Private Dancer

by Stephen Leather

  I told him what the private detective had discovered. ‘Bloody hell, mate,’ he said. ‘You must be shattered.’

  I said I was okay, that I'd half expected that she had someone else, then I told him about the birthday party. He pissed himself laughing and said that he couldn't wait to tell Big Ron and the boys. To be honest, it sounded as if he was laughing at me, not with me, like he didn't understand that it had all been a game and that I'd won it.

  BRUCE

  To be honest, I wasn't surprised that Joy had a husband. Why should she give up everything for him? Pete's always been an optimist, he's the sort of guy who goes to a greyhound racing track and asks if he can bet on the rabbit, you know? Joy's a bargirl, he should have known what to expect. And it's not as if he was as pure as the driven snow. He'd paid bar fine for dozens of girls, why should he expect her to be faithful to him? Okay, I guess it was a bit much for her to have an actual husband, but it's not as if Pete had ever asked her to live with him. He took her back to his hotel, sure, but he never really treated her like a girlfriend, never mind a wife.

  I kept telling him that if he really loved her, if he really wanted to have her in his life, then he should just offer to make an honest woman of her. Tell her that she could live with him, spend twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with her. He'd soon have found out whether or not she really loved him. This business of paying her to live in Surin with her father never made any sense to me. He never gave her the chance to show if she was serious about him. These people, they have nothing, they're poorer than the poorest families back in the UK. Of course Joy is going to hold on to someone who offers her any form of security, and if she can't get that from Pete then I can understand why she'd latch on to a Thai man. She had no way of knowing if Pete would really come back to Thailand, or if he'd keep on supporting her. She knew he'd been screwing around, too. The girls talk, they always do. How did he think Joy would feel, knowing that he'd bar fined another girl? Probably the same as Pete felt when he discovered that Joy had a husband.

  And I thought the business of the party was really petty. It was a nasty thing to do. I mean, she's hardly got any money, and he makes her spend it on a party and a deposit for a pick-up truck. I know he was hurt, but he should just have walked away. That's what I would have done, anyway. Just walked away and never spoken to her again. I think that by going through with that whole revenge thing, he was lowering himself to their level. And I think he's underestimating their capacity for revenge. If he made her look foolish in front of her family and friends, she's going to hate him for ever. And she'll get her own back. We'll see. I hope I'm wrong.

  SARAVOOT

  I don't understand what it is with farangs. They all seem to go crazy when they come to Thailand. It's as if they hand in their common sense when they get off the plane. I was very impressed with Bruce when I met him in Newcastle. He was well groomed, always immaculately turned out, and his factory was the same. He was a hard worker, in at eight, often putting in a twelve hour day. I used to call him from Bangkok and it seemed that he was always in the office. I used to joke about him not having a home to go to.

  I spent many hours in Bruce's company. I liked him. He knew everything there was to know about the handbag business, and he took pride in his factory and workforce. When I raised the possibility of working with me in Thailand, at first he was reluctant. I got the feeling that he hadn't travelled much and I suggested he come over for a week's holiday, at my expense, so that he could see for himself what Thailand was like. I showed Bruce around the factory and he immediately came up with ways that we could improve our productivity. I offered him a position as my factory manager at a salary half as much again as he was getting in Newcastle. He accepted and six weeks later he flew over to Thailand.

  I rented a house for him, a four-bedroomed mansion on the outskirts of Bangkok. It was on a private estate with its own security guards and a communal swimming pool. Cost me almost a hundred thousand baht every month, but I wanted him to be comfortable. The house had everything: cable TV, video recorder, stereo, a fully equipped kitchen, top-of-the-range Italian furniture. It was beautiful. And I arranged for one of my maids, Lek, to go in every day.

  The first few weeks were fine. Bruce spent most of his time meeting the staff and getting a feel for the business. But then he started dressing down. First his suit jacket went. Then his tie. Then he started coming to work in jeans and polo shirt. I mentioned it a couple of times, but he didn't pay any attention. He didn't seem to understand that the suit and tie commanded respect. He was a farang, he was a manager, and it was important to keep standards high. I don't always wear a suit, in fact I often go into work dressed casually, but always designer clothes. Versace shirts. Armani pants. Bally loafers. He was wearing counterfeit Lacoste shirts that he'd bought in Patpong. He seemed to take great pleasure in telling me how little he'd paid for them. Less than a hundred baht.

