The Amok Runners

by Colin Cotterill

  ‘Jimm?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You got an age limit for that tenant of yours?’

  So, that was it. When Sissy arrived back at the house that evening there was already a Thai military type manning the closed gate. He had a gun in a holster and a clipboard.

  ‘I live here,’ Sissy told him.

  ‘Can I have your name, sir?’

  ‘No, I might need it again.’

  There was no sign that the man had registered this as a joke. Sissy dropped his head and spelt out his surname which happened to be the same as mine. The guard unfastened the bolt and gave him just enough space through which to negotiate the Suzuki. He parked beside a Land Rover and a familiar Lexus. Gus looked up briefly from the driver’s seat and then returned to his i-pod without acknowledging Sissy. A second security person sat on a plastic chair under the lumyai tree. Sissy was impressed. He threw his Abibas over his shoulder and walked to the front door. Even that was new – more tasteful than its predecessor and twice as thick. It was ajar.

  The sound of piano jazz ran like a warm rinse through the house. He had no idea who it was. He preferred country ethnic in his own language. Jazz frustrated him. He wished the guys would just settle on a melody and stick to it. But he tolerated it because he’d been exposed to it for so long. He’d had a German husband for a while. He’d learned the language, the icons, the mannerisms, the music. Yet, like me, he could never get it completely right because he was Thai. We’d grown up switching codes. Mair had given us a bilingual upbringing that wasn’t quite complete. We almost spoke English like natives – almost spoke Thai like Thais. But the culture police, they were sharp, man. They caught you out every time. We made mistakes all across the board and they spotted them. So we’d never really been one or the other with any conviction.

  He walked to the balcony and there we all were. All six recliners had been dragged into a line parallel to the river and five of them were occupied. The floodlights had turned the far bank into a luminous green arboretum. From the rear the observers seemed frozen in fascination at its glow. I was one of the starers, then Bunny Savage, Arny, OB the director, and finally Kuro the Japanese-Thai King.

  I looked around to find my brother staring at us.

  ‘You’ve gone to extreme lengths to make the house police-proof,’ he said in Thai.

  ‘Aha,’ said I. ’Sissy’s here. We have a full house.’

  The guests seemed to rise in slow motion to greet him. Bunny alone appeared particularly animated at his arrival but that was probably because she was drinking beer rather than imbibing in our very special weed.

  ‘What kept you?’ she said.

  Sissy had that thick head that comes from driving on Thai roads at night. The news that you were supposed to dip your headlights hadn’t made it to the people who passed their driving tests with a cheque book.

  ‘I don’t get out of second gear after dark,’ Sissy said. ‘Evening, folks.’

  We all wai’d him in our respective ethnic fashion. It was a mishmash of odd salutes but he was obliged to wai us back. He did it Chinese style like in the kung fu movies. Kuro was the only one of the group he hadn’t met before. He shook the actor’s hand and used some of the Japanese lines he’d picked up from his Tokyo salary men boyfriends in the good old days.

  ‘Solly, I do not speak Thai,’ Kuro said.

  If he hadn’t actually been Japanese, his accent wouldn’t have fooled anyone. Sissy was stymied for a moment until the actor laughed.

  ‘Just kidding,’ he confessed. ‘Kon ban wa.’

  ‘I’m stuck with comedians everywhere I go,’ Sissy shook his head. ‘I’m gonna get myself a beer. I’ll be back.’

  He walked to the kitchen and said hello to two Thai women in uniform sitting at the dining table. They stood when he came in.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘We work here,’ they said, almost in sync. ‘What can we get you, sir?’

  Sissy thought that was very funny.

  ‘Nothing, girls,’ he laughed. He walked to the fridge and opened the door. It looked like a display cabinet at Harrods.

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘We’ve moved up a peg, pal,’ I said.

  I’d followed him into the kitchen. The serving wenches fled.

  ‘You’re something else, Jimm,’ he said.

  ‘Anything from Bangkok?’ I asked.

