by James Newman
“It seems to me that you have lived, as they say in England, A sheltered life Mr Joe. I will take you to The Plaza.”
FOURTEEN
A debauched utopia
THE PLAZA was like a regular shopping mall except the items for sale moved around and danced. The Plaza had escalators leading up and down. The women that worked there were translators, tour guides, mothers, daughters, carers, libertines, liars, drug users, dreamers, manipulators, business women. They were also products. They massaged cows. They fed the cows rice wine. They could do so many other things for brown, purple and red pieces of paper.
Joe felt his heart somersault as he walked into The Plaza. He counted the steps under his breath. One. Joe watched a transvestite, or was she a transsexual? It was hard to tell. Two. She or he or it sat outside the entrance to a bar. Her long body was wrapped in fish-net stockings and long leather boots. Three. She grabbed at the men that walked past her and took feminine puffs from a cigarette held in a holder. Four. A short Thai girl with large breasts in stockings and suspenders. She appeared intoxicated. Five. She flicked out her tongue like a reptile and beckoned for Joe to enter her bar. Six. He was ready to have the higher power remove all of his defects. Seven. He was ready to walk into that bar and have all his shortcomings removed by the holy one. Eight. It was all too much. Nine. Holy. Ten. Jesus. Eleven. Fucking. Twelve. Christ.
“It started out as a mini-mall and a restaurant area in the late 1970s,” said Boss. “A small number of go-go bars rented the space and the trend continued. Now it is all bars. The largest sex complex in the world, so they say.”
The weight of ninety days was like lead on his shoulders. He had to take one, anyone, and be done with it. To have her in a hotel room, to destroy her before turning the gun on himself. The weight of the Glock in his pocket was reassuring. Nobody would miss him. The steps kept him walking but the steps had never been here before.
What was he stepping towards?
Women were everywhere. They were serving drinks, dancing around chromium poles, playing cryptic games, making deals, promises, hustling tourists, and greeting the old-hands. Neon lights flashed in all directions. Music pounded from each bar. The sounds met in a flurry of beats; a white compost of sound exploded in the middle of the Plaza. It was the last cigarette saloon. The wild east. The last frontier. A debauched utopia that tourists flocked from all over the world to worship. It was either the best or the worst place on earth.
Joe couldn’t decide.
Boss took the escalator and Joe followed him up to the first floor. The air smelled of burnt chilli and cheap perfume. Food was being prepared in the walkways and the bargirls sat outside semi-naked devouring pungent salads. A dwarf stood lazily smoking a cigarette. A sign in his hand. The Thais here knew how to say one word: welcome. They entered a bar through a red curtain. A young cashier in a white polo-neck waved a torch to usher them to a corner booth where they sat and ordered a beer and a soda.
“This is one of the better bars,” Boss said.
Smoke and mirrors. A sudden blast of conditioned air. A large revolving stage occupied the centre of the room. Twenty women shuffled around on the stage. Each one had a number pinned to her bikini. They looked at themselves in the mirrors and liked what they saw. Joe watched number twenty-three smile down at them upon each revolution of the stage. Mirrors. It had been almost ninety days. Smoke. Ninety. Days. She had implants and a tattoo of a cobra snake slithered up from a white cowboy boot. She stood next to a pale skinned beauty with short hair and spectacles. In another life she could have been a librarian. In another world she was. Next to her was a woman with air-hostess legs and a movie-star smile. Next to her was one of the skinniest women that Joe had ever seen.
“Smoke and mirrors,” Joe said.
“These women may have been models if they were born into money,” Boss observed. “These are working girls, mostly from poor families in the Northeast. Here they can earn more in one night than they can earn following a month’s hard labour in the rice fields. Our country for the most part is very poor. They come here to work, and if they are lucky find a husband who can pay for their life. Remember you can have any woman you want here. The price is small but the cost can be enormous.”
“You mean the cost is small but so is the value?”
“Well, yes that. What are they really buying? Is it a dream, an illusion, a little piece of paradise?” Boss said.
“They are buying escape?”
“Yes, a nice way to put it Khun Joe. But escaping from what?”
“Themselves mostly. But they’ll tell you it’s the ex-wife. Ex-husband. Kids. Responsibilities. The way I see it is the lights and the smoke and the mirrors takes them away from what matters. They failed at the stuff that matters. Here they thrive.”
