village since she ran away. And now, to return with a rich, handsome, good-hearted farang, a man who can take care of them all, is almost too much for Rose to believe. Her parents will have their new house. Howard has drawn and redrawn it, making it bigger and more solid every time. Airier.

  Her brothers and sisters will grow up differently than she did. They’ll have space and light and money for nice clothes. They’ll have futures. And she’ll be finished with Patpong.

  In her mind she’s already in the back of the orange taxi with Howard, slowing at the end of the village street, with the kids assembling to parade them in. She barely registers the flight south to Phuket, even though it’s the first time she’s ever been in an airplane. Her lack of interest tightens Howard’s eyes and turns his gaze past her, out the window. She feels the change in his mood and puts her hand on his and says, “Thank you.”

  He says, sounding like a kid whose surprise fell flat, “It’s like you fly all the time.”

  “Have happy too much already,” she says. “Not have room for more.”

  He smiles at her, and the tension in his shoulders eases. He leans over and kisses her cheek. “We’ll see about that.”

  ON THE MORNING of the fourth day, with only two more days before they leave for Isaan, he takes her to the dock, for the trip he’s been talking about ever since they arrived.

  He’s seemed nervous the past two days. He’s had trouble sleeping, and wherever they’re going, whatever they’re doing, he’s always ready before she is, sitting on the couch, eager to move, while she scurries around getting whatever she needs. He doesn’t criticize her, but his impatience is obvious: a tapping foot, an occasional needless trip to the door, just standing beside it so he’ll be ready to open it the moment she’s ready to go.

  She feels as though he’s trying to hurry time along. When she asks him about it, he tells her he’s just eager to get up to Isaan, eager to meet her parents and arrange the marriage. They’ll be married in the village, he says, and he’ll throw a two-day feast for everyone. It seems like a dream, but still, the whole time they’re in Phuket, she feels like she’s running to keep up with him.

  On the rickety dock, they stand side by side, his arm around her shoulders. One of the things she loves about him, she decides, is that he makes her feel short. She wraps her arm around his back and is surprised to find she can feel his heart. It’s beating much more quickly than hers.

  The boat rides high in the water, battered wood painted white a long time ago, with a faded, abstract brown eye on the front of the side Rose can see. About seven feet back from the prow are a big wheel and some controls, set behind a curve of plastic windscreen that has absorbed so much salt it’s almost opaque. The engine is tilted up at the rear, its big propeller hanging almost a meter above the water, nicked and scarred.

  An afternoon breeze, chillier than usual, blows in off the water.

  “Little,” Rose says, eyeing the boat.

  “There are only two of us,” Howard says. “Just you and me.” He throws a suitcase onto the boat and turns to get the four big two-gallon bottles of water.

  “This”—she levels a finger at the gray-blue horizon of the Andaman Sea, the water dark today beneath gray clouds—“this very big.”

  “Ahhhh,” Howard says. “The Andaman is a swimming pool. Anyway, you’re with me, and I can handle this thing.”

  “Not hard? Not hard to . . . to handle?” The new word comes out fine, but Howard doesn’t acknowledge it.

  He does arm curls with the water containers. “Easy as buttoning a shirt.”

  “Sometime you not so good with shirt.”

  Howard laughs. “Light a cigarette. It’ll relax you. Oh, wait. I almost forgot.” And before she can even react, he drops the water bottles to the deck, making it shake underfoot, slides his big hands under her arms, and lifts her straight up like she weighs nothing. She laughs and beats at his chest as though he’s a monster, but he carries her across the pier, leans forward, and puts her down in the boat, which rocks enough beneath her weight to make her grab the side. “Trip wouldn’t have been any fun without you,” he says, watching her hang on. “You’ll have your sea legs in no time.” He turns back to the water containers.

  “See legs?” she asks, raising one of hers.

  “Not like ‘see,’ not like looking at legs.” He’s been pointing at his eyes to illustrate, and now he picks up a huge bottle
of water in each hand and waves her away so he can lower them into the boat. “The sea,” he says, nodding at the Andaman as he puts the water aboard. “That’s the sea. You know, it goes”—he puts his hands in front of him palms down and makes wave motions—“like that. It can make you sick at first. When you get used to it, we say in English you’ve got your sea legs.”

