Shaky Jake’s was already rattlin’ and rollin’ by the time we got there. A lithesome young lady was winding up her star set in the cage behind the bar, and another was preparing to step into the breach. She walked to the little shrine high on the wall opposite the bar, bowing with hands held together up to her forehead, and then she mounted a stool to add a garland to the strings of fragrant blossoms which already festooned the shelf and its plaster figurines. Early as it was, a miniature forest of joss sticks still smoked and smoldered, burned down to stubs. She wai-ed again, climbed down, and dropped her oversize motorcycle jacket, revealing the lean athletic body underneath. She swung up onto the bar and across to the tiny dance floor, effortless, oiled limbs gleaming in the flashing lights. She nodded in passing to the other dancer and then turned to flash a smile of unaffected pleasure at the whole place as she began to move to a funky beat.
Trevor tried to give the impression he was interested in everything except the gogo cage and those creatures which inhabited it. Of course, what with the four dancers on the other stage, behind us, their reflections in the mirrors behind the>bar, and the off-duty dancers in various stages of undress hanging about the place, that left Trevor pretty well nowhere to look but at us or at his glass. As one consequence of this narrowing of his universe, he was drinking quite a bit faster than he was accustomed to doing.
“Crunch, my boy, if you want a woman, you don’t got to look too far, you know? Gosh!” Leary’s bellow easily carried over the throb and din of the music. Leary looked at the young man with real concern.
“Please, my name is Trevor, and...”
“Trevor is a gosh-darned sissified name. I got nothing against Brits, don’t get me wrong, but it sounds too English, you know what I mean?”
Earlier, at Boon Doc’s, Leary had been introduced to both Trevor and to the story of that individual’ s computerized campaign to find a wife he could bring back to Kuwait. Leary had been most appreciative of this modern romantic epic. He’d also been most impressed with the obvious resourcefulness of this likely young fellow. But he didn’t like his name.
To Leary, those members of the human race who were computer literate were ’number crunchers’; Trevor, then, had become ‘Crunch’, so far as Leary was concerned. “Crunch is a man’s name. And poontang’s a man’s game. Haw! That’s right. And you see that girl up there, just a-dancin’ her fine little heart out to make you happy, and you won’t even look at her?” Leary grinned up at this philanthropic maiden, who was indeed putting more of herself than usual into her performance that evening. “Whooee!” he hollered, waving his San Miguel Beer baseball cap, and with his other hand he took Trevor’s shoulder in a grip that commanded his attention and, no doubt, paralyzed his arm right down to the fingertips.
“That there’s little Daeng, my boy, but there’s nothing little about them lovely big knockers she’s carrying around up there. No, sir, by gosh,” said Leary. “Darn it.
“My boy, you don’t want a wife at all, if you want my opinion. Listen, you’ve got the world by the tail right now. You’ve got a job with money; you’ve got lots of holidays; you’ve discovered Shaky Jake’s; and I think Daeng likes you. Darn it, Crunch, what’d you want to go and get married for, and screw all this up? You’ve got it made. Gosh. Look here, if you took everything I knew about life and about women and you put it into your gosh-darned computer and then you asked it, it’d tell you the same friggin’ thing: you’ve got it good.”
“Sure, that’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to go back to live in Kuwait,” replied Trevor. “You’ve got to have a wife if you’re going to work in Kuwait.”
Homing in telepathically on this latter proposition, Daeng aimed a smile at Trevor that would’ve stiffened the wrist on a ladyboy.
Trevor had by now finished his third gin and tonic, and was starting to act a bit more like you figure a’ Crunch’ ought to behave. He smiled up at Daeng, and she immediately found an extra couple thousand candlepower of good will to beam back at him. You could see a real warmth growing between these two young folk.
Reaching deep into her arsenal of winning ways, and maybe fearing she’d been so far too subtle for this boy, Daeng pulled her top down and proceeded to shake her not inconsiderable boobs wildly in Trevor’s general direction. He was transfixed. His ears charged with blood sufficient to keep them fiery for days to come. He took a big gulp of his fourth gin and tonic — this one a double, though he didn’t know it (it had been Eddie’s round) — and looked again at Daeng, who was squirming back into her bikini top. She stuffed a last loose boob back under cover and then stopped dancing for a moment; probably disconcerted at her own enthusiasm, she turned to wai the shrine as if to say “Sorry; got carried away.”
