Private Dancer (25 page)

“Where was it?” I asked.

“On the dressing table. It was there before I went to Nong Khai. And my business cards have gone.”

“Your business cards?”

“I only just got them. There was a box of business cards on the dressing table. Okay, I don't care about them, but the watch was expensive.”

“Bruce, what are you saying? You think Joy stole a box of business cards? Why would she do that?”

He shrugged. “Maybe she didn't know what they were?”

I sighed in frustration. “If she didn't know what they were, why would she steal them?”

“They were in a wooden box. Maybe she thought it was a pretty box. Anyway, it's the watch I'm more concerned about.”

I sat down at the dining table. “Look, she was never out of my sight, Bruce. She was with me all the time. There's no way she could have got into your bedroom.”

We went backwards and forwards like that for almost ten minutes, me saying that she wouldn't have and couldn't have, Bruce insisting that the watch had gone, and so had the business cards. The thing was, I'd been in Bruce's bedroom several times to use the phone while he was away, and I hadn't seen the watch or the cards. There was some other stuff on the dressing table, including some photographs of him and his family, but no watch and definitely no business cards.

Eventually Bruce went to work. Nothing I'd said had swayed him from his conviction that Joy had stolen from him.

BIG RON Yeah, Thais will steal you blind, given half a chance. The Land Of Smiles, they call it, but that's PR bullshit. The smiles aren't real. The smiles are masks so that they can conceal their real feelings, their true intentions. That's why so many farangs come a cropper when they come here.

They see happy, smiling faces and they think everybody loves them. That's what makes the Thais so dangerous, why their country's never been colonised. They smile and welcome you in and they take everything from you, steal you blind given half a chance.

I've a friend works in a tower block down Silom Road. Thirty stories high it is, and there are four toilet blocks on each floor, two for gents, two for ladies. It used to be that every Monday morning, the management put toilet rolls in every stall. That's something like six hundred toilet rolls in all. By Monday afternoon every single fucking toilet roll had gone. It happened week after week. Now, I ask you, what sort of person goes to all the trouble of stealing a toilet roll?

What does a toilet roll cost? A few baht. And it wasn't as if one guy was wheeling out hundreds of toilet rolls, that wouldn't be so bad. One bad apple they could deal with. No, it was hundreds of office workers, each of them stealing a single toilet roll to take home. In the end the management gave up and they issued individual toilet rolls to each office. So my mate, he works for one of the big British stockbroking firms, if he has a visitor who wants to go for a shit, he has to ask his secretary for the bog roll.

They rip me off in the bar, all the time. Small-time stuff, a few bottles of Singha each day. I know it's going on but I just factor it into their wages. Then once a month a pick-up truck pulls up at the back and a few crates of Singha are wheeled out. I know who's doing it, and I could stop it if I wanted to, but she's a good worker and stealing probably keeps her on her toes. What's the alternative? If I sack her I only have to get a replacement, and the replacement would probably just come up with an even more devious way of ripping me off. Better the devil you know, is what I say. JOY I couldn't believe it when Pete told me what Bruce had said. I'm not a thief. I've never stolen from anybody. Even when I was small and my family had nothing, I never stole. Pete should have known better. He's left me alone with his wallet and I never even looked inside it, which is more than can be said for him. I know he goes through my bag, checking to see if I've got any photographs of other men or extra money. I never said anything to him about that, and he should have showed me the same respect. He should have just told Bruce that I never steal, and left it at that. Pete kept pressing me, telling me that he wouldn't get angry if I had taken the watch so long as I gave it back. That was as good as accusing me. I was so angry, but I didn't show it.

I mean, how many watches can I wear? I have the Mickey Mouse watch that Pete gave me,

why would I want another one? And the business cards? That was just stupid. I said to Pete,

“How much would I be able to sell the cards for? A million baht? Two million baht?” It was crazy. If I was going to steal anything, I'd have taken money. Pete and Bruce always have money lying around, and I'm sure they wouldn't have noticed if I took a few hundred baht. But I'm not a thief. Pete should know that. If I wanted money, I could get a farang to give it to me. I could go short time and get two thousand baht, and if I flirt with a guy I can get a big tip without even having to have sex with him. There's no need for me to steal a watch. Or business cards.

What made it worse was that Pete said I couldn't go back to the apartment any more because Bruce was worried that I might take something else. I felt so insulted. Whether or not I go to his apartment isn't important, it's not as if I have to pay if we stay in a short time hotel, but I just feel so angry at being treated like a criminal. I'm not a thief and Pete should know that. Bruce, too.

