The Queen of Patpong pr-4

by Timothy Hallinan

  Rafferty's voice feels like it's being forced through a sieve. "Where's Horner?" His phone begins to ring.

  Bohnert's eyes are streaming water, but he pulls his mouth tight and spits at Rafferty.

  As his phone continues to ring, Rafferty bends over John and says between his teeth, "There's lots left. Let's try again." He puts his thumb over the bottle and starts to shake it.

  "No," Bohnert says. It's mostly breath.

  The phone stops ringing. "Why were you following us?"

  "See… where you went. Who you know."

  "Why?"

  Bohnert's nose is running, and he sniffs, which is a mistake that registers instantly. He blows out explosively and makes a retching sound that turns into another fit of coughing. When it's over, he lies still except for deep, shuddering breaths, and Rafferty says again, "Why?"

  "Pressure points," Bohnert says. "Looking… for pressure points."

  Rafferty's phone rings again. He looks at it and sees ROSE.

  "What does Horner want with her?"

  "Don't know."

  "Fine." Rafferty puts the phone into his pocket and shakes the bottle again. John is pushing back with his legs, trying to scrabble away, under the wall of the toilet cubicle. A couple of the women laugh.

  "He… he says she tried to kill him."

  "Why?"

  "Don't know. Really, really. He wanted-Howard wanted-to marry her."

  "He…" Rafferty stands there, the bottle dangling heavy in his hand, feeling as if a building just fell on him. "Marry her?

  "He asked her, she said yes. That's what he says."

  "True or false?" He shakes the bottle again,

  "True, true. Ask her. Ask her, not me." Bohnert's voice breaks like an adolescent's.

  "And where is old Howard?"

  "I… I can't."

  "Sure you can. Unless you want to sneeze blood for the next week."

  Bohnert's face softens, and he starts to cry like a child, and Rafferty, with no pleasure, recognizes a self-shattering sense of shame. "He's in… he's in Afghanistan," Bohnert says.

  "Call Dr. Ratt," Rafferty says into the phone. "Tell him-"

  "You went after him, didn't you?" Rose demands, her tone as sharp as broken glass. "That man, the one who was with Howard. How stupid can-"

  "I'm not up for an argument." The sweat he smells now is his own, his T-shirt wet and heavy beneath his arms. "Call Dr. Ratt. Get him and Nui there now."

  "And you got yourself hurt," Rose says. "You saw them, you saw how they were, and now-"

  "It's not me. And will you please-" Beside him, on the backseat of the cab, Pim shifts her weight away from him and whimpers.

  "Then who?"

  "Goddamn it, will you please do what I'm asking you to do?" He is suddenly so furious that his mouth tastes like metal. "Will you just fucking do what I want?"

  Pim pulls farther away, leaning against the door.

  There is a long pause. Then Rose says, in a voice he's never heard before, "You sound like a customer."

  He is trying to think of something to say when he hears her disconnect. ROSE'S EYES ARE stones when she opens the door, but the moment she sees Pim, her face softens. "You poor baby," she says in Thai. "You've been crying." Her eyes flick to Rafferty's bandage, but she makes no comment, just gathers Pim in.

  Behind Rose, Dr. Ratt's wife, Nui, gives Pim a sharp-eyed glance. "It's a new one," she says in English, calling toward the kitchen. Rafferty can hear water running, so the doctor is probably washing his hands.

  "How long have you been in Bangkok?" Rose has wrapped a long arm carefully around the girl. Pim's chin is dimpling at the sympathy.

  "Three weeks," she says. Even less time than Rafferty had guessed.

  "And what's the problem?" Rose asks in Thai. "Did my husband beat you up?"

  "No," Pim says. "He was wonderful. He stuck a bottle right up the man's nose."

  "Did he?" Rose says, without a glance at Rafferty. She guides Pim toward the counter between the living room and the kitchen. "Sometimes he's nice by accident."

  "Ahh, our patients have arrived," Dr. Ratt says in what he imagines to be a soothing tone but has always sounded to Rafferty like the voice of an amateur who's somehow gotten on the radio. "Who needs to be looked at first?"

  "Sorry to disappoint everyone," Rafferty says, "but this is nothing." He raises the bandaged elbow. "I'm fine."

  "Oh, well. That won't last long, the way you live. Who's our little friend here?"

