All night, I rediscovered the wonders of nature entwined in my lover on the deck of the Southern Cross. Near dawn, when it got chilly, we entered the living chambers of the floating palace, tucking ourselves in the warmth of down that was laid out for us.
When I awoke, I was alone with no trace of anyone else on the Yacht. The sun was well up. From the deck, it took me a few minutes before I noticed the form of Thuy Binh in the water, at least a few hundred meters away, swimming with vigour for the exercise that she craved each day. I too swam, trying to make good the resolve of a life athletic. Bobbing in the sea, I saw the vessel shimmering in the sun, Southern Cross scribed aquamarine across her bow.
“There is way of life possible long term on the sea,” she said later, eating fruit with champagne, chocolates and ice-water for breakfast. “One can sail, just following the calm parts of the ocean all year, settling for a quiet yet energetic life,” she said, feeding me halves of grapes which she was de-seeding with her teeth, as if for her Lord.
At that point I fought the notion, but it remains the only style of life that I want, sailing with her forever in calm tropical seas, because, when she wanted to, the lesbian bitch, she could make happy any man alive.
We massaged oil unhurriedly and luxuriously into the others body, before lying listless for a few hours that morning. When I asked for more champagne, she refused to let me have it “You need to be yourself, for I know not what you will turn into after this afternoon.”
* * *
Much later that afternoon, after the crew steered us ashore, we were driven by a taxi to the destination that Thuy Binh declared “East Coast Park, Car Park D”.
“Promise me you will take care of yourself, no matter what you may encounter today,” she said as we were driven.
“What is Li Ya doing here in Singapore?” I asked again, nervous with a tremble to my tone, unable to contain my anxiety anymore.
“All will be quiet and peaceful; I kept telling Miho through bad times, we must simply do our best. The Lord favours the compassionate,” she tried to calm me. Instead, I sensed a quickening in the pace with which she delivered words. They were not spoken at her natural speed, an outcome of what she alone knew. Nervousness of the soother, it is shattering.
My first glimpse of Li Ya was from the concealment of bougainvillea, no more than thirty metres from the swing on which she swayed. She had grown at an almost unbelievable pace, as kids do at that age. She looked well and was smiling. When I wanted to rush towards her, Thuy Binh kept her palm on my shoulder, pulling me back “See it all before you make your next move.”
I took a step back, moving behind the foliage that kept us hidden from view.
A few of Li Ya’s friends appeared, looking into their phones and giggling, not unlike any group of teenagers from across the world’s cities.
“What is she doing here,” I begged, but Thuy Binh simply asked that we follow Li Ya, who had moved towards the row of apartments across the highway that separated the park from the housing estate. We followed her at a distance, Thuy Binh’s arms held mine as she steadied me to the shock of revelation.
Li Ya headed to the coffee shop nestled between the apartment blocks. She sat on a table where Fang Wei was already seated, weary from a day at work.
“What are they doing together?” I blurted. Before Thuy Binh could reply, Georgy entered the picture, moving directly towards Fang Wei, pecking her on the lips before turning to Li Ya, giving her a hug.
I crumbled, sinking to the manicured meadow that lined the driveway. It was dark and we did not need hiding anymore since the cafe was lit and we were well away, masked by the dark dead evening.
Thuy Binh grabbed me by the arm and helped me up, holding on to me as I blabbered “What is going on? Let me go, I want to see Li Ya, please let me go, I want to see my little baby.”
“Yes, but please, you must listen to me, give yourself some time, I have all the answers for you and once you hear them, then you can see her. I will help you. Come now we must go,” she led me away onto the main street before she hailed a cab, carrying us away, back to the Marina again.
Georgy, he was clearly living with Fang Wei, as if married. Were they married? I could understand that a woman may seek comfort in moments of failed femme-weakness following the loss of her family, but, Li Ya too seemed to be a part of their life, smiling, deciding upon dinner.