Trevor’s whole face was almost red enough to match his ears, now, and this made the blond growth on his lip stand out so you would probably think he had a moustache.
“Leary, are you seriously telling me I should take up with someone like that? Someone who makes her living dancing almost naked? And who probably sleeps with the customers into the bargain?”
“What? Do you think Daeng puts out?” Eddie looked at Leary with sudden surmise.
Leary nodded. “Hear tell,” he said.
“I can see it, the first time I take her home to meet the folks,” Trevor went on. “We’ ve got my old Auntie Flo and the vicar and his wife, and there’s an uncomfortable pause in the conversation. Just to put everyone at their ease, then, she pulls out her... her bosom and shakes it all over the place, grinning like a loon the whole while. Bloody hell. Just what I need.”
Trevor’s language was getting a trifle coarse, by some standards. Altogether, I thought, he seemed a good deal looser than usual. Now he was staring at another girl, a comely lass who at that moment was stepping into her dance costume; she hiked the G-string up under her skirt and then dropped the skirt. Trevor seemed deep in thought
“Crunch,” roared Leary, intruding on Trevor’s reverie and shaking his head sorrowfully. “Crunch, did I say you should marry this lady? Did I, now? No, I did gosh-darned not. What I said was you didn’t have to look too far to find a woman and this one, for example, seems to like you, who knows why. And what I said was:
’Don’t you marry any one of ‘em/ I don’t care if they’re gonna shake their darned bosoms at your momma and poppa or not.
“Look, my boy, you say you want a Thai wife, but you don’t really know what you want.”
“I know exactly what I want,” interrupted Trevor, riding high on three singles and a double shot of gin. “I want a companion and a help-mate. I want someone I can love and who can love me and live with me in Kuwait. Someone who can meet my friends and my family and make me proud...” He broke off to finish the rest of his drink in one long pull.
“Are you listening to this?” Leary asked me. “Eddie, you hear this boy? Gosh.”
The girl who had dropped her skirt was now climbing up to relieve Daeng, and Daeng was clearly thinking she’d better come over our way and check out this cute kid with the incandescent ears.
Trevor, meanwhile, was waving at the barmaid. “One more gin and tonic here, and drinks for my friends.”
Looking at Daeng as she swung her long legs off the bar, you couldn’t help but note the way her skin glistened, how her whole person glowed after her exertions. She was also smiling in the most fetching way.
“And bring a drink for the dancer, as well,” Trevor added, grinning like a loon.
Leary and I had business downtown, but Eddie said he’d stick around to see that Trevor didn’t get into any trouble. I guess that’s why I saw him have Ying, the barmaid, slip another gin into Trevor’s glass when he wasn’t looking. He probably figured it was safest to keep the lad sedated.
Next morning, or so Eddie was to tell me some days later, Trevor got to try yet another novel experience — a force-10 hangover, or thereabouts, plus some shaky recollections of all manner of indiscretions and conduct unbecoming a traffic e
ngineer.
He apparently didn’t remember exactly where or when he had parted ways with the very agreeable Daeng, but he seemed to recall her last words had been: “Tomollow, flee!” Whether this had been promise or admonition, he wasn’t quite sure, now that he thought about it. Whichever — in the outcome he had evidently fled, for Daeng was nowhere to be seen.
Trevor had made it to one of his interviews, but he’d quickly realized that he would have to cancel yet a few more days of the program. He’d returned to the Cheri-Tone and the tender mercies of Meow.
Lek was still fond of him, as well, despite the condition he was in, but she had her hands full making life miserable for Eddie. No matter he tried to say he was also in bad shape, there was a leak in the shower room on the third floor which demanded immediate attention, and he had to speak to a neighbor who was complaining that the birds had called his visiting uncle a hia, a giant lizard, which I guess is just about the worst thing you can call a Thai. Trust Nixon.