BRUCE I don't know why Pete is making such a big fuss about the watch. There's no bloody mystery. I went to Nong Khai with Troy, and before I went my business cards and the watch were on the dressing table. When I came back, they'd gone. I told Pete that Joy had fucked up big time because I had five hundred dollars in travellers cheques in the bottom drawer. I reckon what happened is that she nipped into the room while Pete was in the shower and grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on. It stands to reason, right? I didn't steal them. Pete didn't steal them. Pete says that the only visitor while I was away was Joy. You don't have to be Hercule fucking Poirot to work out who the guilty party is. But Pete wouldn't have it. Kept insisting that I must have put the watch somewhere and forgotten about it. Bloody ridiculous.

I think the world of Joy, and Pete should have done the decent thing by her months ago, but you've just got to look at her. She's not in the same league as Troy. I know I can trust Troy:

many's the time I've had a few drinks too many and I've given her my wallet, and she's never taken so much as a twenty baht note. Troy is totally honest. I reckon Joy's more than capable of stealing, though. Look at the way she lied to Pete about her husband, even when he had photographs of them together and everything. She denied it right down the line. And Pete's caught her out in countless other lies. So why does he think he can believe her when she says she didn't take the watch?

The day after I mentioned it, he helped me search the apartment. We went through all the rooms, checked all the drawers, even went through the kitchen. Nothing. Then he started asking me if I was sure I hadn't brought anyone back to the flat. Bloody cheek. Then he wanted to know if I'd taken the watch anywhere with me, when was the last time I'd seen it. I got fed up with him in the end and told him he'd be better off interrogating Joy. He stormed out of the flat. The sad fuck.

PETE Joy called me and asked me if I wanted to go and eat before she started work. She said her stepsister and three cousins had come down to Bangkok from Surin and they all wanted to meet me.

We said we'd meet at the German restaurant in Soi 4 at six o'clock. I was supposed to get the edited proofs of the Bangkok guide to the courier service I used but I figured Alistair wouldn't mind waiting an extra day. I was already a week past deadline so I figured he'd changed the schedule anyway.

I'd had a couple of gin and tonics by the time Joy arrived. She was already wearing her waitress uniform and had her numbered badge clipped to her belt. Server 127. She waied me and introduced the girls. There was her step sister, Dit, who like Apple was a younger, slightly chubbier, version of Joy, and her cousins, Ning, Moo and Wandee. They all stood slightly behind Joy as if they were frightened of me, but Joy encouraged them to wai me.

We sat down at a table by the window and ordered drinks. I had a gin and tonic and all the girls had orange juice. Ning, Moo and Wandee were looking around the restaurant and pointing at the pictures and the place settings, and I got the feeling that it was their first time in a Western restaurant. I gave Joy a laser pointer I'd bought for her in Patpong. It was on a keyring and could flash a laser beam more than a kilometre. I figured she could have fun with it in the bar. She showed it to the girls and they examined it curiously.

I let Joy order the food and she told the waitress what she wanted. The younger girls watched as Joy ordered and I could see that Joy was taking pride from the fact that she was in control.

Joy asked me what I'd been doing and I explained how the book was getting on. She translated to the other girls, and again I could see that she was enjoying showing off her English skills. She kept using the word “farang” rather than my name, but I wasn't offended because “Pete” probably wasn't a name they'd heard before.

I asked Joy how long the four girls were staying in Bangkok and she surprised me by saying they'd come to work. In Zombie. I could imagine Dit in a bar, but Ning, Moo and Wandee seemed too shy.

“Working as waitresses?” I asked.

Joy shook her head. “Dancing, same me before,” she said.

Dit nodded enthusiastically. She seemed to be the brightest of the four and she'd been listening intently to the conversation Joy and I had been having and occasionally interrupted to ask Joy something, presumably for a translation. The other three girls were talking to each other in hushed Thai.

“Have they danced before?”

Joy giggled and said no, they hadn't.

“Aren't they shy?” I asked.

“No, not shy. They want money too much,” she said.

The food arrived and Ning, Moo and Wandee examined the dishes like surgeons preparing for an operation.

Joy nodded at Dit. “What you think?” she asked me. “Pretty?”

Dit smiled at me showing beautifully straight, white teeth. She'd probably never sat in a dentist's chair but she had a perfect mouth. Her hair was as long as Joy's had been when she was dancing, thought it was slightly wavy. Her face was virtually identical to Joy's, though Dit had a small mole to the right of her nose.

“Suey mark,” I said. Very pretty.

Dit giggled and put her hand over her mouth. It was a gesture I'd seen Joy do a thousand times.

“Same father, different mother,” said Joy.

