His hands moved again with the swiftness of a magician. The knife appeared out of his blue suit. There it was in his hand, a thin-bladed knife, six inches, with a black handle. The kind gypsies used to throw at clowns in circus shows. The kind poachers used to skin rabbits.
“Look at the knife,” Carmen said as Ben turned the blade over and around in his fingers, “the way she glimmers and makes pretty patterns under the lights.” She smiled. “Can you see it, Joe?”
“Yes. It’s a fine blade. I use one just like it to sharpen toothpicks.”
“This one sharpens tongues that become too loose. He only uses it when I tell him to. He hates foreigners. He hates it when foreigners make fun of my condition, or of his condition.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Why is that?”
“Because, my dear, he is the silent aggressive type. Well, that’s unkind, he is both aggressive and complex and often irrational. His is however, silent. He hasn’t spoken since, well, it happened. He is not the same as you and I. Maybe that is a good thing, no?”
Ben smiled. The kid was obviously not right upstairs and Joe guessed there wasn’t a head doctor around that could change that. His smile was a shark’s smile. Millions of years of pent up aggression. A row of teeth that could tear chunks out of a man and a stomach that could digest it.
Carmen turned to Ben and spoke. “Not now Ben, put the knife away, there’s a good boy,” Ben hesitated for a moment and then the blade disappeared back into the side-pocket of his suit. He stood there looking at Joe.
Carmen continued the rap, “Ben here, used to be a champion Muay Thai boxer, you know, Joe? He, how do you say? Hung up his gloves after he had an experience that foreigners find difficult to understand. But you speak Thai, maybe you know about these things. I think you have also seen things that most other foreigners have not seen?”
“Maybe.”
Carmen leaned back on the sofa and clicked her fingers. Ben walked over and handed her a torpedo that was as big as it was expensive. She lit it. “You remain an enigma, Joe, but let me explain about the third that stands amongst us, and I don’t mean the third sex.” Carmen laughed slowly to herself, allowed Ben to hand her a mother of pearl ashtray and then she continued. “You see, Ben here is a mute, but I’m sure he doesn’t mind me talking about these things, do you, Ben?” Ben smiled for just a fraction of a second showing those sharp eye teeth. “See. He doesn’t mind. Ben had a problem. He used to be dynamite in the ring; nobody could touch him, really. I mean, I saw it myself. Championship material. But Ben had a weakness, you see, we all do, even prize fighters, and female impersonators. Are you following me, Mr. Detective?”
“Yeah. Real close, sister.”
“Well, Ben liked women, you know, but he had this habit of getting a bit too rough with the women. This establishment was his idea, and mine, but I digress as usual. You know how it is with boys and testosterone; boys will be boys, right?”
“Right. Sometimes,” Joe looked straight through her, through the woman and into the man within.
“Your humor isn’t lost on me, Mr. Dylan. I was born a woman in a man’s body. I did what I had to do to make the body match the heart. I realized who I truly was. Not many do. It’s a gift to be able to see oneself. We are all wicked, most of us spend our lives pretending we are not, but we are all demons, every one of us, even you.”
“You became a woman because you were unsatisfied as a man. Like most transsexuals, you have a fatalistic attitude in a world that you feel has treated you unfairly. It’s a natural reaction for you to want everybody else to feel the pain that you do. Comes with the territory.” Joe said, taking the last drink from his glass of water. “You’re a fucking man hater, but the clincher is, get this, you are one. Deep down inside, you hate yourself, sister, and that’s the truth.”
“I became a woman because I was born a woman trapped inside the body of a man. But I don’t wish to digress into matters of the mind, the body, and the hormones. We are talking about Ben. He has enough male hormones for the both of us, that’s half the trouble. Ben used to tour around the country, different fights in different provinces. We had to erm, satisfy, him in each new town. One night, Ben’s in Surin province, picks up a girl from a karaoke bar and takes her back to his hotel room.” Carmen looked over at Ben as if looking at an abused child. “Took it a bit too far that time didn’t you, champ?”
