Private Dancer

by Stephen Leather

  But the thing was, the bastards on the committee hadn't told all the residents what they were doing. Dozens of household pets died. Cats and dogs. The committee had had leaflets printed but not everyone got one. It was a typical Thai cock-up. And afterwards, no one would apologise for what had happened. No one on the committee stood up and admitted that they'd done something wrong. It was the pet owners fault, they said, because they didn't keep their dogs inside.

  Now, how many of those rich bastards on the committee were Buddhists, huh? All of them, for sure. Every last one of them. But they have no qualms about getting someone else to put down poison to kill a few harmless dogs. Just like my girlfriend and her fresh crabs. So long as someone else does the killing, their aura or whatever isn't harmed and they can go on to the next life with a clean slate. Two faced, they are.

  From COOKING ACROSS SOUTH-EAST ASIA Edited by PETE RAYMOND

  STEAMED CRABMEAT, THAI-STYLE

  8 ounces cooked crab meat

  4 ounces minced pork

  1 egg

  2 cloves garlic

  8 coriander sprigs, finely chopped

  2 tablespoons fish sauce

  2 tablespoons soy sauce

  freshly ground black pepper

  1 red chilli, de-seeded and cut into strips

  fresh coriander leaves

  Pound the garlic and coriander sprigs to a paste using a mortar and pestle. Place in a bowl with the crab meat, pork, egg, fish sauce, soy sauce, and black pepper and mix well.

  Divide the mixture and place in four individual greased heatproof dishes or crab shells. Arrange chili strips on top and put in a steamer. Steam for about thirteen minutes or until the mixture is firm. Sprinkle coriander leaves on the top before serving.

  PETE

  I spent two weeks in Cambodia and hated every minute of it. I kept thinking about Joy, about what I'd done to her. I called Sunan's mobile phone but there was no answer. I called the phone box in Surin but the old woman who answered said Joy wasn't there. It wasn't that I wanted to save the relationship, I'd accepted the fact that it was one hundred per cent over, but I wanted to know that she was all right. She'd cut her wrists after the birthday party that never was and I hoped she hadn't done the same again. To be honest, I spent so much time worrying about Joy that I didn't get everything done that I should have done. My hotel bill was horrendous, too, what with all the calls to Thailand and everything, but the company would reimburse me. I was more worried about what Alistair would say when I told him that I'd have to go back to Phnom Penh.

  Bruce was lying on the sofa reading a book when I got back to the flat. He seemed to be spending less and less time in the office and I figured it wouldn't be too long before he got the push. I mean, what's the point of paying him an expat salary if he's going to spend most of his time in the flat or the bars? He put down the book and grinned at me. ‘Have I got a story for you,’ he said. ‘You are not going to believe this.’

  BRUCE

  It was one of life's great coincidences, the sort of thing that makes you think there is some sort of order to the universe. Practically a mystical experience, it was. I was sitting in this outdoor restaurant close to Soi Cowboy, waiting for a guy who was going to sell me a health insurance policy. He was late but that was no surprise because the traffic was really bad and he was driving. I never take the car out at night, I stick to motorcycle taxis. They're faster and cheaper, though you do take your life in your hands every time you climb on.

  Anyway, I was sitting at the bar wondering whether I should order food or not, when this Thai girl sits down next to me. I couldn't work out what her game was because she wasn't dressed like a hooker but she started up a conversation with me and regular Thai girls wouldn't dream of doing that. She was a bit overweight and her skin wasn't too good, but she spoke excellent English. She said she worked in a beauty parlour in a hotel in Silom Road and that her name was Tukkata. That's Thai for doll, she said.

  I bought her a drink - whisky and Coke she wanted, another sign that she wasn't a regular Thai girl because whisky and Coke is very much a bargirl's drink. I couldn't work her out because she was flirting but she never asked if I'd take her back with me. She said that a friend of hers had a problem and she wanted to ask my advice. I thought that maybe she was going to sting me for money, but that's not what happened at all.

