Bangkok Tattoo (20 page)

Almost all the other women are American citizens, though. Many were born there, others have immigrated and stayed long enough to take the oath of allegiance and generally behave exactly like other Americans. Practically every one of them is on drugs. The white women tend to claim, perhaps truthfully, that it was drugs (mostly coke, crack and meth, sometimes heroin) that drove them to the Game in the first place. They needed the big bucks to feed their big habits. The Asians and the blacks often claim it was prostitution that drove them to drugs. Everyone agrees that to survive on the Game in America, you more or less have to be on dope of one kind or another. Pretty soon Chanya understands what they mean. The men hardly trouble to ask her name, there is no repartee, no fun—even less fun than in Texas. To her it makes no sense at all, since imposing a layer of misery has no effect on the popularity of the trade. On the contrary, it may be the puritanical monotony of the working week that drives the men to seek relief in Vegas: not raging bulls, exactly, more like cows waiting to be milked.

She becomes a production-line worker, if a highly paid one. It is exactly what the men expect. They really
need
to be disappointed—she can see them starting to tell themselves how sorry they are as they put their pants back on, how they will try to live better lives and buy their wives a new dress. Her good looks and superb figure are only minor advantages—generally the men are too rushed and furtive to notice.

She starts to drink regularly, usually a couple of tequilas at the end of a session to keep her head level. She stays more than six months, long enough to save thirty thousand dollars, then takes a bus to Washington. One of her friends from Bangkok has called her. Wan arrived in America soon after Chanya and found work in a Washington, D.C., hotel where the Game is very well controlled. There is a sauna and massage spa attached to the hotel where Chanya can work.

In Washington it takes Chanya a week to realize she has dropped into a whore’s paradise. The hotel where Wan works owns five stars, which means diplomats, high-rolling secretaries, heads of security, and others stay here. But before Chanya has time to apply for a job, her friend introduces her to a Thai diplomat named Thanee, a light-skinned man in his mid-forties with obvious Chinese genes who belongs to one of maybe a dozen very wealthy families who control Thailand. Chanya has heard of his family, who are often in the news in Bangkok. The patriarch, who is still just about alive, made a lot of money in the opium trade while it was still legal, or semilegal, but his eldest son showed true commercial genius by investing his share of the family fortune first in electronics, then in telecommunications. Thanee is a second grandson who showed no interest in business but demonstrated a flair for diplomacy. With his connections it was inevitable that sooner or later he would land a plum job in Washington. He is part of a permanent lobbying group looking after the interests of the Thai economy—well, the interests of Thai patricians, actually.

The negotiations are very short, and he and Chanya close the deal with hardly more than a smile. Wan finds an excuse to leave them alone after about five minutes. It is such a relief to speak her own language and to be with a man who understands where she is coming from, she almost loses her professionalism.

There is no hurry to get her to bed. He takes her to a Thai restaurant off Chinatown, where he urges her to choose her favorite dishes. He orders a bottle of white wine to go with the raw prawn salad, and a bottle of red for the duck. He makes her laugh with some Thai jokes, but at the same time his sophistication is pretty intimidating. He not only speaks English perfectly; he owns a kind of smoothness that seems to impress, even frighten, the waiters. He is a master of both cultures, something that leaves her almost speechless with admiration. Best of all, they understand each other perfectly: there will be no misplaced passion and no offers of marriage with this guy. They will proceed back to his apartment at a leisurely Thai pace, their private party will begin with her massaging him slowly with aromatic oil, little by little intimacy will develop, he will not force the issue but will wait for her to signal she is ready. She will stay the night, they will breakfast together, perhaps they will have sex one more time before he pays her generously. She will allow herself to fall in love with him in a very controlled way. They are as far apart within the Thai class system as it is possible to be, so neither of them is going to develop unreasonable expectations. On the other hand, both of them will greet each other with affection and a degree of relief at their next assignation. She will almost certainly become one of his
mia noi
or minor wives in Washington.

Which is exactly how it happens, except that she quickly becomes his favorite
mia noi.
Indeed, Wan tells her he dumped all the others the same week he met Chanya.