Ben nodded and the shark returned.
“He roughed her up real bad. Next morning, she could barely walk, but before she left to get herself stitched up at the hospital, the girl took a few souvenirs. Some strands of Ben’s beautiful black hair, a promotion flyer with his picture, and one of his boxing bandages.”
“Okay, I see it already. She weaved up some kind of spell?”
“She did. Next fight, Ben collapsed in the ring. We thought it was stress or the volumes of rice whiskey he had a fondness for. But no, it wasn’t that. It was much worse. He kept talking about green demons. We Thais respectively call them Phi Braid. He would shout, scream, and put his fists through walls. Then he stopped talking altogether. He hasn’t spoken since. We took him to the temple and he sat and drew these demons at first…” Carmen blew out a cloud of blue cigar smoke and pointed at the walls and the pictures hanging there. “…Many of them, different shapes and sizes. Then he added colors, they are beautiful, yet tragic representations of what was happening inside his poor cursed mind,” Carmen pointed to the framed pictures on the wall above the fish tank. Joe stood up to examine them more closely.
Beautiful inks and green water-color sketches of demons in various predatory positions. They all had long bodies, short limbs and long faces, like monitor lizards erect on their hind feet. “Every time you sin, one of these monsters is born; Ben’s life style meant he had accumulated a fair amount by the time he reached the temple. He still sees them now. When he looks in the mirror, Ben loses his mind to these demons. That is why we have the crazy circus mirrors in the hall. Perhaps the devil hates to see himself. Ben can’t speak to me about it, but he uses his paintings to communicate what he sees around him. This is why we call this bar the Demon Dreams.”
TWENTY-NINE
BEN STOOD motionless and then smiled slowly. But his eyes did not smile. His eyes followed the shapes and apparitions around the room.
Joe sat back down.
“So why does this involve me?”
“It is our dream for the demons to stop haunting Ben. I think you understand about demons, Mr. Dylan, and I want you to help my brother,” she smiled.
“Ben?”
“There’s not much of a likeness I admit, but we are flesh and blood all the same, bless him. We have lots to talk about, Ben and I, and you, and the Englishman who knows what to do, but he won’t corporate. I think he may have finally lost his marbles, as the British say.”
“I don’t think Sterling is the only one confused around here, lady. Seems that you’ve taken a Chinese angle on this one yourself.”
“He is the one who has the codes to open the case. I fear he is losing his mind. We were once friends, but you know how it is with Englishmen? They have all these deep routed anxieties that they keep buried in the fear of being discovered as their true self. As children, their parents send them away to sleep in a school. Personality crisis. That’s the problem with most people. With me, with Ben, with you, Mr. Dylan. We do not know who we truly are until it’s too late. And there is nothing worse than being too late, especially when the clock is ticking. There is only so much time before it happens.”
“Before what happens?”
“Before you drink the Soma, Mr. Dylan. Until this city turns into Ben’s nightmare, for all too see. Before the mirror becomes reality and we all see who we truly are. Until the secret box is opened.”
“And you think that opening the case will stop this disaster?”
“It will certainly prolong peace, perhaps a thousand years. Read the epic, Joe. We are prepared to do a deal, if you mediate. You see; we have this briefcase but we can’t open it without the code. Inside the case is something that will make Ben better, that will make the world better. Also inside is what Mr. Francis wants. Everybody will be happy if we open that case here.”
“I do not have the codes.”
“Then you must get the codes, Mr. Dylan. The world depends on it.”
“The world?”
“Yes, there is another who wants the briefcase for other reasons. He wishes to use the spell to take over some small backwards countries and then the world.”
“But how would that work?”
“It probably wouldn’t. The man is a charlatan. I wish you would get the codes so we can have Ben back to normal. That is all.”
Her brother stood behind the bar, reached down, picked up the case, and placed it on the counter, his fingers drummed along the leather surface. Joe noticed that he was missing a digit. The pinkie on the left.