  "My name is Pim," Pim says, looking dazzled. Dr. Ratt and Nui are dressed like a cross between medical personnel and slumming angels, he in a white tunic that looks like something Nehru might have worn if Nehru had been a doctor, with a stethoscope gleaming around his neck for effect, and Nui in the latest of a long line of hand-tailored all-silk nurse's outfits. The two of them have made a fortune by defeating Bangkok's fearsome traffic, putting multiple teams of doctors and nurses in cars twenty-four hours a day on the assumption that often enough, when a call comes in, there will be a team nearby. A lot of the profit has gone into clothes. Faced with their soigne urban elegance, Pim folds her arms around her middle to cover some of her bare brown skin and appears even more uncomfortable than before.

  "Mmmm," Dr. Ratt says, giving her a closer look. "Dislocated, is it?"

  "It is," Rafferty says.

  "When I need a layman's opinion." Dr. Ratt says, without glancing up, "you probably won't be the layman I ask."

  "When everyone hates you," Rafferty says, "drink beer." He goes into the kitchen and pulls the refrigerator door open.

  "Well, now," Dr. Ratt says, with a "come here" glance at Nui. Between them they maneuver Pim onto one of the stools at the counter and then swivel the stool so she's got her back to the kitchen and is facing into the living room. She sits there, hunched over protectively, looking from one of them to the other, as though she's trying to decide which of them will bite her first.

  "This is going to hurt," Dr. Ratt says, taking her left wrist. "Only for a second, though, and then it'll be fine."

  "But-" Pim says, just as Dr. Ratt brings the arm up, twists it slightly, and pushes, and it pops into the socket, accompanied by a squeal from Pim that goes through Rafferty's ears like a smoking wire.

  "There," Dr. Ratt says. Pim is bent double, holding her shoulder. "Better?"

  "Yes," she says, "but it hurts."

  "Well, I lied about that. It'll be sore until tomorrow. But it doesn't hurt like before, does it?"

  "Oh, no."

  "He did this to her?" Rose asks. It is an accusation.

  "John," Rafferty says. "The other one. John Bohnert. He's not as dangerous as he thinks he is."

  "Don't you fool yourself," Rose says.

  "He told me something interesting."

  "Hard to believe," Rose says. Dr. Ratt, Nui, and Pim are watching the two of them, unwilling to interrupt.

  "What?" says a new voice, and Rafferty looks around the kitchen door to see Miaow. "What was that noise?" Miaow gives Pim a glance that takes in the garish makeup and the cheap clothes, then dismisses her. "And who's this?"

  "Her name is Pim," Rose says, all ice. "Not 'this.' "

  "You're grumpy," Miaow says, turning back toward her room. "And he's got bandages on and he's drinking beer. Call me when dinner's ready."

  "Hello," Pim says, but Miaow keeps walking.

  "You were just spoken to," Rose says to Miaow's back.

  "Well," Dr. Ratt says, "if no one else is hurt, we should probably be going."

  "Yeah, hello," Miaow mumbles, without slowing.

  "You turn around right now," Rose says. "Who are you to be so rude?"

  "It's all right," Pim says.

  Miaow stops, wheels around, and impales Rose with a glare. "Why are you so mean?"

  "That's it," Nui says, grabbing her husband's arm. To Rafferty she says, "Call us if this gets medical." She hauls Dr. Ratt toward the door.

  "I haven't paid you," Rafferty says.

&n
bsp; "For that? Forget it." Nui is already opening the door, but the doctor puts a hand on the jamb to keep from being towed out of the room. "If you get a chance," he says, "mention us in one of those magazines you write for." He nods to Pim. "Nice to meet you, young lady."

  Pim gives a high wai of respect to the door, which is already swinging shut behind him. She calls out, "Thank you," but the closing of the door cuts the phrase in half. To Rafferty she says, eyes shining, "He's a real doctor."

  "He is," Rafferty says. "And he's got manners, too."

  "Oh, blah, blah, blah," Miaow says. "Why doesn't everybody just yell at me?"

  "Miaow," Rafferty says, "I know it's hard, at your age, to believe that there's anything that's not about you, but it's true."

