Sometimes Tuttle caught a young woman following, with her finger and eyes, the curve of the colored balls painted on the plastic casing. Underneath was a small light bulb. Her eyes wide open, fired with the colors below, as she counted the red balls, then the purple, lavender, and blue circles. One night Tuttle watched as one of the girls stood still, the rest of the world cut off from her, as she calculated the movement of a cockroach imprisoned inside the Jukebox; the slow-moving black form trapped on the backside of the colored balls. She put her finger against the plastic, the roach moved from the shadow, and she traced his path round and round, making a kind of children’s game of hide and seek.
Tuttle doubted the jukebox would be moved again. The stone platform underneath looked semi-permanent. Close to the bar, two steps away from where the girls could get change. The music didn’t interfere with the TV at the other end of the room. Customers rotated around the jukebox, looking at the girls, playing a game of hide and seek, knowing the girls could never get away, and would be back night after night.
“During the Vietnam war, GIs came here with half dollars, quarters, and dimes, and fed them into the jukebox, or gave them to the girls,” said Tuttle. “Have you read the writing on the jukebox? ”
“Use nickels, dimes and quarters,” said Lawrence, smiling. He hadn’t read the sign; but every jukebox had the same formula.
“Six songs for $1.00, three songs for 50 cents, and one song for 25 cents,” said Tuttle. An abandoned, foreign currency of the past. Now the machine took large one-baht coins; two Thai coins to play a song. “Everyone has their favorite.”
“It has ‘Hey, Jude,’” said Lawrence.
“Number 27.” Tuttle had a generous, bemused look, as if something unearned had fallen into his lap.
“That’s right!” Lawrence was more impressed than he should have been. The changeless quality of the music, of the place, of the people created a region where most of the elementary particles were known.
“You remember the Angel Lady in LA? Back then the music taught us things. Same-same here, as the Thais say. It’s a marker. About who owns the place, who comes, who stays. What they dream. How they hurt. The usual suspects you line up against the wall of hard living.”
The original tunes were written on thin strips of paper and placed under the lit clear plastic panel. Oldies had turned yellow, the black ink faded, leaving a phantom image of a word, and old age, dust, and heat had curled up the paper edges into a small cradle. You had to memorize the number of the songs. Because you couldn’t read the words. A hard-core farang was liable to forget a girl, but he never forgot the number of his favorite jukeboxsongs at HQ.
Lek stood on tiptoes beside the jukebox and dropped in two coins. She studied the numerical keypad. She punched the bright blue number two, then a one, and lastly seven. Number 217 flashed in lights, machinery inside spun around, retrieving her record. The sound of ‘He’s So Shy’ filtered across the room. Most of the time, the girls picked a Thai rock ‘n roll or torch song. When the choice was theirs; when the money pumped into the belly of the musical beast had come from their own pocket. When a girl punched in the number of a western song, that was the tell: she had the attention of a farang; he’d given her two baht for a song.
“Pick a nice American song, honey,” he probably said. “One that gets you in the mood. Because I’m already in the mood. But I want to hear some nice music first.”
As the music blared out of the twin speakers, and Lek danced over to the middle-aged farang drinking a beer, Tuttle leaned back slowly as if he remembered something.
“You know what I like about the jukebox? The price of a song is immutable. It costs the same as a Bangkok bus. Everyone knows the fixed price of musical pleasure is two baht. No bartering, borrowing, or begging allowed. The jukebox only understands two baht. Nothing else works.”
Crosby and Snow, having finished an extended tour of the premises, had drifted back to the booth. “What do you mean, nothing else works? ” asked Crosby, sliding back over the bench.
“Everyone wants pleasure and no one wants to remember the price,” said Tuttle.
Crosby squinted. “Getting philosophical, are we? You must tell your friend the truth. Everyone knows the price of an HQ girl. One purple delivered COD preferably with some discretion the following morning, when it is discretely slipped into her handbag, blouse, or skirt pocket. And everyone knows the financial cost can be adjusted on the second or third time you bed her.”
“But you play ‘He’s So Shy’ a hundred times on the jukebox and it’s always two baht,” said Tuttle.
“But take a girl for the third time and you get tempted,” said Crosby with authority, tipping back his beer.
Snow, owl-like behind his thick glasses, laughed. His laugh had a long, loose quality; as if his laugh tank had been filled with high octane fuel. He had gone for “a walk” and smoked a joint with Crosby. His talk about the Lahu Godman idea had got him worked up. He had come close to making that phone call to the Magic Shop in New York; City—or as close as Snow ever came—which was asking Crosby for a loan to make the call. And Crosby told him what he always told Snow, “You’d only make a fuckup of it, mate.”
“Tempted to knock down the price from a purple to three reds,” said Snow, finishing Crosby’s sentence. “And there’s the beginning of all misery; because the missing two reds get made up somehow, some way,” said Snow.
Crosby chimed in. “Exactly. Now you’re outside the formula and anything can happen. These girls can become very unstable. Something has to fill that vacuum. And since it’s not money, you are guaranteed a serious melodramatic scene where you play the heavy.”
