Bangkok Knights

by Collin Piprell

  “Singha beer.”

  “Kloster.”

  “Hey!” bellowed Leary. “Hey, Big Toy.” Leary stamped a boot up on the bar-rail; he tore off his grimy San Miguel Beer baseball cap and slapped it down hard on the counter. “How about another Jack Daniels and soda here, and beer for the boys. Their friggin’ tongues are hanging out. No gosh-darned air-conditioning. Where is old Doc, anyway? What kind of a way is this to run a friggin’ bar? I ask you. That’s right. Haw!”

  On cue, dripping with sweat and laden with bags from Foodland, the missing proprietor made his appearance. “I could hear you all the way out in the street, Leary,” said Doc, as he dumped plastic tubes of pate and loaves of dark bread out on the counter. “You just get back?... Why don’t you put these in the fridge, there, Dinky Toy? If you think you can move okay, I mean; I don’t want to put you to no trouble, and all.”

  Dinky Toy raised her eyebrows, popped a grasshopper, and dismounted her stool with studied languor.

  “And what the hell are you doing eating those goddamned grasshoppers in here? I told you before the customers don’t like it.”

  “No customers here, Doc,” said Toy. “Only Leary. And Eddie and ...” She waved a languid hand.

  “What’s goddamned Leary, if he isn’t a customer?” Doc demanded; I guess familiarity had bred contempt for Eddie and me.

  ”I’m a customer. That’s right. If I’m a customer, then why don’t you turn on the gosh-darned air-conditioning, Doc, just so I can get a drink to my mouth before the friggin’ ice melts?

  “How about another bourbon and soda, Big Toy; and more beer. What’ll you have, Doc?”

  “The usual, Toy.”

  Dinky Toy brought the drinks, including a weak Mekhong whiskey in a tall glass with lots of ice and water. She put the drinks slip in Leary’scup.

  I noticed Doc eyeing the plastic cup ; you could see Leary had already had a couple. Those were the white slips. He’d also bought the girls colas — those were the pink. At the end of each night the girls got a percentage of every drink the customers bought them.

  “I’ve had that air-conditioner fixed twice in the past month, Leary.”

  “The gosh-darned thing is apiece of junk. Tear it out and put in a new one.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, oil money coming out your ears, no family or nothing.”

  “I got Nancy.”

  “I got Pin. I got Pin, and I got Pin’s three sisters and four brothers. I got Pin’s momma and poppa and one grandmother. I got aunts and uncles and cousins I still never heard of, and the ones I heard of already I can’t count. The ones who aren’ t sick and in need of money for doctors, they’re going to school, or maybe they need money to pay some sponsor so they can go to work in Saudi Arabia. I got a pile of them camped in my house right now.

  “And I got my boy Sam, he’s in high school, in some dump, and all these farang kids in Bangkok they get to go to the American International School, I don’t make enough in a good year just to pay the fees. What can I tell Sam, his buddy gets to go play basketball in Hong Kong for the school team, Sam gets to go to the movies if he’s lucky. It don’t make me feel good, I can tell you.

  “The lot of them would be better off without me. The amount of life insurance I’m carrying...

  “And you say I should buy a new air-conditioning system? I’ll tell you what I should buy, I should buy a one-way ticket to Rio.

  For one.” Doc yawned mightily, and shook his head in despair. “Pin’s cousin from Nan is still here. Her twins are teething. What a nightmare. They took it in shifts screaming last night. Sometimes both together, in stereo.”

  “Leary’s Law,” said Eddie, nicely anticipating what any one of us there could’ve told you was coming next.

  “Listen and listen good,” Leary advised us. “Though it’s too darned late for you, Eddie. You too, Doc. But if you gotta get married, if there’s just no other way you think you’re gonna be happy, then you just make sure the lady you marry’s a friggin’ orphan.”

  This was by no means the first time Leary had promulgated this law, but you had to acknowledge the wisdom it embodied. Never mind Chief Promulgator Leary had committed himself, not too long before, to marrying his old friend Nancy, who was no orphan. Probably he just forgot for a minute; or maybe it hadn’t yet fully dawned on him what he’d done.