  ‘Plenty.’

  Sissy selected a Belgian Stella Artois and even put it in a glass. We sat at the table.

  ‘Okay, let’s have it.’

  ‘What about the guests?’ he asked.

  ‘They aren’t guests, Sissy. They live here.’

  ‘All of them? How’d you swing that?’

  ‘Have you seen the rooms at the Chalet?’

  ‘I’ve seen the rooms at the Dhara Dhevi.’

  ‘None of them wants to share a chopper with Jensen back into town,’ I said. They’d sooner stay here. It’s a home. We’re a family. OB and Kuro have the two master bedrooms on this floor and you and me and Arny keep our penthouse suites upstairs.’

  ‘We’re missing a queen,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, find the lady. Now that’s something I have to talk to you about.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sissy said. ‘But I’ll tell you about Bangkok first while I can still remember it all. I’ve got a highway headache so bear with me.’

  ‘Go for it.’

  ‘Boon’s movie,’ he said, ‘the one they were going to make after Siam, it was from a classic Thai historical story. They showed me the script.’

  ‘You didn’t have to sleep with the personal secretary to get it, I hope.’

  ‘She was two-foot-six with a ring through her lip and a poster of that French lady tennis player above her desk. So, no, I got all this by hard work and natural charm. We did some gay/lesbian bonding. She told me the movie was going to be a King Mangrai against the Mongols epic. A buddy movie.’

  ‘The three kings?’

  ‘You’ve got it. All the politics and rivalry and eventual friendship of these three rival royals who band together and beat back the Chinese hoards.’

  ‘So, Boon let us give him a Lanna history lesson even though he knew it all?’

  ‘I guess he just liked listening to our version of it. It was a good idea. Potentially good cinema. But it was a way too ambitious movie for the company. They didn’t have the backing. They needed to cut costs.’

  ‘So that’s when they decided to negotiate with the Americans,’ I said.

  ‘Right. And that’s when things started to go crazy.’

  ‘They had to pay tea money to someone in country to get a deal?’

  ‘Yeah’, he nodded, ‘but that was expected. You write that kind of thing into the budget out here. It was covered. They even had the funds to keep all the extras on for two more days after Siam. They couldn’t pay them as much as Hollywood but that wasn’t a problem. They were probably grateful for any extra money they could get during the dry season. It was a kind of bonus. Those that didn’t think it was worth it were free to turn round and go home. If they still had a thousand men for the battle scenes it would have worked.’

  ‘So, what went wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘They don’t know. Boon met with the Northern Thai Castings rep twice. The emails Boon sent back to Bangkok were all promising. NTC had agreed to the daily rate for extras and even reduced costs for transport and catering. Thais looking out for Thais. Everything was on track. Even up to the day we met Boon at the Dhara Dhevi it still looked rosy. But the day after that, they lost contact with him.’

  ‘Did they know about the meeting at the coffee shop?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Shit. Did she say whether the police went to see them?’

  ‘After the murder?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No. Nobody from Chiang Mai contacted them at all.’

  ‘So the official line is …?’

  ‘Business deal gone bad.’


  ‘And everyone accepts that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a good old Thai cliché. Who’s going to argue?’

  ‘Did he have a wife … girlfriend? Anyone he could confide in?’

  ‘Divorced. Lived in a room above the company office. His only romance was with his work. These people do twenty-three hours a day. Their only family’s their crew.’

  I thought about it for a while.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘His crew. They were close. They drank together. I bet he told someone on his team what was going on.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘I’ll go talk to them at the shoot tomorrow. That’s if I haven’t been fired for playing hooky for two days.’

  ‘The big guy’s our roommate now,’ I reminded him.

  ‘You’re right. Let’s go suck up.’

  ‘First I need to tell you something disturbing about …’

  We were interrupted by Arny who walked clumsily into the kitchen.

  ‘You two leaving me alone to entertain those big wigs?’ he asked with an odd smile on his face.