A picture flashed across my mind, Georgy fucking Fang Wei, a part of it was indirectly he screwing me. Were they seeing one another even before me and Fang Wei separated?
“Please Thuy Binh, I have to see my daughter and know what happened to her in Pattaya, please take me back,” I was weeping. The old taxi driver simply increased the tempo on his car-stereo, wanting not to pry, having had enough of others’ secrets in a life time behind the wheel.
“I will tell you what happened to her in Pattaya, and, when you are yourself tomorrow you decide who all you want to see and what all you want to do,” she comforted me, almost cradling me in the back seat.
On the Yacht, I asked for whiskey instead of champagne and she let me have it, a few drinks before she said “Its time I tell you everything.”
After we sat down she uncovered the pieces of my life story that existed without my knowledge. I soaked in disbelief, preparing questions that only an auditor can serve up before tallying accounts that are put forth.
She began.
“It was never my intention to kidnap your daughter and when the proposal presented itself, my natural reaction was to reject it, which I did. You may know by now I don’t like making enemies for small profits. It was your wife and her boy-friend who insisted on pursuing matters, and when I refused, they turned to others in Bangkok who agreed to execute their silly plan of nabbing your daughter. The prostitution mafia is run on turfs, and mine ends in Pattaya. It is a fine balance and the truce amongst the provinces is a fragile one. An operation on my turf by a rival mafia from Bangkok was unthinkable since it dilutes the one thing that helps me run the ring, fear that others hold in my name. Kawai runs the entire strip in Patpong and called to say that if I don’t execute the job in Pattaya - on my turf where your wife was sure you would agree to get-away - he and his filthy boys would. I was left with little choice but to accept your wife’s offer; because there was no way I was going to let Kawai and his dogs into my town, enjoying my stuff.”
“Isn’t a job as small as this meaningless in the context of your larger trade, for both you and your rival Kawai?” I asked, meaning to extract the information I could, before deciding upon my next action, annihilation of Georgy on the flames of Fang Wei’s body.
“Yes it is, monetarily speaking; but in terms of a territory it presented an avenue for Kawai to enter my turf. And this we could not allow. In Pattaya, I am the one who keeps a track of all dealings transacted.” She made complete sense and I asked her to continue.
“Your wife introduced Miho to Li Ya on the morning of the abduction. The plan was to have Miho befriend Li Ya and then they could stay together for a few days as play mates, like a surprise that you and she had planned for their little child. The entire episode was smooth and did not require any degree of force or unevenness through it all.”
“You mean Li Ya stayed with you? For how long was she with you?”
“She was with us for two weeks, mostly playing in the sea on the islands with Miho, before we had the police find her and return her to her mother in Singapore, as per her mother’s instructions. I understand that by then her disappearance had served its purpose. I can assure you, in that period of fourteen days when she was with us; no harm of any nature befell her. I think she still believes it was a planned surprise by you and your wife for her.”
I realised later, that prostitutes retain the choice of their eventual identity of trade. Miho was Burmese, simply adopting far eastern names and mannerism, since it pleased her. She was just another fruit of the mighty Mekong, wandering before choosing a Japanese way to be perceived in. Sh
e must have been lost, before Thuy Binh sheltered her, accepting her silly Japanese garb and weapons, insulating against those who knew of her reality.
Prostitution may be the only non-criminal profession that allowed the adoption of a garb and identity that its tradesperson may want to adopt. It is best though to be oneself, even if the opportunity of metamorphosis presents itself, since a disguise discovered usually leads to tragedy in the trade of bodies.
I gulped down another double from the bottle besides me. The sea turned choppy and the anchored yacht bobbed about in the onslaught of waves. A lightning flashed on the waters, letting us wait for its thunder.
Fang Wei and Georgy had kidnapped Li Ya, so I would disintegrate and crumble away from their lives, leaving them to build back a life of their own.
