Bangkok Knights

by Collin Piprell

  I saw Meow, Lek’s cute sister, appear in the doorway for a moment, and I called, “Meow; how’s it going, you sweet thing, you?”

  Too late, I noticed she wasn’t in the mood for badinage. Firing a hot look at Eddie, she uttered a choked sob, and retreated back into the guesthouse.

  “This is a real nest of peace and harmony you’ve got on your hands, here, Eddie. What gives?”

  “It all started with yesterday’s champagne breakfast.”

  “Champagne breakfast? Don’t tell me...”

  That’s right; Trevor’s back in town.”

  Trevor Perry, Traffic Engineer and eligible young bachelor extraordinaire, originally hailing from Norwich, England, currently resident in Kuwait where, as Trevor would be the first to tell you, eligible young bachelors can spend only so much time, if they are interested in staying sane and healthy.

  “You’ve got to get married, if you want to spend more than eighteen months in Kuwait.” Or so he had told us that first time he’d visited Thailand. “It’s not normal. It’s not healthy. Not having any women around. Not available ones, I mean.”

  He arrived with a print-out detailing fifty-five dates he and his computer had made by correspondence. These ‘interviews’were to be conducted during a six-week period, both here and in Manila.

  Despite his tender years, anyone could see Trevor Perry was a man of native wit already honed by a rich life experience. It was there in his far-seeing eyes and in his big red ears, fully arrayed and ever alert to perils, both those his mother told him about as well as novel opportunities for disaster too. You could see it in the way he stroked at his upper lip, where you might also notice there grew a blonde kind-of moustache. It was evident in the way he outlined with modest authority his computerized plan to achieve maximum marital bliss and a long and lucrative career in Kuwait all with optimum efficiency and dispatch.

  Never mind he’d been delivered by taxi to the Cheri-Tone Guesthouse instead of the Sheraton Hotel. These things happen. And it could happen to anyone, he ‘d knocked himself out cold while opening that first bottle of champagne to celebrate his arrival in the land of plenty. In his weakened condition, he’d then misplaced his computer printout. Shortly thereafter, he got involved with a born-again virgin named Legs who used to be the star dancer at Shaky Jake’s, back in the olden days. He’d had his moustache removed, and he’d missed his trip to Manila altogether. Finally, he’d returned to Kuwait a single man still, but, he said, all the wiser for his recent experiences.

  He came back to Thailand several months later.

  “You’ve got to get married, if you want to live longer than two years in Kuwait. Or else it starts to do things to your mind.”

  So far as we could see, though, Trevor’s mind was just about as good as it had always been. He had a new growth on his upper lip and another, somewhat abbreviated computer printout of dates with him, but he never got to meet more than a couple of candidates. No matter he was a veteran of that earlier affair with Legs, he managed to get waylaid, mislaid, and just plain laid, while he lost his moustache yet again. He spent some time with an interesting lady who’d learned her English from “G.I., G.I.; many G.I., many year ago.” Then he’d teamed up with a talented dancer named Daeng who’d finally told him “Tomollow,/flee!” which in a fit of good sense he had in fact done. Red, that is.

  ”No more bargirls,” Trevor had advised us, stroking sagely at the place where his supposed moustache had been.

  “And now he’s back to mount a third campaign?” I said.

  “No kidding,” replied Eddie. “Yesterday we had what has become the traditional champagne breakfast to celebrate his arrival.”

  Trevor had decided to trim his sails this time, and he intended to interview a mere half-dozen ladies, prime candidates all. He’d decided to scratch Manila altogether, and concentrate his energies here. “’It’s a mistake to overextend yourself,’ he informed us, and he got no argument,” Eddie told me.

  Lek and Meow had been quick to offer him their patio as a kind of office. They told him it’d be better that way, because then they could keep an eye on proceedings, giving him the benefit of their familiarity with Thai culture not to mention the insights of their feminine intuition. Not only that, but they could keep his strength up with that fantastic noodle dish Meow makes — he remembered, the one he just couldn’t get enough of?

