Asian Heat

by Leather, Stephen

  “I’ll wait for you,” I said.

  She laughed. “You’re a butterfly,” she said. “You won’t wait.”

  I nodded. “I will,” I said, and looking back I’m pretty sure I meant it.

  “I’ll send you a picture of our daughter as soon as she’s born,” she said. Then she kissed me on the lips again and left.

  I didn’t sleep that night. Or the next. I tossed and turned and thought about Nok and my daughter. I loved her. I knew that now. I think I’d loved her from the first moment I’d sat with her outside the Landmark. I should never have let her marry Ray and as soon as she’d fallen pregnant I should have asked her to move in with me. I’d been thinking with my dick and not my head or my heart and now that Nok was about to give birth I realised how stupid I’d been.

  The whole free sex thing had been a stupid idea, right from the start. And living in Thailand had been another stupid idea. I loved Nok, and I wanted to be with her. I knew she needed someone to support her and her family, but if we lived in the UK that wouldn’t be a problem. I’d be earning good money again, our daughter could go to a local school, and we could easily send money back to her family in Thailand. I finally realised what I had to do. I had to marry Nok and move back to England. Ray wasn’t going to be happy but Nok wasn’t with him because she loved him; she just needed his money. And the baby wasn’t his. He’d just have to get over it. And, besides, he’d find plenty of other women to take Nok’s place. But I wouldn’t. Nok was the only woman for me, I was certain of that.

  Her phone was off all day Friday. She was due to go into hospital on Saturday morning. I called her mobile at mid-day but it went straight through to voicemail. I kept calling throughout the day but she never answered. She didn’t answer the next day, either. I wondered if maybe she’d forgotten to take her phone to the hospital, or if her husband was there all the time and she’d kept her phone switched off. I called her half a dozen times on Monday but her phone was off. I looked for her on Skype but she wasn’t on line.

  By Tuesday I was going crazy. There’d been no call, no text message, no nothing. I decided to risk going to the hospital. I figured that even if Ray were there it wouldn’t make any difference because he was going to find out sooner or later. I was younger than him and bigger than him, so even if he kicked off I doubt he’d be able to do me any damage. I was sure Nok loved me, really loved me, and the child was mine. Ray would just have to do the decent thing and walk away.

  I got to the hospital, bought a bunch of flowers at the shop on the ground floor and went up to the maternity ward. That’s when I found out that Nok had died. It happens during childbirth, even today. Something goes wrong and the mother dies. Sometimes the doctors and nurses can help and sometimes they can’t. In Nok’s case they couldn’t. The medical staff were smiling as they explained what had happened. That famous Thai smile. I can’t remember exactly what they told me. All I can remember is the gleaming white teeth. They were all smiling. Every one of them. They smiled as I dropped the flowers and broke down and cried.

  A nurse told me that Nok’s family had taken her body back home and she would be cremated later in the week. And the husband had taken the baby. The baby was fine. A healthy girl. Just over seven pounds. My daughter. A daughter that I’d never see. I didn’t even know her name. I guess that she’d live with Nok’s husband in Pattaya or maybe he’d take her back to Australia. I’d never know. I didn’t know Ray’s full name or where in Australia he was from. And even if I did find out who he was, what could I do? Turn up on his doorstep and demand that he give the girl to me? I’d lost Nok and I’d lost my daughter and they were both lost for ever.

  I went back to my room. I spent the next three days getting blind drunk and staying that way. That was a year ago. Now I’m back on track. You’ll see me most nights in the café outside the Landmark Hotel. More often than not there’ll be a pretty young girl with me. I’m playing the numbers, you see. I’m on ThaiLoveLinks and any other Thai dating site I can find. I talk to hundreds of girls every day and every day I meet one. Sometimes more than one. And I’m going to do that until I find the right girl.

  I don’t drink coffee any more while I’m sitting outside the Landmark. It’s whiskey. Thai whiskey. I probably drink a bottle a day now, pretty much. Mainly at night because that’s when I need it the most. I can’t sleep without whiskey any more. Without the whiskey I keep thinking about Nok and our daughter and the pain is almost too much to bear. The teachers at my school have mentioned my drinking to me, but screw them. I’m fine. If anything the drinking makes me a better teacher; it calms me down and stops me snapping at the little bastards.

