The jet black curtain of hair shrouded her face as she bent to light a cigarette, a match flared in the gloom, dangerously close to it. This was the moment I'd been waiting for, I lifted my hand to brush it to safety.
‘No touch girl.’ said the voice.
I looked round, a little surprised, my hand frozen a couple of inches from her. It was the barman - he'd been watching our slow conversation for the last hour, why the problem now? My nostrils wrinkled involuntarily at the pungent cloud of smoke in my face. I turned back to the girl. She exhaled towards me, the red lips kissing the air then spreading into a smirk. A twinge of alarm forced its way through the alcohol. The barman took off his apron and stepped forward from behind the bar. The T-shirt underneath was not much cleaner than the apron had been, and it was stretched tight round a substantial frame. He looked like he had muscles in his shit.
‘No touch.’ he repeated.
‘Who says?’ I replied, almost before I'd thought about it.
‘I do.’ He answered, simply. The face was expressionless, the eyes impassive. I could have walked away from it - if I'd been smart. But my mouth was quicker.
‘And just who the hell are you?’ I said.
The eyes flickered, off to his right. I followed his gaze, another Thai had appeared behind the bar. The expensively tailored, white button-down shirt at odds with the thick, tattooed forearms, it had to be the manager. But it was the iron bar he put on the wooden counter between us that got my attention.
‘The boss don't like you touching girlfriend.’ said the barman.
Ah. The manager's girlfriend.
‘You been hittin' on her all night, and he just about had enough.’
It was that moment in all conflicts, potential and resolved, when your deepest instincts either get you out of the mess or cast you hopelessly adrift in it. This time, the booze had the final word.
‘Well, he shouldn't let her sit up here, dressed like a tart, along with the rest of the merchandise.’ I slurred out.
I heard the whistle and saw five other Thais separate out from the isolated groups of drinkers. Lots of gold jewellery clashed with the understated Brooks Brothers shirts. Chairs screeched on the wooden floor as the rest of the clientele turned to watch the show. The five approached casually from my left. They didn't seem to think I was going to give them much trouble. I guess I didn't think so either. I could feel the swoosh of alcohol around my brain, thoughts were slow and movements slower. I couldn't deal with this. I saw the tyre lever hefted off the counter by the boss. He moved slowly to his right, trying to pin me between him and the barman. I backed off the stool, getting some distance, closing the angle between the groups. My eyes flicking between them. The girl had disappeared.
Primitive survival instincts clicked into gear. Blood was pumping, my head clearing. The Thais came in a rush, like the adrenaline that suddenly coursed through my body. I dived in under the swinging tyre lever and my kick caught the manager off balance. He doubled up at the stomach. The tyre lever spun free. I lunged after it. I got half way to it before a chair slammed into the back of my knees. I went down hard, thinking that was it, they'd kill me now. I squirmed round, struggling to keep moving, lashing out at nothing and everything. Backing off, trying to stop them closing the circle. Aware only of the coming blow, the anticipated flash of pain. But it didn't happen to me.
They say in those books that glory in this kind of detail, that to win bar fights you have to be prepared to go straight to total violence. No pussy footing around with any of this wrestling stuff you see in the movies. Just hit the sucker as hard as you can in the softest spot you can reach with the hardest object you can lay your hands on. The head butt to the unprotected, fleshy nose, the knee to the groin and the finger in the eyeball are all good, solid, bar fight moves. But this guy, he must have written the manual.
He appeared behind the ring of encircling Thais. I hadn't noticed him before and he certainly didn't look like some kind of all action hero; lightly built, five eleven tops and dressed in chinos and an open collared shirt. The ginger hair was close-cropped, military style. No rippling muscles or martial arts stance. But he was fit, and the face was as lean and hard as the body, creased and freckled by too much sun. His expression had an almost surreal calm, no grimace as his left hand chopped down into the neck of one of my attackers. The man dropped heavily; heaving, retching, struggling to suck air through a traumatised wind pipe. His nearest companion turned, but too slow, something metallic flashed as the newcomer's right hand drove in a straight arm punch. The Thai spun away clutching at a bloodied face.
