by Zolbrod, Zoe
Anchan needs boyfriend, they say. The young one covers her face when the other ladies say this.
I need one suit, for my new hair. Where do you think I should go to get that? I ask them. They say MBK, Atok Market, do I have lot of money? Maybe I can go to Robinson Department Store. They want to know why I buy suit, why I finally get some sense and cut my hair. I tell them business. Some very important business. They’re still laughing. My hair is many long black snakes falling to the floor, lying on that floor, and the lady who’s cutting steps on those snakes.
Please, I say. I would like to save one piece. The young woman, Anchan, bends down and picks up one of those. She puts it on small table.
For your girlfriend.
No. She’s gone. I want one piece for memory, I say.
I don’t want to look at the mirror when my hair is falling off, but the young woman and the married one go work with other customers. Now it’s quiet around my ears. I hear metal go snnnt, each piece of hair falling. Some air is slapping on my neck, little hair pieces scratch in my ear. The barber lady puts some cream into my hair; I feel her fingers close to my skin. She uses the hair dryer—whoosh, it’s dry so fast. She puts more cream on my dry hair.
So handsome! Much better, she says to me, looking with me in the mirror. My head looks small, but it’s still mine. I move, it moves. I look at the side, look at the back. Where my head meets my neck, the hair feels zzzzzz, soft-rough. Stiff, not moving, but the feeling’s not bad.
Oh, so handsome. All three ladies say this-even one customer says it, too.
No, I say. Not true. I stand up to look close in the mirror. I’m so close I feel how cool the mirror is. This is my face, my eyes.
He can’t stop looking at himself, they say.
Very good haircut, I say to them. My voice sounds funny, far away from me. I give some money to the lady who cuts. Anchan hands me one long piece, wrapped in some thin white paper, crispy, and tied with string.
Your memory, she says. She looks up at me fast, then looks down.
I have to get some shoes and suit, I tell her, even though she knows this already.
You go now? she asks me. You go today?
Of course, right now. You come with me, help me pick one good suit?
I’m working now. Where do you live?
I do some business in Bangkok. I stay at Star Hotel while I’m here. That big one. Over there.
Where?
I take her to the big window with me. She can see the Star Hotel from there.
What kind of suit will you get? What will it look like?
I say that after shopping, before going to Star Hotel, I’ll come back to the beauty shop to show these ladies my new suit, but I’m not looking at Anchan when I say this thing. I look over her shoulder, where another mirror is. I look at myself. Handsome, yes, to many Thai ladies. Now they don’t tell me, Why are you looking like this? What your mother say when you look like this? No. My mother will like me now, too, like Anchan, young Thai lady, sweet one, works hard. They all think I’m handsome, but I feel too small. I could get lost. I could sink in the water, and I have no hair to float above me. No hair to tell anyone where I am.
I can’t tell Anchan this when I come back to show those ladies my suit, shirt, tie, shoes, sock-all this I wear. Now they really say something about how I look. They say I look like one rich Thai man, and this is very good, the best thing.
Anchan says you live in Star Hotel, the lady who cuts my hair says. Yes, I tell her. Yes, this is true, but only sometimes. When I do some business sometimes I can stay in Star Hotel.
You take Anchan to see that one. She walks by that every day, but she never goes inside.
It’s no problem for me to take Anchan to Star Hotel lounge, so I say okay, why not? It’s four o’clock and my business is not until later, and Anchan’s work is ended, so we go. It’s only few minutes walking, but I feel hotter in my suit than in T-shirt and sandals. We look inside lounge-so cool and dark there, very peaceful, very nice. Two Thai men in there have short hair, like me. But Anchan doesn’t want to sit there. She shakes her head no. So I take her to the lobby and buy two Cokes to bring out there. Where are you from? I ask her.
When before this have I sat with the Thai lady? In Bangkok, answer is easy: I have never done this before, not in this way. When I live with my parents in Kanchanaburi I have the Thai girlfriend, sure. The sweetest one is named Mai. First time I make something, it’s with her. I am eighteen years old. Wow! I feel lucky at that time. Maybe then I think I marry her. Very sweet. But no, I have to be monk, go in army, go to study-too many adventures are waiting for me. Now she’s already married, I think so. And even then, when we were still sweet together, we could never sit like this, drinking Coke in hotel. We never need to tell where we come from, because we meet in Kanchanaburi Province; we know we come from there.
