BACK IN BANGKOK, Dox and I checked into the Grand Hyatt Erawan on Ratchadamri. It wasn’t as discreet a hotel as the Sukhothai, but I’m not usually comfortable using the same place twice in a row. What it lacked in low-key charm, though, the Erawan made up for operationally: it offered multiple entrances and exits on two floors and a significant security infrastructure in the form of guards and cameras. Ordinarily, surveillance and security are a hindrance to me and I try to avoid them. But this time, I wanted to be someplace that would offer obstacles to anyone who might think to visit me unexpectedly. Not that anyone knew where I was, but I always sleep better with multiple layers in place. And if one of those layers takes the form of 300-thread count cotton sheets . . . well, there aren’t so many perks to this profession. I take them when I can.
There was nothing to do now but wait, and I let Dox talk me into another evening on the town. I had enjoyed our meal together a few nights before, enjoyed it much more than the usual solitary night in a hotel room, and he didn’t have too hard a time persuading me. This time, though, I got to choose the venue.
I headed down to the lobby to meet him at eight o’clock as we had agreed. He was early again, and again looked very much the local expat in an untucked, short-sleeved, cream-colored linen shirt and jeans. He seemed to be absorbed in a book. As I got closer I noticed the title: Beyond Good and Evil.
“You’re reading Nietzsche?” I asked, incredulous.
He looked at me. “Well, sure, why not?”
I struggled for a moment, concerned that whatever I said next would be insulting. “Well, it’s just . . .”
He smiled. “I know, I know, everybody thinks a southern boy can’t be intellectual. Well, my father worked for a big pharmaceutical company, and I grew up in Germany, where he was posted. I studied old Friedrich in school, and I liked him. All that stuff about the will to power and all. When I read it now, it comforts me.”
“Who’da thunk it,” I said, imitating his twang.
He laughed. “Hey, how did you even recognize what I was reading, cowboy? That’s more than I would have expected.”
I shrugged. “When I was a kid, I always seemed to be on the wrong side of one gang or another. I found the best place to hide was the library. They never thought to look for me there. Eventually I got bored and started reading the books. I never stopped.”
“Never stopped getting on the wrong side of gangs?”
I laughed. “It seems that way, doesn’t it. Never stopped reading, is what I meant.”
“So that’s where you get some of those big words you like to use. I found myself wondering from time to time. Plus you never seem put off by my own extensive vocabulary. Even a word like ‘perineum,’ it seems like second nature to you.”
“It’s good of you to say.”
He closed the book and stood up. “Well, where are we off to tonight? Discotheque? Massage parlor?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of taking in a fight at Lumpini, then maybe a bar. An adult bar.”
“Sure, I love to see a little Thai boxing. Not sure about the adult bar, though. . . . Is it like an adult video? I like those a lot.”
“You might be disappointed, then. But you should still give it a try.”
He grinned. “ ’Course I’ll give it a try. Hell, I’m a tri-sexual, partner, I’ll try anything once.”
We took the stairs to the basement, then exited through the Amarin Plaza shopping mall. Out on the street, Dox started to flag down a cab.
“Wait,” I said. “Let’s move around a little first.”
“Move around . . . Look, man, is that really necessary? We did a route on the way to the hotel earlier. We know we’re clean.”
“Just because you were clean before doesn’t mean you’re clean now. You took a shower yesterday, right? Does that mean you don’t need one today?”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“There are ways to track someone other than physically following them. Think about what Delilah said. We’ve got some motivated people looking for us. Let’s not make it easy for them.”
He sighed. “All right, all right. I just don’t want to miss the fights, is all.”
We walked to Chit Lom station and took the sky train one stop to Phloen Chit. We waited on the platform until all the passengers had cleared, then got back on and rode back to Siam. We took the elevator down to the street level, then ducked across one of the sois to Henri Dunant, where we caught a cab.
Dox looked at his watch. “Satisfied now? We’re going to miss half the fights.”
“The good fights start at nine.”
He looked at me. “You know Thailand better than you’ve been letting on, partner?”
I shrugged. “I’ve spent some time here. Not lately, though, and not like you.”
“You’re a mysterious man, Mr. Rain.”
