A Killing Smile Page 22
“Mai bpen! —No, I okay.”
“Tomorrow. I take you to doctor. He make you better.”
“Your friend Ky! jai—sick in his heart,” she said. “Maybe you take him to doctor.”
Lek nodded, the edges of her mouth fighting some bitter sorrow breaking through from inside. Farangs had a formula to follow. They arrived inside Headquarters and bought the girls; the girls never wanted them to see how they were forced to live. In the silence between Lek and Tuttle, the language of face—face lost, face saved—had been in every thought and gesture.
“My friend is Jai dee—good heart. My friend broke his face,” said Tuttle, switching between English and Thai. “Because he cares about you. Anyone ever do that for you before? ”
She shook her head slowly; her friends passing cookies back and forth over the bed. Tuttle turned and walked out of the room without looking back. He continued past where the telephone operator stood eating her noodles and answering the phone, and found Lawrence waiting in the lobby.
“Nothing I said could have affected her so much, Larry,” Tuttle said, as they began walking toward the door. “She won’t forget you. What you said came from the heart.”
“Where can we get a drink? ” asked Lawrence.
“I’m sorry I hit you last night.”
“You call that a punch? I’ve been kissed harder than that.”
There was that half-crooked smile, that endearing smile as Sarah had called it, passing over Tuttle’s face as they walked down the sub-soi beneath the searing sun. “I have the perfect place. There’s another girl who has strayed from the fold. Before you say anything, just listen to this. She’s studying law. Okay? That’s her day world. And at night . . . Fawn dances in a go-go bar. Asanee says Fawn’s in over her head.”
Lawrence felt exhausted, his neck and shoulders stiff and aching. He was drained, used up, and patched together by sheer will-power. From some memory loop, he heard a whisper, telling him to call it a day. He had turned himself inside out in Lek’s cramped room. For a brief second, it hit him what Tuttle must have experienced that moment he realized that Asanee might have been alone with him inside his hotel suite. That accelerated force of such emotion flattened every decoy rolled out to deceive another; and to realize that all along one had been ultimately fooling oneself. The realization followed with that strong sense of conflicted feelings: of being both defenseless and connected for the first time.
“As long as I can get a drink,” said Lawrence, cupping his hand over his eyes against the sun.
“I’m getting this strange feeling that I may have been wrong about you for about half of my life,” said Tuttle. He tapped lightly on the window of the Mercedes, waking the driver from a sound sleep. The steering wheel had left pressure marks against the right side of the driver’s face. Tuttle climbed in without mentioning a word about face. The concept had already opened and closed enough accounts for one day.
13
Asanee wore white sneakers, jeans, and a baggy sweatshirt with UCLA on the front in bold blue letters. She floated a half an inch above the ground. An hour before Lawrence’s Mercedes and driver arrived, she had received a phone call from Lek, who said she would be coming back to school in two days; she had promised. And she told Asanee about the strange farang in his tailored suit and tie who had sat on the edge of her bed, held her hands in his and begun to cry.
“It’s the suit, man,” said Snow, when Asanee broke the good news to him. “A pin-striped tie around your neck and a Thai girl will eat out of your hand.”
“Maybe it was what Khun Lawrence said; not what he wore,” said Asanee.
“You’re dreaming in technicolor.”
“lsn’t that better than black-and-white!”
“Get outta here,” smiled Snow. “You’re getting too smart in English. I can’t handle it, man.”
* * *
ONE success led Tuttle to believe that Lawrence might have other uses. He thought about Fawn. If Lawrence had inspired Lek, then he could reach Fawn as well. He walked in silence alongside Lawrence. He thought about the night before and felt a surge of shame. He had used his own daughter and he found it difficult to look at Asanee the next morning. Though she believed—and he let her have that illusion—she had manipulated him into arranging the meeting. But Tuttle knew the truth and he had a pang of guilt. The unspoken bargain between Tuttle and Lawrence was the working off the moral paralysis of that moment when the truth came home and there was no place left to hide.