  Then he started coming in late. I got the feeling that he was staying out in the bars, drinking. He'd complain of headaches and sit in his office, drinking black coffee and telling his secretary not to put calls through to him. That's no way to run a business. Not my business, anyway. And girls began telephoning the office wanting to speak to him. One in particular, a girl called Troy. Several of the office girls complained to the office manager about the girl. She was impolite, demanding to speak to Bruce, saying that he was a friend.

  The crunch came when Lek went into the house and discovered that Troy had moved in. Troy apparently told Lek that she was Bruce's wife. Lek was horrified. Bruce didn't seem to appreciate that no self-respecting Thai woman would want anything to do with a bargirl. Lek walked straight out of the house and refused to go back. And if that wasn't enough, I caught him showing the girl around the factory. It seems Bruce had some idea of hiring her to work in the office. I couldn't believe how stupid he was being. I'd have had a revolt on my hands. She was a bargirl. A prostitute. A coarse, ugly, impolite girl, young enough to be his daughter. She was wearing tight jeans, high heels and a T-shirt that showed off her midriff - everything about her screamed prostitute. And he had the audacity to introduce her to me. She waied me and averted her eyes. She knew how annoyed I was but Bruce didn't notice. He had to go. He'd lost everyone's respect. He'd become a joke. I had to let him go.

  I wasn't looking forward to searching for a replacement. It's so difficult to find decent farangs. Most want to come to Thailand for the wrong reasons. They don't want to come to work, they want to sleep with young girls. If I could, I'd prefer not to have any farangs working for me. Thai managers work hard and always consider how their behaviour affects the company, they have a loyalty that you can depend on. Farangs are lazy and untrustworthy. That's my experience, anyway, and I don't think I've been especially unlucky. Most of my friends who run companies tell me that they've had bad experiences, too. When farangs first arrive in Thailand they work hard, but then they become lazy and start spending all their evenings in the bars. Then they get involved with bargirls and forget why they came to the country in the first place. It's as if all they can think about is sex. If you want to do business in Europe or America, you have to have some farangs working for you because Westerners always seem to feel happier if they can deal with their own people. But sometimes I wonder if they're worth the trouble.

  PETE

  As soon as I'd wrapped up the London guide, I flew back to Thailand. Bruce had faxed me the address of his apartment but he'd have been better sending me a map because the taxi driver drove past the correct road half a dozen times before we found it. It was a brand new building and by the look of it most of the apartments were empty. Bangkok was in the middle of a property slump and rather than sell at a loss or drop their rents, most Thai landlords preferred to leave their properties empty.

  The flat was on the twelfth floor. I knocked on the door and to my surprise it was opened by Troy. Bruce was lying on the sofa but he jumped up when I walked in. He'd shaved off his beard since I last
saw him. He must have seen me looking at his chin because he grinned and rubbed it. ‘Troy's idea,’ he said. ‘She reckons it makes me look younger. What do you think?’

  I thought he looked better with the beard but I didn't say so, I just said, yeah, it took years off him. He helped me carry my cases into the bedroom.

  It was a huge flat, more than two hundred square metres, and the sitting room was about the size of a basketball court. There were three bedrooms. Bruce had taken the master bedroom but mine was big with its own bathroom. ‘That's Troy's room,’ said Bruce, nodding at the room opposite his.

  ‘How long's she staying here?’ I asked.

  ‘I figured we'd need a maid,’ he said. ‘What with all our laundry and everything. I said we'd give her three thousand baht a month.’

  ‘Plus her rent, right? She's living rent free, isn't she?’

  He looked at me without saying anything for a few seconds. ‘Is that a problem?’

