He said it as we stood across the station “Sir, it was not your fault, I was there and I saw what happened. You could not have done any more to keep your daughter safe. It was just an accident. For all you know they may have found her. Go and check inside,” he pointed to the Police Station in front, and gave me his number with a small pouch, with a bit more cocaine in it. “You will need this later; don’t drink for a few days and don’t sleep in the day time today, just have this in the afternoon, it will keep you going till night fall, and then go to bed. All the best.” It was probably the only kind word that anyone ever said to me about the loss of Li Ya, because for the rest of the world, Li Ya did not get lost. I lost her.
Reaching into my pocket, I took out a few hundred dollars and handed it to SriJaya, who touched my shoulder in consolation before he disappeared back into the streets of Pattaya.
Inside the station, Fang Wei sat at the Thai Police Inspectors desk, speaking into the phone, weeping gently. They had obviously not found Li Ya at night.
“Where the fuck have you been?” she screamed when she saw me, “We have been trying to call you all night,” she kept her phone on the desk and switched to speakers. She was now weeping in wails, not allowing me to keep my palms on her shoulders, pushing away as she spoke into the phone, “Georgy, he is here, speak to him, God alone knows where he has been all night.”
Georgy was my friend from work, at the audit firm that we managed out of Singapore. He was a family friend too, and our closest acquaintance in Singapore.
“Fang Wei, calm down, please, we have to hold ourselves together, I have already informed the Police in Singapore and they too are doing all that they can to find Li Ya. Where have you been, we have been looking for you frantically,” his high strung, electronic voice came sparkling over the speakers of the phone.
“I was looking for Li Ya, my phone ran out of charge since I was using it to show everyone her pictures, asking if they had seen her,” I had only SriJaya to thank, had he not fixed me up with the coke, I would not have survived that hung-over conversation.
“Shit, you nose is bleeding, what have you been having? Okay, you just go to the hotel and stay put there, maybe she will turn up there, I am sure she will remember the name of the Hotel. Just stay there, I will tackle this here and reach you at the Hotel,” she wiped her face and put her phone in her bag, before turning to the inspector who was doing the paperwork.
Had I been sober, I would have been demanding, insisting on the police force to be deployed, and personally overseeing the search that the Police in Pattaya had initiated. Instead, I was high and simply left, going first to the beach where I thought Li Ya may have miraculously appeared, and then shattered, I returned to the hotel, where I bathed, before patrolling the lobby of the Hotel, looking every now and then for that which disappeared from my life, my little girl, Li Ya.
I charged my phone, hoping it would stir, with voices demanding ransom before our darling was returned to us, knowing that she, Li Ya, had hearted well my number.
A train of eventualities thundered past, eventualities that haunted me for decades. The biggest being abduction for some nature of profit, from whatever it is that little girls can be sold or transacted for. The present value of her economic annuity, I was ready to divide it by the most meagre percentage of returns, ready to part with an infinite amount that any may seek, in return of my daughter. Or, did she genuinely get lost, slipping into some street corner before turning around and finding herself without her parents. She would be terrified, she would have cried, she would have been at a complete loss, not knowing how to communicate in Thai. A few kind people might have even tried to help, by channelling her into what the city accepted as the right ducts for little girls.
My phone remained silent, making me feel helpless and panicked as the effects of the drug began to wear. Reaching for the packet of coke from SriJaya, I emptied it on the back of my clenched fist and snorted up right there in the lobby, stuffing the powder into my nostrils with fingers before brushing the remains off my upturned palms. Fang Wei saw me doing it as she walked into the hotel and past me to the lift lobby, not acknowledging me. I ran into the lift as it shut and followed her to the room.
“What did the police say?” I asked her.
She did not reply, simply walking into the bathroom, where washing, cleaning and flushing sounds continued for about five minutes.
“They are doing their best, I have made the reports and they are working with the Singapore police, they are doing their best,” she was completely exhausted, looking drained, unlike me who was surfing on the cocaine.