A beer and a soda arrived from the cash-carrier wearing the white polo-neck.
“What is this?” Boss asked.
“It is merely a distraction, a roller-coaster, a waking dream manufactured for tourists. A hooker at the top of her game knows the rules. She knows she can have a boyfriend. She knows that she can marry him. She knows that she can have his children. She can go to his country and meet his family. But she also knows that she can never love him. These girls have standards. These girls have rules.”
“All that glitters isn’t gold,” Boss said pointing to the girl with the white boots and the tattoo. “Her name is Tong. Be careful of the inner-man. He is not working to your advantage. Remember that. Your inner-man will cause you more harm than any girl ever can. The girl lies to you and the inner-man believes the lies. Love is a sickness. Sickness kills,” Boss took a long drink from his bottle of Heineken. Joe looked at the glass of soda water but didn’t pick up. The inner-man was dry. His thigh was being caressed by number twenty- three. She had walked down from the stage and sat herself beside him. She was a cat purring in Joe’s ear. She was a puzzled deer. She was seeing the first winter snow. Her eyes were amber. Her eyes were impossible. She was his destiny and he was her fate. Her body was impossibly perfect. Generous breasts, slim waist, gorgeous smile. Boss spoke in Thai and she walked back to the stage where she danced to hypnotic music.
“The lady drinks are one hundred and forty Baht but contain only coke. The bar keeps one hundred and she takes the other forty. It’s another way for the bar to make money and for the ladies to entertain the customers. One hundred and forty baht for a coke is too much to pay.
“Boss. Have you been to Samui?”
“Many times on vacation. Once on business. I had some business there,” he said glancing to his left with a sudden interest in number twenty-six.
“The diver’s policy?”
“Yes. That. Well, I didn’t have to visit for that exactly.” Boss answered impatiently. He took another drink from the beer and Joe realised that Boss was now drunk.
“Who was your contact there, Boss?
“Well, some contacts are not who they seem to be. We are not at liberty to discuss who it may have been.”
Joe opened his suit jacket just enough for Boss to clock the piece. “I think you are,” Joe smiled. “You see. I’ve come a long way.”
“You can’t walk around with a gun in Bangkok, Joe. This isn’t a movie.”
Joe picked up the glass and sniffed the contents. “Vodka doesn’t smell as much as whiskey but it still has a smell. What are you doing here Boss?”
“It must have been a mistake, the waitress...”
“Fuck the movies. Fuck the waitress. Fuck Ko Samui. Give me a name.”
“He’s a business man.”
“What’s his name?”
“Shogun.”
“Keep going...”
“...Bluegreen wanted to build a hotel on the island. Shogun owned the land. There was a dispute about the price. The diving contract was put together around this time. We made a mistake. His wife set up the contract. She worked as an intern us at Bluegreen. She knew Hale. She knew us.”
“What is Shogun
’s involvement?”
“Shogun owns the island. ”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he owns it. There are some plots he hasn’t yet bought up, but he owns most of the land, the people on it, the property they live in and the way they think. If you are going there try not to make a scene.”
Joe noticed a man in the corner of the bar. Baseball cap. He wore a shirt and dirty trousers. His teeth were broken. The man waved over to the bar-staff. Asked for the bill. He paid keeping his eyes down low and then stood up to leave.
Back to another dark alley.
“Looks like we have company. Shall we get a bigger table?” Joe looked directly at Boss. Before he could speak Joe hit him with a right that came from nowhere. Drinks fell from the table. Boss recovered and stared at Joe like a rat caught in headlights.
“You’ll be fish-food, like the rest of them,” Boss said. “You are in the big league now.”
“Right,” Joe stood up. “Fish-food.” He thought about slapping Boss again. Two gorilla-like bouncers approached them. Joe stood and flashed the piece and walked past them through the red curtain and out into the Plaza. The night was hot and heavy with the smell of cigarette smoke and burnt chillies. The piece felt suddenly heavy in his pocket. He ran along the plaza runway pushing past semi-naked women and tourists. He saw baseball cap bobbing towards the escalator. He looked over his shoulder and increased his pace. Boss was nowhere. The man took the stairs and dog-legged down to the ground floor. Joe pushed past a group of Korean tourists.
