“It’s the kids,” Fon says. “I love those kids.” With two children of her own, in the care of her mother, up north, Fon has adopted the family who employs her. She stops climbing, and Rose pauses with her. “When I think I was going to go to work at the Love Star, I can’t believe how lucky I am.”
The Love Star is among the grimmest of the bars that line the red-light street Patpong, a dank little hole where men sit at a bar chugging beer while kneeling girls chug them. Working at the Love Star is the lowest rung on the ladder for aging go-go dancers, last stop before the sidewalk. Fon was only a few days away from spending her working hours on her knees when Rose found her a family who needed a housekeeper and babysitter. While some girls enjoy dancing in the better bars, no one enjoys working at the Love Star.
“You made your own luck,” Rose says. “Anyway, that’s what Poke says. ‘Everybody makes their own luck.’”
“What about karma?” Fon asks, eyebrows raised. They are climbing again.
“Poke’s an American. Americans think karma is a soft drink.”
Fon gives her a light, corrective pinch on the arm. “How can you explain luck without karma?”
“Americans are crazy,” Rose says. “But I’m working on him.”
“Any progress?”
They reach the top of the stairs and start down the hall. Three women, wearing the street uniforms of jeans and T-shirts, are lined up outside the open door of the office. They look much more like domestic workers than the go-go dancers they used to be. “Some,” Rose says. “He’s not living entirely on meat. He’s beginning to realize he doesn’t know anything.”
The women greet Rose and Fon at the door. Fon takes her place at the end of the line, and Rose goes in to see Peachy, looking harried behind her desk. She wears one of her memorable collection of work outfits. This one somehow manages to combine bright-colored stripes and polka dots in a design that looks like the first draft of an optical illusion. Like all of Peachy’s dresses, today’s is held in place by buttons the size of saucers.
“Everybody was early,” Peachy says, lifting a hand to her lacquered hair without actually touching it. Her eyes register Rose’s jeans and white men’s shirt-one of Rafferty’s-with a barely perceptible wince. “There were five of them here when I arrived.”
“You look very pretty today,” Rose says. The statement is not entirely truthful, but she knows how good it makes Peachy feel. If you can bring sweetness to somebody’s day, Rose’s mother always says, do it.
“Really?” Peachy’s hand returns to the general territory of her hair. “You like these colors?”
“They’re very vivid,” Rose says. “Like your personality.”
Peachy’s smile is so broad her ears wiggle. “I wasn’t sure,” she says. “I thought it might be a little young for me.”
“Poke always says you’re as young as you make other people feel.”
“And to think,” Peachy says, “I didn’t like him when I first met him.”
“Lots of people don’t,” Rose says.
Peachy shakes her head. “You’re a lucky girl.”
“Peachy?” It is the woman at the head of the line. “I’m going to be late for work.”
“Sorry, Took,” Rose says, stepping aside. “Come in and get rich.”
Peachy counts out the week’s wages for Took, a gratifying wad of crisp thousand-baht bills and some of the friendly-looking red five hundreds and hands it to her. “Too much,” Took says. “I still owe you six thousand from my advance.” She gives back fifteen hundred baht. “Only three more paydays,” she says happily, “and we’ll be even.”
Peachy sweeps Took’s returned money into the open drawer and pulls out a ledger to enter the repayment.
“Lek,” Rose says to the next woman in line, a girl who had danced beside her at the King’s Castle. “How is it at the new place?”
“The woman’s fine,” Lek says, wedging past the departing Took to get to the desk. She is a very short woman whose plump face displays frayed remnants of the baby-chipmunk cuteness that tempted so many men in the bar when she was in her early twenties. Now, ten years later, she has the look of a child’s toy that’s been through a lot. “The man has something on his mind, but he hasn’t done anything stupid yet.”
Peachy’s eyes come up fast, and Rose mentally kicks herself for raising the topic. When Rafferty first forced the partnership on her, Peachy had been terrified of placing former bar dancers-prostitutes, in her mind-with the firm’s clients. “Are you provoking him?” Peachy asks.