Anchan’s from Bangkok. She lives with her family. She’s twenty years old and has to beg her family, please, please, let her learn how to work in the beauty shop. She loves this. She’s always making something new with her hair, but her family wants her to work somewhere else, some bank or office. I put my hand to feel rough-smooth hairs poking from my head.
Why you grow your hair so long before? she asks me. Why you don’t cut for so many years?
I change to English. “Do you speak English?” I ask her.
“Chan phoot pha-sa Ang-grit nit noi.” In Thai she says she speaks little bit of English language, so I know she does not.
I talk to her in English anyway. “I do business with farang, and certain kind of ones, they think long hair is beautiful. It’s been very good in my business with them. You don’t know this,” I tell her. “You don’t even speak English, what can you know?” Then I speak again in Thai and tell her that different business requires different style. And then I see Abu come from elevator. He sees me, too, and smiles.
“How are you doing, man?” he asks me. He holds out his hand, and I stand to shake it. “I see you’re now ready to do some business. Who’s your lady friend?”
“She’s the lady who makes me look like your businessman,” I tell him. “She doesn’t speak English.”
“We have to get to work soon,” he says to me. “Join us in the lounge when you are done with your guest.”
Soon after this I tell Anchan it’s time for me to discuss some business. I walk with her until after we cross the crowded street between Star Hotel and beauty shop, and then I say good-bye. I tell her I’ll see her again, because short hair always needs to be cut.
I feel nervous to see this admiral, sure. Saisamorn’s nephew drives me. His car is not too good, but after we pay forty baht to get on the expressway, the air-con comes out, and everything feels easy and cool. The traffic moves, never stopping, and electric signs on top of buildings make lines of light as we pass by. I like this—swoosh—it’s like some water, and I find pleasure in this driving. I follow that feeling, so I feel calm.
Admiral Wattanayakorn’s house is very fine, very rich. Servant opens door for me when I knock on the one in back, and I take my shoes off to go inside. It’s not like with sandals, one two, both off, very easy. With these shoes, I have to bend down. The servant takes me to one small room and tells me to sit down. She closes two doors and leaves me in that place. In the corner there is one big vase, very big, stone onewow, I think that is something old. Maybe from Sukhothai, I think so. One admiral can have great art from Thailand’s golden period inside his house. Sure. Maybe that’s what I’m looking at now.
I have enough time to think on this, because in this room I’m so alone-no noise, no people. I hear nothing, smell nothing, see nothing. I have never had this in Bangkok. One envelope is in my pocket, I still feel that, but now I don’t feel nervous. The quiet room has its own soft sound, and after some time I feel like I am in that sound. I can live in that, and it’s nothing. There is no problem there; it’s very peaceful. I can meditate. It’s good to do every day, but of course many times it’s n
ot possible. I can meditate now. It’s like I’m nowhere-no fear, no heartbeat; I am away from that.
Then the servant opens those two doors, and I see Admiral Wattanayakorn. I know I must change my face now, close that meditation face. I wai the admiral. He wears glasses in black plastic frame. He doesn’t wear one business suit, not one military uniform. He wears one tan shirt, very stiff one, light color. He greets me. I say thank you, thank you for having me in your home. He says I am the guest, thank you. Have I eaten? His eyes don’t look at my face.
I take envelope from my jacket pocket and put it beside me on the chair.
March 2 is not possible, he says to me. The date will be March 4. Same flight is okay. Dock N243.
I wai. Admiral Wattanayakorn, I thank you, I say to him.
Admiral Wattanayakorn knows nothing about this, he says. Now he looks at my chin. Today I shave the hairs there. I shave those, but someone else cuts the hair on my head.
Excuse me, I say. I wai again to him.
He knocks one time on the door. Servant opens, and this man-maybe he’s not the admiral-shakes my hand and leaves me; he goes deep into his soft house. The servant takes me to the doorway, and I bend down to put back on my new shoes.
