She guesses he works at keeping that body. He is wearing Blues Brothers sunglasses, and she can see the flash of emeralds, rubies, and sapphires from his rings as he moves his hands.
They call him the “Great One.”
When “Cavatina” ends, he looks her way, takes off his sunglasses, smiles at her with piercing blue eyes and claps. Just twice.
He asks her if she knows the song. His voice surprises her. It is raw, husky, but sweet, too. She thinks he has Brando’s voice, the voice from A Streetcar Named Desire. She loves that voice.
She sits smiling her silly grin, says she loves this song in The Deer Hunter. The next thing she knows, he is replaying the movie, talking about DeNiro, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken … and Vietnam.
He says he can never forget Saigon. She says she can never remember it.
The man squints at her. Her body wants to shrivel into a grain of rice. He says that she should have seen it before. She does not understand. He says something in Vietnamese. She knows that he is speaking Vietnamese because he sounds like Delta’s opera tapes. But she has no clue what he is asking.
Then he asks her in English, “Aren’t you Vietnamese?”
She shivers a little, wonders if this is an accusation. But the man is smiling.
She tells him her mother was Vietnamese. She is an American. This is a declaration. Five years in New York City!
For a long time, neither of them speaks.
Finally he points with a finger toward the swords and knives in the case. He asks her if she recognizes them. He tells her they are from Vietnam. Montagnard dha. He thinks they are beautiful. He saw them first when he was a Marine in the highlands north of Pleiku. For a thousand years the hill people used to give them away as dowry. They were still fighting communists with them in 1971. Now, thirty-five years later, they are only to look at, or open letters. He has a favorite little one with a dark jade handle to open his letters.
“Weird guy, huh?” Michael can almost see the case of knives and swords sparkling silver in his own mind.
Tuki nods. “You have no idea! He owned it all. Shangri-La. The dha. Everything. And he was a Marine. I should have known, la. I should have sensed it. I have seen all the movies like Platoon. I know Marines … my father was a Marine.”
Michael shifts his weight to the edge of his seat, runs his fingers through his damp hair to keep it off his forehead. Little beads of sweat are popping up in his chest hair. “Did he come on to you?”
She sits up in her deck chair, turns to face her attorney beside her. Puts a hand on his knee. “He asked if he could take me to dinner after my next show. He rose from the couch, smiled that beautiful smile again, pressed his hands together like a Buddhist person in prayer, then bowed from the waist. His eyes drifted away to the dha on the wall, his collection, as if too much eye contact made him nervous or embarrassed.”
“And you told him yes?”
She is working a club called Silk Underground, where Ingrid’s mother is tending bar—top of the Patpong circuit. It is the summer when she is turning twenty-one. Her first summer doing Janet Jackson; her first gig working alone without Brandy and Delta, who kind of half-retired to tend bar at a place on Suriwong Road four nights a week.
So she is alone. Top billing; a diva. Packing in the house, making so many baht in tips—maybe a thousand dollars a week U. S. She plows it all back into better and better music, costumes, wigs, street clothes, and shoes. Her life is her shows. Ingrid is long gone, disappeared with her sailor boy. Tuki has no one to show up, to share with. Sometimes she sings a love song. Thinks like maybe later, la, for that. She is entirely too busy. And where and how would she meet someone who is kind, not twisted? Who would love her forever?
While the sex tours from Japan and Singapore, and farangs in general, make up most of the business in the Patpong, the rich boys from Bangkok’s penthouses and suburbs also come slumming to the Patpong. It is the retreat of choice for birthday celebrations, bachelor parties. Almost every night the wealthy young men of Bangkok show up after midnight to look at or rent what their girlfriends are not giving up. Every night Tuki is filling her bra and G-string with baht from a lot of young Thai horseflesh in tuxedos and suits.
These boys are more or less her age. Not a night goes by without flowers, love notes, outrageous offerings of thousands of dollars if she will perform at a private party or take a limo ride around the city after work. But she never gives in. First, the Johns are always drunk or high. Second, Brandy and Delta have pointed to a thousand examples of broken showgirls who end their lives turning tricks for peanuts on the street.
“Life no like you movies, la,” says Delta one night when Tuki finds her crying after a date. “Men very dangerous.”
SIXTEEN
“Please don’t hate me,” she says. “So you slept with him?”
She drops her fork with a splat in her crabmeat salad.
It is three o’clock. They have put on street clothes and left the Slip, at last, for lunch at an outdoor café on Commercial Street.
He does not know why he asks this question. He already knows the answer. The police report calls her the victim’s estranged lover. Still, something in him feels the urge to nail her here. Maybe he is just flailing. He is frustrated, suddenly feeling a little mean. He has less than four weeks to sort out her story, prepare a defense. And get married. Maybe he just wants to get an honest, emotional reaction by which to judge other things she tells him. He still cannot help wondering if she did the crimes. In his mind, he is hearing the message from the Thai detective telling him that he may not know what he is dealing with here.