  “It doesn’t take your feminine intuition to guess who they were really planning to keep their eyes on,” Eddie said. “I noticed Meow was getting pretty silly even before she’d had a taste of the bubbly. Something about old Trev’s mere presence in Bangkok seems to give her problems with hormonal balance and everything. Trevor, mind you, doesn’t seem to notice a thing, in all his youthful wisdom.”

  I reckoned Trevor’s sensitivity probably came from all the gazing sternly off into the distance he liked to do.

  “Before long,” Eddie continued, “the champagne was gone, and everybody was in a good mood. In fact, I was in such a good mood I told Trevor to come with me to Boon Doc’s and say hello to Leary for old time’s sake.

  “Everybody was happy to see Trevor, especially Dinky Toy. Next thing you knew she had Trevor in something that looked a lot like a half-nelson, and I guess she was whispering sweet subversions in his ear, because one minute I was talking to Leary, and the next I looked around for Trevor and he was gone.

  “That just about sobered me right up. Lek and Meow were already kind of unhappy I’d taken Trevor out to a bar in the first place, what with him only twenty-four years old and so clean and polite and everything. And now I’d misplaced the young scallywag. No problem, I thought — all I have to do now is misplace myself, probably permanently. Maybe go down to Singapore and ship out as an able-bodied seaman. But what I really did was stay at Boon Doc’ s a while and drink beer. And I waited for Trevor to come back. Big Toy and the other girls said they’d seen Dinky Toy and Trevor leave together, but they had no idea where they’d gone.

  “I even phoned the Cheri-Tone to see if he’d wound up back there. Lek told me he hadn’t, but he’d better, and soon, if I knew what was good for me. Well, he hasn’t shown up, and she was right, it hasn’t been good for me.”

  “So he’s with Dinky Toy!” I said. “But that’s not what Trevor says he wants. She’s older. And somewhat more experienced, you could say.”

  “That’s right,” Eddie replied. “And that’s not even to talk about Leary’s Law.”

  In the course of Trevor’s quest for the helpmate his lifeplan demanded, and upon the advice of the eponymous Leary himself, he had adopted Leary’s Law as a maxim. Not the prime law itself, actually, which is quite simply * Never get married’, but rather its chief proviso: ‘Never get married; but if you do, make sure she’s an orphan.’

  “Dinky Toy’s got more brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins than she has snapshots of men who got away,” Eddie continued, somewhat unkindly, “and that’s more than just a few.”

  “So what’s Trevor doing with her, then?”

  “Are you kidding? Leary’s Law, computerized shopping lists, carefully selected criteria of the ideal wife — this is all whistling in the wind. You take one nice single young man of Trevor’s age and background, not to mention wisdom; you take a guy like that and you get him engineering traffic in Kuwait for — what is it now ? — two and a half years; you bring him to Bangkok and you feed him champagne for breakfast and then a double gin and tonic for lunch; you let Dinky Toy catch wind of all this and let her get within range when she’s had a good sleep and she’s wearing her new dress...”

  “I see what you mean,” I conceded. “But now it seems Meow is also dead keen on this specimen, though Trevor hasn’t noticed this state of affairs as yet. Why don’t you do your little sister-in-law a favor and set him straight? She isn’t exactly an orphan, but the family’ s not that big. And there’s always you to take some of the heat off.”

  “Don’ t think I haven’ t thought of that, not
to mention the fact that he’d also take a bit of the heat off of me — did I tell you Lek’s uncle is going in for another hernia operation? And Pow, her youngest brother, is starting at Chiangmai University next term.

  “But it’s my feeling you don’t want to meddle with stuff like that, not when it’s in the family. Anyway, I wouldn’t like to think all Trevor’s work on that computer has been for nothing. It’s going to be interesting to see what he comes up with, don’t you think?”

  Well, it looked like what he’d come up with was Dinky Toy, from what Eddie had told me. And if that was the case, then what was really going to be interesting was what Lek was going to come up with for Eddie. He’d better only hope there were lots of dogs around at the time to take the heat off. When the kicking started, I meant

  “Eddie?” Lek’s voice issued forth from the house like a whiff of tear gas.