  Seems that two months ago she'd met this American guy, Vernon, in the beauty parlour where she'd worked. He'd come in for a haircut, and as Tukkata cut his hair, he told her that he'd just married a Thai girl. A girl who'd been working in a go-go bar. He'd only met her ten days earlier, but he was sure that she was the love of his life. He'd gone back with her to her village, met her family, had a proper Thai wedding, and now he was planning to get her a visa and fly her over to San Diego, where he lived. Since then, this guy Vernon had flown back to the States. According to Tukkata, he was starting to have second thoughts about the girl. She was writing to him, but sometimes when he phoned her late at night she wasn't there. He wondered if she was working in the bar again. He sent her money every couple of weeks but she was always asking for more. Tukkata asked me what I thought. Well, what I thought was that it was yet another example of a stupid farang being ripped off by a bargirl, but I didn't say that. I just smiled and shrugged and said that it was difficult to say because I didn't know the girl.

  Yeah, she agreed. It was difficult. ‘I've spoken to Sunan, and Sunan says she loves Vernon, but I'm not sure if I believe her.’

  I nearly fell off my bloody barstool. I mean, how many girls can there be called Sunan? I asked her what bar she'd worked in and Tukkata said she wasn't sure of the name of the bar but that it was in Nana Plaza. I asked her if it was Zombie. Tukkata frowned and said yes, that sounded familiar. And did Sunan live in Surin? Her jaw dropped like I was a mind-reader or something. I couldn't believe it. Of all the bars in all the world, I have to sit next to a girl who knows a guy who married Joy's sister.

  Pete couldn't believe it, either. Tukkata had Vernon's phone number in San Diego and I gave it to Pete. ‘You've gotta call him,’ I said. ‘You two have just gotta talk.’

  VERNON

  Meeting Sunan was like a fairy story, it really was. I'd never been to Thailand but it seemed like a fascinating place. I don't know when I first thought about having a Thai wife, I guess it was some time after my Mom died. Mom always took real good care of Dad, even when he got sick with cancer. She nursed him and never stopped loving him, right up until the end. She worshipped the ground he walked on, did everything for him. Girls today just aren't the same, not American girls, anyway. They're too busy with their careers, with their lives. All they ever want to talk about is themselves, what they're doing, how they feel. I don't hold with all that stuff about keeping a wife barefoot and pregnant, but I want someone who loves me and wants to take care of me, someone who'll make me feel special.

  I joined one of those Asian dating clubs. Found an advertisement in a supermarket tabloid and sent off a cheque for fifty bucks. Back came a catalogue of photographs, passport photos really, of hundreds of girls. There was a paragraph describing each girl, how old she was, her measurements, her job, what she wanted out of life. Some of the girls were pretty enough, but I didn't see anyone that I was attracted to. At the back of the catalogue was an advertisement for a series of video cassettes about life in Thailand, and since I'd never been to the country I thought it might be a good idea to buy one. I sent off another cheque and a couple of weeks later it arrived.

  The first part was general touristy stuff, the temples, the river boats, the markets, but then there was a section on Bangkok's night life and that was when I saw her. She was one of four dancers interviewed, and as soon as I saw her, I knew that she was the girl that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. She was gorgeous with long, long legs and a great smile, and big brown eyes that seemed to be on the verge of tears.

  I called the director of the video and he told me that Sunan danced in a bar call
ed Zombie in Nana Plaza. I had three weeks vacation time and I took it at the end of the month, got a cheap flight to Bangkok and went, just like that.

  It was unreal. I walked into Nana Plaza and the bar was in the far corner. I sat outside and ordered a Coke. The outside bar was circular with half a dozen girls in the centre, serving drinks and talking to the customers. There was a curtain hanging across the door to the main bar. I could hear rock and roll music blaring out, the Rolling Stones, I think, and every now and again a girl in a bikini would come and peer around the curtain. I was so excited that I could hardly breathe. I'd had a Polaroid photograph taken from the video and showed it to one of the girls behind the bar. Yes, she knew it was Sunan, and yes, she was working that night.

