The Queen of Patpong pr-4

by Timothy Hallinan

  Nana slid aside on the backseat to make room for her. She was dressed to travel, in the black skirt she'd worn on the day she arrived and a tight red top that looped up over one brown shoulder and left the other bare. The leopard-spotted shoes were back on her feet.

  Kwan said, "You look beautiful."

  "You're going to be a lot more beautiful than I've ever been."

  The driver's eyes flicked to Kwan's in the rearview mirror, and then he shifted with a grinding of gears, and the car bumped down the road.

  "Before I get on the train," Kwan said, leaning against the door to increase the distance between them. She had rehearsed the demand in bed the previous night. "I need to know that everything was true. About the house in Bangkok."

  "It's worse," Nana said. "You remember what I told you about what would happen to your father's money."

  "You mean, the-" But Nana waved her silent before Kwan said the word "police" and lifted her chin toward the back of the driver's head.

  "Yes," Nana said. "Them. They would have taken half, and your father would have gone to the bank for more. To get back what he lost. Do you understand what I mean by the bank?"

  "Yes," Kwan said. She turned away from Nana to look out the window.

  "He drinks, he plays cards. He'd have gone to the bank three or four times. Every time he gets more money, it takes longer to pay-"

  Kwan rolled down her window. "I said I understand." SHE'S HEARD the train passing by all her life, but she's never been on one. Nana climbs on board as though the whole thing, all thirty cars of it, has been sent just for her, and she hoists her bright pink bag up onto a shelf above the seats. To Kwan she says, "The bathroom."

  "I forgot." The car is dingier than she imagined it would be. The floor has the advanced filthiness of a surface that's been spit on repeatedly. The windows are so dirty that the world outside looks like she's seeing it through a glass of tea, and the seats are worn bare wood, wide enough for three narrow rear ends. Hugging her book bag to her chest, she goes to the end of the car, but there's no bathroom there. She looks back at Nana, who waves briskly for her to keep going. She's in midstride in the third car, threading the narrow corridor between the rows of seats, when the train lurches into motion and sends her sprawling back, onto a hard wooden seat on her right, the book bag squirting up from beneath her arms. She flails at it and grabs it, and a young man, not handsome but wearing immaculate clothing, looks at her in amused surprise as he scoots toward the window.

  "I'm… I'm sorry," Kwan says, her face hot as fire.

  He smiles at her, a nice smile that contains nothing to be afraid of. "Why? You didn't start the train."

  "But I… I fell here, and you… um, you had to move, and-"

  "It's fine. Really. Trains do that. If they didn't, we'd never get anyplace, would we?"

  Absolutely no words come to her mind. "The… um, the…"

  "The bathroom? Down there." He points toward the end of the car. "Put your hands on the backs of the seats as you walk. That way when the train goes around a curve, you won't fall down again."

  "This thing," Kwan says, lifting the book bag as though he hasn't seen it and immediately feeling even more stupid.

  "One hand, then," he says patiently. "Hold the bag under your left arm and use the right to grab the seat backs."

  Kwan nods but still can't think of anything to say. The train is shuddering beneath her feet and making a clacking sound like something chewing rocks. She's starting to haul herself onto her feet again when he says, "Where are you going?"

  Where is she going? She hasn't actually asked Nana. "Um," she says. "Bangkok." She manages at the last moment not to turn the word into a question.

  "Where in Bangkok? It's a big city."

  Kwan nods and says, "Really big." And then, since he seems to expect more, she adds, "My aunt's house."

  His eyes travel to the sapphire in her right ear and then come back. "That's good. You've got someone waiting for you, then."

  "Oh, yes. My… my aunt." She wants to fan her face, but she won't do it.

  "So you said." He lifts his eyebrows and lets them drop. "Well."

  "Well," Kwan says, searching desperately for something to say. "Thank you."

  He smiles again. "I didn't do anything."

  "You taught me… um, how to walk. On the train, I mean."

  "You'd have figured it out. So." The eyebrows go up and down again. "The bathroom."

