Bar Girl (5 page)

Thirty five years in the army. Joined at eighteen. Man and boy. It gave him his pension. Nothing more. Even that was being taxed. Sixty five years old and nothing to show for his life other than a run down bar and a chesty cough. Too many cigarettes.

He lit another. One more before closing the bar. He’d have to clean the place up in the morning. He always did. Couldn’t afford a cleaner any more. Another whiskey and then off to bed.

The small upstairs room wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even good. In fact it was bloody horrible. No air conditioning. Not even a real bed. Just a mattress on the floor. It would do though. All he needed to do was sleep. He didn’t need to entertain these days. Couldn’t afford it. He smiled to himself. He gulped the last of his whiskey, poured another to take to bed, and turned away from the bar to head for the doors. When he looked up he saw her.

She was just standing in the doorway looking around the bar. Her eyes skirted over him quickly. They didn’t need to linger. He looked like every other tired old farang.

He walked a few paces toward her, meaning to say ‘hello’ but stopped before he got too far. There was something about her. Something about the way she stood. She had the same long, black and straight hair the other girls had. She wore a pair of denim jeans and a white tee shirt. Same as a lot of the other girls. Her skin was lighter. A shade of light coffee or maybe honey. Her eyes were dark brown. Nothing strange about that. All the girls had dark brown eyes. There was something else. Mike concentrated. Maybe he’d drunk too many whiskies. The girl didn’t say anything. She just carried on looking. As though she were summing up. Thinking. Planning in her mind.

Mike continued to look at her. She didn’t seem to mind. She was beautiful that was for sure. Very beautiful. Even his old bones could see that. Long legs, slim waist, great looking breasts. She was stunning. But that wasn’t it. There was something about her. An air of confidence. A maturity beyond her years. Mind you, he didn’t have a clue how old she was. She looked about twenty-two, maybe a little older. He couldn’t be sure. Then it hit him. He suddenly saw what was different about her.

He took another couple of steps. She was similar to all the other girls. Dressed the way they dressed. Same eyes. Same hair. Everything the same except for one big difference. This was no girl. When Mike looked at her what he saw was a woman. A woman with a mind of her own.

As he approached she looked at him again. Straight into his eyes. No shyness. No coyness. No smile. She looked deep into his eyes. Assessing the man she saw walking toward her. He hesitated. Unsure. He’d seen it all. Knew it all. But he’d never seen anyone like this woman before. She was so confident. So sure of herself. He stopped again.

She blinked and, as her eyes flicked open, she smiled. She had decided. The smile was honest and open. She wasn’t laughing. Not at him. She was smiling. The first genuine smile he had seen for a long, long time.

‘Hello,’ she said, in perfect English. ‘You must be Mike.’

She didn’t offer her hand, just stood there, looking at him. The smile had broken his spell. Now she looked like any other girl. Beautiful, yes, but not unlike any of the other girls he had seen. She looked younger when she smiled. Twenty, maybe even nineteen.

‘Er, yes. I’m Mike.’ He stammered. The first time in his life he had ever stammered. He coughed into his fist. ‘Can I help you? We’re closed I’m afraid.’

‘Yes. You can’t pay the police,’ she said. ‘We need to talk, Mike.’

*****

Mike had closed the main doors and was back sitting at the bar listening. The woman sat beside him had introduced herself as Siswan and she had a proposition for him. Mike hadn’t lit a cigarette for almost twenty minutes. He didn’t think she’d like that. He hadn’t touched the whiskey in front of him either. He didn’t know why, but her voice, and what she was saying, had him hooked.

‘So, that’s what I have in mind, Mike. What do you think?’ she finished.

‘Why me? Why this bar?’ he asked.

‘It’s in a good position,’ she told him.

‘Yes, but why me? You could take this place over in a few weeks. I know how it works.’

‘That’s true, Mike. I could. But to do that I would have to involve local help.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t want to work with the locals.’

‘Why not?’

‘Mike, what do you need from life? A better room? Another pack of cigarettes? A bottle of whiskey?’ She looked at him. ‘You don’t need anything more, Mike.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that. I’m not dead yet, you know,’ he answered. My god, she knows more about me than I know about myself, he thought. He couldn’t think of anything else he needed from life. ‘Maybe I’d like some new clothes.’ It was the only thing he could come up with. She had him mesmerised.