  I’ll find her eventually, I’m sure of that. Somewhere out there is another girl like Nok, who looks like Nok and talks like Nok and feels like Nok. I’m going to find her and this time I’m not going to screw it up. This time I’m going to do the right thing. I’m going to marry her and have a kid with her and live happily ever after. It’ll take time, I know, but it’s just a question of numbers. If I meet enough girls, sooner or later I’ll meet another Nok. That’s my plan, anyway. Wish me luck.

  I’m also including three very short stories set in Thailand.

  MASSAGE THERAPY

  I first met Ricky sitting at bar on Walking Street in Pattaya. He was tall and thin and pretty much bald, hunched over a glass of iced water. He seemed a bit miserable and I’m a cheerful enough chap so I asked him what was wrong. He had one hell of a story – most people move to Thailand because they want to start living but it seems that Ricky had come to die.

  He’d been a butcher in the north of England. He’d owned his own shop and made a decent enough living despite competition from the supermarkets. He was a widower – his wife had died of cancer in her fifties – and had two grown-up sons. When he’d reached sixty Ricky had started having problems with his waterworks and had to get up several times a night to pee. It got so bad that he went to see his GP and the doctor referred him to a specialist and the specialist told Ricky that he had prostate cancer.

  According to Ricky’s specialist there are two sorts of prostate cancer. There’s a slow-growing one that can be treated and managed, and there’s a fast-growing aggressive one that is invariably fatal. Ricky had the second type. They treated Ricky, with drugs and radiation therapy, but the cancer continued to grow and to spread. After six months they told him that there was nothing else they could so they gave him a leaflet for the McMillan charity and sent him home.

  Ricky decided that if he was going to die he’d do it under his own terms. He sold his business and his house, gave most of the money to his sons and flew to Thailand. He booked a suite in the Marriott Hotel in Pattaya and kept a bottle of sleeping tablets in his wash bag. His plan was to enjoy what little time had left and once the pain became unmanageable he’d take the tablets.

  He couldn’t drink alcohol and most food made him feel nauseous but at least Thailand was warm and the people were friendly. There wasn’t much I could say to him, but I did suggest that he should have a Thai massage. A good Thai massage done by a professional can really make you feel better, I told him. Ricky said that he’d try. He left the bar soon afterwards, saying that he felt sick. To be honest, I never thought I’d see him again.

  I was wrong. I bumped into him again about three months later, in the Golden Bar in Bangkok, across the road from Nana Plaza. At first I didn’t recognise him. He had put on weight and his hair was growing back. And he was drinking a beer. He grinned when he saw me and told me he was feeling better than he’d felt for months. And it was all down to Thai massage, he said. Or rather, a massage girl.

  The day after he’d met me in Pattaya he’d done as I suggested and tried a Thai massage. He did indeed feel better and from then on he had the hotel send up a masseuse every day. Ricky had become disenchanted with Pattaya. “The world’s biggest brothel, it was a big mistake moving there,” he told me. He’d moved to Bangkok and checked into the Marriott in Sukhumvit Soi 2. He�
��d tried to book a massage on his first night but they didn’t have anyone available, so Ricky had gone looking for a massage parlour. And that was when he met Cherry. She worked in a place in Soi 23, not far from Soi Cowboy. She was in her forties, a bit chubby but with a lovely smile, he said. Cherry had great hands, he said, and had been trained as a masseuse at the famous Wat Po.

  He felt so good after the first massage that he went back to see her the next day. And the day after. On the fourth day Cherry asked him if he wanted a ‘special’ massage. He wasn’t sure what she meant but she’d smiled and said that for a thousand baht he could have a happy ending.

  Ricky explained that he was ill and that he thought a happy ending was out of the question, but Cherry said she would try anyway. Providing that he paid a thousand baht, of course. Ricky had laughed and told her that if she could indeed make him come he’d give her ten thousand baht.