Chapter 10
On the flight back to Bangkok, Robin squirmed and tugged at her suit. She had bought some cropped pants and a cap-sleeved shirt in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown, but they were tucked in her carry-on. Abu hadn’t said on the phone who would be picking her up at the airport, and if it were him, Robin knew he’d want her to look professional. If it were Piv ... Robin wasn’t sure which side of her he liked best.
She had tried during her lonely Malaysian days to finger their romance as a touchstone, to get the buffed salt smell of Piv in her nostrils, but he wouldn’t function that way. He just remained in the flat back of her mind sitting quietly, watching her. He watched her when she’d bumbled through the meeting with Mr. Rong. Save face, she’d told herself as she staggered away from Mr. Rong’s blase hand on her nylon-coated knee, but that concept was an Asian one she had read about in books and couldn’t fully grasp. It popped into her mind because of the Piv-within-her, not her genuine concerns. These ran toward sexual harassment, sexual humiliation, rape.
But if Piv was within her, why couldn’t she imagine what he was doing? He sat in her mind, but in the blind spot. Would he hustle other tourists? Would he go home to his family, become what she imagined was the quintessential, family-centered, dutiful Thai? She wasn’t sure she had met anyone like that, unless the brothers in Pai counted. Where would Piv sleep if he went home? On a mat on the floor? On a teak bed hung with mosquito netting? On a thin foam mattress with one pink polyester sheet? Her ears clogged as the plane descended, and she heard the world through her own liquid environment. She heard her heart beating. What had her or Piv’s future to do with the other’s? She only knew she was returning to Bangkok on Thai Air flight 1247, and that in this part of the world, it was 3:00 PM. Abu was more of a fact than Piv was; at least she carried assets for him. She’d held the envelope up to every kind of light offered by her hotel room trying to count the money, determine the currency, confirm the presence of a note, an order form, a report-but to no avail.
Once again, she glided through customs. If anything, the rolling clicks of the case she pulled along gave her confidence. When she exited, nylon straps separated her from the crowds waiting in greeting, and she scanned visages for one to meet hers. If people hadn’t been packed so closely, she knew she could have picked out Piv immediately just from his stance, his hair, but her eyes focused instead on a tiny grandma at one end of the crowd. The skin around her temples was pulled tight by her gray and black bun, a printed sarong wrapped around her waist country-style, and she squinted at the emerging passengers with her arms crossed, inquisitive. Then Robin’s gaze slid back along the queue and, directly in front of her, met Piv’s face. He was smiling, hands in pockets, eyes lit. She felt her own face open even as she noticed his hair. The pang of loss only heightened her glee and relief. She took a step forward, was only a foot distant from him, and she extended her arms. Then she remembered that they weren’t supposed to embrace in public. The strap that separated them bumped her just below her waist. They faced each other, full and grinning. She had never seen this posture of his before: a slouch down around pocketed fists. His hands rose to wai her, and her heart leaped at receiving this insider’s gesture.
“Welcome to my country,” Piv said. Their eyes locked in a hug.
“I feel very happy to be here.”
“Please. I can carry for you.” He reached his hand out for her luggage. She passed it to him, light without it.
“You cut your hair,” she said. They were both still smiling. She reached out to ruffle his shorn mane, but then stopped midair, hand dangling from her wrist-touching this way went against etiquette, too.
“How you like it?” he said. He breezed the top of his own head. “I cut it for you.”
“It’s different. It looks good. But why for me?”
“For you, I cut my hair. For this business we make now.” Robin registered his suit. It was cream colored, loosely cut; it hung well. He had a collarless shirt on, not a tie. His thick hair shone stiffly. She smoothed her own professionally tailored jacket. It felt new again, fresh.
“We’re both dressed to make some business,” she said.
“Come with me, please. We take taxi.” She unclipped the crowd-control strap from its chrome bar. She reclipped it behind her and smiled at him, blushing. They walked to the taxi queue without talking, throwing sidelong glances at each other, fighting to keep the grins from their faces.