  “Listen,” said Eddie. “I’ve got a bit of painting to do in the kitchen, put in some tiles and stuff. Why don’t you come back tomorrow? Things might be more pleasant by then. Say around 11:00? I’ll make pancakes.”

  The brunch was excellent, with just a soupcon of Singha beer adding this je ne sais quoi to the pancake batter, and the remainder of a large bottle doing the same for Eddie. He offered to open a second bottle to help the sausages down, but I passed in favor of coffee.

  Meow poured the coffee. She wasn’t dressed in her usual tatty old sarong and flip-flops; she was decked out in a nice short skirt and what looked like a brand-new pearl-gray silk blouse. And I’d never seen her in high heels before. She didn’t dress like that when I came around. Of course I wasn’t twenty-four years old and blonde, with an almost moustache and money in the bank. Not to mention an accent just like Prince Charlie’s, if only Prince Charlie came from Norwich.

  “He is also clean and polite,” Eddie reminded me.

  Trevor was back, though just where he ‘d been and what he’ d done he wasn’t saying.

  “I would’ve thought Trevor would want something more romantic than your patio, here, for these assignations,” I told Eddie. “More private, at least.”

  “Naw, not for the preliminaries. It’s better to do it this way, he says; he can stay more objective, keep his wits about him.”

  Without being unkind, you could suggest Trevor needed any help he could get in keeping his wits about him, given his record on the courtship front, at least.

  But his ears had flamed fiercely and he’d gazed sternly into the distance as he resolved that the very next champagne breakfast would in fact be his engagement party. It only remained to find the lucky lady who would be the guest of honor.

  Right at that moment he was engaged in earnest conversation with a Thai woman of indeterminate age but very determinate ambition, judging by the intensity of her regard for Trevor. She only took her eyes off him when she had to bat them or else roll them about in what she probably thought was an alluring manner. Trevor, meanwhile, kept asking questions and writing things down in a legal pad on the table in front of him. Just looking at him, you could see he was all business, stroking at his upper lip with brisk concentration as he listened to the lady’s responses, stabbing at his notepad to record same. It was all very impressive.

  “One sister, then? And no brothers. One sister?” Trevor was getting to the essentials.

  Lek, meanwhile, was busily watering all the plants around the patio, some of them twice or three times, in fact, never getting out of earshot of the proceedings. Meow had her attentions divided between the interview and the trick of simply staying upright on her fancy shoes.

  The only other people on the patio were two husky American women. They were sitting there decked out in the tattered uniforms of the Southeast-Asian backpack traveler; they also flew every sign of indignation at the scene they were witnessing. They evidently felt there was something outre about Trevor’s project. Judging by the loud and somewhat belligerent comments they were coming up with, anyhow.

  ”This is ugly. It’s degrading*”

  They had been going on a bit, rather loudly and quite evidently for the benefit of everyone present. It seems they’d gone to Patpong the night before, and had been thoroughly disgusted at the exploitation they’d witnessed, the sex shows, the young girls for sale. They’d seen it again and again, in show after show. And all these Western men, mostly middle-aged and overfed, buying love, pumping up their puny egos with First-World dollars and deutschesmarks and francs, penny-ante Diamond Jim Bradys cutting a swathe through the deprived women of the East. Emotional retards. Unable to cut it on equal terms with real women. Arrested adolescents with living, breathing playthings bought and paid for with peanuts, by any real standards. And so on; you get the drift. Spineless, weak-kneed apologies for real men who could only be comfortable with passive objects of their feeble lusts, willing slaves to their every command, downtrodden by centuries of oppression and poverty.

  Yeah; just ask Eddie, I thought.

  These ladies were welcome to their own views on things, of course, but they could’ve kept them to themselves a bit more. Maybe toned them down out of the strident range, anyway. After all, Eddie himself was married to a Thai, and Lek was no bargirl; she wasn’t even noticeably passive and oppressed. And Eddie was no social deviant. Or if he was, it was merely in little ways that only added to his charm, once you got to know him.