  Anyway, the hard fact remained — marry one of the local girls, and you assumed responsibility for her whole family unto the nth generation or probably even further. With some of these upcountry families, that could add up to a number that should entitle you to U.N. aid. And there was nothing like a farang in the family, sometimes, to raise the general level of expectations up to brand-new heights, so far as life prospects went. You got these plans for self-improvement on every side, each of them requiring only a little bit of money, after all everybody knowsfarang are rich, and what was money anyway, when it was all in the family?

  “But it’s safer to never get married,” said Leary.

  “And that’s the truth,” added Doc.

  “Nobody marry you, Leary.” Apparently Dinky Toy also chose to ignore Leary’s recently affianced status. No one likes to see a legend die.

  “That’s right, Dinky Toy. I’m too darned sexy; no lady could ever hope to keep me all to herself. And I’m too young, anyway. Gosh.”

  Leary gave a little laugh, just enough probably to scare the pigeons off the roof of the temple down the street and across the way.

  ”Leary!” The door to the street swung open. “Leary, I know you’re in there!” bellowed a voice only slightly less stentorian than Leary’s own.

  Squinting against the glare of sunlight, you could make out the form of one ‘Dexy’ Dexworth, a beer-bellied, bandy-legged, foul-mouthed whoremaster and offshore oil platform manager. And that’s how he liked to characterize himself; other people were often less charitable. Eddie, for example, always said Dexy was the most objectionable man it’d been his misfortune to meet during all his years in Bangkok. Whenever Dexy directed anything at him, Eddie would get kind of taciturn. If pressed, he might come up with as much as a non-committal grunt, but that was generally all about he’d have to say to old Dexy. It’s funny, too, because Eddie was the most tolerant fellow you could imagine, as a rule.

  However you wanted to react, it didn’t do to call Dexy ugly names; Dexy would simply take this as a challenge to his imagination, and he’d come back with repartee that would turn a longshoreman pink. As a matter of course, he bellowed and swore and punctuated every statement with “Yuh know what I mean?” Every phrase he uttered was a physical, aesthetic, and moral assault on the sensibilities. I kind of liked Dexy.

  And Leary always treated Dexy as though nothing were amiss. This probably had something to do with the fact they were both offshore oilmen from ‘way back. I’d even heard it said Dexy was merely Leary without Nancy’s refining influence. They did bear more than a passing resemblance to each other, both in appearance and manner. Dexy was shorter, but he had a bigger beer-belly. And his voice was less impressive than Leary’s, though he was fouler-mouthed by far. Other than that, they were practically two peas in a pod. What differences there were, though, were enough that while Leary was one of Eddie’s best friends, Eddie could hardly even bring himself to talk to Dexy.

  Dexy had ordered a Singha and a round for the house. He was telling us how he’d spent his day. “Oh, yeah; she was dead tired. I mean, wouldn’t you be? It’s 8:45 in the morning and you’ve just spent the night tossing some John. The sun’s up. You deposit your money and you’re turning away from the automatic teller machine, and now...”

  ”You sure she was hustling, Dexy? I mean...”

  “Sure? Of course I’m sure. God, she was yawning — you could see clear down to her asshole — but she still gives me the big come—on. Unbelievable.”

  “Unbelievable,” I agreed. “So what did you do?”

  “Well, you know, I took her home. Yuh know what I mean?”
/>
  “What?”

  “Well, yeah. I was horny. I mean, what the hell.”

  Dexy worked offshore Indonesia, where he’d spend one month on the rig doing eighty-four-hour weeks and minting money before returning to base, in Bangkok, to spend the alternate month getting rid of the loot on beer, whiskey, and the satiation of all those carnal appetites he’d honed to such a keen edge during those long days and nights on the rig.

  “Sweet and sour,” he told us. “And that’s exactly how I like it. Sweet is Bangkok, and sour is the platform, and both are fine with me. But one requires the other, or it don’t all taste just right. Yuh know what I mean?”

  “But don’t it ever get to you?” Doc asked. “I mean not having anybody waiting for you, when you’re out there. How old are you now? You can’t go on this way for ever.”

  “Why not?” replied Dexy. “I like it... Anyway, I been married already.”

  This was news. Except maybe for Leary, our little assembly showed surprise. Somehow, you hadn’t figured Dexy for the marrying type.