“I need to find the truth about Monica.”
“Well find out and fast. The clock is ticking.” Carmen stood up. “Now if you will excuse us, we have customers to prepare for. Ben is agitated. Between thought and the expression, there is a lifetime of troubles to consider. I must let him paint for a few moments before we open. He must express himself in color. You may leave now. Thank you.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Oh, your weapon. We will return it to you. All in good time.”
Joe stood and put his hands together and nodded at the transsexual. He headed towards the hallway.
The street outside was only a few yards away, but each step felt like he was climbing a mountain.
It was a different carnival outside. It was like walking out of the house of horrors right back into the freak show.
THIRTY
SOME BARS in Bangkok made you feel right at home when you walked in. A cute chick would slide up next to you on the stool and wipe a cool towel across your noodle. There were some places where the bar staff would head straight for your Johnson and begin to rub the little man while you were trying to take a snifter. Then there were the bars that left you feeling colder and more confused once you walked outside.
Tonight you are hunting for the perfect bar.
The bar to end all bars.
You walk along the Street of Dead Artists. The evening and night served in the same dirty ashtray.
The hazy sky darkened for a nanosecond and then the blackness fell suddenly over the city. Fairy lights lit up the streets with orange, blues, reds, and pinks. The lights hung from urban trees outside the can houses and the karaoke bars. You had to be Japanese to enter, sit down, and lose your yen to a bad sister. You have no time for clip joints, testicle massages…You stop a yellow and green.
Take it to the Red Night Zone.
You sit on a street bar.
Plastic chair.
Sidewalk.
An expensive bottle of coke. The drinks were expensive inside the bars. They cost more on the streets. Street bars paid off the cops who owned every slab of concrete and every weed growing up from the cracks in the city. Every market stall, fruit seller, and taxi driver had to pay a fee.
On the street, bar drinkers sat around tables with beer and rum. They smoked cigarettes and discussed where it went wrong and whose fault it was. One boozehound plucked a diminished chord from a battered acoustic and began to sing:
Hotel, Fucking, California.
You wish he hadn’t.
Scenery street level in the city. Grey sewer rats scurried here and there with their long oily whiskers twitching and their hairless prehensile tails trailing behind them. Their beady eyes peered up from beneath the cracks and the holes in the sidewalk. They scavenged scraps and boldly passed between tourists, vendors, touts, citizens before returning down to their subterranean labyrinths below. You once heard a theory that a rat could grow to any size given the right food and a loving home. Bangkok kept the bastards lean and mean. The stray dogs were a different story. The locals fed them donations on the streets in the morning. This was one smart piece of karma. If the feral dogs got hungry, they would turn vicious and turn on the citizens. Dogs were fed. The millions of rats scavenged at night. The homeless begged and gave the money to the police and the gangs.
Lady-boys brightened the city with all the colors. Gaggles of transvestites waved, blew giggly kisses, solicited passersby’s outside an Arabian eatery. They had the deal sewn up. Curious Johns travelled from all over the rock to get a piece of the action. They had websites, international shows, beauty contests and coffee-table books written about them and published in New York. They worked as airline hostesses, interior designers, teachers; they had a good thing going. The street was theirs.
Further on and underneath Nana footbridge, a beggar dragged his legless body along the road. He held a plastic Starbucks cup between his teeth. He was there every day and night and was known to the locals as the Caterpillar Man. The whores touched him for luck. You didn’t believe in luck. You paid the bill and headed to the Nana Entertainment Plaza.
Walking into Nana at night was to be sprung into a pinball machine: electric blues, neon pinks, florescent reds and purples; lights flashed in all directions. You never knew which way you’d bounce. Sound systems blasted. Bikini-clad women in cowboy boots. Fishnets, uniforms, schoolgirls, nurses, booze, booze, rivers of booze. Weary travelers. Couples. Bleary-eyed sex tourists. Wide-eyed newbies.