  The girl went behind the curtain and five minutes later, Sunan was there, sitting next to me, every bit as beautiful as she'd been in the video. Her skin seemed a little darker and her hair was a bit longer, but it was her. She even had her name and a number on a little badge pinned to the wraparound skirt she'd put on over her bikini. I was so nervous, I remember my voice was trembling when I told her who I was and that I'd flown all the way from San Diego just to meet her. I said I wanted to take her for dinner, just to talk to her, to get to know her, and she explained about the bar fine system. The girls have to work all night unless someone pays their bar fine, about fifteen bucks. I paid it and we went out. I kept wanting to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn't dreaming.

  SUNAN

  It happens all the time. Some farang will say he wants to pay my bar fine so that we can go and eat or sit in a bar and talk. It's fine by me, though to be honest I always prefer to just go to a short time hotel. There are load of hotels within a five minute walk, and I can make a guy come in about ten minutes at most, so I can be back dancing within half an hour of having my bar fine paid. I charge fifteen hundred baht minimum for short time, two thousand if they want me to stay all night, but again, I try not to stay the night unless they insist. My boyfriend likes sex a lot and if I'm not there to see to him, I know he'll go on the prowl, so I try to get home by 3am whenever I can.

  I didn't think much of Vernon the first time I saw him. He looked like he was fifty because his hair was grey and he had bags under his eyes and I thought he was bullshitting when he said he was forty. His body was okay, he was quite tall and thin, but his teeth weren't good, they weren't white at all, almost yellow. That surprised me because most Americans I've met have really white teeth. He didn't smoke so maybe it was all the coffee he drinks.

  He took me to one of the restaurants in the Landmark Hotel. A lot of farangs like to go there with girls, it's not far from Nana Plaza and the waitresses are nice to the girls. Some places don't like to serve bargirls, they turn their nose up at us, but the Landmark's okay. He talked to me non-stop for almost four hours. Wouldn't shut up. He'd seen the video I'd made about a year ago. An American guy had bar fined half a dozen of the girls and taken us over to the Nana Hotel. He'd paid us 500 baht each to talk to us while he filmed us, what we thought of Bangkok, what the bars were like, stuff like that. I was lucky that Vernon didn't see the other video the guy made. Two of the girls went back to Nana Plaza but the rest stayed behind and the guy paid us two thousand baht each to do lesbian scenes. Pretty raunchy stuff it was, too. He'd brought a stack of sex toys with him, things we'd never seen before. We kept laughing, it looked so ridiculous, and the guy ended up getting really angry with us.

  Anyway, Vernon spent four hours telling me that he thought I was the love of his life, that it was fate that brought us together, that he thought he could spend the rest of his life with me. Why are farangs always so quick to fall in love? It happens all the times in the bars, a farang comes to Bangkok on holiday, meets a girl in a go-go bar, and decides he loves her and wants to marry her. How can you possibly love someone you've only just met? Crazy. So Vernon keeps telling me that he sees something in me he doesn't see in other girls, that I'm not like the girls in America. To be honest, I could only understand twenty per cent of what he was saying because my English isn't that good, and I spent most of the time wishing that he'd take me to a short-time hotel and screw me.

  PETE

  I telephoned Vernon right away. I told him I was Joy's boyfriend, and he said he knew who I was because when he'd gone to Surin Sunan had shown him a photograph of Joy and me taken outside the house. But Vernon had been told that I was Joy's husband, not boyfriend. Sunan had told him that we'd been married for two years, but that we'd not been getting on well and had decided to get a divorce.

  I put him straight, I told him about Phiraphan and Joy's husband and the way I'd been lied to. I told him about bargirls and how they couldn't be trusted. He listened in a stunned silence. ‘Wow,’ he said eventually. ‘That's unbelievable.’