  I wanted to say that yes, it was a problem. I wasn't sure that I wanted to share the apartment with a hooker. She'd be answering the phone, she'd be in and out of my room, she'd be there most of the day when I was working. Bruce should have told me he'd planned to move her in before he offered to share with me. It was one thing for two guys to share an apartment, it was something quite different for two guys and a hooker, albeit one disguised as a maid. ‘No, it's not a problem,’ he said. ‘I just wish I'd known, that's all.’

  ‘She works hard,’ he said. ‘Wait till you see what she does with your shirts.’

  Troy was in the sitting room, watching a Thai variety show. She was wearing hot pants and a tight white T-shirt that left nothing to imagination. I knew she was twenty-one but she looked much younger.

  It was about ten o'clock in the morning and Bruce suggested we go down to Fatso's Bar for breakfast. I asked him if he didn't have to go to work but he just shrugged and said he'd call in sick.

  In the taxi he asked me if I'd been in touch with Joy. I told him I'd no idea where she was.

  ‘Are you going to look her up now that you're back?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I'll give it a week,’ he said. ‘You'll be back with her.’

  BIG RON

  Was I surprised that Joy had a husband? Was I fuck. It's her instinct to lie, to get as much from a farang as she can. It's like the story of the scorpion and the frog. You heard that one? There's this frog sitting down at the edge of a stream. A scorpion comes up and asks the frog if he'll carry the scorpion across the stream. Scorpions can't swim, you see. Now, the frog's not stupid. ‘If I let you on my back, you'll sting me,’ he says.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ asks the scorpion. ‘I want to get across the stream. If I sting you, you'll die and I'll drown.’

  The frog thinks about it and then says okay. So the scorpion climbs on the frog's back and the frog starts to swim across. As they reach the midway point, the scorpion stings the frog. With its dying breath, the frog says to the scorpion, ‘Why did you do that? Now we'll both die.’

  As he disappears under the water, the scorpion shrugs and says, ‘Instinct, I guess.’

  It wouldn't matter how much Pete loved Joy, how much he gave her. It wouldn't matter if he meant to marry her and take her away from the life that had pushed her into prostitution, no matter what he did or what he promised, she'd follow her instinct.

  It's like we say here. You can take the girl out of the bar, but you can't take the bar out of the girl.

  PETE

  I left it a week before going to Nana Plaza. I'd been in Fatso's, but Rick and Jimmy were playing silly buggers, Big Glassing anyone who went to the toilet. Bruce was doing his old trick of getting the girls to pour his away when no one was looking, but I couldn't be bothered playing that game.

  I sat outside and had a gin and tonic. It tasted as foul as ever. It came out of a Beefeater bottle but whatever it was, it didn't even taste like gin. It was always a shock to the system because Big Ron served large measures of the real stuff, but once you stepped inside the Plaza you had no idea what you were drinking. Most of the guys stuck to bottled beer in the Plaza, because at least a Heineken was a Heineken.

  One of the dancers came out and sat down next to me. It was Wan, the girl who used to do the lesbian show with Joy. I bought her a cola and she clinked glasses with me. I asked her if she'd seen Joy but she shook her head. ‘She go back Surin,’ she said. ‘Pete, why you not go party?’

  I told her that I knew Joy had a husband and that she'd lied to me. Wan looked at me with wide eyes and denied that Joy was married. I wouldn't have expected her to say anything else. Joy was her friend and I was an outsider.

  I don't know why, but I told Wan the whole story. About the private detective, the photograph, and how I wanted to get my revenge. She sat and listened, sometimes smiling, sometimes shaking her head sadly. I asked her what she thought.

  She shrugged. ‘I don't know,’ she said in a sing-song voice.

  I asked her if she thought Joy loved me. A stupid question, and I hated myself for asking it.

  Wan looked at me earnestly. ‘Joy love you too much, Pete. She have you only one.’

  JIMMY

  We all thought what Pete did was a hoot. The farang bites back. But I think he made a big mistake because it meant a serious loss of face for Sunan and Joy, and I don't think Pete appreciated what that means. Thais will wait years for revenge if they have to, but they never forget an insult.