During the trip back to Lawrence’s hotel, Tuttle explained that for the past year, Asanee had tried to recruit her for the school—not as a student, but to sign on as a teacher. Fawn was a look krueng; her father, Howard Stone, came from a middle-class Jewish family in New York City. He was thirty-three years old when he came to Bangkok; the assignment was a promotion, and Howard was being groomed for rapid advancement in the marketing division of an international finance company. Fawn’s mother had worked in an exclusive private members’ club—and whoring had a caste system like every other occupation—which put her at the peak, where only the most beautiful, fluent, and sensual girls were selected to work.
The wealthy and powerful international clientele included Japanese, Taiwanese, Koreans, and farangs. The Parrot Club was the equivalent of reaching K2; while HQ was somewhere below Death Valley elevation. Membership was by invitation only. The waiting list was reputed to be five years long. Howard gained entrance as a guest of the general manager of the Bangkok branch of his corporation. He immediately felt like he belonged; no one paid any attention to the fact that he was a Jew. He was lumped in with all the other farangs; one indistinguishable mass who were interchangeable. There was no apparent restriction of his coming and going. At once, Howard felt freer than he had ever felt in New York where the clubs either allowed or restricted Jews.
Military and police generals, minor nobility, and important politicians sipped cool drinks, sitting back in rattan chairs on a long veranda, as they watched the long-tailed boats and ferries navigate the Chao Phraya River. The Parrot Club was a place where business and finance were discussed; where deals were made, and a generous member was known to have offered a business associate the services of beautiful identical twins as a gesture of goodwill.
Fawn’s mother and father met under a ceiling festooned with crystal chandeliers. She had descended a circular staircase wearing an ankle-length navy blue silk evening dress. The manager, a Swiss man, who affected an English accent, had worn a monocle in his right eye. Gunter noticed Howard’s moonstruck expression as Siri reached the foot of the stairs; he immediately brought her over and introduced her to his “good friend” Howard Stone who was from the Big Apple. Gunter neglected to explain to Stone some essential background information: Siri had been a mee-uh noi—a minor wife—to an influential Chinese merchant.
Perhaps Howard wouldn’t have understood the implicit warning of those three words: influential, Chinese, and merchant, strung together to create the impression of a successful businessman. If he had asked what a Thai meant by using those three English words, he would have learned three more words: Watch your back. Cross an influential Chinese merchant and you had better watch your back. In less than four months, Howard had proposed to Siri, and she had accepted. When she became pregnant in the fifth month, they were both overjoyed.
Then Howard received a phone message from a stranger, “Maybe you leave Thailand soon. Go home alone. Think it good for you to go to airport.”
“I’m an American, asshole. Fuck off,” he had replied, banging down the receiver.
Still he didn’t understand the rules. There was no such thing as a former mee-uh noi of an influential person in Thailand. It came down to a question of loss of face. Howard announced one night at the club, having bought a round of drinks at several tables, that he intended to marry Siri, and make an honest woman out of her. He didn’t detect from the hard mouths and narrowed eyes among certain tables that this was beyond foolish talk.
He didn’t watch his back. Two weeks later a motorcycle rider wearing a red helmet pulled up alongside his car one morning, pulled a 9-mm handgun from inside his windbreaker and shot Howard in the face four times. Fawn’s farang father had been dead four months on the day of her birth. All she knew of him were the newspaper clippings her mother had saved; blurred, fingersmudged photographs of a man sprawled out in the gutter like a puppet whose strings had been cut. A couple of uniformed Thai policemen stood smoking cigarettes beside the body. They smiled nervously into the camera.