I winced slightly at the mention of my name. All right, I know I’m paranoid, as Harry used to tell me: the name wouldn’t mean a thing to the cabdriver, who had picked us up utterly at random and who doubtless spoke no English regardless. But what was the upside of using a name? If your paranoia doesn’t cost you anything, I figure, why not indulge it? It’s worked for me so far.
But I let it go. I was learning that with Dox, as perhaps in all things, I had to pick my battles.
The cab ride to Lumpini stadium took ten minutes. We bought ringside seats for fifteen hundred baht apiece and went inside.
Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, is Thailand’s indigenous form of pugilism. The contestants wear gloves, and in this and a few other respects the art is superficially similar to Western boxing. But Thai boxers also legally and enthusiastically fight with their feet, knees, elbows, and heads, even from grappling tie-ups that Western referees would immediately separate. The feel of a match is different, too, with none of the trash-talking that has come to dominate so many American sports. Instead, Thai boxers warm up together in the ring, largely ignoring each other as they perform the wai khru dances by which they pay homage to their teachers, and they fight to music, a blood-maddening mix of clarinet, drums, and cymbals. During my years in Japan I worked with an ex-fighter who had come to the Kodokan to study judo. We taught each other many things, and I came away with a lot of respect for the ferocity and effectiveness of this fighting system.
The stadium was purely functional: three tiers of seats, pitted concrete floors, stark incandescent lights shining murderously into the ring. The air reeked of accumulated years of sweat and liniment. The second tier of seats was the most crowded, and the most uniformly Thai, as this was where the hard-core betting went on, and each solid shin kick or roundhouse was greeted from that section with a chorus of cries that had as much to do with commerce as with bloodlust.
We caught the last three fights of the evening. As always I was impressed with the skill and heart these men brought to the ring, and this time I found myself a little envious, too. When I was their age I had been at least that quick, and my speed had pulled me through any number of unpleasant close encounters. But my reflexes, though still good, and despite a careful diet, supplement, and exercise regimen, weren’t the same anymore. I touched the knife in my pocket, and thought, Well, that’s what toys are for. Along with evolving tactics.
Dox was characteristically boisterous, hollering enthusiastically during the fights and even getting up to offer some congratulations in Thai to the winners as they left the ring. I would have preferred it if he had been able to keep a lower profile, but I recognized that this would be impossible for him. I reminded myself that, if I wanted this fledgling partnership to go anywhere, I would have to try to accept Dox more or less as he was.
When the last match had ended, we headed outside. Dox said, “Well, the night is young. Are we going to hit that ‘adult bar’?”
I nodded. “Yeah, if you’re not too tired.”
He grinned. “I’m good if you are. Let’s get a cab.”
He saw my expression and said, “Oh, man, not again . . .”
“Just down the street. We’ll walk along Lumpini Park. We can get a cab from there. It’ll be easier, there are fewer people.”
“Along Lumpini Park? There won’t be any people.”
“Well, that’s even better. No competition at all.”
He sighed and nodded, and I realized with an odd sense of gratitude that he was doing the same sort of “if I want this thing to work” calculus that I was.
We walked, then found a cab. It took only a few minutes to get to the place I had in mind: Brown Sugar, Bangkok’s best jazz club.
The club was on Soi Sarasin, opposite the northwest corner of giant Lumpini Park. It announced its presence quietly and with confidence: a simple green awning with white lettering that proclaimed “Brown Sugar—The Finest Jazz Restaurant.” A redbrick façade and a lacquered wooden doorway, the door propped open, inviting. A window with rows of glass shelving displaying odds and ends—a ceramic bourbon decanter sporting a map of Kentucky, an antique martini mixer, a collection of tiny glass bottles, twin coffee canisters, a demitasse, ceramic soldiers in Napoleonic garb. A few wooden tables and chairs along the sidewalk in front, illuminated only by whatever light escaped from the club inside.
I was gratified to find the place still thriving. It was bracketed to the right by an alley and to the left by a cluster of neon-lit bars with names like Bar D and The Room and Café Noir. Unlike Brown Sugar, which had a classic—some might say rundown—feel to it, the others all looked new. I had a feeling that none of the upstarts would be here a year from now. Brown Sugar might be older, but it had what it takes to go the distance.