  "The bathroom." And then she's up, the bag trapped beneath her left arm, taking it one cautious row at a time, her right hand grasping the backs of the seats.

  The bathroom is tiny and dirty, and it smells sweetly awful. She has to lean against the door to get her skirt off, terrified that it'll swing open beneath her weight and she'll be standing there in her frayed underpants. Once the skirt is off, she hurries into the jeans, having some trouble with the left leg because there's nothing to balance herself against except the door, and the train is turning, as the young man said it would. With the jeans finally up and buttoned, she pulls the school blouse over her head and chooses her best T-shirt, the one that nobody else owned before she got it, and slips it on. She looks at herself in the mirror, avoiding her eyes, and smooths the wrinkles in the T-shirt with the palms of her hands. She lifts the blouse by its shoulders to fold it and feel the weight in the pocket. The stone.

  She stands there, swaying with the train, holding the stone in her right hand and feeling the distance between her and her village open and stretch. She shoves the stone into the pocket of her jeans.

  Then she carefully folds her school uniform and places it in the bottom of the book bag, takes a last glance at herself, and pours water over her hands so she can scrub her face and smooth down her hair. She finds herself thinking of the young man as she dabs her face dry with her spare T-shirt.

  When she passes him on her way back to Nana, his eyebrows rise again and stay up as he takes in her jeans and shirt. His smile, when their eyes meet, is more measured than it had been before. "BUT WHAT DO you want?" Nana has been filing her nails for the past twenty kilometers or so, but now she looks over at Kwan, who has her nose pressed to the window, watching Thailand slide by.

  "Want?" She realizes that Nana has been talking for a few minutes but has no idea what she's said. "I don't know."

  "There must be something."

  There is, actually, something she's always wanted. "A wristwatch."

  Nana laughs, a laugh as sharp as glass breaking. "In the village? A wristwatch? Why? The whole village is a clock. Sunrise is at sunrise, noon is at noon. When the sun disappears, you pee and go to bed. When it comes up, you pee and wash your face. Everything you have to do, everything everyone has to do, it's got its time, and everybody knows when it is. And if you're wrong, by a few minutes or a few hours, so what? You can do it at the right time the next day. Or the next." She looks critically at her nails, her arms outstretched and her fingers spread. "That was one of the things I hated most. Every day, every day, exactly the same, like the week was Monday, Monday, Monday."

  "I still want a watch," Kwan says stubbornly.

  "Well, that's easy. If that's all you want, you're going to be happy."

  "That's not all I want."

  "Then what? What else?"

  A better life for my brothers and sisters. Safety for my sister Mai. Someone who will love me. Someone I can love. A place that's mine. Being clean all my life. What she says is, "Never mind."

  "Oh, don't sulk. This is an adventure."

  "I'm not sulking."

  "Don't worry, then. There's nothing to worry about. Don't you want a cell phone? Pretty clothes? A gold bracelet? Two gold bracelets?"

  "Yes," Kwan says. "All those things."

  "Fine. Don't talk." Nana goes back to work on her nails.

  "What time is it?"

  "You really do need a watch, don't you?" Nana puts the emery board between her teeth, fumbles with the catch on her own watch, and hands it to Kwan. "Here. Put it on."


  "Oh, no, I-"

  "Stop that. I just gave it to you. Stop saying no. Life is about getting things. You get nice things, and you give them away. You make money-you never say no to money, never-and you give it to your family. You have food, and you share it with friends. You have spare change, you give it to monks or beggars. But you can't do any of that until you have things."

  Kwan says, "Thank you," and tries to put the watch on, but she doesn't know how to work the catch.

  "You're absolutely hopeless," Nana says, and she reaches over and snaps the catch closed. "See? You fold it here and then just fit it over the inside piece and press."

  "Thank-" Kwan begins, but realizes she's just said that. She looks at the watch. "Almost four," she says. "Mai will be getting home in a few minutes."

  "Your mother will be making something for her to eat," Nana says. "Isn't that sweet? And your father will be off in the woods with the three guys who are waiting to tie you up."