Howard’s parents refused to accept Fawn as their granddaughter. According to Jewish tradition, since her mother wasn’t Jewish, neither was Fawn; according to Thai tradition, since her father was farang she wasn’t Thai; and since her parents never married, she wasn’t an American. Like most look kreung, she learned, at every turn, and in every face, to expect rejection; and she had been rarely disappointed. Though, in Fawn’s case, she had collected the full hat trick of abandonment. No one wanted her. She started on the outside rim and never managed to find a way in.
After a year of hammering away, Asanee was frustrated; the chip on Fawn’s shoulder was as big as ever. Working in a rough go-go bar, going back with low-class farang acted as some kind of personal revenge on herself. It was as if Fawn needed to punish herself over and over again; her mother had never helped matters, always hinting that her father had been killed because of Fawn.
* * *
THEY ate dinner in a Chinese restaurant opposite the school where no wall or window sheltered them from the traffic fumes, dust, yapping soi dogs, and motorcycles opened at full throttle. Lawrence squatted with his knees thrusting to his chest on the low stool dressed in a fresh suit with a blue pin-striped tie. Asanee smiled to herself, thinking of Snow’s remark that afternoon about Lek being taken in by the tie. Lawrence’s white collar was stained with sweat. He caught Asanee looking at him. But only a brief glance. What he felt the night before returned as a kind of energy field.
“Fawn’s been in fourth-year law for two years now,” said Tuttle, as a large steamed fish arrived.
“She keeps failing two subjects,” Asanee said, serving her father a slice of fish.
“I have a theory about those two subjects,” added Tuttle, watching his daughter carefully place a piece of fish onto Lawrence’s plate. “If she passes, then she’s finished school and has to make some decision about her future. If she fails, well, she says she’s always failed, and at least the money she makes working the bar is good.”
“Then she’s bright? ” asked Lawrence, finding Asanee’s eye lingering with his a moment too long.
“She’s a very smart girl,” answered Asanee, flipping the fish over and helping herself.
“We could use her at the school. No offense, Larry, but there are enough lawyers in the world.” Tuttle used the small spoon to sprinkle the spices over his fish. “She has a loose arrangement at Mister K’s Bar. She dances when she feels like it, and does not ask Riche, the guy who runs the bar, to pay her. She wants only the money that comes from turning a trick. An example of a peasant’s mind with a legal education; like all lawyers she calculates every act as some fraction of a billable hour.”
Asanee said something in Thai to Tuttle.
“l’m at a slight disadvantage. I don’t speak Thai,” said Lawrence after a moment.
“Maybe not all lawyers are satang jai—money heart,” said Asanee, looking down at the table.
“My daughter reminded me of our meeting with Lek. And she’s right. It’s hard changing your way of thinking about something in one afternoon. Asanee’s disciplined me; put me gently in my place.” Tuttle broke into a grin.
Lawrence felt the devil of passion at his elbow; he avoided Asanee’s eyes, as he looked out at the broken piles of concrete where the sidewalk had been ripped out. He had been married to Sarah longer than Asanee had been alive. She was a child; Tuttle’s child, and he hated himself for the feeling that surged through him as they sat across from each other at the table. Tuttle was so damn trusting, he thought to himself. The side of his face where Tuttle hit him throbbed in the heat of the night. Had it never occurred to Tuttle that Lawrence still might be attracted to his daughter, attracted to the point of distraction? And that it would take much more than one punch in the mouth to change that?
Asanee brought Lawrence back to earth by invoking the name of his wife. “Sarah told me that a woman should prefer a man who admires her brain, her thoughts and ideas, and not just her body.”
“Sarah never stepped foot in Bangkok,” said Tuttle, emptying the last of his Kloster into the glass.
“If she had, I think she would still have told you the same thing,” said Lawrence. “I know she would have.”
“I talk to Fawn but she closes her mind,” Asanee said.