“Meanwhile,” Eddie told me, “poor Trev is lying abed with fans blowing from all directions, his moustache limp with fatigue, smiling bravely as Meow fills him with life-giving substances and a lot of guff about how he still looks like a young boy and how come? because old Eddie is the spitting image of a moulderin’ old crock of manure, more decrepit, even, than he usually looks.”
I came over for breakfast a week after all this transpired, and Eddie was still running just behind Nixon and possibly neck-and-neck with a giant lizard in the Cheri-Tone popularity stakes.
Trevor was still there, and he’d canceled another week of interviews.
As I waited for Eddie to cook the ham and eggs (Lek was busy), I got to listen to Trevor drill Meow in the correct pronunciation of ‘omelet’.
He did look pretty young, I thought, as I watched his careful enunciation of the various requisite vowels and consonants. Prince Charlie himself couldn’t have done any better. Then I realized why he appeared so youthful — he’d shaved his moustache again, and you get no prize for guessing who was responsible this time. She was also watching his careful enunciation, though with a good deal more interest and affection than I felt.
“Omer-ette,” she said.
I exchanged a glance with Nixon; he merely cocked his head and fixed the young couple with a nasty gaze. “Flee!” I almost heard him shriek, but of course it was just my imagination.
LOOKING FOR MISS GOODBAR
I was waiting to meet Eddie. He was on a mission, he had said, and he needed my help. Could I be at this bar called Lots O’ Hots around six o’clock?
If he wanted to make sure I started the night in a great mood, then he really knew how to pick a rendez-vous. There were two customers in the place — myself and one other guy who sat at the end of the bar with a beer in front of him. He didn’t have any arms, and the cashier would lift his beer to his mouth for him every once in a while. This lady wasn’t a bad-looking thirty-nine years old or so, though she seemed pretty tired and she didn’ t have a lot of teeth. There was another woman behind the bar, and she had a big greasy bag of fried grasshoppers. She’d offered me one when I first sat down, but I said no thanks. She and the cashier were crunching up these crispy morsels, occasionally popping one into the guy with no arms, who would do an imitation of a hungry baby bird whenever he needed another. He had a grasshopper leg stuck to his upper lip. I stood drinks for the house — for all four of us — and tried to find something to smile about.
Eddie finally showed up and he explained how he had wanted to meet in a quiet place with no hassle so we could talk.
“This joint is quiet, Eddie; I’ll give you that,” I said. “In fact, I’ve known cemeteries that would’ve seemed pretty rowdy by comparison.”
Eddie assured me we’d soon move on to more festive venues. He ordered two more beers, and proceeded to outline the problem. It seemed a mutual acquaintance of ours named Ronald from Riyadh, a regular traveler to Bangkok, had returned to the Sandbox last time with an unpleasant souvenir of his vacation. As far as he could see, he had written to tell Eddie, there had been only one possible source of this memento, and that source’s name was Ann who was a dancer at Pogo’s Gogo Bar. Now, Ronald was quite fond of this particular exponent of the hoofer’s art, and not a little surprised that she would do such a thing to him. He had to assume it had been inadvertent, and he wanted to warn her, as discreetly as possible, that she was not entirely dissimilar to Typhoid Mary in some respects, these respects being ones that should be spoken of, if at all, in hushed tones and far away from the public ear and the idle tongues of gossips.
“So Ronald wants me to talk to Ann,” said Eddie, “and break the news as gendy as I can, suggesting she see a doctor.”
“Why didn’t he just write her a letter?” I inquired.
“He said he didn’t want to embarrass her. He only had her address at the bar, and you know how that would’ ve gone. Anyway, he’s not sure his Ann can read English, and one of her colleagues would quite possibly have read it out for all to hear.”
“And why do you need me?
“I went down to Pogo’s the other night, and found it closed and shuttered. I asked around a bit, but no one I talked to knew this Ann. I’ve never seen her, and only know her from Ronald’s description, which is that she has legs like a racehorse. This is by no means enough to pick her out of your average gang of gogo girls.