  Kwan swivels to face her. "That's not-"

  "If you're going to remember any of it," Nana says between her teeth, "remember all of it." She looks back down at her nails and frowns. "I don't have the color I want."

  "Do you…" Kwan falls silent, and Nana makes a show of folding her hands to hide the unfinished nails and turning her eyes to Kwan's. She waits. "Don't you ever think about it? How you used to be? The people you knew? I mean… I mean-what your life was like?"

  "No. My life was covered in shit. I stepped in shit all day long. Buffalo shit, dog shit, sometimes human shit, someplace where some little kid took a squat. I was fat, I was angry, I was lonely, I was hungry. I didn't even know you weren't supposed to be able to be fat and hungry at the same time. Now I'm full and I'm thin. Better, right? I never step in shit. I can have anything I want. Another watch? No problem. Ten pairs of thousand-baht blue jeans? No problem. A man? Anytime I want one. And yeah, sometimes when I don't. But you know what? If that's the worst thing that ever happens to me, I'll die happy." She stops and looks beyond Kwan, at the scenery blurring past the window. When she speaks again, some of the edge is gone from her voice. "You have to wait, baby. You have to see how you feel when you've been there for a while. You're scared. You don't know what your life is going to be like." She puts her hand on her own chest, fingers flat. "You never liked me. Well, I didn't like you either, but that wasn't your fault. I didn't like anybody. So forget what you thought about me then and look at me. Do I look unhappy? Do I look like somebody who's going to jump off a bridge? Do I look like I'm about to burst into tears?"

  "No."

  "I lived through this. I know hundreds of girls who lived through this. And you know what? You'll live through it."

  The train is slowing. Kwan leans against the window and peers ahead. A small station is gliding toward them. People in worn village clothes stand there, clutching plastic bags.

  "Nowhere," Nana says, without even looking. "We're nowhere."

  The doors open at the end of the car, and the young man Kwan almost fell on walks through them, carrying a cloth traveling bag. As he comes toward them, his eyes find her and then slide past to Nana. The smile on his face loses its energy. He looks straight ahead and passes them without slowing.

  "Mr. Nowhere," Nana says when he's gone.

  Kwan looks at Nana, seeing her blouse the way the young man had seen it, high on one shoulder and low above the opposite breast. Then she closes her eyes, places a hand over the stone in her pocket, and waits for the train to start again.

  Chapter 12

  Candy Cane

  She smells Bangkok long before she sees it. The train is slicing through the night, and Nana's watch-her watch-says it's almost nine. By now her family would normally be asleep, but her father is probably stalking the village in a rage, his pockets empty again, while the children stay out of sight. During the past hour, the dark expanses between villages have grown shorter, until now there are always lights on both sides of the train and she's surrounded by a brownish back-of-the-nose smell, like standing behind a bus, and she thinks, This must be Bangkok, but the train keeps going and keeps going, and the lighted windows get higher and higher, and there are more roads, and then the roads have cars on them. At one point cars pass above them on a bridge, and Kwan cranes up to stare at them.

  "Getting there," Nana says. She yawns comfortably. Her nails are now a kind of tangerine color with red underneath it, like a juice mix. Kwan thinks the polish is as garish as some of the colored electric signs they've been passing for the last half hour.

  Looking back out the window, Kwan says, "It's too big."

  "It's still a village, once you know it. It's just that it's a big village." The train begins to slow, and Nana is up, yanking her bag from the overhead shelf while the world is still sliding sickeningly by. "Come on," she says. "We've missed most of the night." And she's halfway down the car, moving toward the rear of the train, before Kwan has even gotten her arms around her book bag.

  Outside the train Kwan sees a rice paddy of people, a solid field of people, pressed shoulder to shoulder, too close together for light to shine between them, stretching back four or five meters from the train, where it thins into individual shapes, blurs to Kwan's nearsighted eyes. She is seeing, she realizes, more people in one moment than she has seen in her entire life. She hesitates, one foot still on the step leading up to the train, but Nana reaches back without even looking, snags Kwan's T-shirt, and drags her behind. Kwan has to dodge the wheels of Nana's pink suitcase.