“It’s hard to dust without bending over,” Lek says. “If I could leave my behind at home, there’d be no problem.” Peachy blushes, but Lek laughs and says to Rose, “Remember the guys who always looked at the mirror behind us? He’s one of them.”
“I was always careful of those,” Rose says. “No telling what they wanted.”
“Oh, yes there was,” Lek says. “Anyway, Peachy, don’t worry. If he comes on too hard, I’ll just ask you to find me someplace else. No way I’m going back to that.” She folds her money and slips it into her back pocket. “You know how people talk about money as units? Like this many baht is so many dollars or pounds or whatever? I have my own unit of currency.”
“What is it?” Rose asks, against her better judgment.
“The short-time,” Lek says. “This money is about six and a half short-times. Six and a half times I don’t have to pretend that the guy who’s grunting on top of me is the prince I’ve been waiting for all my life. Six and a half times I’m not lying there reminding myself where I put my shoes in case I have to get out fast.”
Rose can’t help laughing, but Peachy is scarlet.
“I’m just joking,” Lek says to Peachy.
“I should hope so,” Peachy says. She looks like she’s about to start fanning herself.
“I always knew where I left my shoes,” Lek says.
“Next,” Peachy says, looking past Lek.
By two o’clock all the women have been paid, and Rose and Peachy face each other over the desk. Peachy takes the remaining money, sadly diminished now, and divides it into four unequal piles: one for the rent, a smaller one for bribes to the cops charged with protecting the business, and one of medium thickness for each of them. Handling the money carefully, out of respect for the portrait of the king on the front of every bill, she politely slides Rose’s money into an envelope before
handing it across the desk.
“So,” Peachy says, leaning back.
“You’re doing a good thing, Peachy,” Rose says. She stretches her long legs in front of her and crosses her feet. A silver bell dangling from her right ankle jingles. “You’re making merit.”
“I hope so.” Her eyes search the familiar room. “I have to admit, one or two of them worry me.”
“They’re good girls,” Rose says. “Or at least they’re trying to be. Some of them probably need more practice.”
“At any rate,” Peachy says, “it’s been an education. I knew about Patpong, of course, everybody does, but I never thought about who the girls actually were. I just thought of them as, well. .” Her face colors as she searches for a term that won’t offend.
“Dok thong,” Rose suggests, using the name of an herb employed as an aphrodisiac in folk medicine, a word that has come to mean “slut.” She adds, “Women who would do anything for a thousand baht.”
Peachy makes a tiny fanning gesture beneath her nostrils, Thai physical shorthand for “bad smell,” then says, “Such language.”
“Well, they were,” Rose says, “or rather we were.” She wiggles a hand side to side. “Although fifteen hundred is more like it.”
Peachy leans forward and laces her fingers. She purses her lips for a second as though trying to hold something back that wants to get out and then says, “Please forgive me. How bad was it?”
“Don’t take this wrong,” Rose says, “but in some ways it was fun. We weren’t planting rice or hauling a buffalo around
. We were in the big city. We could go to the bathroom indoors. There was food everywhere. Some of the men were nice, and we were just swimming in money. And we had the satisfaction of sending a few hundred baht home every week. That took a bit of the sting out of it.”
Peachy is leaning forward on one elbow, her chin in her palm, so absorbed she doesn’t notice that her elbow is crumpling a stack of money. “But then there was the other end of it,” Rose says. “Going into rooms with men we’d never seen before, not knowing what they wanted. Even when it was just the normal minimum, just the basic guy-on-top, quick-getaway boom-boom, we knew we were damaging ourselves. You know, you can only sleep with so many strangers before making love stops meaning anything. You begin to wonder whether you can still fall in love.”
Peachy opens her hand so her fingers cup her cheek. “You did,” she says.
Rose feels the heat in her face, and Peachy courteously drops her eyes to her desk. This is territory the two women have always avoided until now. Then, abruptly, Rose laughs, and Peachy’s eyes swing up to hers. “Poor Poke. I made him prove himself a thousand times. I think part of me wanted to believe he was just another customer.”