Without this elaborate scheming, they knew a divorce would be long in coming, and when it came it would carry unfavourable terms, since the law biases gains in favour of those who do not cheat on their spouse, especially with the spouse’s friend, a detail no judge ignores. In short, with a few bold moves from my wife, I was removed and a new family got born, without the stretched out nature that such affairs ordinarily take and without the loss of money that such matters demand. Had Fang Wei’s infidelity surfaced in a court of law, she would stand to lose and would have to settle for a life anew with Georgy, building back rather than building on what was ours. Legally speaking, Li Ya’s custody would also be debated under the circumstance of her mother’s illicit lover entering the picture as Li Ya’s new father. She would have lost custody of Li Ya, if my lawyers became persuasive and adamant.
At the Audit firm too, it would be sympathy for me and lengthening shadows of doubt on Georgy, after all who can trust the fate of a company in the hands of a man who cheats his friend’s wife.
In time, my wife’s adultery and deceit assumed a new dimension, leaving mundane the thought of another aside of a spouse. Sexual consumption is the culmination of a mental chain, leading to the loss of thought-fidelity that some of us succumb to. In other words, it is a simple physical act, like throwing a ball in the air.
Immediately though, the predominant sentiment that came over me was relief, relief in knowing that a child had not been consumed and destroyed by the gruesome trade of flesh.
Strangely, my spontaneous anger towards Georgy and Fang Wei subsided, maybe since by now we had been apart for over a few years. The years would slowly consume them in their own boil of guilt, lies that they told, Li Ya being the poison ingredient. They would have made me out to be a villainous-snake, a substance addict, a whore seeker, a deserter; a plethora of lies before Li Ya was convinced at vomiting out of her system the love that I knew she held for me. All aspects that pained me were about Li Ya, and the broken paternal link that remained for me alone to dwell upon.
“But, we lodged a complaint with the police?”
“I don’t use the word turf loosely. On my turf it all happens on my terms. The police have rules and if you understand those it is easy to achieve what you want, which in our case is always complete control. Li Ya was insulated from it all and never had to see a uniformed man through the two weeks that she stayed with us. In fact, it was Miho and the Doctor who accompanied her on the flight back to Singapore,” she said, as a soft rain blew in with the west wind. We moved to the shelter of the teak bar besides the upper deck of the Cross, insulated from the rain but still out-of-doors and enveloped by the darkness of a mild storm. Only the mast light of the Yacht visually screamed its disastrous presence to any other floaters that may pass by.
My mood was one of letting drowning souls sink. “Do you love me Thuy Binh?”
“Yes. I love you today and I loved you yesterday. Yet tomorrow, it will not be an expression that will jump to my mind,” she turned cold, preferring the Pashmina to my arms, against the winds picking up around us.
“I can’t let them rip my daughter away while I sit and watch what I built all my life destroyed,” my need for action, mostly to reach Li Ya, I knew could be facilitated only with Thuy Binh and Miho by my side. To their orchestra, anything could be made to dance.
“That is for you to choose and device. I just want to stand clear, knowing that there is no ill will between us,” she said, laying out a salad of ham and cheese between us.
“Tomorrow, I will head back and see Li Ya. She will see I have been cheated, and she will come, from where I will build back my family,” the knowledge of Li Ya’s safety led me to the possibility of including her back in my life.
“These are your choices. Where will you settle with her?” Thuy Binh asked.
I could not settle in Singapore with Li Ya since it would require legal intervention, prolonged and excessively reported, possibly fracturing what I was building even before it got sown. My dream was of building a normal, future family life. I could not even be sure of a legal decision in my favour; after all, there was enough incrimination on my plate for a judge to doubt the custody of a girl child in my hands.
If I sought a place overseas with Li Ya, it would mean confronting her parents and the arguments that I would lose even before I began.
Such dead ends are like chess situations where you cannot move without a sacrifice, yet you are forced to move by your opponent, mostly leaving you heading backwards.