Boys dressed as girls. Smoke. Girls dressed as boys. Mirrors. That grey area in between. Smoke, mirrors, legs, long and short, athletic, fat, and thin.
In the Zone, the night market flourished with shy girls, talkative girls, mute girls. Experienced. Novice. Nationalities from all over the rock rocked. The last cigarette saloon. You light a cigarette. Have a smoke. The road to Atlantis was patched with mirrors and clouded with smoke. You stare straight ahead. The spectacle of Nana Plaza. The ball inside the pinball machine. Some bounced from bright light to bright light for years. Some slipped through the jaws of the machine. They bounced down to another pinball machine. They rattled around in the northeast. Or on the tourist streets. Penniless, broke, bridges burned. A home they would never own. A beer bar. An expired visa.
The gardener.
The brother.
The lies.
The empty bottle of Chang smashed on the back of the neck.
The disappointment.
The shame.
The Plaza.
The greatest shopping mall in Asia.
You make it to the first level of the Plaza. Some guy is one step ahead. You follow the scent of land-crab salad and cigarette smoke blended with cheap perfume.
Atlantis glowed with the soft colours of coral. A dada night-scene. Scientists predicted the oceans would swallow Bangkok up in a hundred years. Speculated the place was swimming in AIDS. You didn’t know what to say about it. Dead dreams were just that.
Memories.
So what if it sank? What would the archaeologists and anthropologists make of the Plaza once it’s rediscovered after the floods had disappeared?
The Last Cigarette Saloon on the road to Babylon.
The Wild East.
The Big Mango, Sin City, Disneyland for Adults…
Fun City.
The smell hits your sinus like a violent assault. Chillies and fried insects. Black magic spells. The man walks along the runway that circles the perimeter of the plaza. You follow him. Past bar entrances. Past dreams. Past lies. Past promises. From the first floor bars, you get a view of the bars above and below. The dancing girls take their break. They smoke cigarettes. They swap tactics. They hatch plans…
A hard-bodied hooker blocks the man’s path by extending her long red leather-boot acro
ss the runway. “Where you go?” in an accusatory voice.
“Move aside, worker,” he gives it to her in Thai and her boot falls from his path. She smiles downwards. You walk past. A John that could speak the lingo wasn’t worth the time of day to a hooker.
The man walks through the red curtain and into the Voodoo a-go-go. You follow. A wave of air-conditioning. Dark inside. There’s smoke and there’s mirrors. Skin and money change hands. A cash carrier in a white polo-neck points a torch towards an empty booth. The man sits down and orders a soda water. You sit in the next booth. The dancers shuffle on revolving stages and podiums spread across the display area. The soda water arrives carried by the cute cash carrier in the white polo neck. The man asks her which dancer went by the name of Lek.
“She’s dancing, on stage,” cash carrier smiles, “she’s number 23.”
You look at her.
Twenty-three owns the bar. A luminous green tongue stud. She flicks out her green tongue in a serpentine fashion. A peroxide blonde. A lounge lizard. A real hard body and no stranger to the neon. She uses two poles, one in each hand and grinds her body, flicking her hair from side to side before flipping over with the ease of a Russian gymnast. Smoke. Lands back on her feet to a round of applause from the audience.
Mirrors.
She leaps up high into the air and flips over again, clinging to the pole upside down. She rotates clockwise. Slides down one pole. Her mischievous face smiling between her legs. Body firm and supple from the nightly workout. Not one bead of sweat as she rotates and then lands on the stage in the split position. Her pins are immaculate. A crowd of Brits roar with appreciation. A bunch of Japanese do calculations in their noodles. She’s making a hundred grand a month with that routine. Her reflection visible from every position in the bar. Dynamite. There’s other dancers dancing but there needn’t have been. The walls and ceiling covered in mirrored tiles. A million peroxide dancers spinning, glittering, and glowing in Atlantis.
Lek owns the bar.
Red Night Zone - Bangkok City Page 14