The gun was there in his pocket.
He got to the mouth of the plaza and the man was bent over with his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath. Joe grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and pushed him up against the wall. “Not used to running, huh?”
“You are crazy. I’m a tourist the same as you.”
“Okay so you’re a tourist. What the hell do you want?”
“To warn you, that’s all.”
“Warn me about what?”
“I told you before. The city. It can be dangerous.”
Joe looked around. He thought about the gun. Too many witnesses. A crowd of tourists and bargirls had gathered around them. The man’s face was like a tranquilised bear. “Leave the poor guy alone,” shouted an American. “Yeah, let him go,” said a Brit.
Joe let go of the man and watched him fall to the floor. He turned around and walked away from the crowd. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned. A large man squeezed Joe’s shoulder like it was a rubber ball. “Listen we don’t want your type here.” His accent was from Australia or New Zealand. “You English are all the same.”
“This is none of your business, man.”
“I’m making it my business, pal.” The crowd around them grew heavier. The man continued to squeeze Joe’s shoulder. The man was huge and covered in tattoos. He squeezed Joe’s shoulder. The shoulder that had missed the bullet. “Say sorry to that gentleman,” the man nodded towards baseball cap who was now standing beside them.
“Forget it.”
“Apologise,” the grip tightened.
“Never,” Joe smiled at the man.
The fist that landed on Joe’s nose was the size of a brick and just as heavy. The crowd let out a cheer. Joe fell to the ground and looked up at the crowd. Their faces were white and ugly and masked in justice. He sat in the road and watched the faces disappear. The tattooed monster walked slowly away. He sat there on the sidewalk watching the whores walking past. He began to count the steps.
Step one. They were beautiful.
Step two. It began to rain.
Step three. Bangkok.
FIFTEEN
Trash, rats, whores
“MAN, YOU look like you could use a drink,” Joe looked at the man’s scuffed lizard-skin shoes, his black pin-striped trousers, his creased business shirt, and his neck-tie decorated with beer and curry stains. Hale looked like a man who had nowhere to go and was in a desperate hurry to get there. His grey eyes were friendly lamps below short hair matted slightly with sweat. His smile was warm. Heat was the last thing Joe needed. He needed a break.
“You should see the other guy,” Joe smiled.
“Stand up, mate. Best foot forward. You like my shoes? Monitor lizard. Five thousand baht a pair on soi three.” The man crouched down to Joe’s level and breathed a cloud of alcoholic fumes. “Look mate, you may not want my help, you can tell me to bugger off if you like, but when I see a fellow country man in trouble it’s my duty to take him for a beer and bathe in the glory of his misfortune. I’m a man just like you, but my shoes are better. What do you say?”
“I say you’re a bastard and the cobbler saw you coming. But I like you, help me up.”
“Good. My name’s Hale.” Hale offered a hand. Joe grabbed it and pulled himself vertical.
“Pleased to meet you,” Joe stood up and brushed himself down. His pride hurt more than the swollen eye and the grazed shoulder did. Fate was a cruel bitch but she threw him the strangest crumbs from time to time. Fate was the only woman that Joe had known for the last eighty-eight days. She was a bitch but she was his bitch. She was all he had.
“I know a lovely little place not far from here,” Hale said, “A high class joint. Beds instead of chairs. You look like you could use a rest, mate, if you don’t mind me saying. You look like a geezer that fell into a barrel of tits and came up sucking his thumb. You know what I mean?”
“Sure. Lead the way, Jimmy.”
“No one calls me that.”
The mouth of the soi. Across Sukhumvit. Streets, broken pavements, trash, rats, whores, dirty underwear, paperback novels, reading glasses, cross-bows, vibrating dildos, angry birds, drugs, robotic toys, perfumes, sex, dreams. The river of humanity was flowing. Yes, it flowed. Down, down, down, The tide went only one way. Down. Sukhumvit road. The zone. Reservoirs of pleasure. Carnal canals. Lakes of longing, seas of sin, oceans of desire. Down it went. The tide was uncontrollable. African hookers and Isaan whores washed-up on the kerbs. A caravan of drunken Arabs swayed ahead of them. Joe’s legs were like blocks of wood. Shit. The steps were fading fast. Just one, anyone, would do. Step one. They found themselves outside the bed supper-club. Two. Hale stopped at the foot of the stairs to the club. Three. Joe looked at his alcohol ravaged face. “Need to have a smoke before we go in,” Hale said and lit up a Benson and Hedges. He blew out the smoke across the street. Joe watched a drunken farang negotiate the purchase of a kebab. Step four. A cat walked across the road with a raised knotted tail. Five. Six. Seven.