  She sits on the wooden bench that runs around the passenger compartment and opens her purse. A cigarette sounds good right now. “Sea legs. You have sea legs?” She’s taken to repeating every new term she hears so she can file it in memory, hoping to improve her English more quickly. In her imagination she sees herself in two or three years going to farang parties as Howard’s wife, speaking perfect English.

  “I don’t need them,” Howard says. “I’m a fish.” Rose suddenly remembers Oom describing herself as “half fish” the night Rose—Kwan then—went with Captain Yodsuwan. It seems like years ago. Howard puts the other two water bottles aboard and bends to the dock to pick up the black rubber wet suit that looks to Rose like an empty person.

  “Not cold,” she says. She finds the pack of Marlboro Lights and shakes one out. “Water okay.” She swam the day before for hours, forgetting for once about not getting dark from the sun, no longer worried about what the customers and the other girls would think. The water was much warmer than the shower back at the apartment. “Why only one?”

  “You won’t need one,” Howard says, climbing aboard with the suit tossed over his shoulder. “And it’s not for cold. It’s for something else. I’ll show you when I see one.” He rolls the suit up and stuffs it beneath one of the benches, then straightens and shades his eyes, although the day’s not bright, and squints up at the sky, dark gray in places but with one or two small, tattered patches of blue. “We left the rain in Bangkok.”

  “Maybe later,” Rose says, watching him as she takes the first puff. He’s right; the smoke makes her feel smoother. Howard, on the other hand, seems even more energetic than he has the past couple of days, as though his blood is carbonated, bubbling in his veins. There’s something bristling, something sparky about him that reminds her of the first day she drank Nescafé. That buried kernel of energy. If she could see through Howard right now, she wouldn’t be surprised to find a flame at his center.

  In all the months she’s known him, she’s never seen him do a muscleman exercise like the one he just did with the water bottles. His body tells her he exercises often, but it’s something he does privately, and although they’ve been together for three and four weeks at a stretch, she has no idea when.

  Howard steps up onto the edge of the boat and makes the leap to the dock. The boat’s stern swings outward behind him, but the prow stays put, anchored by a thick rope that’s been passed over one of the vertical timbers that supports the dock. He pulls the loop of rope off the timber, tucks it under his arm, and jumps back onto the boat, which rocks alarmingly. He holds the rope out to Rose.

  “Coil this,” he says.

  She says, “What?” This “coil” is not a word she knows.

  “Circles,” Howard says with an edge of impatience. “Just—” He makes a circular motion with his index finger, pointing down. “The rope,” he says. He makes the gesture again, giving her the wide eyes she sometimes gets when she’s too slow for him.

  “Fine,” Rose says, getting up tentatively. The boat is still rocking, and she has to put out a hand to steady herself. “Coil.” She goes to the place where the rope has been knotted inside the boat and begins to feed the loose rope onto the deck in a circle. “Coil,” she says again experimentally.

  At the wheel, Howard mutters something and takes a long drink off a smaller bottle of water.

  Rose says, “What?”

  Without looking back, Howard says, “I said, Jesus Christ.”

  “Oh.” She finishes making rope circles and drops the end, then nudges the rope with the toe of her flip-flop to make it rounder. “Why Jesus Christ?”

  Howard screws the cap onto his water bottle, but he doesn’t look at her. “Something I always say when I go out to sea,” he answers without turning. She has to cup a hand to her ear to hear him. “Like a prayer.” He turns a key beside the wheel and pushes a button, and the engine growls to life with a racketing sound, spewing gray smoke. “Sit down,” Howard says, almost pushing past her. He goes to the back of the boat and releases a little catch that lets the engine drop into the water. The noise is cut in half, and the dock begins to slide by beside them. He returns to the wheel, and the boat points itself away from the dock. She grips the edge of the bench in both hands and turns back, seeing the widening V of their wake, churned greenish white in the center behind the propeller, seeing the island fall away behind them. It seems to get smaller very quickly.

  “THAT WAY IS India,” Howard says, pointing west. He’s at the wheel, and he zigzags right and left. The boat’s sudden wobble makes Rose dizzy. “The old Thai boats had the engine at the end of a pipe,” he says. “The long-tail boats were steered by pushing the pipe right or left.”

  “I see before.”

  He gives her a lengthy look before he replies. “Am I boring you?”