Snow cut back into the conversation. “He means they grab for a knife—and turn from a sweet, smiling little girl into guerrilla fighter with a pressing desire to cut off your balls.”
Lawrence looked at Snow and then over at Crosby. He hadn’t expected them to return. It was a mild surprise. With their return, they had captured the conversational high ground. Tuttle, he could see, was drifting off somewhere in his mind beyond the jukebox. Crosby lit a Lucky Strike cigarette, exhaled the smoke away from the table.
“There’s one more thing,” Crosby said, picking a piece of tobacco off his tongue. He looked at it for a second. “Most HQ girls don’t speak English, but I have never met one who couldn’t count in a hundred languages. And I never met one who wouldn’t play by the rules if you explained the rules to her in advance and once she agreed, she would follow them.”
* * *
CRAZY thoughts swung on a jungle gym of grotesque images from one side of Snow’s mind to the other. He sat back with a smirking smile, arms folded over his chest, and nodding at every slender young girl who patrolled past the table. Since the girls knew Snow as well as Tuttle and Crosby, they swapped greetings and smiles like people who had been at the same party together for a dozen years. The half-hearted attempt at suicide became the focal point. One girl’s failure to redeem herself; to cut herself off from the worthlessness and hopelessness of her world; to offer herself as a sacrificial lamb to the others, who huddled near the jukebox.
“More than one guy’s turned to ratshit in six months because they fucked up on the price,” said Snow, who was clearly on a roll. “You gotta pay as you go in life. There ain’t no free lunch. See Ted over in the corner with Bun? ”
Everyone at the booth looked over at a bearded farang in jeans and T-shirt, with each arm wrapped around a girl.
“You’re looking at a doomed man,” Snow continued. “He thinks you can find a respectable Thai girl, sleep with her for nothing, and there’s no bill at the end. Sometimes I see him around the Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Friday nights. He comes in HQ once in a blue moon, looks at the girls, then goes home for a freebie.
“Why doomed? You might ask yourself, Larry, because you’re green.”
“It’s obvious. You’re a lawyer. You know about balloon payments. Ted’s in for a huge balloon payment at
the end. That’s gonna take him, by surprise. Rock his boots, man. Instead of a free lunch he’s gonna end up owing more, paying more than if he had simply played it straight. You gotta think of Headquarters as a tax system. It’s pay as you go. Each night you know the bill. You pay up and start the day clean. No residual shit about you said this. You promised this. Why didn’t you tell me that? He’s fucking doomed. It comes from all those years in the ’60s living on food stamps in California. It turned him into this great human sponge. Sucking up shelter, food, clothes, and there never seems to be a bill. Paradise, you think. Man, the whole world must be organized like California. Big fucking mistake.
“You get the wrong attitude about things. You get the idea that the government provides everything for free. You want a girl? Sure, just take one, fuck her, she won’t mind. Pay? Why pay when you can get it free. Anyone who thinks like that is a doomed man. That balloon payment is getting bigger and bigger each day over his head, and when it busts, forget about his clothes. You ever see one of these chicks in action with a knife or razor blade? Fucking Green Berets turn and run in terror. Any one of these girls with a razor can polish off a man’s wardrobe in ten seconds. Then she turns the blade and points at his cock. You can run but you can’t hide, as Ali used to say. The Thais have pioneered precious little on this planet. But they are number one in surgically reconnecting cocks. America might be able to put a man on the moon. But when that razor takes off your cock, this is the one country in the world you want to be. The doctors know exactly how to operate with the skill of an open-heart surgeon in the States.
“You gotta learn to read Thai. The Thai newspapers report some Thai woman flipping out and cutting off the dick of her husband, lover, or customer. The stuff never gets into the English press. It creates a bad image. Gunter sitting over in Munich might book his two-week holiday to the Philippines where he can get laid with peace of mind.
“The native women go savage here. But California Ted won’t listen. He thinks he can perch up on a high stool and just watch; nothing bad is gonna happen to him. Doomed. Read my lips. Doomed for eternity.
“Here are the rules. You’re not paying for a date, or for love, for romance, or for a relationship. You try to pay your way into any of those and all you’ve bought is fucking chaos that will eat you ass first and spit out your eyeballs. At HQ, you’re paying to use a female body for a few hours or for the night. A young, beautiful, horny, well-dressed, big breasted, long-legged girl, who is clean, and loves oral sex. You pay her to have sex with her. You pay her COD. This is her job. She goes with you on an employer employee relationship. In that collective agreement, which every regular knows by heart, there are terms and conditions that apply.
“She fucks you once at night and once in the morning. She sleeps in your bed. She never eats breakfast on the premises of her employer, and employers never pay carfare. And you never tell her that you love her. You never tell the jukebox you love it because the music has made you happy. Never tell an employee whose body you’ve hired for the night that you love her. Because you don’t know her. You don’t want to know her. Her family, her life, her fucked-up past, or doomed future. You’ve gotta divide your instincts from your sentimentality.