Then everything was still. Smart move I thought, if I was them I wouldn't be in any hurry to shift either. The newcomer quickly took the opportunity and stepped in between me and the Thais, ‘You ok?’ he asked over his shoulder. American.
‘Sure, thanks....’ I eased myself gently to my feet, brushing away the dust, taking some much needed deep breaths.
He didn't take his eyes off the five still standing as he slid the heavy steel watch back from his knuckles onto his wrist. In the silence I heard the catch on the strap close. ‘We're leaving now.’ he said to them. No one moved. ‘We'll just move off nice and easy,’ he went on in a lower voice. ‘You go first, watch the back, I'll keep an eye on these boys.’ I shuffled to the door, the stranger backing up, until he joined me on the street. We set off together, walking rapidly. He glanced over his shoulder once or twice, but no one was following. After about a hundred metres there was still no sign of pursuit from the bar. I started to slow and then stopped. I must have been a good couple of inches taller and several stone heavier than this guy, but I held my place against the flow of people around us with a difficulty he didn't appear to be having.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’ I said, ‘You saved my hide back there.’
‘No problem, those guys are pricks.’ he finished with a grimace that might have been a smile, revealing some unamerican yellow teeth. ‘But I'll take the drink anyway. I know a place just down by the beach. The owner's an acquaintance - no one'll bother us there.’
I followed him down the hill towards the ocean, visible only by the line of white surf on the beach. We turned west along the sand and ducked through a t-shirt stand. I clattered against a bench of trinkets. Christ, how much had I had to drink already? The sobering effect of the adrenaline rush was beginning to slip away. We emerged in a back alley of wooden shacks, crackling fires and silent stares, walking another fifty metres to a bar well hidden from the tourist strip. The kind of local bar where the clientele have to be friends of the owner or they don't get in. There were some bamboo chairs and tables scattered around a hard earth floor. Otherwise the place was empty. I sank gratefully into a chair and sucked at a split knuckle.
A waiter stepped out of the gloom like a ghost. The American spoke rapidly in Thai and the man returned with a bottle.
‘What are we drinking?’ I asked.
‘Local stuff, but it's ok.’ he said. The glasses clattered onto the table top and the amber liquid rolled into them. The waiter had started to move away when the stranger's hand flashed out, grabbing him by the wrist, ‘We'll keep it.’ he said.
The barman looked at him and then down at the hand imprisoning his arm. He quickly let the bottle go. In the silence I dropped a fistful of notes on the table. The waiter snatched them up, revealing the ugly red welt left on his wrist.
I picked up the glass gratefully, it slipped down easily. So did the second and the third. It wasn't until they had stopped that I realised how badly my hands had been shaking, ‘Thanks for your help.’ I said.
‘It was nothing.’ he replied.
I shrugged, swallowed the drink. The glow was spreading outwards. I gazed hazily at the roof. A spider crawled erratically down a bamboo pole, the single bare bulb throwing its shadow into gargantuan relief. I hauled in a deep breath, and slumped forward onto the support of my elbows.
‘Better?’
I nodded, and held out my hand, t
here was only the slightest tremor, ‘See? No problem.’ I said.
He nodded solemnly, but didn't shift his gaze from the rest of the room, ‘It's scary that stuff, if you aren't used to it.’
‘You look like you are.’ I made the statement flat, no rising inflection, no question asked. His cold grey eyes swivelled slowly towards me. The memory of the sudden violence of only minutes before came back sharply. Two guys hospitalised with startling speed and precision. And complete indifference. You wouldn't mistake this guy for someone who gave a fuck. I sat, frozen in that frigid gaze for a full half minute. Until he picked up the bottle and the chuckle of alcohol into my glass broke the uneven silence. I heard my heart beating in time to the tick, tick of the ceiling fan. I wanted to leave, but that gaze had immobilised with its spell.
