The Museum of Doubt (27 page)

When they slowed down Gordon saw lights of many colours in the windows. In the doorways the girls’ white teeshirts and stockings and dresses reflected ultraviolet. The driver pointed
Gordon towards a place with a front made of black glass and a vertical blue neon sign saying 4-U-2 Knight Klub. A grey light washed the doorway. A man in dark clothes sat astride a wooden chair outside, chairback between his legs. He held the chairback in his hands and rocked backwards and forwards, softly singing a country and western song in Bangkokian. There were two girls behind him, one in a pale green sleeveless dress coming down to her ankles and the other in a tight white sports bra and leggings. The man called to the driver while Gordon was getting out and the driver said something back. Gordon approached the club. The man on the chair grinned and nodded and waved him past, chairlegs beating his Loretta Bangkok Lynn time on the pavement. The two girls bobbed and pressed their hands together and bowed their heads and smiled and held out their fragile arms to the interior. Gordon went inside.

The scent he entered was thick, blurred and promising, dried whisky, oversweet perfume, cigarettes, grass, incense and a chemical palette to stop the lower forms of life multiplying without discouraging the higher ones: disinfectant, air freshener, incense, nail varnish, mothballs, mosquito coils, shampoo, roach syrup. Gordon couldn’t make the music fit together, but he understood it was music. Short fanfares, repeated, like warning sirens that the place was about to explode, and a steady battering, a pneumatic drill in slow motion. It was good music. It put clothes on words that were best not spoken bare. It was a grand place, with a bar, and young Bangkokie lassies in short skirts and tight tops dancing with steel poles, and a few couples in the tables in the shadows, and ceiling fans two yards across.

A Bangkokite woman in a tight black dress and patent leather ankle boots left the bar and took Gordon’s arm. She asked if he’d like a drink.

Aye, said Gordon. Scotch’d be very nice, Grouse if you have
it, with a fair measure of water. I can’t stay long though, I’m on my way to the red light district.

Oh! said the woman, laughing. Funny. On your way!

Have you seen a man in a cream-coloured suit? Friend of mine? Mr Smith?

Mr Smith? Mr Smith! The woman pulled in her shoulders, leaned her head back and laughed, slapping Gordon gently on the chest. You’re funny.

Was there one in a cream-coloured suit? Sly-looking?

If he comes, we take care of him. What’s your name? Gordon. I’m Cindi. You not going to buy me a drink? Oh, very kind of you. Cheers! American? Ohhh!!!
Scot
land!!!!!!

Gordon drank. He asked how come the lassies were dancing with the poles. Were there not enough men in Bangkok.

You like them? said Cindi. She looked pleased. Which one you like? Tell me.

Gordon pointed to a girl in a checked pleated miniskirt and a denim jacket, open to show a black bra. She was wearing a silver wig.

Girl with silver hair? said Cindi. She’s called Donna. Oh, she is very nice. You like her?

She’s got a good arse, said Gordon.

Cindi went over to fetch Donna and left them. Gordon bought Donna a Coke. Donna had sprinkled glitter on her body. She smiled at him without saying anything, swivelling on one stiletto, and let the rim of the glass slide over her teeth. She started stroking Gordon’s chest with her fingertips. Gordon stared down at her sparkling breasts. Donna looked up at Gordon from under her eyelashes and traced her fingernails over his crotch. She asked him if he wanted to fuck.

As long as it doesn’t take too long, said Gordon. I’m trying to reach the red light district.

We be quick, said Donna. She took Gordon’s hand and led him through a bead curtain to a narrow corridor with doors placed close together. In the corridor the light was red. This was how it should be. This was how life should be. When you just walked into a place and the lassies were available. You didn’t have to go with them, you didn’t have to buy them flowers, you didn’t have to talk to them. There was nothing about love, clothes or children. When it was over, you walked away without saying anything. Heaven had to be along the lines of golf interspersed with bouts of oral sex.

Donna put her ear to one of the doors, tapped on it with a single knuckle and opened it. She led Gordon inside. The room had no windows and was lit by a dim yellow bulb in a scorched lampshade drooping from the wall. A fan on a stand scanned the room jerkily from a corner. There was a bed neither single nor double covered in a white sheet, a bedside cupboard, a wicker basket, a fridge, a plain wooden chair and a basin. A box of tissues waited on the cupboard. Gordon sat on the bed.

You want a beer? said Donna.

No, said Gordon.

You want a talk?

No.

It’s good, said Donna, taking off her jacket. Oh, the moment.

Wait, said Gordon.