“Think of her as a temporary typist in your law firm who’s come to perform a job. You’re not gonna make her a partner. She has one function. The only difference is the HQ girl is gonna touch-type on your balls. She knows the collective agreement. Man, she’s been through it a thousand times. So don’t try and strike a new deal. Ask her to take less than a purple for a good night’s work, she’s gonna expect this is something more than an employer-employee relationship. She’ll have visions of advancing from the typing pool to mistress of the house. And you’ve put that fucked-up vision in her head simply to save a couple hundred baht. In the end you have bought yourself pure chaos. Because you have to explain you don’t love her, you ain’t gonna marry her, take care of her, her sick parents, and sixty dirt-poor relatives. That you sweet-talked her into believing you loved her, man. Not just her sexy little body that you fucked into the ground for several months, but her soul.
“Now the balloon breaks. You’re outside the collective agreement. All bets are off. She knows people with guns who work cheap. She’s good with a razor. And you stumble into HQ looking for advice when it’s too late and you’re all but dead meat. And you fish a couple of one baht coins from your pocket and you walk over to the jukebox and you scatter the English songs, and finally punch in number 104, ‘We Are the World’ thinking it might be the very last song you ever select on this earth. And you wish like hell that you weren’t doomed. You wish like hell you could have resisted discounting her body. You wish like hell there were second chances.”
* * *
THE con man and the whore had both advanced beyond hope or redemption in their lives, and it was just a matter of time before enough fraud sluiced through the gates of the night and exposed the mechanics of how the other would maneuver. The entire night the magnetic needle of the conversation came back around to fraud. Lawrence was vaguely aware of the frolicking about on the steep pitched roof of probabilities. The hunt was for higher stakes than one of the girls drifting around the floor. It was more like an event where bets had been put down, odds measured, a grand strategy devised. Lawrence sensed that Tuttle and his friends were closing the distance between themselves and their quarry; that’s what had brought them to HQ, they had homed in on their target. A pension lawyer from Los Angeles who had married a girl named Sarah, a woman killed a couple of months earlier in a car accident, a gallant, troubled woman. Not long before her death, Sarah had offered to extend help. Maybe this was a way she used to prepare herself for death.
“You get scam artists here from all over the world,” said Tuttle, glancing at Lawrence through a cloud of gray smoke left by Crosby’s cigarette. “The Merchant of Bangkok was from the Big Apple. Ran a sweat-shop garment factory on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Just separated from his wife, and came to Bangkok for some action. He had more money than brains. He checked into the best room at the Oriental Hotel. He shot through all the shops in the main arcade and bought a shitload of skirts, dresses, scarfs at twenty-five, thirty percent discount and had all the stuff delivered to his room.
“Next he found out where the best bargain in ‘babes’ could be found. He always used that word, ‘babes. I wanna fuck a real babe.’ Someone at the hotel told him about HQ and he started coming in every night. Of course, he didn’t speak a word of Thai, so first night one of the sharks took him on. A peu-un pod leader who kept her purse stacked on top of the jukebox. A girl who spoke twenty-five words of English. That first night, he was told that the going rate was a purple—even then in ’82. He whipped out a pocket calculator and did a number of fancy conversions. Howard was the kind of guy who had never paid retail for anything in his life and he wasn’t about to start in Bangkok.
“He went over to Fawn—she’d been around for about four or five years—and she spoke half-assed English. Enough to make her employable for the kind of nightwork where conversation wasn’t of the highest priority. If Howard wanted to go, she was ready to turn on the meter. Howard pulled her out into the alley. Under his coat, he had a couple of samples. A skirt and a scarf. He pitched her the deal. She laid out her ass for him, and the stuff was hers. Top retail for the skirt and scarf might have pushed a purple. Fawn took the skirt over to a taxi parked in the alley and got the driver to put on his headlights. She examined the fabric, label, and design in the light. She did the same with the silk scarf. She ran a few numbers through her head. Then Fawn turned to Howard and nodded. He had a deal. Howard must have thought this is easy. A five-hundredbaht retail piece of ass for about three hundred.
“If he had been really smart, he’d have cut and run. At least from HQ where the intelligence network among the girls is world class. The next night, Howard returned. Fawn occupied her post position in a corner booth wearing her new skirt and scarf. He gave her a
little wave of the hand not knowing that at HQ a farang waving to a girl he had hired out the night before is an invitation for a new employment contract based on the same terms and conditions. Instead, he gave her the old cold shoulder, and Fawn slumped back to her booth without her face. Fawn had already told her friend about the deal with Howard, who told another girl, who told another, who spread it down the table, until everyone in the place knew Howard’s idea of payment. You get the picture. So one of the regulars went up to Howard and flirted, grabbed his hand, made goo-goo eyes at him. Howard struck the same deal. Only this time, it was easier because the girl already knew this john’s idea of compensation translated into clothes.
“By the end of the week, seven HQ girls arrived dressed wearing Howard’s discounted skirts and scarfs. I’m arriving at HQ early every night along with about two dozen other resident farangs who are taking bets on just when Howard’s bell is going to get rung. It happened to be a Sunday night. Howard walked in, ordered a whiskey sour, gave a girl a couple of baht for the jukebox, with instructions to play number 101, ‘Sexy Eyes.’ You see, Howard made the mistake of many greenhorns.
A Killing Smile Page 12