‘So what brings you to Ko Samui?’ his eyes swept across the room again as he spoke. Then settled on the open door. The door. How to get through it? I began to frame some excuses for leaving in my head, but first, his question.
‘I just needed to get away for a while.’ It sounded lame as soon as I'd said it.
‘You in trouble?’
And suddenly we weren't small talking any more. How to get through that door?
‘Not exactly.’ I said, stalling, gazing down at the patterns of dirt at my feet. But 'No' was the right answer. I might have escaped all that followed if I'd just said 'no' right then. Made up some bullshit story about a holiday and got the hell out of there.
Instead, I glanced up and once more I was fixed in the glare of those penetrating grey eyes. I could feel them sucking it out of me. I'd not talked to anyone else, not since the accident. So why now? And to this stranger, who was already on the way to freaking me out? I still wonder about that. But the answer was right there in those eyes.
‘It's a long story.’ I said, throwing back the contents of the glass.
He smiled again, yellow teeth and gaunt face skull-like in the gloom, ‘We got plenty of time.’ he said, reaching forward and refilling the glass again.
I slumped back in the chair. The spider had gone. The bulb was swinging lightly under a puff of wind. My mind started to follow it, dizzily beginning to spin. I leaned forward again quickly, gazing ahead until the giddiness had gone. A puddle of beer was slowly working its way down a crack in the table. ‘I guess it started about six months ago. There was a motorway accident, although I wasn't involved in the crash itself...’ I stopped, thinking about the trailer filling my rear view mirror, the horns, the rising alarm. And then that gentle wumph. That must have been the explosion that started the fire. ‘It wasn't my fault... I mean, the other guy definitely screwed up. And no one even knows I was there... you certainly couldn't prove it was my fault. I cut the guy up and he lost control, over-reacted to the situation...’ I stopped and took a deep breath, looked up again, but the grey eyes were cold, ‘Eighteen people died. Several of them burned to death, trapped inside a minibus. I read about it in the papers the day after.’
The beer had made it to the edge of the table and was slowly dripping onto my leg. I watched another drop fall. The brown stain crept slowly across the faded denim. Somewhere I found it in me to care enough about it to move. I shifted and looked up.
‘So?’ he said.
‘So...?’ I choked, ‘So eighteen people died and...’ the words tumbled out, then evaporated. I tried again, ‘I don't... I mean... fuck it.’ I shook my head. I hadn't got the words. I stared at him, but there was nothing in those grey eyes, no blame, no sympathy. Perhaps, and only perhaps, a little curiosity.
I snorted back a deep breath through my nose and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. Why was I doing this? But having started, it seemed I couldn't stop. ‘For weeks afterwards I caught myself doing the same sort of thing, cutting people up, not letting them into queues, driving like a real arsehole. It was like...am I always like this? Or did I want to get caught, get it out in the open. Almost like it was guilt. Shit, I mean, I knew it wasn't my fault but...’ I lifted the glass and stared at the glowing amber light. I poured it back. ‘I started drinking, a lot. Started to lose it at work. I was a currency dealer in a big London bank. And I was good, made a lot of money. But it started to slip and then there was a deal...’
I shuddered slightly as that day came back at me. The row with Jo that night, rolling in to the office at nearly ten the next morning looking like shit. Then the 'this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you' speech from the boss. I could still smell the power and money that hung in the air in that office, oozing out of the wood, the leather, the wool. It could have been mine. My secretary had brought me a coffee afterwards, no one else came near. The word had gone round. I was history. Bad news. A loser. Last seen leaving.
I slugged back the whole of the drink. I was numb now and the liquid no longer had its fiery effect, but I didn't have much more to say. I went on in a hollow, distant voice, slurring the words, ‘I lost the job, then the girlfriend.’ I smiled weakly. ‘The money went, she went. Fuck her, I don't miss her. I packed a bag and took a plane out here. Bangkok blew my brains out, someone told me about the islands, I got on a bus and've been drifting around down here ever since.’
