Lost in Pattaya (15 page)

“What about you
and Miho?” I asked.

“I don’t know, she
is upset and cannot fathom losing me to another. I will have to speak to her,
persuade her back to Pattaya. If I can’t do that, I am sure by the time the day
runs out Kawai will know his opportunity at crushing us has finally arrived.
There is a rope ladder at the stern, use that to descend and swim ashore. Wait
for me to kill the engine first. Go now, and call the doctor immediately when
you get ashore.”

I waited for the
boat’s motor to die since its propellers and their violent revolt would never
allow me to descent stern-side without casualty.

The swim was long
and strenuous, but it provided a diversion from the fear that was gripping me
with eventualities my mind conjured. I had no documents, what if I lost touch
with Thuy Binh altogether, what would I do? Even if I did find Thuy Binh, it
was likely that Kawai would sense her absence in Pattaya and launch a manhunt.
With her Yacht in plain sight, he would not take long to add things up. It was
also plausible, with Thuy Binh’s absence Kawai would swoop into Pattaya,
gaining control of our ground, leaving us to hide and run. If discovered, he
would slay us. Maybe, it was better for me to simply move away, try and find a
passage back to Singapore all by myself. I had records of identification there,
which could be pulled up to verify my sorry existence. It was a long walk back,
but on grounds of pure reason, it was not unfathomable for me to cross the Thai
and Malaysian borders on foot, given the money I was carrying on me.

I prayed, even as
I swam, for Thuy Binh and the triumph of strength that she always put in her
lord, to see us through the next few days, emerging unscathed, having accosted
Kawai. Accosting Kawai, was it even plausible in the absence of her most
powerful weapon, deadly Miho, who was wasting in jealousy when finally the need
of her allegiance arose.

Then there was Li
Ya, who would pass through Bangkok in as few as seven days. In such mental
turmoil I finally stood beached, still, in the shallow sands of exhaustion. I
could confront her parents, lamenting my past and begging them to stand as guarantors
while I worked my way through the officialdom of immigration and checkpoints in
Thailand. They would agree, since from it they stood to add another moral
victory to their tally of gains, to see me cower and beg, allowing them to
exhibit a failed father to a teenage child, tearing her permanently away from
me.

All these avenues
of thought were just figments of my imagination. Ahead lay a path I never once
conceived on that first day spent by myself in Bangkok.

The dry-bag I was
carrying proved its worth. I dressed on the beach and moved quickly because I wanted
to lose myself to the streets of Bangkok as inconspicuously as possible, just
in case Kawai’s gang came around to question the ragged people in the shanties
along the beach that I had landed on.

In a couple of
hours I was in the most forgotten lodge in the world. I had travelled in a
tuk-tuk and then wandered about for an hour on foot, ensuring the tuk-tuk
driver had no opportunity of directing anyone onto my tail. In that hour I
procured a cell phone and tried calling the doctor in Pattaya, to no avail
since his phone seemed switched off. At the
forgotten-lodge
I paid in
advance for the week, showered, got stoned and lay in bed, staring at the
revolutions of the ceiling fan above my head. Fear seethed through my pores and
I felt unsafe in the stillness of my rented room, so I ventured back out and
entered a movie theatre where I spent a couple of hours in the relative safety
of darkness. Towards evening I strolled into Patpong and found the temple,
staying well away from it, alert for any sign of Thuy Binh, observing from a
distance. After an hour I gathered the courage to enter the temple, bowing and
praying in front of the lord, hoping Thuy Binh would find me and make things
well again.

She never showed
up, neither at the temple nor at the lake in Lumphini Park which I patrolled
each day in the silly garb of a jogger.

I tried reaching
the doctor a couple of times, from different phone booths and internet cafes,
it rang unanswered only once; the rest of my attempts were met with polite
switched off recordings.

On the third day,
I made my way back to the beach where I had landed. The yacht was no longer on
the water.