In the corner of the room lay Li Ya’s stroller luggage, with a bright bubble printed princess on it, the one that we allowed her to pack with toys, board-books and such, for the holidays. Fang Wei crumbled in front of the princess bag and broke down again “My baby, my baby.” I reached for her, wanting to take her in my arms, wanting to console her, but she jerked away from me with widening ivory-red eyes.
“What are you doing here in this room, get out and search for her, don’t come back till you find her, you lost her you fool; now you go and find her. Go away,” she was understandably crazed, speaking meaninglessly as she clutched the stuffed bunny she had picked up from the floor.
The bunny’s ears drooped and it blinked its eyes at me, before tears, inky-blue, rolled down its white furry cheeks and onto Fang Wei’s over creamed, aging, desire-less palms. I knew it was the coke weeping and simply left the room, settling back onto the couches of the hotel lobby below. Her hands, they were desire less only because they did not seek my touch anymore.
Me and Fang Wei, we had not made love in over a year, if not more. The alcohol had decayed from my body by now, given that I had not imbibed in almost twenty hours, half-life of alcohol favouring the abstinent. Other drugs linger; an experiment of discovery, I strongly advise you against.
Her grief, I understood. What I did not understand was the binding of love that the grief of a loss is supposed to drive couples towards. Having lost the most precious denominator of a relationship, should that not compel us to stand together as we face a societal jury, who are safe and judgmental of what happened, and more importantly, of how it can be avoided. I was befuddled by the steady motions that came by, not yet erupting in the grief that gnawed and ate me over the years of loss that lay ahead. For now, I was just coasting on the cocaine.
When I lost Li Ya, I was at the pinnacle of my life, a point reached with steady industrious ascendancy, before the flag of her loss was planted on the zenith, murdering me. Then, the plummeting began, the awkward descent into the abyss of what I could not plan or control. The ascent had been measured and educated, before I landed the ‘Partner Position’ at the audit house, and the related ‘marrying up’ to Fang Wei. The descent was rough, like when gravity takes over.
There is so much to narrate and my keystrokes fumble, for I have only that much time, so let me try and lay the background out quickly for you in three points, before I introduce deadly Miho and her mistress Thuy Binh, both in whose love I lie in my sick-bed, typing furiously away before the end comes and announces ‘curtains’ on my excessive past.
The squash was good, the women even better, but, it was the deluge of drugs and drink which did me in, needing no judge to spell my death sentence. My end was the culmination of my own excess, leaving me to accept the consequences of that what we subject our bodies to.
Let me get back to the three quick points.
First, I am ethnic Indian, with no financial or familial links with the sub-continent, the only brother I have, a Canadian citizen, has made clear that the ties we share limit us to the amicable settlement of inheritance, which we have already affected. From that settlement, actually away from it, we have drifted, apart enough for us to lament the loss of relation that leaves the internet and its promise of proximity completely misplaced. We would help each other, if and when the need arose, and, if and when we called or wrote for help. That cal
l for aid had not presented itself in a decade or so, leaving us cut off and cocooned in our respective lives.
Second, I am a family man. Family, the only reason I remained married to Fang Wei for over a decade, about three years after our love came apart. It was simply my goal at keeping knit a unitary-whole-family that kept me and Fang Wei together in the final ugly stretch. We had even discussed it before concluding that it was not worth scarring a child with the blows of a breaking family, as she came of age. Actually, there was a lot about me not being able to survive outside of my family that played up in the unit being held together, even if it was only an illusion, and, even if it was only theoretical and physical togetherness, with strong ties between child and parent and none between man and wife.