  “No. Just . . . cold.” She glances at the sky, which has turned darker, partly because the clouds have thickened and partly because the day is beginning to dim. The island is far behind them now, although she can still see it rising, pale and irregular, on the horizon.

  “So get a jacket. That’s why we brought the suitcase, remember?” He passes a loop over the wheel. “Do you see this?”

  She gets up, feeling the wind hit her, and finds the handle of the suitcase. “Yes,” she says. “See.”

  “You’re not looking. This holds us on a straight course.”

  Rose says, “Yes.”

  “Born to be on the water,” he says. “The wheel makes the keel under the boat go side to side.” He demonstrates by holding his right arm straight out, pointed toward the engine, dead center in the water. “When you turn the wheel to the right, the keel goes this way”—he shifts his arm—“and the boat goes right. Turn it the other way, et cetera.”

  Rose says, “Et cetera.” She shivers. “Cold.”

  Howard shakes his head. “So open the suitcase. Oh, never mind.” He picks up his water bottle, unscrews the cap, and drinks. Then he pulls the suitcase away from her, puts it on the bench, and rips the zipper open. He paws through a couple of layers until he comes up with the bright pink windbreaker Rose had bought the day before. “Put it on.”

  “Why you angry today?”

  “All I want,” Howard says slowly, “is for us to have a good time. I don’t want to have to say everything ten times, I don’t want you shivering with cold when it’s eighty fucking degrees, and I don’t want you arguing with me all the time.”

  Rose’s stomach muscles tighten the way they would if she were afraid of being punched there. “Not argue.”

  “Good. You steer.”

  “Okay,” she says, holding up both hands. “I steer.”

  She shoves her arms through the windbreaker’s sleeves and goes to the wheel. When she has both hands on it, Howard says, “Turn starboard.”

  “Star—”

  “Right, right, for Christ’s sake.” He clamps his hands over hers and twists the wheel, and the boat lurches severely enough that Rose has to sidestep to remain standing. “Starboard,” he says, pointing right. “Port.” He points left. “Now turn to port.”

  “Port,” Rose says, easing the wheel around. “Port, okay?”

  “You know,” he says, “I don’t have to show you anything. I could just skip the whole fucking thing. Or do you want to learn something?”

  “Want.”

  “Bow,” he says, pointing to the front of the boat. He points back, toward the motor. “Stern.”

  “Bow,” Rose repeats with a clamping around her heart that she almost doesn’t recognize as fear. “Stern.”

  “COME HERE,” HOWARD says. He’s at the wheel.
They are traveling in a straight line, at an angle to the island, now a hazy break on the far surface of the sea. While they were headed directly away from Phuket, they had taken the swells head-on, but now the swells are hitting the boat from the side, and the two movements—the boat churning forward, the relentless rocking from side to side—are making Rose uneasy. She can feel her lunch, a hard, heavy ball in her stomach. It’s a little like the first three or four times she’d smoked a cigarette and the room had begun to spin.

  Howard locks the wheel and moves to the other side of the boat. He makes a curt “hurry up” gesture with his hand, leaning over to look down at the water. Rose gets up unsteadily, feet spread wide, and waits for the boat to do its sideways rock, then hurries across and grabs hold before the next swell rises up beneath them. She knows she doesn’t want to look down at the water. She has an instinctive feeling that watching it stream by will be the final ingredient in a mix of motion that’s likely to bring her lunch back up into the light of day.

  “Down there,” Howard says, pointing. “See them?”

  She looks down and then, immediately, up again. “I can’t,” she says.

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” The words sound barbed to her.

  “I get sick.”

  “No you won’t. Just look for a minute, and then I’ll give you something to make you feel better.”

  “What?”

  “A pill. I should have given it to you before we left. You’re getting seasick, is all. The pill will fix it.”

  “Seasick,” Rose says.

  “This isn’t a language lesson,” Howard says, “and those fucking things aren’t going to be out there forever. Look.” He points toward the water at about a forty-five-degree angle, and Rose searches the dark surface.

  She sees nothing but the Andaman. The day is on the way out now, the clouds an angrier, deeper gray that verges on black, and the surface of the water is powder gray and oily-looking. And then she sees rounded shapes, as though the water has thickened into spheres that are barely floating, only the very tops exposed to the air.