We got out of the cab, crossed the street, and went inside. A sign by the door said the band playing was called Anodard. Anodard turned out to be two guitars, sax, keyboards, drums, and a pretty female vocalist. They were doing a nice cover of Brenda Russell’s “Baby Eyes,” and the main room, a cramped, low-ceilinged space that could hold probably thirty people on a good night, was about three-quarters full. The décor was exactly as it should be: dim lighting, a bare ceiling, worn tables and floor, fading jazz memorabilia on the walls. I hoped no one would ever think to give the place a face-lift. We took a table on the right side of the bar, with a view of the band. Brown Sugar’s only real failing is its unimaginative selection of single malts, but I made do with a Glenlivet eighteen-year-old. Dox ordered a Stoli rocks. We settled back, sipped our drinks, and listened to the music. It turned out to be more pop than jazz, but Anodard was good and that was the main thing.
It was a little odd to take in live music with a companion. Usually I go to a club alone, coming and going quietly and unobtrusively and without having to worry about whether anyone was enjoying the experience as much as I. About a half hour in, when the band took a break, I said to Dox, “Well? What do you think?”
He frowned as though in concentration. “Well, it’s taking me a little getting used to. Most of the Bangkok establishments with which I’m acquainted have girls dancing on tabletops and wearing numbers on their bikini bottoms. But I can see the appeal.”
I nodded. “All right, there’s hope for you.”
“And that singer is sexy, too.”
“Faint hope.”
He laughed. “You know, partner, that Delilah’s a classy lady. I don’t know what she’s doing with a reprobate like you.”
“I don’t know, either.”
He gave me a smile that was half leer. “Looks like she smacked you up pretty good there. Didn’t know you liked that kind of thing.”
I glanced around for the waitress.
“I like it when a lady isn’t afraid to get passionate,” he went on in a thoughtful tone, apparently unperturbed by my lack of response. “Damn, just thinking about it is turning me on.”
“Feel free not to share,” I said.
“Oh come on, we’re partners and friends and we’re here in the great state of Bangkok, land of smiles! We can let our hair down a little.”
“Dox, your hair’s never been up.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Anyway, I think your lady is going to help us. I’ve got a good feeling about her.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t always go on a feeling.”
“Well, partner, lacking your well-developed sense of universal paranoia, I’m often left with nothing more than my gut to fall back on. And it’s served me well so far, seeing as I’m even here to talk about it.”
I was surprised to find that his words stung a little. Ever since we’d left Phuket, I’d been half-consciously playing scenarios through my head, testing my hope that Delilah was being straight with us. I thought she was. I just wished I could have Dox’s simple confidence.
“We’ll see,” was all I said.
The waitress came by, and we ordered another round. Periodically a new couple or group would drift in from outside. I was pleased to see Dox checking the door each time this happened. In professionals this should be a quick, unobtrusive reflex, performed as unconsciously as breathing. You always want to know who’s joining you, to maintain your sense of the crowd.
At one point, I looked up to see a striking Thai girl enter the club. She was wearing a pewter silk jacquard blouse, sleeveless and with a mandarin collar, a clingy black silk skirt, cut just above the knee, and strappy, open-toe stilettos. Her makeup was perfect, and her hair was done in a neat chignon that accentuated her perfect posture and confident gait. Drop earrings that looked like jade gleamed under each ear.
She sat down at the bar like royalty on a throne and looked around the club. Dox nudged me and said, “You see that girl who just came in?”
I nodded, wondering whether I’d been giving Dox too much credit for what I thought were perimeter checks. It looked like the more likely explanation might be excessive horniness.
The woman saw Dox and smiled. He smiled back.
Great, I thought. Here we go.
“You see that, man?” he asked. “She smiled at me.”
I looked back at him. “She’s probably a prostitute, Dox. She smiles at everyone. Especially Westerners who she assumes have money to buy her jade earrings.”
“Partner, I don’t care how she makes her living. She might freelance a little, who could blame her? That ain’t the point. The point is, she likes me. I can tell.”
“She likes your money.”
“She might like that, too, and I might even tip her, as a show of my appreciation and just to help her out generally. But I wouldn’t be attracted to her if she didn’t want me for me. Watch, you’ll see.”