  "Oh?" Miaow says, and her chin juts out in challenge. "So you're yelling at me because of what? Because of Rose? Or maybe her?" She flips a thumb at Pim. "Or the guys in the restaurant? Or whoever hurt your stupid arm? Like, what, it's an accident that I'm the one you're yelling at? If someone else was standing here, would you be yelling at them instead of me? Fine. I won't stand here anymore. One of you can stand here and let him yell at you." She turns and stalks down the hall, and a moment later the door to her room slams.

  Rose stands, looking after her as though she'd vanished through a wall. She seems distant enough to be reconsidering her entire life. Rafferty drains his beer and thinks about getting another. Then Rose says to Pim, "We're not usually like this."

  Pim glances at Rafferty, looking for help, but he's staring into the refrigerator. She says, "Oh." She makes fluttering gestures with her fingers, but no words come.

  "This is not a good job," Rose says, her voice flat. "What you've come to Bangkok to do. It's not good for you."

  "My parents," Pim says. "And there are five kids." She puts a brown hand flat on her bare knee, fingers spread wide, and stares down at it. She swivels on the stool, and her hot pants glitter. "Everybody needs money," she finally says.

  "I know," Rose says. Then she says, "Poke. Get me a beer."

  "Gee," Rafferty says. "You're speaking to me." He pulls a Singha out of the refrigerator and says to Pim, "Want one?"

  She shakes her head. "I don't drink."

  "See?" Rose says over the hiss and fizz as Rafferty pops the cap. "You're a good girl. I know it feels like there's nothing else you can do, but you're wrong. You have no idea how wrong you are. You think you'll do it for a while, a few years, and then it'll all be over, but you're wrong. It's never really over. I haven't danced in more than five years, I'm married, I have a husband and a daughter, and it still comes up and kicks me in the teeth."

  "You danced?" Pim says. She blows out a deep breath of admiration. "You must have made big money. I'll bet you got all-nights, maybe even weeks. I'm not beautiful like you. I usually have to wait until they're drunk before one of them picks me, and then it's a short-time. Nobody ever wants me to stay all night." She rubs her palms over her thighs as though she's cold. "I hate going home after, at three or four in the morning with money in my pocket, dressed like this. It frightens me."

  "It should all frighten you," Rose says, taking the beer from Rafferty. "You see how disrespectful my daughter just was? That's because she's ashamed of me. My daughter. She could barely look at you because of what you do. And she was a street kid just a few years ago, so it's not like she shits silk. Is that what you want? Someday, after you fuck a thousand drunk men, and defend yourself against the ones who hate women, and avoid getting AIDS, and save your money, and maybe even buy a little house, if you're not like all the other girls who spend the money as fast as it comes and lose it at cards and give it to boyfriends who beat them up. If all that happens, if you live through it and take care of everybody and keep a little money somehow, then your daughter is disgusted with you."

  "Miaow's a kid," Rafferty says.

  "What do you think Pim is?" Rose says, just this side of a snap. "And don't say 'Oh, that's different,' because it wouldn't have been, not if you hadn't come along. What do you think Miaow would have been doing at- How old are you, eighteen?"

  "Sort of," Pim says.

  "What would Miaow have been doing at seventeen or eighteen, do you think?" Rose demands. "Running for office? Look at her, Poke. She even looks a little like Miaow."

  Rafferty looks at the girl, and Rose is right. They're both small, brown, and shaped by the distinctive gene pool of the northeast, with rounded features, broad nostrils, and the fine, dark, flyaway hair that Miaow used to part and slick down with water. "A little," he says.

  "Miaow is your daughter?" Pim says. "She's prettier than I am."

  "It'll change you," Rose continues, as though no one else has spoken. "Now you're a good girl, you're a village girl who's never hurt anybody. Two, three years from now, you'll lie, you'll tell men you love them when you can't stand the sight of them. You'll steal their money when they're in the shower, then tiptoe out of the room. You'll tell your friends to look for them outside the club so you can hide when they come in. You'll drink and smoke and take yaa baa and nobody knows what else. You won't be Pim anymore."

  "You haven't changed."