Lawrence’s thoughts drifted back to his Los Angeles law firm. His office, his partners, clients, and Kelly Swan expertly handling a meeting in the conference room. And he wondered what offer Asanee would accept to leave Bangkok. He sensed that she was bound in ways he could only guess; that was the truth about her; the same truth that Sarah must have embraced in this girl with the Thai name meaning lightning, a quality of her father, this deep, burning obligation to decency.
* * *
WHEN Fawn strolled into HQ it appeared that she had come alone. Lawrence had felt the rest of the world drop away; her very presence was enough to rock him back on his stool. She waied to Tuttle, and turned toward Lawrence. Fawn knew the distinct expression. The furtive glances the nervous laugh, the mobile eyes, unblinking, as they moved like a military squad down her thighs. She was tall, with slender frame, wasp waist, and long, tapered legs with calves that appeared to have been turned on a lathe operated by the gods. Fawn walked up to their table wearing a G-string, six-inch high heels, and a black bikini top. She spoke perfect English—she had gone to Convent School in Bangkok. A farang customer grabbed her arm on the way across the room. And in fluent French, she told him to go home to his wife. She was a woman, who on the outside appeared in complete control.
“At least she’s not with that asshole, Riche. He loves bringing her here,” said Tuttle above the roar of music, as he leaned toward Lawrence. “He can’t speak a word of Thai after three years in Bangkok. Riche is someone she can run circles around. She’s twice as smart as well. And she likes that sense of power.”
When Fawn spotted Asanee, who had squatted down, playing a hide-and-seek game, she rose to her feet and broke into a run. Fawn chased after Asanee across the bar, and finally caught her from behind, picking up Asanee, swirling her around, and all the time, Asanee kicked her feet and, laughed, making no serious attempt to break away.
“I sometimes worry that Fawn might end up recruiting Asanee back to the bars,” said Tuttle, his eyes following his Asanee as she wrapped an arm around Fawn’s waist. They sat, giggling, at a booth near the bar. “She’s like a wild animal. This was the kind of place where I found her. There is always a pull for her to return.”
From the corner of his eye, Tuttle saw Riche coming out of the toilet, checking his zipper. A cigarette with a long ash was in one corner of his mouth.
“That’s Riche,” Tuttle said to Lawrence.
“Looks like he came after all,” said Lawrence.
* * *
“How you doin’, old buddy? ” Riche said, shaking Tuttle’s hand, and then Lawrence’s. “If you’re a friend of Tuttle’s then you must be in deep shit. Don’t mind me. I’ve got a Midwestern sense of humor. I tell people I’m the true middle American. You look at a map of the 48 states and draw a line east and west or north and south, and you’ll find a hair-trigger right over Topeka, Kansas. I’ve been here nearly three fucking years.” He took a long drink from his whiskey and soda. His cheeks billowed out and he shuddered, gesturing for the bartender to bring him another double.
“You see those tight little buns on Fawn? ” said Riche, as the new drink arrived. It was ten o’clock and he
was already drunk. “Man, I don’t care how old she is. I’d love to test out those buns. But I can’t. I got a Thai girlfriend. I’d like to test out a lot of these girls. But my girl worked a bar. She knows I work a bar. You think that makes any fucking difference? I try to fuck one of these girls and it gets back to her.”
“Did I tell you that I had a new toilet put in for all the customers? ” asked Riche, as, taking the last cigarette, he crumpled the empty pack into a ball and threw it at the stage, hitting one of the girls on the leg. The girl cursed at him in Thai and stuck out her tongue.
“What’s the problem, Riche? ” asked Tuttle, winking at Lawrence.
“I had a separate toilet for the women. But the goddamn Thai girls wipe their ass and throw the tissue in the fucking wastebasket. And that little whore who stuck out her tongue is the biggest offender. These girls are so goddamn clean. You take them home for a screw and what is the first thing that they do? Take a shower. You screw them, and what is the first thing they do afterwards? Take another goddamn shower. Then they take a shit, and the first thing they do? Throw the goddamn shitwipe in the wastebasket. You figure that.