  “Yeah. For five years. Then one night we had a party, back at the house. That was back in Georgia. I got kinda drunk, I guess, ‘cause I woke up on the bedroom floor. And there was my best buddy and my wife, my king-size water bed just a-sloshin’ away.

  “I said ‘You folks want some coffee?’ Then I went downstairs and I got out my deer rifle, a nice 30-30 Winchester. I poured a drink and sat around for a while. Then I put the rifle back in its case and I left. I never went back. The lawyers took care of everything. The wife did pretty well out of it, I can tell you.”

  I’d never before heard Dexy come out with such an extended piece of discourse without half of it being obscenity. His flat, matter-of-fact delivery somehow lent the story more force.

  ”Never again. You just give me a good bar on the corner, a couple of buddies to drink with, and a good whorehouse down the street. That’s all I need. That’s all I’m ever gonna need.”

  There was a silence wherein we all paid respect to Dexy’s hard-won wisdom, except for Eddie, who was only silent.

  “Could be worse,” Doc said. I saw him look at his empty glass and then look down the bar at the other glasses. There was evidence of an inner conflict before he signaled Dinky Toy to set up a round on the house.

  “Could be lots worse,” he continued.” Do you remember a guy name of Alf, from the States — North Carolina, I believe — who married Daeng from the old Danny’s Dozen Bar? Maybe you heard some of the troubles he had. Like the house they bought, it cost twice as much as it should’ve, and imagine how he felt when he found out that the guy he’d bought it from was Daeng’s uncle, no wonder they paid such a good price. When he went around to complain to the uncle, the uncle and a couple of his friends used Alf for kick-boxing practice. When he told the police about this, explaining he thought he should get treated better than that, being an in-law and all, he couldn’t find a witness; even his wife, Daeng, said there’s no way her dear uncle would’ve done anything bad to her dear husband.

  “Marriage is a matter of give and take, and Alf decided he’d have to take it for the time being; but he told me, once, he wasn’t sure after all if he’d done the right thing by getting married.

  “And he was right, because next thing he knew, that brother of Daeng’s — the one that just wouldn’t go away, always hanging around the house sleeping or else drinking and playing cards with his buddies? — the ‘brother’ turned out to be no brother at all; he turned out to be Daeng’s Thai husband, a little skeleton in the closet, there.

  “Well, Alf figures that’s about enough of that, and he gets some legal help. He thinks he’d like to get back the money that went into the house, and such-like. His lawyer thinks there might be hope, in this case, since there’s a supernumerary husband in the picture, and even though this is Thailand, and people are generally pretty relaxed about this kind of thing.

  “So it looks as though Alf might come out of all this in not too bad shape, after all, and I tell him I’m very happy for him and I hope he’s learned a lesson or two.

  ”He said he had, but I guess it was too late, because next thing I read in the papers, a week or so later, an American named Alf is found down a well, dead, and it is this Alf. Turns out his mother-in-law pays to have him beaten to death and then dumped. She only has the best interests of her family at heart, it seems, and this farang was about to make all kinds of trouble for them.

  “According to the papers, Daeng herself felt her mum had gone a bit too far, and she felt sorry for Alf. In fact, I heard she spoke more fondly of him after he was gone than she ever had while he was alive. Of course he was a lot more use to have around when he was dead. In a manner of speaking. The cops locked her up no matter how sorry she was, but not for too long, I’d imagine, since her old lady already admitted she was the one who took out the contract Daeng’s Thai husband and various other hangers-on are no doubt looking after the house till she gets out.”

  “Marry an orphan,” said Eddie.

  “Don’t marry nobody.” Dexy preferred the principal part of Leary’s Law. “A woman ain’t nothing but a life-support system for a pussy, anyhow. Yuh know what I mean? And what do you want to buy a cow for, anyways, when milk’s so cheap?

  Now, even though Lek was his wife, I knew Eddie had a good deal of affection for the lady, and you could see he really wanted to say something to Dexy. Even though at the same time he really didn’t want to. In the end, however, pique won out over prudence.

  “Dexy,” he said. “You lame-brained bag of wind. You obscene fart-bag. I’m not surprised you couldn’t hang onto a wife. With your attitude towards women, you’d be lucky to get a lady to talk to you, much less live with you.”