So, with the two closest relations in my life, my brother and my wife, I led a life of bare essential and urgent communications. With my brother, the settlement of inheritance had shut the need for communication. With my wife, the monthly transfer of money led to the tacit settlement of us leading separate lives under the same roof. Adult and business-like, we had agreed upon the weekly children’s movie night and the holidays when school breaks presented themselves, often insulating the child from what was apparent to others around us -- sterility in marital continuity. You may now fathom the harshness that I received from Fang Wei when we lost Li Ya; the binding thread between us was our child and when it snapped, she unleashed all her spite and bitterness, stifled for all these years, upon me. In the absence of Fang Wei’s body, creamy, milky and firm against mine, bringing alive the reality of the oriental goddess was impossible, at least until I was with Thuy Bin. Till then, I masturbated, with whom I know not, even as I try and build back the list of women who have provided me sexual pleasure without ever being with me. In my defence, I never once headed into town, paying for sex, since deep in the folds of my foolish mind, I thought we, the holy couple, would rise to love again. Of course, hand jobs after massages don’t count, they being antiseptic and fleeting, announcing the mere end of a beginning, the beginning of a habit.
Third, I am a corporate man, having got educated and settled in sky-scraping business corridors. I run audits, finding and piecing together what falls through the cracks of accounting and its demands of reporting standards. More importantly, I search out human failure which is driven by the business of ambitions and the accumulation of deceit, like the one that led to the crash of 2008. I am a good auditor; my only frailties are human, too. Georgy and I run the Asia operations for the Audit firm, which mostly adds up the accounts from across the globe for our clients, before signing off what gets reported on Wall Street as quarterly results. I run the IT practice, and managing BMI in Asia is my largest contribution to the firm. BMI, Business Machines International, was where I worked as a manager of marketing, before shifting to auditing full time only recently. BMI is easy, mostly straight, but then that makes auditors look bad, because if you look hard enough, numbers never add up, only human motivations do, like billed revenue in the absence of firm purchase orders that my work found, or the revenues that linger as receivables before being accounted into oblivion.
On the following week, after we went back to Singapore, I was to receive papers relating to a billing of over a few million dollars from the Reserve bank of Manila, RBM, receivables turned sour and bubbling up, having crossed the six-month mark before they got escalated to me, a desk where my pride had ensured such escalations got tackled and smothered, which is why I remained the partner of operations that me and Georgy managed. My success at business had been attributable to travel, yes, the will to go in physically and meet the people who release and seek business contracts that become the bones we contend over. Understanding people motivations has been the bedrock of my success; like, the sales rookie whose eyes I read, getting assured that the money will be received in the weeks to come, while I sign the audit off; or, the finance executive whom I reject, just because he thought a night of drink and Chinese silk was enough for me to sign him away. The drinks and the honey are all good, but the eyes of dismay as I reject them on the following day were far more joyous, because they could not fathom how a man could handle all that the night had offered before he suits up on the following morning, putting up slides of reason that these financial, deskbound, official bastards think they can avoid.
My experience in audit helped make Thuy Binh one of the richest women in South East Asia. That’s one achievement, however perverted, that I can boast of in the years of steady decline that lay ahead of me.
In the hotel’s lobby I grew nervous and anxious as the drug wore down towards evening. I reached for the phone and called SriJaya, who asked me to meet him at the beach, the same one across which we had lost Li Ya. He remained sympathetic and kind, consoling me, giving me the support of simple words along with the cocaine, before I felt calmer and within myself again.
“You must sleep sir. You said you were flying back tomorrow; if you are, then rest tonight, before you head back,” he said, doing the best he could to help me, with the things in his bag of pleasures.
“I don’t think we will be flying back so soon, we will stay on till we find her. Sleep, I don’t know where to sleep, my wife has thrown me out of the room,” I looked down at the sand and drank some more water from his bottle.
“Come with me, I will show you a place to rest,” he got up and walked across the street leaving me to follow him into the world of prostitution that lay ahead.
In what may have been a few minutes, I stood facing a bank of Asian girls. They were dressed to attract tourists and all of them were smiling at us, invitingly. I was put off, but followed SriJaya, who insisted “Come sir, just get a good rest,” as he led me into the den of pleasures.
“No, no, SriJaya, I am not up to partying, thanks, maybe I should just sit around in the hotel’s lobby, just creep into bed late at night after my wife has slept.”