“Why do you try to make me feel shame?”
“I don’t.”
She spits air, like there is a bug on her lip.
“What kind of a lawyer are you? Beat on your clients? Make them feel small? Look down your big nose at me and my friends at the Slip when all I want is to show you a good time? Make you feel less strangled by life. Alby was a terrible mistake, la. You think I am proud of this? Is that what you want to hear? I am sorry. Very, very sorry I ever slept with an American.”
He shrugs, takes a sip of his Corona. In his mind the silhouette of a woman beckons from a small boat on dark water.
She picks up her fork, points it at him. “I asked a question. Your turn to answer.”
“What? Which question?”
She gets a sad look in her eyes. “Maybe you should go away. Let the crazy little luk sod tranny eat her lunch alone, okay?!”
He can almost feel her fork sink into his chest.
His forehead is starting to pour sweat again. He wants to tell her to just back off a little. Wants to go fishing, wants to spend about forty-eight hours in bed with Filipa. But he knows she is right. He is being a jerk, and this is getting the case nowhere. Except that now he knows that she is not afraid to admit her mistakes. She is explosive. And she will stand and defend herself when attacked. He is betting that she did not run from Bangkok or New York out of fear and cowardice. Something else is driving her.
“How do you say ‘I am very sorry’ in Thai?”
For a moment he wants to reach across the table and cover her long slender fingers with his. Instead, he picks up a book of matches and lights the black candle in the center of the table. He fingers the hot wax as it starts dripping down the side. Something to do.
There is an emotion swelling in her throat.
“In the beginning … he seemed so sweet,” she says. Big tears are rolling down her cheeks. A sad little smile of recognition grows across her lips.
She sits facing Alby across a table for two in a private room in an East End Italian bistro. There is accordion music playing. If you count champagne, Tuki is breaking her no-alcohol rule.
Alby looks good. Ever since she saw the movie The Great Gatsby with Robert Redford when she was about thirteen, Tuki carries a torch for men with freshly scrubbed skin; slick, trim hair; pressed shirts; linen slacks; loafers; and smiles that go
over the top with teeth. This is Alby Costelano tonight. She is staring into his blue eyes, wondering whether he could get down with a little safe you-know-what.
The frutti del mar comes and goes. But she does not even notice. They are talking nonstop. She is cataloguing every dimple in his smile, drinking in the smell of his cologne, picturing yards of holy flesh in that body.
After another hour goes by, she knows his story, she thinks. He has spent the last twenty years in P-town, buying and selling real estate, watching the price of property and his holdings double almost five times. He is rich. Now he owns Shangri-La, the Painted Lady, and thirty percent of the business property on Commercial Street. But he still puts in twelve hours a day, six days a week at his Commercial Street office, Pink Dolphin Reality, just a shout away from the Painted Lady.
He says he is addicted to the carnival. She thinks he means queens. He says things that make her think he first fell for the trannies in the bars and clubs of Vietnam, tried to go straight when he got home. Could not hack it.
The man does not laugh the “ha, ha, ha” of most men, but rather like waves rolling along the beach. And he makes her laugh, too, about their funny accents. He says he comes from Pittsburgh where they say things like “Aoh, moy gawd, Muriel, we ain’t seen yoons guys dawn tawn inna coon’s age. So where yoons bin at?”
She is staring into Alby’s eyes and starting to wonder how her “la” would fit into a place like Pittsburgh … when he changes the subject. He says she reminds him of someone.
Her left eyebrow arches. She thinks, please, do not spoil this. Like what else is a drag queen SUPPOSED to do if not remind you of …
This is not good. Tonight she wants to be attractive as Tuki, not Janet or Whitney.
Alby reaches across the table, puts his big paw up under her hair, alongside her neck. His fingers whisper to her ear.
Her eyebrow arches again. She is beginning to smell stale plaa, stinky fish.
She lifts a hand from her lap and flashes a palm toward his face like, “Stop in the name of love!”
Maybe it is the champagne, but she does not even try to make her words tip toe. She tells him please, please, do not tell her she reminds him of some girl who broke his heart.
He slides his fingers from her neck to her lips, silences her. He says that he is trying to tell her that he thinks this might be the best night of his life. But if she wants, they can call it an evening.
She feels something churning inside her. Then she hears herself asking him if she can come home with him.
At the Glass House, Alby’s private residence at Shangri-La, he puts Gladys Knight in the stereo. And they rewrite the I Ching, with the help of some of Kama Sutra’s minty lip balm, sex oil, and Pollaner strawberry preserves. She thinks it is like riding the Uptown Express all night long—
“Stop!” Michael jumps up, waves the bill and his credit card at the waitress. “I don’t need to know about the sex.”
SEVENTEEN
When he gets back to Chatham, there is another message from the Thai detective on his machine.