  Dexy roared with pleasure at what he obviously took to be a rare compliment. ‘Talk to me? Why am I gonna want some woman to talk to me? Listen here: I’m gonna give you the specifications of the perfect woman—and I’m an expert; I’ve seen more pussy than you’ve ever even dreamed of. Your ideal woman is about three foot tall with a flat head, and she turns into a six-pack and a ham sandwich at midnight.”

  “A flat head?” inquired Doc.

  “Some place to put your beer. Haw, haw, haw.

  ”Hey, Big Toy,” Dexy directed in a voice that made Eddie wince. “Feed all these life-support systems some more colas; colas for everybody. Keep all these here pussies happy. Have a drink yourself, Big Toy.”

  Eddie should’ve known better than to stir Dexy up.

  “I’ve got some stuff I’ve got to do back at the guesthouse,” Eddie said, even though I’d never known him to leave Boon Doc’s just before Happy Hour merely because there was a job waiting for him at home.

  “Hey, I gotta go too,” Dexy told us. “I got a heavy date — Number Thirty-seven over at Smokin’ Sal’s Saloon. A regular little wildcat, looks about sixteen. Sweet sixteen. A real beauty. Though she has got a bad bite.”

  No one wanted to touch this one; you hated to think what old Dexy might be talking about.

  “Can’t hardly sleep, what with her bad bite, and all. Of course, she’s such a sweetie-pie it seems a shame to sleep anyhow. Yuh know what I mean?”

  After Dexy had left, Eddie ordered a round. When I asked him about the chores back at the guesthouse, he asked me “What chores?”

  “Ah, gosh, Dexy’s okay,” said Leary. “Only he’s not what you’d call real sensitive, that’s all. You know he’s got nothing but respect for Lek, Eddie. It’s just his way.

  “Anyway, he must be getting friggin’ soft: here he is talking about seeing this young kid at Sal’s, he sounds like it’s some kind of heavy date or something. That’s not like Dexy. Gosh. Usually he won’t spend more than one night with the same girl. It’s like policy. Doesn’t even want to spend a whole night with the same girl, usually. Says he likes ‘short-times’— no time to get bored, he says. And you don’t have to wait for the toilet in the morning, besides.”

  “He’s an emotional ret
ard,” was Eddie’s opinion.

  II.

  I hadn’t seen Boon Doc’s that crowded in a long time. Just about all the regulars were there, plus any number of strange faces all told, there must’ ve been a dozen people, easy. And that’s not counting Doc’s girls. There were seven of these specimens — Big Toy, Dinky Toy, Keeow, Nid, Noi, Boom, and Sue-wang, and they looked great that night, all decked out in their party togs. You could see half of them were getting pissed, though none of them normally drank except maybe for Big Toy, who had a nervous condition. But it was a party, after all, and Doc was nowhere to be seen, so let the good times roll, why not?

  We were there at Doc’s invitation. The first drink had been on the house, and the food was free. Not only that, but Happy Hour was being extended right through till closing time, according to the announcement scrawled on the big card behind the bar.

  FIRST DRINK FREE

  ALL YOU CAN EAT,

  NEVER MIND DINKY TOY COOKED MOST OF IT

  HAPPY HOURS TILL 1:00

  HAPPY HOURS FOREVER!

  AND BEST WISHES ALWAYS, MY FRIENDS

  Had Doc come into an inheritance, or what?

  It was seven o’clock, and the party had been in full swing for a couple of hours already. The only thing was, our host hadn’t yet made his appearance, and we were all still in the dark as to what the big occasion was. Why had Doc decided to blow the air-conditioning repair fund on this lavish soiree?

  Dexy was there, and he’d brought Number Thirty-seven from Smokin’ Sal’s with him. This represented a departure from established procedure. It was not conventional for habitues of Boon Doc’s to bring their little doxies to Happy Hour, especially if these doxies gave every appearance of being sweet sixteen and hardly ever even kissed, maybe. It was bad for the morale of Doc’s girls, for one thing. For another, it simply wasn’t done,

  Besides all that, as Leary pointed out, Dexy never took girls out Why is anybody gonna take any broad out when they ain’t nothin’ but life-support systems for pussies, anyhow? Right? So after twenty minutes or half an hour there’s nothin’ you can do with them, and they’re going to be cluttering up the head in the morning besides. Did we know what he meant?