What?

Do that again.

OK, said Donna. She lifted the jacket off the chair where she’d draped it, put it on, and shucked it off, slower this time.

Again?

Gordon nodded.

Like a video, said Donna. Rewind!

Gordon watched her take off the jacket and put it on about
twenty times. Each time he saw her bare arms and shoulders emerge to frame her breasts it seemed new for an instant, and then lost forever.

Maybe that’s enough now, said Donna.

No, said Gordon. Do it some more. I like it.

You want a make a video? We can make a video, said Donna.

Gordon shook his head. Donna did the jacket thing a dozen times more. Then she left it on the chair and came over to sit beside Gordon. Gordon stroked the place where her breasts met the stitching of her bra, where the flesh was squeezed a little. His fingers delved inside the fabric and his knuckles rubbed against her nipples. He tugged at the bra and Donna unfastened it behind with a rapid move of her wrist. Gordon covered her warm breasts with his hands. To see and feel perfect smooth skin between his mottled hands, where the white skin was scored and rumpled and ridged with veins. It was no more than he deserved, no less than he wanted, which was the same thing. He was deep, deep inside the club of men, rooms and corridors and doors and passwords and signs away from the breasts of Mary and from girls who wouldn’t.

Donna pulled down his flies and rummaged for his cock. She fished it out, soft as an unbaked bap, and went down on it. Gordon stroked her bare back, lifted up her skirt, put his hand inside her panties and fingered her cleft.

Good lassie, he said. It’s a shame you’re an oriental cause you could teach the girls at home a few things about the right way to behave when it comes to their elders. Where I come from they keep the lassies at school too long and teach them not to touch men. Normal men, I’m talking about. It’s no wonder the country’s full of perverts and child molestors when the girls
don’t want to do the business with anyone over fifty. They end up with someone like my son.

Donna sat up, tossed back her hair, gave Gordon’s fingers a hard clench, closed her eyes, moaned, smiled and began pulling off his ghost of a hard-on.

You have a son? she said. She kept panting and making moans all the while she talked. She was brilliant.

I do have a son, said Gordon. But he’s a wanker.

What is that?

It means he’s kind of disabled.

Oh! Donna shut her eyes and squeezed Gordon’s fingers so tight he felt them go numb. She opened her eyes. Disabled. I am sorry for you. I know this. She relaxed her grip, stood up and let her skirt fall away. She began taking off Gordon’s clothes. My family in Laos has same problem. Where we live American bombers came before I was born. Everywhere was bomb bomb bomb, and my mother, my father, they were small and hid in shelters. Then they marry and start having children. In whole village it’s same. First child, it’s me, OK. Second child very weak, dies after few weeks. Third child bit stronger, maybe few years. Fourth child disabled. My brother. Born – no arms, big head, like a melon. Hates the sun.

Aye, those bombers did an amazing job, right enough, said Gordon.

Father fixed that I come here and send money home to help my brother. And learn English. Think maybe when I’m fifteen I look for another job. Foreigners don’t like it when we get old.

You want to watch out for foreigners, said Gordon. Bangkok’s full of them.

Maybe they let me go next year when I’m fifteen. Maybe not. Depends on money. Few thousand dollars is enough.

You’d be better staying here, said Gordon. You get off with
all these men. Must be nice for you. Probably a tab behind the bar too, and your tea. Out there are all the young guys, that’s the trouble. Then you get old.

I get tired, said Donna. Three, four, maybe six men a night. Some they don’t treat me so well. Last night a foreigner, he was fat and hairy, like a big monkey, he was sick on back of my head while I had him in my mouth. Made me finish.

Donna laid naked Gordon down on the bed, took off her panties and straddled him. She began tugging at his cock again. Is it serious, if you are a wanker? she said. Is it like our problem in village? Your son got a big head?

Yes, said Gordon. He’s got a big head all right. And this growth on his upper lip. And whenever you see him he’s this purple colour.

Oh! said Donna, biting her lip and bending down to kiss Gordon’s cock in sympathy, it’s same with my brother. He lies on a bed in the back of the house, he can’t move, his head is in a what, harness. Father wrote to say brother is blind now, head grown too big for eyes to see. He just lies there and listens. Sometimes he screams. Sometimes it’s hard to keep the chickens off him. You getting nice and hard now. Donna fitted Gordon with a condom and eased herself onto him. She tossed her hair back, clamped his half-erection bravely with her inside muscles and began to toil.

Poor mister, said Donna, I do my best for you. Relax. I know you want to forget about your son for a few minutes. I know.