He looked over again and gave her a long smile. She smiled back, then said something to the bartender and got up. She started heading in our direction.
Dox looked at me. “What did I tell you?”
The confidence she displayed in brazenly approaching Dox told me I’d been right in suspecting she was a prostitute. But it occurred to me that her presence here was a little odd. The high-end hookers tended to troll dance clubs and bars like Spasso at the Grand Hyatt, not authentic, out-of-the-way dives like Brown Sugar. Well, she might not have been having any luck in one of the places next door, and might have drifted in here for the music, or for the hell of it. Still, as it always does in response to something out of place, my alertness bumped up a notch. Although I had already been keeping a routine, low-level awareness of what was going on in the room, I glanced around just to confirm that nothing else was wrong. Everything seemed okay.
The girl came over to our table. I checked her hands. Right hand empty, left holding a tiny black evening bag, probably weighed down by no more than a cell phone, lipstick, and a mirror. I didn’t pick up any danger signals. But my sense that something was out of place wasn’t entirely placated, and I remained watchful.
She glanced at me, then at Dox. “Hi,” she said, in a voice that was both sweet and slightly husky. “My name is Tiara.” She had a heavy Thai accent.
“Well, hello, Tiara,” Dox said, offering her an enormous grin. “I’m Bob, and this here is Richard. But most people call him Dick.” He glanced at me and his grin broadened.
The girl held out her hand to Dox, who shook it. She offered it to me. I caught her fingers and gave them a gentle squeeze. Her fingertips were smooth, with no calluses. As she withdrew from my grasp I glanced at her hand. Her fingers were long and perfectly manicured, and the light caught her polished nails as though they were little jewels.
“Would you like to join Dick and me for a drink?” Dox asked.
The girl offered a radiant smile and made some microscopic adjustment to her hair. “Yes, very much,” she said. I expected this kind of conversation would be all that was comfortable for her in English. This, and maybe, “Oh, you so big dick! Oh, you make me come so much!” and the other such Shakespearean phrases of the trade.
I got up and offered her my chair, adjacent to Dox’s, facing the bandstand. “Here,” I said. “I just need to use the men’s room. You and Bob get acquainted and I’ll be right back.”
The girl nodded and took my seat. Dox grinned and said, “Well, thank you, Dick.”
In fact, I wasn’t particularly in need of the restroom. I just wanted a chance to scan the room from other vantage points. To observe our table the way someone else might be observing it. It would make me feel better.
Brown Sugar has two back rooms, and I checked each of these. Both were occupied by groups of middle-aged Thais talking, eating, and laughing lustily. The other tables were filled by unremarkable twenty- and thirty-somethings, foreign and Thai. No one set off my radar. But something was still bothering me. Not a lot, but it was there.
Maybe you’re just jumpy. You’re not used to being out in the open with company, with someone approaching you uninvited.
Maybe. I used the men’s room and returned to the table. Dox and the girl each had a fresh drink. They were holding hands and murmuring to each other. Well, it looked as though I was going to finish up the evening on my own, after all.
I walked over to her left and said, “You know, I’m actually feeling a little tired.”
The girl glanced up and back at me. From this angle, the high collar of her dress pulled away slightly from her neck. Beneath her smooth skin I saw the slight bulge of the cricothyroid cartilage—the Adam’s apple.
I’ll be damned, I thought. All at once I understood what had been making me twitchy. I had to stifle a laugh.
“Oh come on, Dick, it ain’t past your bedtime. Stick around, you might even have some fun.”
Oh, I’m going to have some fun, I thought. I’m sure of that.
I smiled at him, trying to stop short of the shit-eating grin my mood was suddenly demanding. “Well, okay. Maybe just for another song or two.”
“There you go,” Dox said. He gestured to the chair across from him. “Have a seat. Tiara and I are drinking Stolis. You want another one of those whiskeys?”
“Why not?” I said. Dox signaled the waitress and magnanimously ordered everyone another round. He and Tiara leaned close again and went back to murmuring.
Oh, this was going to be good. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve something so beautiful, but here it was. And it could only get better.