  Rose tilts her head back and drains most of the beer in three or four long swallows. "I don't even have my own name," she says. "Now I'm Rose. Before, in my village, my name was Kwan. I came to Bangkok as Kwan, who bathed in the river under a long cloth and washed my hair in rainstorms with all my clothes on. I kept my voice down to be polite. I was a good daughter and granddaughter. I was embarrassed to be so tall. It took about six months before I turned into this person called Rose, who danced nearly naked every night and gave big smiles to men when what she wanted to do was to kick them in the face. I ate yaa baa like candy, and I smoked"-she looks down at the cigarette in her hand-"about as much as I smoke now. I let one of the men rename me. A man gave me the name Rose-you didn't know that, did you, Poke?" She hasn't turned to face him. "He said, this man, he said that Kwan was too hard to remember, even though it's a good name and it means 'spirit,' and that the rose was the queen of flowers and I was the queen of Patpong." She laughs, rough as a cough. "The queen of Patpong. A kingdom of whores and viruses. Death with a smile. Every dick every night, every guy who wants to go bareback, maybe he's the one who'll give it to you. So you visit the temple and you pray and you say no when they don't want to wear one, and they slap you around until you say yes, and then you go to the temple and pray harder, and you're terrified next time you get tested. Except you learn, when you've been here for a while, that all the tests are negative. Even if you're positive, the tests are negative." She inhales the rest of the cigarette as though she'd like to bite into it and spit it out. "Did you know that, Poke? All the tests are negative. Positive tests are too expensive for the bars."

  "I don't think that's true anymore," Rafferty says.

  Rose backs across the living room, drinking as she goes, still looking at Pim. When she feels her legs touch the couch, she collapses and tosses the almost-extinct cigarette butt into the ashtray. "True or not, who cares? You." She tosses the word toward Pim as if it were a rock. "You want to spend your life worrying about condoms? You want to ride up in elevators with guys who might decide to break your fingers? You want to learn to pee on guys who need that? You want to do three-ways and four-ways and five-ways and whatever way the guy wants? You want guys to put it in your butt?"

  There's a moment of dumbfounded silence, and Pim bursts into tears. She puts her right hand on her injured shoulder and cradles it, then reaches down and grabs her ankle and just lets the sobs come. They're big, gulping sobs, minor-key foghorn tones, sobs that lift her back and lets it drop, and they come from someplace very deep.

  Rafferty says, "Great. You've cheered her right up."

  "I wasn't trying to cheer her up," Rose snaps. "I was trying to- I was trying to… save her. Save her, okay? Is that too dramatic for you? Does all the talk make you uncomfortable? You want to leave it unspoken? What do you want to believe? You want to be
lieve that I lived on the tips from colas? That I turned down guys for all those years, just waiting for you to come in off the street?"

  "It's a little late for that," Rafferty says, and he feels an immediate and blood-hot wash of shame.

  A door bangs against a wall, and a moment later Miaow stalks into the room. Without looking at either Rose or Rafferty, she goes to Pim and rests a hand on the back of the girl's neck. "Come on," she says. "You can cry in my room. She'll leave you alone in there."

  Pim gets up, looking even younger than Miaow, and Miaow puts an arm around her and leads her out of the room. This time she closes the door quietly.

  Rafferty stays where he is, listening to the silence reestablish itself in the room. Rose is as still as a mannequin for the space of nine or ten breaths, and then she pulls back her arm and slings the beer bottle, end over end, spewing beer, at the sliding glass door to the balcony. The bottle explodes in a skyrocket of brown sparkles, and the pane of glass in the door cracks from corner to corner. By the time Rafferty has torn his eyes from the damage, Rose is already up and heading for the bedroom, her spine as straight as a bullet's path, her hands balled into fists. She shoves the door aside with her shoulder and kicks it closed behind her. IT TAKES PIM a few minutes to stop crying, or at least to lower the volume to the point at which it's not audible from Miaow's room. There's a single crash of something hard and heavy in the room Rafferty and Rose share. Then there's nothing at all, just the steady sigh of the air conditioner, and the city dark and sparkling behind the crack in the glass door, turning the jagged seam into a long, narrow prism, shining with color like a frozen rainbow.

  It seems like a good idea to clean up the broken glass. This is an area in which he can be helpful. He can think of no reason that anyone would get angry at him for cleaning up the broken glass.

  He goes into the kitchen and pulls open the door of the narrow pantry, which is next to the stove, tugging it gently to keep the catch from making its snapped-finger sound and opening it only partway so it won't bang against the handle of the oven.