And my wife, said Gordon.

Oh! said Donna. Poor mister. Your wife as well! You a very good man. Your son a wanker, and your wife a wanker, and you look after them both. Donna’s eyes became moist and she summoned all her skill. It took half an hour to bring Gordon to
climax. Gordon smiled as he remembered how easy and right it was to be happy and victorious. He opened his eyes and gazed at Donna, the sweat and glitter shining on her little belly as the muscles there quivered with the sudden rest, her mouth open, her breasts rising and falling with her quick breathing. To think they could all be this way if they wanted, and happiness would be on tap.

OK? said Donna.

Gordon opened his mouth to say she was fine, and a good lassie, and he was ready to help her out again, although next time he’d like to try a different girl, maybe two together, when he felt the blade of a spear rise out of his stomach into his oesophagus and lodge there, radiating pain and suffocation. Mr McDonald’s acid revenge clawed his chest and he slapped his breast with both hands, opening his mouth and drawing in deep draughts of air. His head spun.

It hurts, said Gordon, screwing up his eyes.

What’s wrong? said Donna, dismounting and putting her hand on his forehead. You OK?

My heart, said Gordon. I need Gaviscon.

Oh, mister, don’t do this, said Donna. Don’t have a heart attack, please, mister. Already lost one that way and they don’t pay me for two months afterwards.

Gaviscon, said Gordon. The heart. McDonald’s.

Gaviscon not here. That your son? Don’t worry. You be OK. Oh dear, mister. I go and call ambulance. Why they come here, fat and old and not used to the heat, I don’t know. Donna ran out of the room.

Heartburn, said Gordon. The second quarterpounder must’ve landed on its side. Should’ve had a third one for a solid foundation. Another grappling hook landed in his chest. Maybe it wasn’t the burgers, maybe it was the smell of the Bangkokian cooking.
Wrapping itself into the beef as it sizzled, invisibly foreign, an acid bomb. Drops of Gaviscon’d fix it. Ayah.

Donna came in with Cindi and they talked to each other very fast in Bangkokish. +++ ++++ ++++ ++ disabled +++ ++ ++++ +++ ++++ +++ Gaviscon ++++++ McDonald ++++ + +++ +++, said Donna.

Cindi shook her head. She was angry. +++ ++ ++++ ++ +++ + +++ + dollars + ++ ++++ + + +++ McDonald + +++ ++ +++++ ++ +++ Scotland, she said.

The two women dressed Gordon roughly. Cindi took Gordon’s pulse and peered into his eye. Gordon looked back at her eye. Cindi smiled. How you feeling, sir? she said.

Fine, said Gordon. Heartburn. Quarterpounders. Gaviscon’d sort it out.

Cindi stroked Gordon’s forehead and smiled. She shook her head. Gaviscon isn’t here, she said. He’s at home in Scotland. Don’t worry. We see you back to your hotel. You be fine. Take it easy. You use too much energy. Maybe next time older girl for you.

++++ ++ +++ ++, said Donna. Cindi turned to her and shouted something.

The ambulance came. They made Gordon lie on a stretcher, carried him into the back of the van and laid him down on a bunk. A doctor was sitting opposite. He asked Gordon if he had any insurance.

Gordon sat up. I’m fine, he said. Heartburn, it was. If you had some Gaviscon that’d be all I need. He looked out of the back window. The ambulance was moving. Cindi and Donna were standing outside the club. The two of them began pushing and shoving each other. The guy sitting on the chair got up and hit Donna across the face, grabbed her by the arm and started dragging her back inside the bar. Cindi came behind, kicking the two of them in the leg in turns with her steep
stilettos. It was cool inside the ambulance. The heartburn had passed. Gordon lay down on the stretcher, yawned, pulled a blanket over himself, rolled onto his side and went to sleep.

The hotel was on night regime when they dropped him off. A single receptionist on the desk, the piano shut up, the bar deserted, no policeman to open doors for him. Gordon went to Smithie’s room. He’d hung his Do Not Disturb chit on the doorknob. Gordon would disturb him. He needed disturbing. He needed a hammering for leaving Gordon on his own. Only Gordon couldn’t do that. He couldn’t hit Smithie, cause Smithie was not to be hit. He was too close. It’d be like punching your own chin. It’d be like mugging yourself. Gordon’d left things with Smithie over the years, piled them up cause there was lots of space there, and never thought about getting them back cause he could always get them if he wanted and he never did, and now. Now what. He couldn’t get them back. He couldn’t even remember what they were.