  I asked him how much he was giving Sunan and he said he'd agreed to send her a thousand dollars a month, plus he'd paid Sunan's father a four thousand dollar dowry. And he said he'd bought a ring for Sunan that had cost two thousand dollars, a blue sapphire ring similar to the one that I'd got for Joy. I interrupted him and asked what he meant. The most expensive thing I'd ever bought Joy was the gold bracelet I'd got for her on her birthday, and that had only cost three hundred and fifty dollars at most. Vernon told me that he'd met Joy in Bangkok before the wedding and that she'd been wearing a sapphire ring, and that Sunan had told him that I'd paid two thousand dollars for it. It was an engagement ring, Sunan had said, and she'd taken him to the same jewellers to buy a similar one for her.

  I almost pissed myself laughing. I knew the ring he was talking about. Joy had bought it herself in Patpong. Three hundred baht it had cost. I asked him what else they'd said about me. Vernon said that he'd been told that I'd bought an apartment in Bangkok and that Joy lived with me, but that we'd now decided to split up and were sleeping in separate bedrooms.

  He explained how he'd seen Sunan on a video and flown to Bangkok to meet her. She'd told him that she'd only been working in the bar for a couple of months and that she hated it. That was pretty much the same story Joy had fed me when I first met her. I put Vernon right and told him that Sunan was one of the hardest working girls in Nana Plaza and that she'd been hooking for years. I couldn't believe that he'd fallen in love with Sunan. She wasn't even particularly pretty and anyone who saw her couldn't not notice how hard her eyes were.

  I asked Vernon if Joy had been at the wedding, and he said no, she hadn't. In fact, the only relatives at the ceremony were her brother Bird and her father, and a few cousins whose names he couldn't remember. I asked him if he thought it was possible for Sunan to fall in love with him so quickly. She could barely speak English, after all.

  It was like soulmates meeting, he said. As soon as he saw her he knew that she was the love of his life. I told him he was making a big mistake, that Sunan cared only about money. His money. She'd take him for everything he had and then she'd dump him.

  ‘Oh no, you're wrong,’ he said. ‘Sunan's different. She's not like the other girls.’

  I told him that they were all the same, that love didn't even come into it. I asked him if he didn't have doubts himself and he went quiet for a while. I waited for him to speak. When he did, he told me a story so bizarre that if it had happened anywhere else but Thailand I wouldn't have believed it.

  VERNON

  It was the night before the wedding. I was staying at Sunan's house. There were lots of people there, and I didn't know who most of them were. I'd been introduced to them all, of course, but they had such weird and wonderful names that I couldn't be expected to remember them all. Sunan's father was upstairs and so were some of the older people, Sunan's uncles and aunts or great uncles and aunts. Sunan and I were sleeping on mats in the big room on the ground floor, along with her brother Bird and half a dozen other people. One of Sunan's aunts, a woman called Nit who must have been in her late fifties, was giving us all massages. She's a professional masseuse, apparently, a medical one, not the sort that works in the massage p
arlours in Bangkok. She was doing everybody, massaging them until they fell asleep. We were all sleeping in our clothes, I guess that must be Thai style.

  So eventually it's my turn. I was the last to get a massage, everyone else was asleep. I was a bit embarrassed, actually, even though I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. I was lying face down and she knelt beside me, rubbing and probing. It wasn't all that relaxing, to be honest, she prodded a lot and I just wished that she'd stop. I decide the best way to get it over with would be to pretend to fall asleep, so I closed my eyes and started to breathe heavily. After a couple of minutes of fake snoring, Nit stops. The next thing I know, she's reaching into my back pocket and pulling out my wallet. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what to do. I was being robbed by Sunan's aunt. On the night before the wedding. I froze. I heard her rifling through the bills. There was more than a thousand dollars in cash in the wallet, plus twice as much again in travellers cheques.

  I pretended to wake up and I rolled over. Nit dropped the wallet and scampered over to the far side of the room. I put the wallet back in my pocket. I didn't mention it to Sunan the next day. Didn't mention it to anybody.

  On the day of the wedding Nit helped get Sunan ready and she smiled broadly whenever she saw me. I began to think that maybe I'd imagined it, that maybe I'd actually fallen asleep and dreamed that she'd taken my wallet. But in my heart I knew that it hadn't been a figment of my imagination.