“Please,” Piv said to Robin in the taxi. “I would like to take one beautiful lady to fine restaurant. Okay with you?”
“Only if you mean that you’re going to take me.” They let their hands drift to the middle of the cab’s blue upholstery and touch there. The short drive into town took over an hour in daylight traffic.
“How was that business?” Piv asked.
Robin painted her trip in broad strokes: The men who met her didn’t speak English. Mr. Rong did, but he wasn’t very nice. She had forgotten her clothes, but she had gotten another double visa without a hitch. “No one’s going to think I’m a drugged-out hippie in this outfit, right?” At Piv’s prodding, she described Kuala Lumpur, its Bangkok-like traffic jams, its Bangkok-dwarfing skyscrapers, its general lack of glory.
“Okay, then. We don’t go there when we make our adventure. We don’t need business there.”
“Forget Kuala Lumpur!” Robin cried out, reaching back with both arms to touch the rear window glass. “Fooooorrr-get it!” Then she looked to the taxi driver and looked back at Piv and covered her mouth, which was cramped from smiling.
Her lips kept tilting upward as Piv ushered her into the restaurant, leaned toward her to enthuse about the combination of a certain bitter vegetable with a particular curry, reached under the table to brush her knee while still holding her eyes. “I’m so glad to see you, Piv,” she said. “I’m so glad it was you who picked me up and not Abu.”
“Abu and those friends left Bangkok yesterday, so of course I come to get you. I’m the lucky one.”
“Abu’s gone? But I have this shipment for him.”
“Russian friend is coming. Russian boss. Abu says that you should give that to him.”
“But Abu was going to pay me.” Robin pushed away her soup bowl, her water glass, and a small cup of pepper sauce. “Is the Russian guy staying at the Star?” Piv shook his head no. “Well, when’s Abu coming back?”
“He’s coming soon. He made all the arrangements, no problem. He has more business for us—I told you, I help him—and next time we both go. We make money for our plan together.” He leaned toward her, his tongue running along the inside of his cheek. “This is the good one.” He dipped his chin at her to emphasize his point and raised his eyebrows slightly. In that gesture Robin could see both his close-cropped, su
ited business aspect and his long-haired rock-and-roll cool. Her smile flattened under the weight of her desire. She reached for her water glass.
“Do you really want to do something with me? I was wondering on the plane.”
“Why you wonder?” They looked at each other for one beat, two. Robin didn’t speak. Then Piv half rose from his seat and kissed her on the forehead. “You know Thai people don’t kiss like that,” he whispered, settling back on his chair. “They don’t like to see that. But for you, I do. I tell you already, I want to make something.”
“Me too,” Robin whispered back. Piv dipped his spoon into the soup. Robin watched him inspect the broth, swallow. “But we need a plan. We need a goal to save for. It’d feel good to save with you. Maybe I’d feel better about this stuff with Abu, then.”
He took another spoonful. “Why you feel bad?”
“Why? I mean, come on. There’s definitely something creepy going on.”
“Abu’s good for us now.” Piv left his spoon in the soup and took out a money roll from the inside pocket of his jacket. Robin noticed again how new his suit gestures were, how smoothly he performed them. “Now we have this-more than two thousand baht.”
“It’s a start. But if we’re really going to do something, not just mess around, we’ll need some serious money—that’s only what, like five hundred dollars.”
“Sure. We’ll get more when Abu comes back. If you want, while we wait for that time, I take you to visit my family.”
His family! Piv’s invitation dissolved Robin’s mental abacus. It’d be challenging—he’d told her they didn’t speak English-but it meant he wanted her to know him, was going to let her know him. She’d rise to the challenge. She softly bounced in her seat.
“I want to!” she said. “I want to, I want to!” And this time she was the one who leaned over to kiss.
By 11:00 PM in Star Hotel room 517, the bottom sheet had peeled from the mattress corners. A sliver of street light cut through the top sheet and blanket tangled on the floor. Piv wanted to make love again, but Robin kept her hands on his hips and held him slightly from her. “No.” She arched to bite his earlobe, then murmured. “I told you. Not without a condom.”