Peachy’s powdered brow furrows. “Why?”
“I knew how to deal with customers,” Rose says. “It was love I didn’t know anything about.”
“Love,” Peachy says. “Love is so hard.” She glances down and sees that her elbow is on the king’s face, and lifts her arm as though the desk were hot. She smooths out the bills. “I mean,” she adds, “I mean it can be. Back when. . when I was married-” She stops. “Well, obviously I’d think it’s hard, wouldn’t I? Considering that my marriage fell apart, that my husband. . left me.”
As Rose searches for something to say, Peachy straightens the papers on her desk and then straightens them again. Then she lines them up with the edge of the blotter. “Listen to me ramble,” she says. “What matters is that you and Poke are happy, and that he brought you to me.” She hits the stack of paper with an aggressively decorated fingernail, fanning it across the desk blotter. “Why is this so difficult? What I’m trying to say is how happy I am that we’re partners, how much I appreciate what you’ve helped me to do.” She looks directly at Rose. “This business is my family. It’s my. . um, my baby. So I wanted to say thank you.”
Rose feels the slight prickling that announces that tears are on the way. She blinks. “That’s so sweet of you, Peachy.”
“I mean it. And today is obviously the right day to tell you.”
Rose looks up, surprised. There’s no way Peachy could know. “Today?”
“It’s eight months today,” Peachy says, as though it should be obvious. “This is our anniversary.”
“Oh, my gosh. Is it? It doesn’t seem possible.”
“You forgot,” Peachy says bravely, swallowing disappointment. “Oh, well. Your life is so full.”
“My life?” Rose asks without thinking. “Yes, I guess it is.”
“You’re lucky,” Peachy says.
“I suppose I am. I never thought I was. Maybe I’m not used to it yet.”
“Get used to it,” Peachy says, a bit shortly. “It’s a sin not to appreciate a good life. Somebody should hit you with a stick. I wish someone had hit me, fifteen years ago.”
Rose lowers her head. “Go ahead.”
“No. What I want to do. .” She hesitates and then plunges in. “I want to invite you to have dinner with me tonight. To celebrate.”
Rose sees the hope in Peachy’s eyes, sees a different woman from the resentful partner Poke had chained her to all those months ago. She leans across the desk and puts her hand on Peachy’s. “I’d love to,” she says. “But tonight is something special. Something with Poke, I mean. Can we do it tomorrow?”
Peachy turns her hand palm up and grasps Rose’s. She gives it a squeeze. “Tomorrow,” she says. “Tomorrow will be fine.” She puts the remaining stacks of bills in the desk drawer and pushes her chair back, preparing to rise. “But what’s tonight?”
“Nothing much,” Rose says. “It’s supposed to be for me.” She stands, slipping the envelope full of money into her pocket. “But it’s really for Poke.”
5
How Much It Means to Me That You’re There
The little man from the bank steps out into the heat of the evening. He pauses in the shade of the bank’s door, pulls out a cell phone, and dials the number he knows best. One
ring. Two rings. Three rings, and his stomach dips all the way to his
feet. “Hello?” his wife says. “Oh,” he says without thinking. “Oh, thank you.” “Why? What did I do?” She sounds pleased. “You’re there,” he says. “I don’t tell you enough how much it means
to me that you’re there.” They have been married nine years, and he is not a demonstrative
man. His wife says, “Are you all right?” “I’m fine,” he says. He waits, eyes closed, listening to his heart pound. “And that’s why you called? To tell me you’re glad I’m here?” “Well,” he says, and then a hand lands on his shoulder. Another
takes the phone from his hand and snaps it closed. The teller smells cheap cologne. He has to fight the urge to bolt.
“Give it to me,” the man says. He is tall for an Asian, with a broad, pale face and very tightly cut eyes on either side of a wide nose that has been broken, perhaps several times. The body beneath the tight jacket is bulky with muscle.