‘Yes, well, that’s not a bad idea,’ she laughed, as she looked at his worn tee shirt and shorts. ‘The thing is, Mike, is that you don’t need, or want, very much. If I enlist the help of locals they’ll try to take everything. They need the money, you see?’

She had other reasons for not working with her own people but she wasn’t about to explain all that to Mike. He seemed an amiable enough guy. She would be able to get along with him. It wouldn’t be for too long.

‘How do I know that you won’t just rip me off anyway?’ he asked.

‘Mike. Be realistic. What on earth do you have to lose?’ She looked into his eyes again.

This woman was offering him hope. A little hope in the land of guiles. He didn’t have anything to lose. Another few weeks and it would all be over anyway.

‘I’ve already got girls working here,’ he told her.

‘No, Mike. You don’t. You have five girls who sit on their backsides. One of them, Tam, is fleecing you for as much as she can get before she moves on. You have four others who sometimes don’t even bother to turn up. You have a cashier, called Pan, who is dipping the till for thirty percent of everything you take and you can’t afford a cleaner. You don’t have anyone actually working.’ She wasn’t smiling.

Pan? Dipping the till? He thought she was a nice girl. A girl who didn’t want to go with farangs and so struggled on her monthly wage. Christ. Thirty percent?

‘On top of all that, Mike, you pay too much as a monthly wage, give away fifty percent of lady drinks and bar fines and pay twice as much for the girls’ accommodation as you need to,’ Siswan informed him.

‘But, I thought we agreed ten percent? The rooms are hard to get. I don’t know.’ He tailed off. He knew they were fleecing him. He just hadn’t realised by how much.

‘Yes, Mike. You don’t watch anymore. You just sit and drink the last of the profits. You trust the smiles. You know so much and yet you still fall for the smiles,’ she said.

‘What can I do?’ He looked as though the final plank had fallen from the bottom of his world. He was hanging in mid air.

‘You agree to my proposal. You trust me,’ she said, throwing him the only line he’d ever get the chance to grab.

‘Okay. As you said, what have I got to lose?’ Fifty percent of something was a lot better than all of sod all.

‘Nothing, Mike, but everything to gain.’ She held out her hand.

He looked into her face. She wasn’t smiling. She was stunningly beautiful. He’d never met anyone like her before. If only he’d been thirty years younger. He took her hand. Shook it. She had a good grip. There was a scar on her arm. It ran from her wrist almost to the underside of her elbow. It looked angry. He wondered how she’d got it.

‘Thanks, Mike,’ she said, letting his hand go. ‘One last thing.’

‘Yes?’ he said. He was in a bit of a daze.

‘If you ever so much as put a finger on me without my permission I’ll cut it off. Okay?’

He started to smile but, as he looked into her eyes, stopped. She meant it. He didn’t doubt for one second that she meant it. Maybe he’d got it wrong. Maybe she was a lot older than he thought. He didn’t know.

‘And I’ll need a key for the doors,’ she added.

‘Uh, yes. Okay,’ he said, and passed her the key from his pocket. He had another upstairs. Somewhere.

‘Well, that’s that settled then.’ She stood. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow evening at six. Goodnight, Mike.’

‘Just one other thing, er, Miss Siswan.’

‘Just Siswan will do, Mike.’

‘Er, right. Just one thing. You are old enough to work in a bar, aren’t you?’ Mike was having his doubts about his estimates. This woman was confident, sure of herself and clever, but he couldn’t help wondering. There was something weird going on.

She opened her purse, took out her ID card and gave it to him.

‘Ah, okay. Twenty one. Yes, I thought so. Had to be sure, you know,’ he said, looking at the date of birth on her card.

‘Don’t be stupid, Mike,’ she said, taking the card back and putting it into her purse again. ‘It’s a fake.’

He just looked. Oh my god, he thought, what the hell am I getting into?

‘Don’t worry, Mike. It’s a very good fake.’ She smiled. A genuine smile.

‘Goodnight,’ she said again, and left the bar. He heard her locking the doors with the key he’d given her.

Mike just sat there. He didn’t reach for the whiskey. He didn’t light a cigarette. He just sat there. What the hell had just happened, he asked himself. He didn’t know what the girls were going to say. He didn’t know what the regulars would say. Bloody hell, he didn’t know what to say himself. He just sat there looking around at the old bar.

If she was as good as her word, and he didn’t think for a moment that she wouldn’t be, this place was going to see a few changes, that was for sure. He could hear the bass from the nightclub a few doors up. They were doing good business. They could afford to pay the cops. He wondered to himself. Maybe, just maybe, in a few months, he’d be able to afford to pay them as well. He smiled to himself. The land of smiles, eh? At least when Siswan had smiled he hadn’t seen the guile. Maybe she was telling the truth?