“Then I remembered you’d gone on that boat-ride to Ayutthaya with them, and you’d be able to recognize her. That’s what I’d like us to do tonight — it’s not impossible she’s shifted to one of the other joints along here, and it might not be too hard to find her.”
Any excuse for a pub-crawl, as far as Eddie was concerned. We finished our drinks, said so long to the merry crowd at Lots O’ Hots, and hit the street
The strip was lined on both sides with little bars. Girls spilled out onto the pavements, working at a carnival atmosphere which failed to disguise a sense of quiet desperation and the fact the girls outnumbered customers by a ratio of four to one. A lot more places had closed since last I’d been there. For every three or four live establishments, there were two or three steel-shuttered blank fronts offering mute testimony to hard times, and it reminded me of the gap-toothed smile the cashier at the Lots O’ Hots had flashed when a customer appeared on the threshold.
Reasoning that Ann would’ ve gravitated to one of the more successful places, and choosing one that wasn’t too far from where Pogo’s had used to be, we made our way through the flashing lights, pounding music, and very friendly hostesses which swarmed outside the doorway.
There was lots of light and sound and motion, but if you took a hard look through all the razzmatazz, you could see the only patrons were two tourists in a booth, and four young Thai soldiers in camouflage outfits sitting at the bar. Nobody was too happy with the latter gendemen, either, mostly because they’d brought their own bottle of Mekhong in with them.
I didn’t see anyone that could have passed for our missing person, but asked the barmaid if she knew anything about an’ Ann’ from Pogo’s. She said she didn’t, but she did know that the cashier from Pogo’s now worked at a place called Fancy That Maybe she could help us.
Eddie bought the lady a drink, and we set off in search of ‘Mu’, formerly of Pogo’s Gogo Bar.
Mu, who was cashier at Fancy That, did indeed know Ann; she also knew where Ann worked, and she told us Ann had been quite worried Ronald from Riyadh wouldn’t know how to get in touch with her. In fact, just two days before Mu had ghost-written a letter to Ronald for Ann — a 50 baht special two-page job, complete with personalized references to good times gone by and hopes of more to come.
She was working on a missive for someone else right at that moment. From where I stood I could read the salutation; it said ‘To Walter My Big Water Buffalo, With Love’.
Mu told us we could find Ronald’s penfriend a little farther down the road and across the way, at a quiet restaurant-bar called Skipjacks.
Eddie bought Mu a drink, and muttered something about how all this was going on expenses, and it was going to be Ronald’s shout in a big way whenever he returned to Bangkok.
As we were leaving, Mu called to us: “Hey, what’s another word for ‘generous’?” She was frowning thoughtfully and chewing on her pen.
“’Gullible’,” said Eddie. “G-U-L-L-I-B-L-E. Or ‘softheaded’. Either one.”
At Skipjacks Ann spotted me before I saw her, and she came right over to join us at our table. Not a bad joint, this establishment featured hand-lettered signs advertising greasy-spoon-style farang food and waitresses dolled up in frilly dresses that almost covered their knees. They all had legs like racehorses. There were several customers sitting about the place drinking beer and joshing with the girls. Nice soft music, and lots of air-conditioning. Quite the little oasis — a quiet retreat from the hustle and hassle out on the street. I ordered a hot roast beef sandwich, something I hadn’t had in years. Lots of thick gravy, and french fries on the side.
I’d introduced Ann and Eddie, and they were having a nice chat about Ronald. Eddie finally got around to mentioning he had a message from that very individual.
“He didn’t write me” said Ann with a pretty pout.
“Well, he wanted this news to be kind of private, you see... Ah, he wanted to tell you he’s... urn... sick.”
“Sick? Oh, my poor Ronald from Riyadh. What’s wrong?”
Skipjacks was fairly quiet anyway, but just at this moment one of those strange hushes fell over the place; everyone sort of paused to reflect on life’s rich pageant all at the same time. Right in the middle of this hush, Eddie said: “He’s sick. You know—sick” And he waggled his eyebrows meaningfully. The very soul of discretion, he elaborated further by flicking the most fleeting of glances towards his lap.
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