There was only one path by which I could enrich my own life. I had to wait for her to turn eighteen and then coax her to become a part of my life, on her own free will, which at eighteen could only be influenced by her parents, not enforced.
Li Ya, her being a part of my life, it was not like we had to live together under the same roof. I simply wanted her to call me once in a while, allowing me to share dinners on tables graced by her presence. I wanted her to ask me when she needed money for a summer vacation, or when she went to school. I wanted her to seek from me, answers to what needs clarity at some stage of youth, usually when we blunder and need to pick ourselves up. I wanted her to reach me for all that she could not share with her own parents. I simply wanted to become her parent, the one she held herself close to, in her own thoughts, the same one whom the whole world including her parents had conspired to remove from her life.
“Let us sail back home to Pattaya tomorrow,” she said.
“I can’t leave without getting my daughter back. You must be out of your mind even to suggest it,” I was livid at the thought. I had to show anger. I mean, how else could I express outwardly what I knew deep inside – other than observing them from a distance, there was little else I could achieve in Singapore.
In an hour or so, she let me convince myself. Thuy Binh was powerless in Singapore, and I was powerless without Thuy Binh. Singapore was not her turf and the law in this city was too straight for her to play cat or mouse.
“We can help bring your daughter back to you, but not here. It has to be when she travels out of Singapore. We can keep track, and when the time is right we will strike, re-uniting you with her, for now you can be with us, if you like.”
It was the right decision, not seeing Li Ya, at least for now, since she was bound to confide in her parents who would simply create obstacles and traps too tough for me to scale. In fact, they would plot to ensure that
I never saw my daughter again.
But, if I listened to Thuy Binh and waited for an opportune moment, Li Ya and I could be united. The opportunity would come when they travelled overseas, passing through our turf on which we dictated terms.
On the following day, I simply pottered about the apartment block of Li Ya, seeing her walking in and out on a few occasions. She seemed completely normal, and I felt relieved that my daughter was okay and unharmed, at least in any discernible manner.
At night I returned to the Yacht where Thuy Binh was scattered about, trying to manage remotely with phones her business of prostitution in Pattaya.
“I need to head back,” she declared after getting off the phone. Sex mafia leaders are no different from senior corporate leaders, they are both busy i
n similar ways just that the commodity they vend crosses over the boundary of legitimacy.
“Can we stay for a few more days?” I asked.
“No, I can’t. There is a consignment that I need to accept, but, if you want to stay on in Singapore, you can,” she started speaking into the phone again, obviously busy with ensuring that her instructions were understood and followed. Most of the conversation was in Thai, snatches of which I had begun to comprehend.
Consignment in this case was of girls, a semi-annual survey of prostitutes designed to let underperforming ones leave before providing fresh flesh for the season ahead.
There was little point in me snooping around Singapore. I simply had to bide my time and plot carefully the claiming back of my little girl, and, it would involve moves that could not be executed in Singapore.
I decided to continue on with Thuy Binh; I knew she would play a significant role in the plot that lay ahead.
To my surprise, we never disembarked from the Yacht; we simply set course due north, sailing back to Pattaya, she commandeering the Cross across the night.
* * *
The consignment awaited us upon return. There were about two thousand girls needing survey over a period of about a month before taking in a few hundred for the season ahead, replacing old meat for favourable new trade.
Yes, our trade, since on the cruise back, I crossed the line between us and them, becoming a part of Thuy Binh and Miho’s world, starting to understand our trade, like an apprentice learning the ropes.
Before we disembarked, Thuy Binh pulled me aside and sat me down to a glass of whisky and a chase of coke, my first hit in weeks. “For your safety, remember not to show any signs of affection or love towards me in the presence of Miho. She is damaged and she will not tolerate you if she knows we have been together,” she said.
“Do you love Miho?” I asked.
Lost in Pattaya Page 9
