Private Dancer

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Server 127,’ I said.

  He found the card and sat down. He studied it, then turned the card over. He put the card in the top drawer of his desk as if he was scared that I'd make a grab for it. My heart was racing, but I tried to look as unconcerned as possible. ‘Pete, I don't see anything on Joy's card that changes my opinion.’

  For a few seconds I couldn't breathe, it was as if a steel belt had been tightened around my chest. I forced a smile. ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ he said.

  I didn't want his pity. ‘Nah, it doesn't matter. I guess I knew anyway.’

  I laughed but the sound caught in my throat. I don't know why but I started telling him about the DJ, about how I thought it was Joy's husband but that she'd denied it. Damien nodded. ‘That's him,’ he said. ‘The mamasan said he came back to Bangkok with her.’

  I stood up. ‘Yeah, I knew I shouldn't trust her. It's like you said, they're all hookers.’

  He scribbled something down on a piece of paper and gave it to me. It was an address. He leered at me. ‘When you're in Phnom Penh, try this place. They've got the prettiest Vietnamese hookers you've ever seen. All of 'em under fourteen. Great place Phnom Penh, real Wild West. Like Bangkok was thirty years ago.’

  I smiled, trying hard not to show how upset I was inside. I shook his hand and left.

  DAMIEN

  That Pete, what a sad fuck. He'd obviously fallen for the girl in a big way and when he came into the office he was wound tighter than a watch on a wanker's wrist. I could see it in his eyes. He was trying to be cool, trying to pretend he wasn't that worried, but he kept fidgeting in his seat and a couple of times I thought he was going to cry.

  I didn't know Joy, I've more than a hundred girls in Zombie alone, probably up to a thousand working for me in Nana in total. Me and my partners have seven bars, and Zombie is just about the biggest and most profitable. The girls there are the best, they're the prettiest and the hardest working. I didn't know Joy personally, though I'd seen her. Beautiful girl, great body. Had that young, unsullied look that I go for, but her skin was too dark for my taste. Her sister I know, Sunan. One of the hardest working girls in the Plaza, is Sunan. Two or three times a night, every night. Her sister, Mon, was another good worker. They were a good source of new girls, too. Every few months they'd go back to their village, show off their new clothes and their gold, and they'd come back with three or four new girls who wanted to work in the bars. Sunan would teach them how to dance, how to put make up on, how to talk to customers. Some of the girls we get are so shy they wouldn't say boo to a goose, they dance all right but then they sit together in groups talking to their friends. But the girls Sunan brings down know how to go up to a customer and introduce themselves. It doesn't take much, all they have to do is smile and say hello. The customer'll do the rest. Sunan tells them how to act with customers, how to get them to pay the bar fine, and how much to ask for afterwards. I tell you, Sunan should think about starting up a bargirl school. She'd be a great mamasan, too. I've asked her a few times but she knows she can earn more dancing. How much does she earn? The bar pays her about six thousand baht, she earns another six thousand or so from her share of bar drinks, and her bar fine gets paid an average of thirty times a month, I guess, so she gets another three thousand from that. So there's fifteen thousand baht right there, which is more than a teacher gets. Plus there's the money she gets from the punters themselves. I doubt she does it for less than fifteen hundred baht, so that'd be another forty-five thousand baht. That means Sunan's probably pulling in sixty thousand baht a month, which is about ten times the national average wage. Pretty good, huh.

  Now, one look at Joy's card and I could see that she'd been at it. Her bar fine had been paid five times during the previous month, and she'd been to the short-time room twice. I've never understood why anyone would want to take a girl into the short-time room, but it gets used half a dozen times a night. It's a horrible place, a room without windows or aircon, a single bed with no pillow and a sheet that gets changed once in a blue moon, and a wastepaper basket for the used condoms and tissues. We charge four hundred baht every time the room's used, and punters seem happy to pay it. They could go down the road to the Penthouse and for the same amount of money have a night in a decent room with a TV and clean sheets and mirrored ceilings. The girls love it, though, because it's quick and easy money. They don't even have to get changed.