He barked in Thai, what were instructions for me to be left alone. One of the girls took me by the hand “Rest only, come with me, rest only, come,” her eyes were kind and bright, watery damp with youth and the offer of peace and quiet.
She led me up, me disarmed by her warmth. We entered a room with a bed and a view of the whoring streets of Pattaya below. She shut the window, obliterating the melee from the streets before switching on the air-con, high and effective. SriJaya drew three lines of white powder on the glass table in the middle of the room. We knelt, taking turns, snorting from three short pipes cut from a bubble-tea straw. Then he left me with confusing instructions “She will help you rest, just pay a hundred dollars when you think you are ready to leave. Any problems, call my phone.”
The extent of a person’s addiction can be told by the strength of insufflation. Feeble wind belongs to the wasted and the dying, unable to suck in what is killing them.
After I turned away from the door that shut SriJaya out, she was kneeling in front of me, slowly undoing the laces that had imprisoned my feet, removing my shoes, massaging as she gently peeled the socks off my feet. She rubbed on the parts that get imprinted by the stubborn elastic of new socks, before producing a small tub of hot water for me to dip my feet in. I moaned pleasurably in sorrow, as she rubbed the natural protrusions of feet, sending satisfaction-ripples to my weary, stoned brain.
“Relax, I let you have good rest,” she said, as she sat on the floor beneath me, not cross legged, but feminine with both her knees pointing rightwards, away from her. The wiping of feet was followed by my immersion in a warm bath, where I lay naked as she bathed me, taking time and kneading each and every part of my body that demanded the force of palms and elbows. On the tender parts like the lobes of ears, she was gentle and lingering. When I was dry again, she offered me hot noodles and tea, then she took me to bed, where I slept, for the first time after I had lost Li Ya.
She cleansed me off my loss, at least tried to; a nameless whore, she soothed me.
At what may have been the middle of life, I woke up, sweating and dis
orientated. She too stirred, holding me as I wept, the sober tears of loss finally flowing as I realised that I was here, well and grounded after the coke had loosened its grip, while my little baby was out there. The prostitute, she held me, letting me cry into her arms for many minutes, then she went to the glass table and the two waiting lines of cocaine, one of which I snorted, feeling the relief of anxiety that rid my nerves, and, with that the grieving ceased as she joined me back in bed, where we lay, eventually naked, both of us, measured, as she stroked me through pleasure, tidying up before we slept again till just about dawn. I awoke to the acid-batik robe that she had put on me and the sweaty beads of coke-less anxiety on my body. That second bit she had a remedy for as she knelt by the glass table. She arranged two cups of tea with buns for us, in the few minutes that it took for me to join her.
“Take some tea, eat something, before we ready for the day,” she said, lighting incense sticks up in front of the peaceful one, who was just a little clay figurine on the glass table, looking over the tea cups. It was she, kneeling in front of him that became reverent, kneeling in front of her diminutive and unmoving God, it was she who became my Goddess, as she prayed unashamed in naked piety, for me to see, and I hope accept her reverence; because up till now, I thought I was her God. She had cared for me all night, almost like a priestess venerating her beloved, and, the sight of her praying to another was just misplaced in my silly mind.
We ate and we drank the tea for a few minutes before the lines of white disappeared inside us, again. Insufflations had left my sinuses dripping into my throat, something I did not mind since I knew, what cannot be absorbed by the nasal lining will be taken in by the stomach. She offered me spiced tobacco, cinnamon and cardamom flavoured, from a smoking pipe, that being her weakness for mornings. I was glad we had eaten, since a hit in the morning usually suppresses appetite for the rest of the day. We shared and smoked, even though I am a non-smoker of tobacco. By the time the sun was up I was back on the streets, having redeemed each of the pennies in the dollars I had given for that night at the brothel, well beyond the hundred that I was advised. It was I who was in the brothel’s debt, having slept a first sleep in my life without Li Ya, a sleep which was not possible in the swanky hotel that I was paying for, at the ‘family’ end of the beach.
Lost in Pattaya Page 2