  They can be very creative when it comes to getting their own back, too. The big thing here with unfaithful husbands, is for the wives to get a bit handy with the old kitchen knife. The unkindest cut of all. But they don't do it in anger, they wait, they wait until the husband thinks he's gotten away with it, then slash! Blood on the sheets and the guy has to use a pair of tweezers to piss. It happens so often in Bangkok that the hospitals here have got really proficient at sewing dicks back on. Micro-surgery, they call it, they reconnect all the vessels and nerves and stuff and apart from a ridge of scar tissue around the base of the thing it's as good as new. The doctors are now so good that, providing the dick is wrapped up in a pack of frozen peas or suchlike, there is more than ninety per cent chance of repairing the damage.

  Now, once the wives realised that the doctors could sew the dick back on, they started to dispose of the organs. Up country, they throw it to the ducks. The birds fight like fuck for them, apparently, must be a delicacy. Or maybe there's a revenge element, too, a chance for the ducks to eat humans for a change. Anyway, there aren't too many ducks in Bangkok, so the wives there started throwing them in the street. If a truck rolls over it, a cut off dick can be squashed flat until it's the size of a saucer. No bloody use to anyone, that. Or there's another variation - putting it in the blender. Thirty seconds at high speed and there isn't much left. Prick puree.

  There was a great one in the Bangkok Post a while back. A woman in Khorat had found that her husband had a second wife. That's what they call mistresses here, mia noy, second wife. They're not married or anything, and it's usually only a temporary thing, but the whole Thai marriage thing is a mystery anyway. So this woman waits for a couple of months until her husband has a dose of the 'flu, and she gives him a couple of tablets before he goes to bed, telling him that they're for his headache. Well, they're not, they're sleeping tablets, and he wakes up with a pain in his groin and blood all over the place. He goes apeshit, searching high and low for the bit she'd cut off, but she just keeps screaming at him that it serves him right. He checks the fridge, the back yard, the toilet, but there's no sign of it. He begs her to tell him what she did with it. She goes out into the garden and points up at the sky. Seems she'd tied it to a helium-filled balloon and let it go. Brilliant, huh? Guy's still with his wife, you know. Didn't press charges. I guess he realised that with a one-inch dick, he's not going to be able to get himself another woman. She probably makes him satisfy her with his tongue. See, that's what I mean about the Thais and revenge. They have a knack for it.
Pete better watch his step.

  PETE

  I'd been back in Thailand almost a month before I saw Joy again. At first I didn't recognise her - she was wearing a big white T-shirt and black flared jeans that I hadn't seen before and she'd cut her hair so that it now reached to just below her shoulders. She'd dyed the front, too, red streaks that she'd tucked behind her ears. She was with Sunan and they got out of a taxi and walked into the Plaza together. I was sitting outside Zombie, watching a rugby match on one of the overhead televisions. Can't remember who was playing, and to be honest I wasn't even concentrating on the game, I was thinking about Joy. Everything about Nana Plaza reminded me about Joy. The girls, the music, the noise, the smells. That's what was so funny, really, I was thinking about Joy but when I saw her I looked right through her. It was only when I saw her face harden that I realised it was her. It was the hair, I guess, she looked totally different with shorter hair.

  My heart sort of turned over and I smiled. She smiled then, as if she'd been waiting to see how I'd react before she betrayed any emotion. Sunan said something to Joy, then walked through the curtain into Zombie. Joy slipped on to the stool next to me. She was carrying her red purse and she let me take it off her. She didn't say a word, just kept looking at me and smiling. I opened the purse. The photograph was there. The photograph of the two of us sitting in the bar, taken more than a year ago. I was stunned. It was the last thing I'd expected. There was no way she could have known that I'd been in Nana Plaza, no way of knowing she was going to see me, so why the hell was she carrying my photograph.

  ‘So, how are you?’ she asked, the first thing she'd said since seeing me. Her first words and she was asking how I was. Again, it was the last thing I expected. I thought maybe she'd be angry, bitter, resentful maybe, but it was as if we'd never been apart. She sat next to me, her hand in my lap, smiling as if I were the most precious thing in her life.