  Outside, in a haze of heat and fumes, Nana stops and sizes up a long, long line of taxis, all new-looking, painted every color Kwan has ever seen, plus some she hasn't. Nana opens the door of the cab at the front of the line, leans in, and says, "Patpong 1. Forty baht."

  The driver says, "The meter."

  Nana says, "Fuck the meter. Forty baht. With the air-con on."

  The driver glances up at the rearview mirror, sees the number of taxis behind him, and does something under the dashboard. Kwan hears the trunk pop open. Without a word Nana goes to the back of the cab, raises the trunk all the way up, slides the bag inside, and slams the trunk. To Kwan she says, "What are you waiting for? Get in." She hip-shoves Kwan across the seat and, even before she closes the door, says to the driver, "Go, go, go."

  Kwan has to fight the urge to press her nose against the window. Lights, cars, people, more people, more cars, buildings high enough to lose their tops in mist. No stars at all. The taxi is freezing, and goose bumps have popped up all over her arms. She glances at Nana, who is sitting there gazing at the back of the driver's seat as though a movie were being projected on it. Just as Kwan is about to speak, Nana says, "Listen. Are you listening?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Here's what's going to happen. He'll drop us at the end of Patpong. There's a market set up in the middle of the street, and the sidewalk is crowded. I don't want to have to keep looking for you, so you grab the back of my blouse and don't let go. If anybody gets in the way, just shove."

  "Shove someone?"

  "That's what I said, isn't it? If we get separated, I could waste half an hour looking for you, and I want to get to work. Don't look at any of the men."

  "Oh," Kwan says, thinking, She wants to get to work? "I won't."

  "Well, don't. One of them might try to stop you, and I haven't got time for that. When we get to the bar, you just keep your mouth shut. I'll introduce you to the mama-san, and then she and I will go away to talk some business for a couple of minutes. You stay wherever she puts you. Exactly where she puts you. Don't talk to the customers." The taxi passes a big, brightly lighted shrine, and Nana dips her head and makes a wai in its direction. Kwan follows suit, and Nana begins talking as though she'd never stopped. "It's important that you do not look at, or talk to, any customers. You don't want to make enemies of the other girls before you even start to work."

  "Enemies?"

  "Think about it. They've been up there all night, dancing their feet off, trying to
get one of those fatsos to buy them a drink, take them out, whatever will put some money in their pocket. Then you come in, with dew still on you, and the customer one of them has her eye on suddenly decides you're the angel of the evening. That girl is not going to be your friend. And neither are her friends."

  "I'm not going to be anybody's… angel."

  "See that you're not."

  "Why can't I go with you and the mama-san?"

  "Because I say so."

  "Oh."

  Nana pats her hand. "I know this is confusing, but just do what I say and stay out of trouble. A week from now, you'll feel right at home." She smiles at Kwan and then leans forward, slaps a hand on the back of the front seat, and says to the driver, "Could you move this thing? I'd like to get there in this lifetime." THE SIDEWALK IS solid with people, almost all of them farang. They seem to be suffering in the heat; their shirts are as wet as second skins, their hair is matted, and their necks and faces are red and dripping. Maybe they sweat so much, Kwan thinks, sneaking quick looks at them, because so many of them are fat. They smell different from Thais, too. Some of them smell so bad that Kwan breathes through her mouth, thinking it would be rude to hold her nose. For a sliver of a moment, she tries to imagine being close to one of these men, being alone with him. Could she do it? Would it be rude to ask him to shower first? Maybe she could wash him, like a baby, to make sure he was really clean.

  What amazes her is how tall they are. Most of them are only a little shorter than she is, and some are actually taller. For the first time in her life, Kwan doesn't feel like the one nail that's sticking up from the board. She doesn't feel like a freak. She has a brief sensation that she's walking in a trench.