  Pete was asking for trouble trying to change Joy. She's a hooker, she was born a hooker and she'll die a hooker. The best thing for him to do is just to accept that fact. Pay her, screw her, and let her go home to her husband. When he gets bored with her he can find another regular girl. No one gets hurt.

  He promised me that he'd walk away, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that he doesn't. We'll see.

  JOY

  I was fourteen when my father had sex with me for the first time. I didn't know what was happening or what he was doing. I thought that a ghost had got inside him and was making him do it, but the next day I told Mon and she said that he did that to all his daughters. Except for Sunan. Sunan wouldn't let him. He beat Sunan black and blue but she never let him. Once he hit her so hard that she couldn't get up and she lay on her sleeping mat for four days and couldn't eat anything. There was blood in her urine but our father wouldn't let her go to the hospital. I was twelve then, it was the year after our stepmother had died. She had cancer and was sick for a long time.

  I hated it, but I didn't ask him to stop because I remembered what he did to Sunan. I just turned my head to the side and let him do whatever he wanted to do. That's what I used to do with farangs, too, until I learned that I could get more money if I pretended to enjoy it.

  My father never said why he did what he did. I guess maybe he missed our stepmother because he never did it when she was alive. He'd come into my room about once a week, and he always smelled of drink, same as the farangs do. He wasn't rough, though, and he never asked me to do the sort of things that farangs ask me to do. He just had sex with me in silence, then went back to his room.

  My elder brother started having sex with me about three months after my father took my virginity. My brother was rough and he wanted me to do other things for him, too. I cried because I didn't understand why he was doing it. I could understand my father because he didn't have our mother but my brother had lots of girlfriends. I tried to stop him but he was too strong. He'd hit me if I didn't do what he wanted. I'm not as tough as Sunan, I couldn't stand up to him, so I just let him do it to me.

  My father stopped fucking me when I was sixteen. He'd moved on to Dit by then. Dit was like me, she never said anything, though I heard him stumbling along the corridor to her room at night. I was just glad that he wasn't coming to my room.

  My brother carried on, though, and he made me fuck his friends as well. He used to charge them twenty baht a time and he'd beat me if I didn't let them do it. He did the same to Dit, too. Practically ran a brothel out of our house, but he was always careful to make sure that our father was away in the fields. After a while I stopped complaining. I told my brother to give me half the money and he decided that it was fair and so he did. Small money, but at least I didn't feel as I was being raped. It was work. That made it seem all right.

  PETE

  I had a major drinking session in Fatso’s. Drunk as a skunk. I was well behind schedule on the travel cookery book but my heart wasn’t in it.

  Most of the guys had gone around to the Plaza, so I sat with Big Ron and poured my heart out. I told him about Joy's card and her husband working as the DJ. ‘She's playing a bloody game,’ I said, ‘but she's not going to win.’

  That's what it was to Joy. A game. The rules were simple. Say whatever you have to in order to get the stupid farang to part with as much money as possible. Tell him what he wants to hear, lie if you have to, and keep taking the money. She'd been playing a Goddamned game with me, but now I knew what the rules were and I was going to show her who was the b
etter player.

  I had a plan already, so I rang the bell to buy Big Ron and the girls drinks and explained it to him.

  Several of the girls had tattoos on their shoulders. Usually butterflies or animals, though sometimes they'd have their name tattooed. I was going to persuade Joy to get my name tattooed on her shoulder. That way she'd never forget me. Whenever she saw the tattoo she'd think of me. And more importantly, so would her husband. Then I'd dump her, and the tattoo would be a constant reminder to the two of them that I'd won the game.

  It took me almost a week to persuade her to get the tattoo. I didn't want to press it too hard because she'd have suspected that I was up to something. I'd sit with her in Zombie and point out girls with tattoos, saying how pretty they were. I asked her if she'd like one and she said sure, she thought they looked good. After a couple of days I asked if she'd have a heart with my name on it, and she said yes. I asked her how much it would cost. She asked one of her friends, Cat, and Cat said she'd had one done for seven hundred baht. I gave Joy a thousand baht and said she should get one.