On returning to
the
forgotten-lodge
I contemplated my next move. Things had spiralled
away from my control and it was logical to wind my way back to Pattaya, seeking
the truth of events that may have befallen my lover-benefactor Thuy Binh and
her soured-lesbian lover, Miho. In Pattaya I would be recognised, yet it would
not be tedious to make inquiries surreptitiously, since I would be in my
neighbourhood.

I was baffled at
my inability in reaching the doctor.

Was Kawai already
in Pattaya laying siege on our ground? Were they all dead, in which case it
would be best to disappear from this plot too? If I were to eventually
disappear, the thought of seeing Li Ya once, telling her that I loved her,
before melting into oblivion consumed me in the three days ahead, before I
actually saw her.

Until I met her, I
never once felt the true guilt of losing Li Ya.

This thought of
disappearing
,
it was another trick of the desperate mind, knowing well that I had limited
destinations for doing so. The option of acting naive, by hiring whores and
making enquiries about Kawai’s whereabouts kept me enlivened. In fantasy, when Kawai
confronted me, I would kill him, freeing Thuy Binh and Miho from his clutches,
repaying in one stroke all the kindness they had bestowed upon me. In a stoned
extension of that same fantasy, I would have the means to travel to, and from
where Li Ya lived in the future, participating in her life while retaining the
luxury of returning back to the life that I had with Thuy Binh and Miho. In
that same dream, I wanted Miho’s memory to become accepting of me and Thuy
Binh, just as I was ready to accept her lesbian past with my present lover.

Through those
three days, I spoke to no one, simply tangling up in conversations with my
counter, that same other which appears each time cocaine takes on an excessive
proportion.

When I reached the
terminal building, I did not have definite plans other than that of observing
my little girl from a distance. On the concourse past immigration, her image
came sparkling through the stone, giving purpose that diverted me from the
addiction gripping me these past days. In that instant, I felt her, cuddled as
an infant in my arms and the energy of rough-housing that we expended each
weekend when she was growing up with me. Now, she was nearly a woman, striking
with the glow of youth, smiling as her parents’ secured papers that travelling
families become paranoid over. Fang Wei and Georgy, they were with Li Ya in the
distance, across from the crowds that milled on the concourse. They were
looking ragged with the passage of time, as if the burden of their moral decrepitude
had been too heavy to bear without physical decay. No ill-will or spite
surfaced in me when I saw my ex with my stealing friend, even though they were
the pirates of my life’s torment. Maybe, I was too full with the miracle of Li
Ya’s image which glowed and tingled, spreading its luminescence across the
terminal building. I bathed in that miracle, knowing well it was the coke
sparkling.

Like the aging do
often after flights, both Georgy and Fang Wei left for the washroom, a good
fifty meters away, treading in my direction. I pulled my cap lower and moved
towards them. We crossed only metres from each other. Li Ya was ahead of me,
fidgeting on her phone, glancing around as if in the discomfort of feeling a
constant unwavering gaze, mine, which had been on her from the minute I had
spotted her on the concourse.

It was a narrow
time window, of only a few minutes before her parents would return comforted
from their visit around the corner. In the impulse of an opportunity that may
not present itself again, I grabbed chances and was barely a meter or two from
Li Ya, still concealed enough to stride past without her noticing me, if I so
decided.

From behind her I
took the cap off my head and gently spoke her name “Li Ya,” the first word I
had uttered in days, almost as if the word was worthy of breaking the penitent
vow of silence that Thai Buddhism preaches.

Her reaction to my
sudden presence was all revealing in its spontaneity, finally letting me know
the sentiment that she harboured in her heart as regards the memory of her
biological father went; a sentiment of hatred, love or worse still
indifference.

“Dad,” she almost
screamed to my alarm, a beam of happiness spreading across her face, as if in a
sudden eruption of pleasure.