While we were eating, Joy took a piece of paper from her purse and gave it to me. It was a letter, addressed to me. It wasn't Joy's writing, the letters were all capitals and down the margins were childlike scrawls of hearts and flowers. It was a love letter, but the sort that an eight-yearold might write. I read it, with Joy and Dit watching my face intently, looking to see how I'd react. It was signed “Joy” but it wasn't her signature.

“Who wrote it?” I asked.

“Friend Joy,” said Joy. “What you think?”

“Lovely,” I said. “Why didn't you write it?”

“Her writing better. I tell her what I want say to you and she write for me.” I put the letter in my back pocket. I wasn't sure what to say. Joy was perfectly capable of writing to me, she'd written dozens of letters. So why had she asked a friend to write to me?

Ning, Moo and Wandee were tucking into the food. Joy put prawns on to my plate, and then poured more tonic water into my gin. She said something to the girls, not in Thai but in Khmer, I think, and all the girls nodded. I got the feeling that she was telling them what she was doing and why.

When the bill came I paid with cash. Joy said something to the girls and they all waied me.

She'd obviously told them to thank me.

Joy asked me if I'd go over to Zombie with them. It felt strange walking into Nana Plaza with Joy and four very young girls, as if I were a teacher taking a class on a field trip. Dit looked about nineteen, the same age as Joy when I met her for the first time, but Ning, Moo and Wandee all looked as if they were under eighteen. They held hands as they walked past the touts and the neon lights advertising the bars, huddled together like frightened rabbits.

We went into Zombie and Joy sat everybody down and went over to get drinks for us all.

Then she stood in front of the girls and began talking in Thai, pointing out various parts of the bar, the toilets, the changing rooms, the short time room, the dancing stages. The girls sat wideeyed, sipping their orange juices and hanging on her every word.

The next day they were all up on the stage, dancing naked around the silver poles. A six-foot tall Scandinavian guy paid bar fine for Dit and she left holding his hand, Joy smiling proudly like a parent at a graduation ceremony. How did I feel? Uneasy, I think. Like I'd been witness to a coming of age in a culture I didn't understand. Or didn't want to understand. Dit was a bright,

pretty young girl from the country but she'd taken on the life of a Bangkok bargirl without a moment's hesitation.

JOY Wandee had to go home after a week. She wasn't working out. She couldn't dance, in fact she could barely walk in high heels. That wasn't the problem, though, a lot of the girls just stand and hold the pole and jiggle around, it's not as if the farangs actually go into a bar to watch girls dance. The problem was that she wouldn't talk to customers, even if they approached her. She wouldn't smile, either, it was as if she was paralysed with fear. I tried to get her to relax, I'd sit with her and help her make conversation, but she was too nervous. Only one guy wanted to pay her barfine, an old Swedish man, but he came back to complain the next day. He told the mamasan that Wandee lay on her back with her legs pressed together and her arms folded across her breasts. He demanded his money back and the mamasan gave it to him.

The mamasan wanted to beat Wandee, but I said no, that I'd talk to her. I sat her down and explained what she had to do, but she just kept on shaking her head and saying that she couldn't do it. I asked her what the problem was, because it wasn't as if she was a virgin or anything.

She'd had a boyfriend back in Surin, and I think she first had sex when she was fifteen.

It was farangs, she said. She didn't like the way they looked, and she didn't like the way they smelled. I said that hardly anyone does, but you had to think of the money. You can do anything if you think of the money. I used to work in a factory for a few thousand baht a month. You can earn that in one night, so isn't a few minutes of discomfort worth it? She started crying and I put my arms around her. Some girls just can't do it, and I guess Wandee is one of them. I gave her enough money to get the bus back to Surin and sent her on her way.

Sunan was furious. She'd paid for clothes and shoes for Wandee and she'd given her spending money. She was expecting to get a commission from the money Wandee earned. She's a smart businesswoman, is Sunan. She brings lots of girls down from Surin and then takes ten per cent of what they earn for the first year. Sunan wouldn't talk to Wandee after she'd said she wanted to go home. Wandee kept saying that she was sorry and that she'd pay Sunan back, but Sunan just ignored her.

Dit was totally different, she took to working in the bar like a duck to water. She was going out with farangs every night, and she was in the short-time room a lot, too. Dit loves sex and I don't think she cares who she does it with. Her husband came with her to Bangkok and he encourages her to screw as many farangs as possible. She gives most of her money to him and he's already bought a motorcycle.

Dit's a good dancer, and a quick learner. I showed her a few moves and she learned them really quickly. She's got a good body, long legs and big breasts. Eighty per cent of farangs like girls with big breasts. Her English is getting better every day, too. She can make farangs laugh and she knows what to say to make them like her. She reminds me of myself when I was her age.