  ‘Arny, are you stoned again?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘Little bit,’ he said. ‘It’s for medicacinismal purposes for my back. The doctor recommended it.’

  ‘Stick around, brother,’ said Sissy. ‘Jimm’s got some big news for me.’

  ‘Ah, that’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’ll keep.’

  Even though at the time I was afraid it wouldn’t.

  Every now and then, we would lean forward and stare at the river to see whether any Persian motifs shimmered beneath the surface of the water under the glimmer of the lights. It was midnight. OB and Arny had retired. Bunny had gone upstairs also but she said she’d just be reading her script for the morning. We were left alone with Kuro and the hovering shadows of two housekeepers. The Japanese seemed impervious to smoke and booze which made us question whether he was really Japanese. He was our kind of man – laid back and funny. We tried to convince him to apply for a job at the Fuji restaurant at Airport Plaza so we could hang out after the movies. He told us he’d think about it.

  ‘One of my derights,’ he told us, ‘is to rearn about different culture. I enjoy to gain knowledge about the world in such a way. It is my legret that I cannot communicate with the soldiers on the shoot.’

  ‘The extras?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘Yes. They do not speak any ranguage we can discover. Not Thai. Not Burma. Somebody tell me they are Shan-Thai. They have transrator but transrator does not have time for social, is it … chit chat?’

  It was the first we’d thought about it. We’d assumed the extras were tribesmen from minority communities. There were several ethnic groups clustered along the Thai border and we didn’t speak any of their languages. But a gathering of two thousand guys and none of them speaking Thai? The odds against that were phenomenal. Sissy looked at me. We’d both tried to engage the extras in conversation and been met with blank expressions. We’d assumed they didn’t want to talk to strangers or they’d been told not to. We hadn’t considered the fact they might not have been able to. They were certainly worth another visit.

  In order to contemplate the matter more thoroughly, Sissy announced he was off to pay homage to the ancestors at the porcelain shrine. Kuro waited until he was gone.

  ‘Your brother is quite unusual,’ he said.

  ‘Some people might say weird,’ I told him.

  Chapter 19

  “I love women. Wearing their clothes makes me feel closer to them.”

  Ed Wood (1994)

  It was a while before I realized Sissy had gone straight to bed. And by then it was too late to warn him. I doubted he’d ever forgive me. This is his version of what transpired that night.

  He’d had a shower in his en-suite and put on his thick towelling robe against the air-conditioning. When he went back into his room he was surprised to see Bunny Savage sitting in the arm chair beside the bed. She had on a silk yukata and she wasn’t being too modest about how she wore it. Sissy smiled.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ said Bunny.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Sissy, still blissfully unaware of his visitor’s intentions. He sat on the bed and dried his hair; two girls about to share secrets at a slumber party.

  ‘You’re different,’ said Bunny.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sissy.

  ‘You know I don’t usually do this.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Sneak into a strange man’s room uninvited.’

  ‘You don’t need an invite, Little Sister. My door’s always open. Jimm used to come in all the time for confessionals.’

  ‘That’s a little bit different, don’t you think?’

  She looked offended.

  ‘Is it?’ said Sissy.

  ‘I heard that you were interested in me.’

  ‘Are you kidding? I’m crazy about you. You’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted.’

  Bunny got up from the armchair and sat very close to my brother on the bed.

  ‘Really’ she asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said and squeezed her hand. ‘You can tell me anything.’

  ‘You know, I believe I can. That’s what makes you different.’

  She went to kiss him and he instinctively offered her his cheek. She was confused but persistent.

  ‘Do you mind if I stay here tonight?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Sissy.

  ‘You’re so … so natural.’

  ‘Oh, there are one or two unnatural bits.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Can I use your bathroom to freshen up?’ she said, and licked her top lip before leaving the bedroom. That was the moment Sissy had his revelation. The clumsy silk yukata had sailed through the radar without a blip. But the top lip lick? He’d used that same gesture on a number of occasions with remarkable success. It was something men responded to. He’d never use it with a girlfriend.