The bank teller reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a fat envelope. The man takes it, gives it an experimental heft, and doesn’t seem to like what he feels. Cologne rolls off him in heavy waves, a scent many flowers died to create. The tight eyes come up to the bank teller’s face, flat as burned matches. “How much?”
“One hundred eighty thousand.”
“Not enough.” His Thai is strongly accented. He slaps the envelope against his hand in disgust.
“Slow day,” the bank teller says. His own voice sounds thick and distant.
The man pulls another envelope from beneath his belt and hands it to the teller. Like the first, the new envelope is heavy manila, with the date scrawled across it. “Have a better day Monday,” he says. “Or maybe no one will answer the phone next time.”
6
A Perfume from About a Thousand Years Ago
"It’s a perfume from about a thousand years ago,” Rafferty says. “It’s called White Shoulders, and the man’s squirt gun was full of it. I’m lucky he didn’t get me in the eyes. Hand me the bowl, okay?”
“It smells terrible,” Miaow says. She passes him the bowl, wipes pink frosting from her chin with a brown finger, glances at the finger, and puts it in her mouth.
“Terrible like what?” Rafferty says without looking up from what he’s doing. “Terrible doesn’t tell me anything. If you want to be a writer, Miaow, you need to be specific.” The cake won’t come out of the pan. He turns the pan upside down over the yellow platter and gives it a discreet whack with his knuckles.
Miaow had startled him two weeks earlier by announcing she was going to be a writer. Like him, she said. He’d had to swallow a sudden lump in his throat before he could say anything.
“It’s sweet terrible,” she says. “Terrible like. .” Concentration plows a tiny furrow across Miaow’s flawless eight-year-old nose. “Like if a flower threw up.”
Rafferty raises his eyebrows. “Pretty good.” He burps the cake pan again. The cake doesn’t budge.
Miaow’s eyes are on the cake pan. “White Shoulders is a dumb name.”
“I didn’t name it, Miaow.”
She dredges a thumb through the frosting bowl and licks the clot of pink. “Why would they call it White Shoulders?”
“I don’t know.” He takes the spatula from the bowl and runs it again around the edge of the cake pan, exactly as the magazine recipe directs. He finds the maneuver considerably more difficult than it sounds. “Maybe somebody thought it was sexy.”
“And you?” Rose asks
from the living room. She is curled like a dark odalisque on Rafferty’s white leather hassock, which she has pushed in front of the sliding glass door to catch the light. She is in an indolent race with time, trying to finish painting her toenails before the sun dips below the jagged horizon of the Bangkok skyline. Night comes fast here. Her lustrous black hair has been pinned up, baring a slender neck the color of the gathering dusk, with a throb of pink beneath. Her jeans have been traded for a pair of shorts, baring the legs that literally made Rafferty gasp the first time he saw them, when she stepped onstage in the bar. The white shirt hangs in immaculate folds; in a phenomenon that has mystified Rafferty since he met her, Rose’s clothes never wrinkle. She has stuck the ever-present cigarette between her toes to free both hands, and the smoke curls like the ghosts of snakes around her hair. Her eyes slide sideways to his. “You,” she repeats. “Poke Rafferty. Do you think white shoulders are sexy?”
“Actually,” Rafferty says, his gaze sliding easily down the familiar curve of her back, “I’m pretty firmly in the brown-shoulders column.”
“Eeeek,” Rose says languidly, fanning her toes. “A sex tourist.”
At the sound of the word “sex,” Miaow’s eyes swing to Rose and then up at Rafferty, who is looking straight at her.
“Not in front of the c-h-i-l-d,” Rafferty says to Rose, still watching Miaow.
Miaow drops her gaze to the mixing bowl and scoops out more frosting. “W-h-y n-o-t?” she asks.
“Because, Miaow,” Rafferty says, “in spite of the fact that you think you know everything in the world, you are approximately eight years old and there are still things adults only talk to adults about.” The “approximately” is necessary. None of them actually knows how old she is, but they settled on eight soon after she left the sidewalks and moved into his apartment. For all he knows, she’s a tall seven or a short nine.
“Like your dumb book,” she says. “You won’t talk about that either.”
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