Joe watched the clientele entering and leaving the club. They dressed smartly. Joe guessed they paid for it with new money rather than old. They may have been movie producers, litigation brokers, marketing experts. Perhaps they sold cosmetics or made government policy. Snake-oil, vitamins, interior design, luxury motor vehicles. Red Bull executives. Ferrari dealers. Nobody knew. Everybody cared.
The nightclub was a metal cylinder raised on stilts. It reminded Joe of something he’d seen in a science fiction flick. Perhaps whores and Johns made it inside. Space whores and cyber Johns.
Barberella.
Joe watched a young Thai woman with long legs saunter out of the space-pod followed closely by an old western man in a business suit. She stopped and waited for him to reach her and she put a hand through his hair. She tilted her head to one side. She kissed him. He smiled like a dumb weasel. Whatever he was paying her wasn’t enough, new money or old. She walked a few paces in front of her date and waved down a yellow and green. They got into the taxi and disappeared into the traffic. Some high-tech condo in the clouds where dreams were manufactured with Swedish furniture, delivery pasta, and inherited cash. A place where the holy cow was massaged and fed imported Chilean red.
“Let’s do it, like,” Hale grunted, stubbing out his cigarette with the sole of his lizard-skin shoes. Joe followed Hale into the nightclub and they sat down on one of the stark white beds. Everything was white inside. The floor,
the walls and the ceiling were white. Joe felt strangely sterilized by the whiteness. A waiter came over to the table. He was wearing white. Joe glanced over the white menu and ordered steak with fries and a glass of lemon juice. Hale ordered two bottles of beer.
“Healthy appetite,” Hale observed. “That’s good. You’ll be needing it.”
“Tell me about Thailand. How did you end up here,” Joe said, “and skip the parts about the temples and the food.”
“It’s dangerous. But anything fucking interesting always is. I came here because no one else wanted to. Before that I was in China, before that Singapore. How do you like it here, Joe?”
“I like the way it surprises me. I like the way that the women are only after my money. I like the heat and I love the pollution. I like the darkness. I like the whiteness. I like the contrasts and the contradictions. I like the way a guy fires a gun at me and another smacks me in the face. I like lizard-skin shoes. What’s not to like?”
“Yeah, well, she grows on you like testicular cancer, sunshine. Slowly and deadly. You ever had the clap, Joe? Nothing like a dose to put things in perspective. I was in Pattaya. I thought it was all over, mate. It was like my left nut was being tightened in a vice. It had a heartbeat, I tell you, a heartbeat. My bollock was throbbing like there was no bleeding tomorrow. The pain was out of this fecking world. But that’s another story for another clinic waiting room. I know who you are, Sherlock. I heard you are one of the best. The syndicate likes you. I heard you’ve been to this town before. Stick with me son. If we don’t pull in here I’ll take you to the Eden bar. Get involved with some weapons of mass destruction. I hear you are a bit of a player, yourself Joe. Or at least used to be?”
“I’m on the program.”
“On The Program.” Hale mimicked Joe’s voice. “Fecking pussy.”
A white-suited waiter put Joe’s order down on the table between them. “There’s one thing you should understand, sunshine. A little thing about the Thai people. Do you understand the concept of face, greng jai?”
“Tell me about it,” Joe said forking a fry.
“Thai’s will never say what they want or what they mean. Drives you round the fecking bend. They will tell you what they think you want them to say. They don’t do conflict very well neither. They’re fecking terrified of saying the wrong fecking thing, unless it’s behind your fecking Harris – then they go to town. How would your lordship say it. ‘Cowardice protects a tremendous loss of face. Hatred is conveyed through rituals of politeness.’ I’m serious Sherlock. Once your back is turned the knives get sharpened. You got to watch these fuckers, man. Watch them.”