  But their extensive researches on Patpong Road had shown them every Thai woman in Bangkok was a whore and every Western male in their company an emotional moron, or so you’d have to believe, listening to this pair. And now they were down on Trevor.

  “Can you believe that? He’s actually in Bangkok shopping for a wife. Like you’d choose a piece of meat at the supermarket. It’s disgusting”

  At the same time here sprawled these farang traveling ladies, robust emissaries of the Right Way, even though they’d never had to be a single young man resident in Kuwait. Or a young woman with very few options, if ever she was to have hope of any security in this life, one of these options being to team up with a lonely young traffic engineer from Kuwait.

  ”There ought to be a law; look at that pig — he’s interviewing her. He’s actually interviewing a bunch of hookers, and he’s going to marry one of them!” These sentiments were delivered in tones just loud enough f or all of us to hear, only it didn’ t seem to register on Trevor; he was preoccupied.

  Lek and Meow were used to it — they had to be, running a guesthouse. But the average Thai woman would’ve been shocked and offended. Somebody who hadn’t seen that many farang up close might have been forgiven for thinking these two were prostitutes. Legs spread wide with no doubt liberated abandon, cigarettes waving about, braless bosoms shaking and heaving with indignation compounded by smoker’s cough. Voices brassy in opinionated celebration of the secure grip they had on the Way Things Should Be. No problem, back home; that’s the way it’s done these days, at least in some quarters. But in Thailand this behavior was the antithesis of everything people thought of as pleasing. So it was East was East and West was West once more, and everybody thought everybody else was a trollop.

  Meow was still tottering around having a great old time on her high heels. Then she sort of lost her balance for a minute, and before you knew it she was doing this tricky little sideways shuffle — something like that dance routine the vaudeville types used to call ‘Going to Chicago’, or maybe it was Detroit, I can’t remember. She didn’t make it to Chicago, anyway, because she ran right into the table where the American ladies were having breakfast and making critical noises about Trevor’s current enterprise. Now they made more critical noises about the hot coffee all over them, instead.

  “That kind is never happy without something to bitch about,” was Eddie’s opinion.

  But now the Western trollops were wet and unhappy, and they went upstairs to change. It was safe to say all of us remaining on the patio were not sorry to see them go, and Lek for one would’ ve poured hot coffee all over them herself if she’d thought
of it first, or so she said.

  Now we could get back to the business at hand, which was getting Trevor hitched to the woman of his dreams, whoever this might be. So far, in the poll Lek and Meow were running on the wifely candidates, two of them had been judged passable material as maids, perhaps, though never wives, while the other two you wouldn’t have wanted to trust with the silverware. And then of course there were the children and extended families and even husbands one or the other evidently had stashed away, probably wanting to surprise Trevor later, maybe in case he started to get bored right after the honeymoon.

  Lek and Meow had made sure he wasn’t taken in by first impressions. Candidate # 1, for example, had had a ring mark on her wedding finger. Or so Lek said, anyway; Trevor hadn’t noticed a thing. In any case, it certainly wasn’t unusual for a Western man to marry a Thai only to discover subsequently she was already married, and he was being viewed more or less as a belated dowry for the Thai husband. Candidate #3 had looked good for a length or two out of the starting gate. In fact Eddie had offered me two to one odds she’d at least get to go to dinner with Trevor. But it was not to be.

  “Feel her hands,” Lek advised Trevor at one point, when the lady in question went in to the toilet. “Like stroking a carp, just you see.”

  “Mai suay” Meow elaborated. “Not beautiful.”

  This was unfair. Number Three was a capable looking type — the sort of bird Gauguin would’ve painted, had he ever gotten to Thailand. Quite sweet, I thought. But the Gauguin had been dismissed as a washerwoman. Probably in a sleazy hotel, as well, though how Lek deduced this latter proposition she never did say. Meow pointed out she was dressed in the cheapest clothes from Pratunam Market, but I couldn’t see how this put her in a cheap hotel, since half the women in Bangkok were dressed the same way, and Meow was no fashion plate, herself, except maybe for today.