She leapt into my
arms making us conspicuous, but I held her, my big baby, taking her in, knowing
well that very few teenage girls hug their dads unabashedly.

In the next
instant, I took her hand and moved about twenty meters away from the luggage
she was looking over. Here, behind the huge vertical cement beam resisting the
infinite inertia of the terminal roof above, we were hidden enough to talk, at
least for the few minutes before panic may strike parents suspecting
misfortunes befalling children. From the corner of my eye, I saw Georgy
emerging and moving listlessly back towards the heap of his baggage. He did not
panic, with the incomplete picture in which he saw his luggage in; after all
the missing element, Li Ya, she was old enough for a parent to feel easy about
a short absence.

“How have you been
my darling?” I asked her, tears brimming in my eyes.

“I missed you dad.
I knew you would come and see me when you could. I just had to be patient and
wait for you,” she too was overcome.

“I want to spend
some time with you. We don’t fly till a few days later, I want to be with you
for a few days in Bangkok, Can I, can I?” she begged.

“You know your
mother will never allow that, and I can’t force the matter since you are not
yet eighteen,” I replied.

“I am old enough
to be allowed time with my dad, you can just take me away for a few days, why
do you have to tell mum?” she said.

“But . . . your
mum will be worried and she will go berserk looking for you,” I was taken
completely aback, though comforted in the proposal of exaggerated time that she
wanted with me.

“It will be for a
couple of days, nothing compared to the years of misery that she has put you
through. I can only imagine how you would have torn yourself apart, knowing
that I was lost in the red-light district of Thailand,” her eyes hardened,
though her words were of compassion.

I sunk, feeling
disappointed with the thankless demeanour of a child towards her ward, Fang
Wei. The sinking was from the ignorance of my child, about investments that
mums make when dads lie stoned in whorehouses. Li Ya was young and unforgiving
of the environment that nurtured her, abusing what was helping her become an
educated, affluent woman. In my mind, I was thankful to Fang Wei and Georgy for
taking care of my kiddo.

“Li Ya, you must
pray, you must seek peace, you must study and lead a grand life. I am the past;
don’t enter the mess of my discord with your mother. She is caring for you and
that is what is important,” I grew worried, for I knew youth is wasted upon the
young, and, I never wanted Li Ya to enter my world in the manner she was
suggesting. Fang Wei was capable of settling Li Ya well, it was me who wanted
to be part of Li Ya’s world, never the other way around.

Georgy studied the
abandoned baggage, fished out his phone before thumbing its keypad, rousing Li
Ya’s phone, which glowed blue with the name of her foster father on it, simply
Georgy
.
Just one word, saved in the devoid presence of softness, it upset me, for she
should have provided a suffix he deserved: ‘Dad’.

She did not answer
the phone, moving simply towards the exit, leaving me to follow her about seven
to ten meters behind.

Outside the
terminal, she hailed a cab, waited for me to join her before providing
directions to the taxi driver ‘Holiday Inn, Silom.’

“Dad, chill, I
have it all worked out. Don’t worry; I will let them know I am safe and that I
will see them before we board the flight for the Gold-coast,” she said, keying
her message of disappearance on her phone, leaving hapless I was sure, parents
on the receiving end of the line, the line of teenage rebellion.

“Li Ya, your
mother does not deserve that, they will become frantic, calling the police and
looking for you. If they find you with me things will be very unpleasant,” I
said, worried at the rebellion and the ability at plotting that this young
woman displayed.

“No dad, they
won’t call the police. I fight over you all the time with them. They will guess
that I am with you; I know that they know you are in Thailand staying on after
you failed to find me. They will simply wait for me to turn up for the flight
out of Bangkok.”

“Are you hungry?”
I asked, not knowing what to say without thinking-through things for a while.

My biggest folly
was the hope of future remedies for what we must confront in the present.

“Yes,” she said.
We rode for about thirty minutes before arriving at the Inn, which was only a
ten minute walk from the forgotten-lodge.