Thanee’s wife number one, Khun Toi, the matriarch herself, spends most of her time in Thailand with their two children and only rarely comes to Washington. Of course, she knows about Thanee’s various
mia noi.
She would have laughed out loud if anyone had told her he was faithful to her. She herself, having been educated in the West and being as liberated as any woman in her own Thai way, has a regular lover in Bangkok whom Thanee knows all about. It is not out of the question that Thanee will introduce her to Chanya on her next visit. Everyone would know the rules: Chanya would show great deference toward Khun Toi, and Khun Toi in return would develop an affection for Chanya.

Which is exactly how it happens. Khun Toi stays for ten days, she and Chanya get along marvelously and go shopping together. Khun Toi buys Chanya some fine new skirts and dresses with the best designer labels, Chanya carries all their bags to the waiting limo. At the end of the ten days Khun Toi tells her husband how it is to be: Chanya is far too beautiful and valuable to be left to the mercies of the local sex trade. Thanee is to pay her a stipend every month, enough to live and dress well and to accompany Thanee from time to time on those few social functions where Americans will not raise too many eyebrows. Chanya will be invited to Thanee’s Asian-only soirées. They will not live together, and Chanya will be discreet about coming and going from Thanee’s penthouse apartment. Thanee must give her a key so as to make her comings and goings smoother. For her part, Chanya will dedicate herself to Thanee and not take on any other clients. That will take care of the risk of disease, which has been worrying Khun Toi for quite a while. Not that she and Thanee have sex very often these days, but she doesn’t want him to get sick and die.

“Three quarters of my money would go back to my parents,” Thanee explains to Chanya in front of Khun Toi. Everyone laughs, Thai-style.

Chanya thinks maybe Khun Toi gets off on arranging her husband’s naughty fucks. I could smell her when she hugged me tonight. She’s making him screw her while I’m writing this. She’s going to make him tell her what Chanya’s like in bed, what he makes me do. Well, we do everything, honey.

At first Thanee is too canny to give Chanya more than the tiniest glimpse of his professional life, and such glimpses as she is allowed come out of small talk among her new lover and his Thai friends. But although she left school at the age of twelve and has never spent a minute thinking about geopolitics, Chanya catches on fast. She is astonished and even a little dismayed at the unofficial view of this
Saharat Amerika
she spent so much time and effort to reach. According to Thanee and his Chinese friends, the world’s only superpower and its biggest economy is also old, gridlocked, overtaxed, overgoverned, more overarmored than
Tyrannosaurus rex,
and too hidebound for any dramatic expansion. Modern China is a young country that began life in 1949. It has only just entered the great period of wild entrepreneurs and robber barons, enjoys just the right balance of corruption and law and order that allows the strongest and most ferocious of its businessmen to cut through the red tape, while lesser citizens are kept under control. It approximates to the golden age of the Rockefellers, Joseph Kennedy, and Al Capone. China is also very close to Thailand. When the present phase of road-building projects in Laos is completed, there will be direct land routes all the way from Beijing and Shanghai to Bangkok. This seems to excite Thanee and his closest associates, both the Chinese and the Thai. China is already dominating the economies of Southeast Asia. Within twenty years it will be the world’s largest economy and the most important country in the world for anyone living in Thailand. With two billion natural capitalists, its potential for expansion is incalculable.

Understanding the subliminal message, Chanya realizes with sadness that she is Thanee’s last Washington luxury. He sees that she has understood. Perhaps he has deliberately allowed her to overhear certain conversations—he’s certainly smart and devious enough for that.

Career moves take planning, though, and with Asians an awful lot of wining and dining. He is out most nights in his tuxedo. The occasions to which he is able to invite her are few, but he buys her three evening gowns just in case. She causes a sensation in her long gowns with her shining black hair plaited and pinned up and the gold necklace he bought her glittering against her brown skin, large single gold-set pearls in her ears. She sees that not a few Chinese and Thai men intend to inherit her after Thanee’s departure. And so they might have done, were it not for a curious move by Thanee himself.