I think the only difference between us is that she likes sex and I don't. I hate it. Except with Park, of course, but then it's not sex, it's making love. What I do with the farangs is just sex, in and out until they come, and I hate that. They'd never know, of course, because I know how to smile as if I'm enjoying it and I make the right noises. Just like the lesbian show I used to do with Wan. It's all a big act.

PETE

Joy had been working as a waitress for almost two weeks when I saw him. I actually wasn't sure it was him, so I kept looking at the booth where the DJs worked. He was wearing a baseball cap so I couldn't see how short his hair was, but there was no mistaking the bulging eyes. Joy kept coming over to me, as attentive as ever, leaning against me, rubbing my shoulder, pulling faces to make me laugh. “What are you looking at?” she asked eventually.

“That guy. The one playing records."

She didn't look around, she just kept looking at me. “What about him?”

I took a deep breath. “Joy, he looks just like your husband.”

She frowned, then turned and stared at the DJ, her hand resting lightly on my thigh. She made a soft, snorting sound. “Him? No,” she said. A teenager walked by carrying a tray and she grabbed him by the arm. “My husband looked more like him,” she said, nodding at the surprised waiter.

I looked back at the DJ's booth. If it wasn't him, the resemblance was amazing. Joy released her grip on the waiter's arm, and slid her arms around my neck. “Pete, I not lie to you,” she said.

I looked into her eyes and wanted so much to believe her.

“It looks just like him,” I said.

She took a step back and looked at me admonishingly. “Pete, he only work here one week.”

“What's his name?”

“I don't know,” she said. “You want me ask?”

I nodded. She sighed theatrically and walked over to the DJ's booth. She climbed up on to a seat and called over the top of the glass partition. “What's your name?” she shouted in Thai.

“Gung,” he called back. It means 'prawn' in Thai and is a common name for both men and women.

She walked back to my table, swinging her hips prettily. She raised her eyebrows. “Gung,”

she said. “His name's Gung. Are you happy now?”

I smiled and put my arm around her. She smelled fresh and clean, despite the smoky atmosphere. I kissed her on the neck and she pressed herself against me. “Yeah,” I said. “I'm happy.”

Something about the way she smelled worried me. I'd smelled it before, but for the life of me I couldn't remember where.

BRUNO

Love is blind. It really is. It's not a cliche, it's a truism. There's an experiment that demonstrates the fact perfectly. You show a film to a group of volunteers. It can be about anything. The one I've seen is a robbery, three men steal some money from a security van and are thwarted by two passers-by. Then you tell the volunteers that they're going to be asked a series of questions about what they've seen. They're told to answer specific questions truthfully, and to lie when they answer others. Now, you get three types of people to ask the questions. The questioners, of course, haven't seen the film. You get a stranger, a friend, and a marriage partner to ask the questions, and they have to assess whether or not they are being told the truth or a lie.

Now, what do you think the results of the experiment would be? The layman would assume that the partner would be most likely to spot the lies. But in fact, the exact opposite occurs. The strangers are most likely to spot when they are being lied to. The partner is the least likely. And the friend is somewhere in the middle, depending on how close a friend he or she is.

What does this tell us? There are a number of possible conclusions to be drawn. It could be that people find it easier to lie to those who love them, that they learn to hide the non-verbal cues that give away untruths. It's far more likely, however, that we as human beings prefer not to believe that those we care for would lie to us, so we fool ourselves, we force ourselves to overlook the tell-tale signs of deceit. Love truly is blind.

PETE I could sense there was something wrong as soon as I walked into Fatso's Bar. Big Ron was sitting there with a big grin on his face, jiggling in his specially-reinforced chair like a volcano all set to explode. I sat down and ordered a gin and tonic.

“Joy's at it,” he said.

I felt cold inside. I knew what was coming. I could tell by the smug look on his fat face.

“She was bar fined last night.”

“Impossible,” I said. “I was in there at ten.”

“Yeah, but what time did you leave?”

“About eleven. Then she came around to the apartment when she'd finished work.”

Big Ron giggled like a schoolgirl on her first date. “Better speak to Matt, then.” I pretended that I couldn't care less, but my heart was racing. Matt was an American guy and a regular visitor to Nana Plaza, where he'd recently started barfining katoeys. He walked into Fatso's about an hour later and sat down on the stool next to me. He grimaced. “Big Ron told you?”

“Yeah,” I said, swirling the ice cubes around my drink with my finger. “You’re sure?”

“No question. I was with Jimmy, and Jimmy tried to bar fine her. She said no, but about twenty minutes later she left with an American.”

“Do you know who he was?”