  Cherry had Ricky roll onto his back and she poured a good measure of baby oil over his dick and went to work. To Ricky’s surprise he soon found himself growing hard. Cherry was smiling like the proverbial Cheshire Cat and she started caressing his balls.

  Ricky hadn’t felt so aroused in years but he didn’t feel that he was going to come, despite Cherry’s valiant efforts. But Cherry knew what she was doing and she locked eyes with him as she slipped a finger into his backside. Ricky gasped and exploded like a geyser. “It was the best ten thousand baht I’d ever spent,” he said. ‘The thing is when the doctors used to shove their fingers up my back passage I’d scream like a banshee, but when Cherry did it, it was the most erotic thing I’d ever felt. Really, it was just out of this world.’

  Cherry’s happy endings became a regular feature of Ricky’s life. He paid her for a two hour massage each time, with the first ninety minutes taken up with a traditional Thai massage followed by thirty minutes of her special oil massage culminating in her own special version of the prostate exam.

  After a month of seeing Cherry every day, Ricky noticed that his appetite had improved and he had started to put on weight. And to his surprise, his hair began to grow back. He knew that his condition was terminal, but there was no doubt that he was starting to feel better. He made an appointment with a cancer specialist at the Bumrungrad Hospital, one of the best medical facilities in Asia. They gave him a through investigation and confirmed what he already knew – he had prostate cancer. But according to the Bumrungrad doctors, he was in remission. The cancer was there but it hadn’t spread and it wasn’t life-threatening. Ricky was stunned. But the doctors were adamant. The cancer wasn’t killing him. Or at least it was growing so slowly that it would be decades before it put his life at risk.

  “It’s Cherry,” he told me. “I’m sure of it.” And with that he patted me on the back and went back to his hotel. I watched him go, wondering if it could possibly be true, that Cherry had somehow managed to massage away his cancer.

  I met Ricky for the final time in the Golden Bar, a few weeks later. He was halfway through a bottle of Singha Beer and was as happy as Larry. He had just been to the Bumrungrad Hospital and they’d given him the all clear. Not a cancerous cell in his body, they said. Pretty much six months to the day that the National Health Service had given up on him.

  “Bloody morons,” said Ricky. “They said I wouldn’t last six months and now the docs here say I’m as fit as a fiddle.”

  He looked good, there was no question of that. He’d put on a fair bit of weight and his hair seemed thicker and there was a glint in his eye that hadn’t been there the first time I’d met him. I asked him what he planned to do and he grinned, reached into his pocket and took out a small red box. He opened it and proudly showed me the diamond ring inside. “I’m going to ask Cherry to marry me,” he said. “I know she’s not the prettiest but she’s a good sort and she makes me happy.” He put the ring away. “And she’s the one who saved me, I’m sure of that. Her massage, her hands, they healed me. If it wasn’t for her I’d be dead. Soon as I’ve downed this, I’m heading to Soi 23 and going down on one knee. She can stop work and I’ll build us a house up in Korat, where she’s from. Might even start a butcher business. I love this country. ”

  He finished his beer, paid his bill, shook my hand and wandered down the road to get a motorcycle taxi. That was the last time I saw him. From what I heard later he got sideswiped by a truck that ran a red light at Asoke, killed him and the motorcycle taxi driver stone dead. Somewhere along the line someone stole his wallet and the ring. I did go looking for Cherry to tell her what had happened but there are a lot of massage parlours on Soi 23 and I never did find her.

  CAT’S EYES

  It was her eyes that I noticed first, even though I was sitting about thirty feet away from where she was dancing. They were cat-like and as black as coal and she’d emphasised them with mascara and eyeliner but even without the make-up they would have stopped me in my tracks.

  I was in Rainbow Two, on the ground floor of Nana Plaza. There are four Rainbow bars and they’re geared up for Japanese customers rather than Westerners which means that most of the girls play on being cute and young with vacant stares and their hair in curls or pigtails.