Chanya thinks she will puzzle for the rest of her life about why exactly Thanee introduced her to the
farang.
For quite a while she will think of the tall, muscular, and rather unattractive man as just that: the
farang,
probably because since she took on Thanee, she has hardly met any white men at all. Why did Thanee invite her to lunch with the
farang
at 7 Duck on Massachusetts Avenue (wicker and pillows everywhere, the penne pasta with seafood would have been a lot better with more chiles), on exactly the day that he broke it to her that he had been posted to Beijing and would be leaving in two months? Sometimes she thinks it might have been a kind of malice, not toward her but toward the
farang.
Perhaps the subtle revenge of an Asian diplomat who has not failed to notice how even his smoothness, charm, intelligence, and perfect English still do not qualify him as an equal of the Americans who believe they run the world? If that is the case, then it is a stroke of malicious genius on Thanee’s part; anyone could have foreseen how hard the
farang
was likely to fall.

Mitch Turner cannot keep his eyes off her all through the lunch, to the extent that it becomes embarrassing and Thanee makes signs of irritation too subtle for Turner to notice. Chanya has to keep dropping her eyes so as not to lock with the
farang
’s. Sometimes she slips rather rudely into Thai, in the hope the American will be offended, but he seems not to notice. Those blue eyes simply burn into her skin. He cannot stop staring at her.

This is not entirely surprising. She has been in Washington for five months now and for most of that time she has been kept by Thanee, who is not a man to begrudge a woman when it comes to clothes and cosmetics. She is wearing a fawn Chanel business suit, and her creamy brown skin has benefited from endless visits to upmarket beauticians who also know how to emphasize the mystery in those Oriental eyes, but best of all, her natural poise convinces everyone that she is a young diplomat herself, the product of the best education money can buy. Surely no peasant girl who began her working life by minding water buffalo barefoot in the paddy could possibly know to sit like that? And to be so relaxed it is almost intimidating? That is the word Mitch Turner will use later, when they know each other better. That whole lunch
he
feels intimidated by
her
!

On this day at least she is saved by neo-Puritanism. Normally Turner permits himself only half an hour for lunch, and this one has gone on for seventy minutes. When he can take his eyes off her, he gets into a cryptic conversation with Thanee that she cannot follow. Now Turner must get back to the office.

Thanee and Chanya exchange signs of relief undetectable to non-Thais, order champagne as soon as he’s gone (of course Mitch Turner never drinks at lunchtime—and very little at other times), and slowly seduce each other for the thousandth time. When they eventually arrive at Thanee’s apartment, she automatically goes to the bathroom to change into a bathrobe to begin his massage. When she finds him on the sofa, also in a bathrobe, he gives her a box finished in crimson velvet. Inside is a heavy gold chain with a Buddha pendant. When she takes it out, she sees the chain is very chunky and not especially beautiful. It is twenty-three-karat gold and alone worth maybe five thousand dollars. The Buddha pendant is in gold and jade and worth double that. The chain does not really suit her, it is too hefty and ostentatious, but she knows that is not the point. This is Thanee’s Thai way of taking care of her. The gold is her insurance in the United States—or anywhere else, for that matter. If she ever gets herself in serious trouble, she can pawn or sell it. Thanee is saying goodbye, in other words. For the first time in her life, Chanya bursts into tears over a man. She recovers quickly, though; only a stubbornness around the jaw tells how hard she is fighting to control herself.

He comforts her and makes love to her in a way he has never done before. His tenderness says it all. He loves her too, more than she dared hope, but neither of them is so dumb as to suppose they can run off to a desert island somewhere. The rules of the Thai feudal pyramid are etched into both their hearts. He could not possibly take her to Beijing, that would be broadcasting their intimacy in a way that would damage his wife’s face, and in the East nothing is more important than face. This last party of pleasure is the best they can do, and they make the most of it. He forbids her to come to the airport when he leaves. She understands. The news of his assignment to Beijing has got out, and the press will be all over him. The airport will be no place for a
mia noi.