I looked at him, there was no expression, no response. I stared back into the glass and watched a final trickle of alcohol slip back down to the bottom. But looking down was a big mistake. My head started to spin, there was the hot rush of nausea. I bit back hard, struggled to my feet, stumbling backwards. I think I made it to the veranda before I threw up.
Chapter 2
I must have slept a while. But consciousness came like a painfully piercing light. The sun finally emerging through heavy, grey clouds in the aftermath of a wicked storm. I twitched my eyes open a crack and stared upwards. Gradually a little light started to filter through the matted roof. It must be morning. My head was pounding. Slowly I levered myself upwards. At this point my stomach registered a severe protest. I flinched quietly and rolled over onto my side, pushing my legs out and slowly easing off the edge of the bed. I was starting to sweat and my legs were shaking.
I staggered the few steps over towards the bathroom. Such as it was. Basically a bowl, toilet and a shower head in a screened off corner. I groped around in the half light until I found the bottle of water. I slugged it back. Slowly I became conscious of my mouth. I felt round my teeth with my tongue, gently dislodging pieces of food. Probably vomit. Foul. I found a toothbrush and gingerly prodded around in my mouth with the help of lots more water. When I finally sat back on the edge of the bed I was feeling quite a bit better. I let myself drop back, landing heavily as my stomach muscles weren't quite up to the task.
The second time I saw the roof, daylight was streaming in. And it was hot. I was hot. I was soaked in sweat. I glanced at my watch, two pm. I tried the sitting upright business again and this time it hardly hurt at all. I stretched gently and eased myself off the bed. The sordid clothes from the night before were swopped for a clean pair of shorts and I staggered out into the too bright daylight. I had to close my eyes completely whilst my iris's, which not unreasonably had assumed they'd got the day off, were summoned back from wherever they had gone and put to work.
The scene, when finally it revealed itself, was the same one that had greeted me each morning for the past couple of weeks. A few rather shabby bamboo beach huts scattered around a central covered area that passed as restaurant and bar. A couple of figures were dotted around the shaded tables and beyond them others were stretched out on the beach to fry in the afternoon sun. Dumb cancer-heads. But it was a stunning beach, the kind they make chocolate bar ads on, with white, white sand sliding gently under the ridiculously azure water. I took a deep breath, then turned back inside to find a beach mat, book and the water bottle.
‘Martin!’
I turned, still moving smoothly so as not to disturb the delicately balanced equilibrium of my health, to see a small figure running down the beach towards me. It was Prachit, at least I think that was her name
, the young daughter of the manager. She worked in the restaurant and bar and we'd struck up quite a friendship in the past couple of weeks. Strictly platonic, I hasten to add. She bounced up, panting anxiously, and said, ‘You ok Martin?’
‘I think so.’ I replied in a hoarse croak. She looked dubious so I carried on before she could find the words to express it, ‘How did I get back here last night?’
‘We find you in road with other man and bring you back on motorbike.’
‘That's very kind of you, I was in a bad way. What did the other man look like?’
‘Like you, Farang, but not so fat,’ she paused and made a height motion with her hand, ‘not so...,’
‘Tall?’
‘Yes, not so tall, funny red hair.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘Ask where you from, I tell him here.’ the pretty features were breaking into a frown, so I smiled to reassure her.
‘That's great, thank you. You know what I'd like? One of those special fruit shakes you do for me, could I have one please?’
She beamed, revealing a row of shining white teeth, ‘No worries,’ she said.
I did wonder whether the varied English influences in the little resort were having a positive impact on her grasp of the language. I smiled again and turned back to go inside the hut.
‘Martin,’ and I looked over my shoulder, ‘you very funny last night.’ she said, giggling, and ran off. The other question, it then occurred to me, was whether I was having a good influence on her. I retrieved my beach mat and book and settled under the shade of a palm tree to wait for Prachit to return with my drink. I flicked through the book to find the crease that marked my place. But my eyes refused to hold the focus and the page blurred out. I closed them ready to settle for more sleep and immediately a new image exploded on my consciousness.
The Wrecking Crew (Janac's Games) Page 25