“This is Varat Samset of the Royal Thai Police calling again, Mr. Decastro. I am very anxious that you return my call, very eager to speak with you about Tuki Aparecio. As you may remember from my first message, I have been looking for her for five years. And now, thanks to Interpol and the computer age, she has resurfaced for me because of certain murder and arson charges in America. She left unfinished business with our office here in Bangkok. But that is not my major concern at this moment. There is something else, something related. More important now. I have reason to believe that she may well be in immediate danger. There is more here than meets the eye. You are my only way of reaching her. This is urgent. Please call me at …”
He grabs a paper plate, writes down the number on it, skips to the next message on his tape. He heads for the fridge and a can of Old Mil, wonders what time it is in Thailand, what day it is—yesterday or tomorrow. Then he hears Filipa’s voice coming from the machine.
“Hey, it’s me. I know I told you I’d be down tonight. But it is Monday. Seems like about half the staff blew off work today and I’m way jammed here. I’ve got to stay in the city tonight. I want to hear your voice. Wish you could give me a call, but I’m running around like a firefighter, and you know they make us turn off our cells in here. I’ll try you later if I get a minute. There are some new wrinkles on the wedding front. Love you.”
“I love you, too,” he says to the machine. The tone of his voice is a mix of exasperation and relief. He has been so buried in the case all day, he totally forgot Filipa was supposed to come down for the night. Well, it is a good thing she’s not going to show. He feels like he has just gone fifteen rounds with the cat lady. He would be rotten company. She would want to have sex, and after a day in the Magic Queendom, he has overdosed on the human fascination with carnal desire.
Since starting back to Chatham in the Jeep, he has been trying to make sense of the police reports and everything else he knows about his client. Then there are these calls from Thailand, putting huge question mark over his investigation. Everything seems a muddled mess. He still is not getting a clear sense of Tuki Aparecio. But he is trying to put together the bits and pieces she has told him, especially about her life in Bangkok. Sometimes when she talks about it, he can almost smell the curry, the ginger, the sex, the tearing of flesh.
Dusk in the Patpong. The in-between hour. The only time of the day when the noise of the streets is muted, and you can hear chickens cackling in their cages. Thai love songs echo through the halls of the cheap hotel where chambermaids are still preparing the lala rooms for a night of rendezvous. The combined scent of diced scallions, peppers, steaming rice, roasting peanuts, frying fish, and ginger filter through the hot air of the concrete building.
Since she does not eat until after the show, this is Tuki’s time to gather herself. So she is wearing just her underwear and a red silk robe, swinging easily in her hammock, painting and drying her nails before a huge pole fan in the little apartment above Silk Underground. Life is easy.
Then she hears shots downstairs. First two, loud and close together.
After a couple of seconds, a third. A bit muffled.
Brandy and Delta, who have been sleeping in their hammocks, jump to their feet, their robes hanging open until they cinch them closed with the belts.
“Get down. Hide!” They shout at Tuki, point to the clothes closet. “No move!”
The door to their apartment squeaks open, then clicks shut. Her mothers are gone. She can hear their bare feet padding down the hall, down the stairs that lead backstage in the club. She is alone, curled in a dark corner behind three dozen dresses hanging like a curtain between her and the rest of the world.
The odor of cheap cologne from the dresses is starting to make her dizzy when she hears the first of the screams. Then the bawling, like cats in the night. Keening in Thai and Vietnamese.
Suddenly the door to the apartment bursts open. She peeks through the dresses, sees Brandy grabbing an armful of towels.
“What …”
“You no come. Stay here!” Brandy’s voice sounds fierce, but her face is streaming tears as she runs back out the door.
Tuki cannot help herself. She has to know about these shots, this emergency that makes Brandy scream and cry. Slowly, she creeps out of the apartment, tiptoes down the hall, descends the back stairs. The concrete chills her feet. And all the while the sobs and the keening are growing louder. Now she hears sirens in the street. People are shouting.
She is backstage, pulls open the curtain until she can see the main room of Silk Underground where the bar, the tables, and the stage are bathed in faint violet light coming in through the door from the street, the red neon over the bar. The room is empty of patrons, but there is a crowd of queens and B-girls around the far end of the bar. Some are holding their heads, some shrieking and howling, wandering away from the huddle in a daze.
Suddenly, about
six policemen come storming through the front door. The crowd scatters. Tuki sees a figure lying on the floor, leaking blood everywhere. Brandy and Delta are on their knees in this mess, pressing the towels to the figure’s chest.
When she gets closer, she can see the face. White and ghastly. The eyes are rolled back in their sockets. It is Ingrid’s mother, her blonde hair fanned out around her in a pool of blood. She is dead. Two holes in her chest where her heart used to beat. Not far from her lies a second body, a man. He looks Chinese. There is a pistol in his hand. A big purple dimple on his right temple. The left side of his head is a pulpy mass of hair and blood and brains.
Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues Page 7