  The next day when I went in to Zombie, she said she'd been to the tattoo parlour with Cat, but that it had been closed. I shrugged, playing it cool, and pretended that I didn't care.

  The next day, she said she and Cat had spoken to the tattoo artist, but that he'd said that the best days for girls to have tattoos done were Tuesday and Thursday, something to do with fortune telling or religion, she couldn't explain which. I figured she was just making excuses, and I told her so. She denied it and said she'd get it done in two days, on Tuesday.

  On Monday night when I went in to Zombie she'd already drunk four bottles of Carlsberg lager and was giggling. She was drunk. She didn't get the tattoo done the following day because she said she had a hangover. I kept putting on the pressure, slowly but surely, smiling all the time, making it a game. When I told Big Ron what I was doing, he called me a callous, unfeeling bastard, but he was laughing as he said it. I didn't feel guilty about what I was doing, because every time I was in Zombie, Joy's husband was up in the DJ's booth. Any guilt I felt evaporated when I looked up at the booth and saw him and his tight T-shirt and stupid baseball cap. If they wanted to play the game, they couldn't complain if they got burnt.

  Eventually she ran out of excuses. She telephoned me at mid-day and I could hear a buzzing noise in the background. Joy was at the tattoo parlour with Cat and she wanted to know if I wanted my name in the heart or both our names. I said it was up to her.

  Four hours later she was ringing the doorbell of the flat. She stripped off her shirt and showed me the winged heart on her left shoulder. In the middle of the red heart, my name. Big Ron had said that Joy would probably try to get away with a painted tattoo, one that would wash off after a few days. I rubbed it with my thumb and she yelped. It was genuine. ‘You not believe me, Pete?’ she asked, a look of despair on her face.

  I hugged her and said no, I believed her, I knew that she'd never lie to me. I held her close to my chest and breathed in the smell of her hair. I'd won. I'd won the game but I didn't feel good about myself. I sat with her in the bar for most of the night as she proudly showed her friends the tattoo. When the bar closed I took her to the Penthouse Hotel and we spent the whole night together. I stroked and kissed the tattoo as I made love to her.

  ‘You happy now, Pete?’ she asked, and I said I was. It was a lie. I felt like shit.

  I had one more thing to do. The day after she had the tattoo done, I bought a return ticket to Phnom Penh. Alistair had been on my back for a while, telling me that I had to go over to Cambodia to do the research for the Cambodian guide, but I'd been putting him off. Once I'd bought the ticket, I packed my bag and then telephoned Joy. I told her that the DJ had stopped me outside Nana Plaza and that he'd told me that he was her husband and that he'd said I wasn't to go to Zombie any more.

  ‘Why he say that?’ asked Joy. She didn't deny that he was her husband, I noticed.

  I warmed to the story, telling her that the DJ said his name was Park and that he was jealous, that he didn't want me to give her any more money, that he wanted me to stay away from her.

  ‘Pete, he lie to you,’ she said. ‘I not know why he say that, but he wrong.’

  I said it didn't make any difference, that if she had a husband I didn't want anything to do with her. I put down the phone and caught a taxi to the airport. Four hours later I was in Phnom Penh.

  BIG RON

  Pete's going to have to watch himself because if he carries on the way he's going, it's gonna be payback time. I don't think he realises how dangerous the fucking Thais are. They never go one on one, it's always mob-handed and tooled up, pieces of wood, knives, guns even. Happened in the Plaza six months back, a farang had got up the nose of one of the mamasans. Called her a water buffalo and stormed out without paying his bill. Two weeks later three guys caught up with him and started knocking him around with pieces of lead pipe. Stan his name was, big bugger too, lifts weights and works out. He got one of them and smashed his head into a wall. The other two ran off. Two against one aren't good enough odds for Thais. The only time you'll see them fighting one on one is in Muay Thai, Thai boxing, and most of the time that's fucking rigged, too.