  When the bathroom door closed he rewound the tapes of his memory and came to the scary conclusion that he’d screwed up monumentally. Bunny Savage was attracted to him as a man. It was unthinkable that a woman would recognize enough male characteristics in him to tickle her libido. But there it was. It was unlikely she’d consider a lesbian relationship and she was far too feminine for his taste, sexually. It was a difficult situation. He knew he had to be gentle if he wanted to avoid hurting her feelings. He didn’t want to lose her as a girl friend and without a little tact the whole thing might blow into a thoroughly humiliating experience.

  Bunny emerged from the bathroom with her robe unfastened. She was naked beneath. Her hair was swept back as if she’d been riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Sissy stood in the middle of the room holding his wallet out in front of him.

  ‘What do you have there?’ she asked.

  ‘Some pictures I’d like you to see,’ said Sissy. He’d considered stripping off and lying naked on the bed but thought that might be a tad too drastic for the situation. Bunny came and stood beside him, linking her arm through his.

  ‘This is us as kids,’ he said, showing the first photo.

  ‘You were adorable even then,’ she said. ‘Look at you with your flowery hat.’

  ‘Thank you. It was my favourite hat.’ He flipped to the next picture. ‘And this is our mother, Mair and my Grandad Jah.’

  Her hand was stroking his arm.

  ‘It’s adorable that you carry family photos around with you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sissy. He flipped to the last picture. It showed a glamorous girl in a low-cut gown. She had a sparkly tiara on her head and wore a sash with Thai characters on it.

  ‘She’s cute,’ said Bunny. ‘Old girlfriend?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Sissy.

  ‘Wait,’ said Bunny. ‘Why have you chosen this exact moment to show me …? She’s not your ex?’

  ‘No.’

  Bunny pulled away.

  �
��So she’s the reason you haven’t wrestled me onto the bed?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Bunny collected together the flaps of her yukata and tied the cord.

  ‘You don’t think you might have mentioned the fact you’re in love with someone else before you let me make a fool of myself?’

  She headed for the door.

  ‘Well, Bunny,’ said Sissy. ‘That’s just it. ‘I hadn’t suspected for a second that you were interested in me in that way. We all thought you had a thing for Arny.’

  ‘Arny? Are you fucking kidding me?’

  ‘He’s a sweet boy.’

  ‘He’s meat.’

  She turned the door handle.

  ‘And what’s with the “You’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted,” routine?’

  ‘That’s absolutely true. I want your body. Your face. Your magnetism. Your voice. Your career. Your income. I want everything you’ve got.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  He held up the photo.

  ‘Bunny, the girl in the photo …’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  Chapter 20

  “I just feel so alone, even when I'm surrounded by other people.”

  Lost in Translation (2003)

  The new cameras were aboard an army transporter. The word was they’d be arriving in Chiang Mai in ten minutes and be in Fang two hours later. OB was off doing something experimental in digital with Jensen while they still had him – while he was in the mood to perform. While everybody else waited, I took a stroll over to the area where the second camera crew was setting up beneath straw pavilions. Warriors, injured in battle: legs missing, intestines spilled, lay on bamboo stretchers playing drafts and telling jokes. They all seemed in good spirits for ones so mutilated. One minor Thai television celebrity sat in a pool of blood with an arrow entering his left eye and emerging from the back of his brain. He was arguing with his girlfriend on his cell phone.

  ‘I told you, aluminium window frames work out a lot cheaper than wood in the long run.’

  I caught sight of Thirayuth, Boon’s head cameraman for the amok runners sequences. He was sitting on a dolly unit that would take him on a grizzly funfair ride between the litters. He looked uncomfortable on the small seat. He was a large untidy blob of a man – a Thai Michael Moore. If he’d done a day’s exercise in his life it wouldn’t have been long after nursery school. He recognized and obviously liked me.