Ah, well, better get the old body up the stairs. Another day tomorrow. A hell of a day by the sound of it. He climbed off the barstool. He’d seen it all. Heard it all. A smile in the land of guiles.

‘Well, bugger me,’ he laughed to himself. He just realised that she’d actually said ‘goodnight’ to him. He walked to the stairs leading to his squalid room. The untouched glass of whiskey sat on the bar.

*****

Tam eventually turned up at ten the following night. The farang from the night before had had more strength than she had guessed, and it had been almost six in the morning by the time she got to sleep.

Must have been on Viagra, she thought. She hated whoever had invented the drug. Kept them going all night. Still, she’d made quite a bit from him and, if he wasn’t too tired, he said he would be back for more tonight. In a way she hoped the old fool wouldn’t come again. She was too tired to go through another night like that. Still, the money was good. She could always pick up some lubricating jelly from the local store.

The other girls sat outside in their normal places. Well, three of them were. Looked like Jom was going to be late. If she turned up at all.

‘Where’s Jom?’ she asked.

‘She’s got a farang. From the club last night,’ one of them told her.

Oh, well. Good for her. They all had more of a chance at picking up farangs at the club than they did in this dump. The bar was old, needed a facelift. Never got any new customers. If it wasn’t for her, the place would have been closed down months ago.

She didn’t care anymore. She wouldn’t be staying too much longer. Another bar had just opened in the next street. A friend of hers was going to get one of the other girls into some kind of trouble and then get Tam in to take her place. Probably tell the farang owner that the girl had been stealing. It was easy. All the girls made places for their friends. That reminded her to get her cut from Pan. The little bitch was holding out on her.

Couldn’t do anything like that in the locally owned bars though. The owners knew every trick in the book and weren’t soft when it came to dealing with the girls. She had a friend who had been cut so badly she’d never be able to work again. Not with farangs anyway. The locals would still pay. A pittance mind, but it was better than nothing.

Tam looked around the bar. Mike was sat in his usual place. A few of the regulars were there. Who was that? A new girl. Sat on the stool next to Mike. Who the bloody hell was she? No new girl could just walk in without going through her. She turned back to the three bored girls sat in their chairs.

‘Who’s that?’ she asked, pointing toward the bar.

‘Don’t know. She was there when we arrived.’

Tam looked back at the bar. The girl was talking, laughing. With a small shake of her head her hair shimmered in the lights of the bar. The stupid farangs were all gazing at her. Open mouthed half of them. Big Barry wasn’t even talking.

What the hell was going on, she thought to herself. The bloody farangs are all spellbound.

Mike sat in his normal place and watched the faces of his regulars. He couldn’t believe what was happening. Siswan spoke to them all in perfect English. Within a few seconds she had learned all their names and used them when she spoke. It made it more personal, more intimate, somehow. She gave each one her attention and looked them in the eyes. She smiled. Open, warm hearted smiles, that drew all of them in. Even Big Barry. The man hadn’t said a word for the last hour.

‘So, Tim, what do you do over here?’ Siswan asked.

‘Oh, I just came here to meet a girl like you, darling.’ Tim smiled.

Forever the smoothie, our Tim, Mike thought. How would she deal with him?

‘Oh, that’s a lovely thing to say, Tim. Thank you so much,’ Siswan answered, looking Tim in the eye.

Mike couldn’t believe it. Tim blushed. The old trout actually blushed. My god, this woman had something. Something every man would want.

He was really enjoying himself. He hadn’t had a drop of whiskey and, every time he wanted a cigarette, he excused himself and went outside to smoke it. He hadn’t had many of those, to tell the truth. He didn’t want to miss Siswan in action. She was wonderful. Every time she took a sip from her glass the regulars drank from theirs. Every time she finished her drink someone would order another round. And that wasn’t all either.

Pan, who he was so disappointed with, sat there with a red-faced scowl and was obviously in a bad mood. Siswan had spoken quietly to her when she’d arrived and, every time a drink was ordered, Siswan took the bar chit and checked it against the duplicate. No fudging the figures anymore. Not for Pan, anyway. And it wasn’t that Siswan made a big deal out of it either. She just smiled, held out her hand, a quick glance, another smile, back to the regulars. They didn’t even notice.