  Anyway, Stan figures he's got away with it and starts getting cocky. Eventually they got him again, walking down the road. Four of them, with knives. They slashed him across the face, damn near blinded him. The doctors saved his eyes, but he's going to be scarred for life. Always was an ugly bastard, was Stan, so I don't think he's worrying too much. Girls here don't turn down customers because of a few scars. Look at me, for God's sake. I'm twenty-eight stone and pig ugly and I've never been turned down.

  That's what I can't work out about Pete. What is this with him and Joy? There are thousands of them out there, thousands of Joys, and they all screw for peanuts. Receptacles for jism, that's what I call them. Fuck 'em, pay 'em, and move on, that's what I say. Pete should just walk away, forget about this revenge thing. He won't win. They won't fucking let him win.

  JOY

  I don't understand Pete. If he doesn't want to be with me, why doesn't he say so? It's as if he just wants to cause me problems. Why did he ask me to get his name tattooed on my shoulder? Doesn't that count for something? And he lied about talking to Park. Why did he do that?

  Park was in my room when Pete telephoned. I asked Park what he was playing at, and he said he didn't know what I was talking about. I got angry then and said that he'd spoiled everything. He had no right to talk to Pete, he was my customer. Park got really angry then and slapped me. I slapped him back and he hit me really hard. Almost blacked my eye. He wouldn't talk to me at work, he turned away every time I went up to him, and he didn't come home with me. I was so embarrassed, all the girls were talking about me. Cat had told everybody about the tattoo and Park had told somebody about Pete finding out that he was my husband. The girls put two and two together and they thought it was hilarious. Why did Pete do that to me? I kept telephoning Pete but he either wasn't there or he wasn't answering the phone. Bruce came into Zombie just after midnight with Rick and Jimmy, the guys who like to fuck katoeys. Bruce said Pete had gone to Cambodia and didn't know when he was back. I burst into tears and went to the toilet.

  Dit came after me and asked me what was wrong. I told her and she said she'd go and speak to Park for me. It didn't do any good. Park said he was through with me. I went to see the mamasan and said I couldn't finish my shift. She was really horrible and said that if I went early I'd have to pay my own bar fine. I begged her to be kind-hearted but she said no, rules are rules. I borrowed 600 baht off Dit, flung it at the mamasan, and went home.

  I sort of hoped that Park would come after me, but he didn't. I sat on my bed and cried my eyes out, then decided to go back to Surin. The money I'd been saving was under my mattress. I got it out, had a quick shower then I got a motorcycle to the bus station and got on a VIP bus. I pretty much cried all the way home.

  JIM
MY

  I love Thailand. Wouldn't have stayed here for fifteen years if I didn't. But they're a bloody weird people, I can tell you. They've a nasty side, a real vicious side to their nature that they keep well hidden but it's always there and not too far below the surface, either. Let me give you an example. They're Buddhists, most of them. Thou shalt not kill and do unto others and what goes around comes around, all that crap. I mean, I had a Thai girlfriend who liked fresh crabs so she'd buy them alive from the market and bring them home and ask me to kill them. Loved to eat them but couldn't kill them herself, because she was a Buddhist.

  Okay, so you think that means the Thais are a gentle, passive people, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. There's this up-market housing estate a few miles outside Bangkok. Big houses, serious money, security guards, no riff-raff, that sort of thing. Mainly Thais living there but a sprinkling of rich expats, too. Well, a while back they had a problem with stray dogs, barking at night, snapping at passers-by, that sort of thing. The committee of the housing estate met to discuss what to do with the dogs. High powered guys, they were: a couple of doctors, a few army and air force officers, even a bloody judge. Now, what would normally happen is that they'd call in the local dog-catcher, he'd round up the strays and any dogs that weren't claimed within a few days would be put to sleep. I guess that's pretty much what happens in the UK, right?

  Anyway, the committee got an estimate for bringing in the dog catcher, but because there were so many dogs involved, something like fifty, they reckoned it'd be too expensive. So they decided to use poison, instead. One night they got someone to drop pieces of meat laced with strychnine all over the estate. The next morning there were dead dogs all over the place. They called up the local council and they sent around a truck to pick up the carcasses. More than eight dead stray dogs, there were, and all of them had died in agony.