  She was different, not Japanese-style at all. And she had her hair up, held in place with a clip, which is unusual for a go-go dancer. She wasn’t young either; I doubted that she would see thirty again. She had a real woman’s figure, nice full breasts and hips that curved. And those eyes. My God, those eyes.

  She was dancing around a chrome pole but when she locked eyes with me she stopped dancing and smiled. It was a full-on smile, loaded with self-confidence as if she knew exactly what effect her smile had on a man.

  When the dancing shift changed she came and sat down next to me. Her name was Cat and she was from Surin, close to the border with Cambodia. She asked me my name and I told her. Roger. From London. Actually I’m Simon from Maidstone, but I know enough about the Bangkok bar scene to know that it’s best not to reveal your real name up front. I bought her a drink and we chatted for a while, her fingernails gently scratching my thigh as if they had a mind of their own. Her English was good and she had a great sense of humour which usually means a succession of Western boyfriends. When it was time for her to dance again, she stood up to go.

  I asked her how much she charged for short-time. She flashed me her smile and her eyes locked on mine. “Everything you have in your wallet,” she said.

  I laughed and shook my head and paid her bar fine. Ten minutes later we were in the short-time hotel on the second floor of the plaza. Her lovemaking was intense and passionate and for most of the time she was looking deep into my eyes as if she could see into my soul. It’s not normally like that, usually the girls want the sex to be as impersonal as possible, something to be gotten out of the way so that they could collect their money and get back to the bar.

  Cat seemed in no rush to go and after the sex was over she lay down next to me and stared up at the ceiling. I asked her why she was working in the bar. With her eyes and her body and her personality I doubted that she’d have any problem finding a boyfriend or a sponsor.

  “You want to know my story?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you,” she said. She sighed and carried on staring up at the ceiling. “The first time I met my husband I was twelve and he was twenty-two.”

  “What? Twelve?”

  She continued to talk as if she hadn’t heard me.

  “He came to our village to stay with his aunt and when I looked at him and knew that he was the love of my life. But what could I do? I was twelve. Every night I prayed to Buddha and asked him why he had done this to me, why had he shown me the man I loved but made it impossible for me to be with him? Eventually the man moved away and I was heartbroken. It wasn’t fair. When I was a teenager lots of boys wanted to be with me, but I turned them all down. I knew what it meant to be in love and I didn’t want to settle for anything less. When I was twenty I fought with my mother because s
he said it was time for me to marry but I said I wouldn’t marry unless I loved the man and I had already met the man I loved. She said I was crazy.”

  She sighed again. “When I was twenty-one I went on holiday with my friends to Cha-Am. We stayed in a hotel by the beach. On the day we were due to go back to the village I met him in the street. He was on holiday with his friends. We literally bumped into each other. He looked into my eyes and I knew at that moment that he felt the same. He hadn’t married, he hadn’t even had a regular girlfriend. He told me later that he felt as if he was waiting for somebody, he just hadn’t realised that it was me he was waiting for.”

  She turned to look at me and smiled. Her killer smile. And again I was lost in her eyes. “I never left his side from that day on and three months later we were married. He worked for Thai Airways at the airport and we had a really nice house that his parents bought for us. They were quite rich and he was their only son. They were so pleased when I got pregnant and we had a lovely baby boy. Our son was so handsome, just like his father. I was so, so happy. Every night I prayed to Buddha and thanked him for giving me my perfect family.”

  She stopped talking and rolled onto her back again. I watched her chest rise and fall as she breathed.

  “What happened?” I asked quietly.

  “They died,” she said. “Three years ago. It was a car accident. He was driving home with my son and a truck smashed into the car. Killed them just like that. The truck driver had been taking drugs, the police said. He ran away but they caught him. He’s still in prison. But I lost my husband and my son.”

  She sighed and turned to look at me. There were tears in her eyes. “That’s why I work in the bar. I cannot be alone at night. I cannot sleep. In the bar I can be busy and I don’t have time to think. And when I go with customers I can forget who I used to be. I don’t want to think about who I used to be. Because when I think I feel sad and I want to die so that I can be with my husband and my son.” She smiled but the tears were still running down her cheeks. She shrugged. “And that’s my story.”