The drinks came. I enjoyed mine in silence, my focus alternating between the bar, the room, and my distracted drinking companions. The girl’s arm had disappeared beneath the table. From the angle of their bodies, I recognized that her hand was, at a minimum, on Dox’s thigh. Possibly it had come to rest somewhere farther north.
The girl whispered something to him. Dox nodded. The girl smiled at me, got up, excused herself, and headed toward the restroom.
Dox took a last gulp from his drink and leaned across the table. His face was flushed. “Well, partner, you know I’m going to miss you, but duty calls.”
I smiled. “I understand completely. You’re going to make her very happy, I can see that.”
“Well, I reckon she’s going to make me happy, too. Did you see her, man? When was the last time you saw something so fine? A little flat-chested, it’s true, but that doesn’t bother me a bit. I’m sure her other charms will make up for it.”
“Oh, definitely. I’m sure she’s otherwise . . . very well equipped.” Keeping my voice even wasn’t easy. One hitch, one chuckle, and I knew I’d be lost in a hurricane-force laughing fit.
“Thanks for your understanding, man. It’s time for this young lady to have the experience of a lifetime. It’ll be nothing but disappointment for her after tonight, but that’s the price of a love-filled evening with Dox.”
I nodded. I knew if I tried to speak I’d be done.
He must have misinterpreted my silence. “Shit, man, there’s no need for you to spend the night alone. You’re not a bad-looking guy, and the ladies won’t know about your deficiencies until it’s too late, anyway. You could meet someone if you wanted to.”
Part of me, a bigger part than I cared to admit, wanted to let him go through with it. And I would have paid almost anything to be there at the moment of truth. But he was a good friend. Hell, he’d saved my life. I couldn’t do it to him, even if he did deserve it.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Dox. She’s a katoey.”
Katoey, or “lady-boy,” has a range of meanings, from a guy who likes to dress in drag from time to time all the way to a man who has had transgender surgery and is now effectively a woman. They can be found all over Thailand and are generally accepted, if sometimes difficult to spot, within the society. Regardless of the differences, what they all have in common is that presumably Dox wouldn’t want to sleep with one.
He scowled slightly and cocked his head. “Now that’s not like you, man. Don’t go trying to spoil my night just because you haven’t gotten one of your own.”
“You didn’t notice her hands? They’re just a little big for her frame, don’t you think? And did you get a look at her Adam’s apple? Women don’t have Adam’s apples, and she’s wearing that high collar to conceal it.”
Some of the color drained from his face. “Don’t fuck with me,” he said.
I shook my head and stifled a laugh. “I’m not.”
The girl walked back from the restroom as though on cue. Dox stood and turned to her. “Honey,” he said, “Dick over here thinks . . . he thinks . . .”
I smiled gently and said to her, “I just didn’t want there to be a misunderstanding. Bob didn’t know you’re a katoey.”
She smiled back, then looked at Dox, her eyes wide. “You no like katoey?”
Dox lost a little more color. “I . . . I . . .” he stammered.
“Me, I think you know,” she said. “So I no say.”
“No, I didn’t know!” he said, his voice anguished.
“Most men, no problem. When it dark . . .”
“I ain’t like that.”
She smiled. “Please, honey? I like you.”
Dox’s expression was about halfway to physical illness. “Look,” he said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but could you just go?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Thank you for drinks with me.”
“You’re welcome,” Dox said, his tone the quintessence of forlornness.
She got up and left the club, no doubt disappointed that her investment of time had yielded so little. Dox looked gut-shot.
He slumped into his chair and looked at me. “When did you spot that stuff about her hands and her neck? You let that go on for an awfully long time there, partner.”
“Dox, I thought you knew. It was so obvious.”
“It was not obvious. No, sir.”
“You sure you don’t want to take her back to the hotel? If you hurry . . .”
“Hell, yes, I’m sure.”
“Because, c’mon, you had to know. At some level.”
“No, I didn’t know at any level, not until you told me.”
“Really? I mean, you pointed out that she was a little flat-chested. And I don’t know how you could have missed the hands and the Adam’s apple. Dox, she might as well have been wearing a sign.”
“No, she was definitely not wearing a sign, man. Although I think she ought to.”
I smiled. “Maybe you would have enjoyed it.”
“Stop it.”
“I mean, if she’d only given you a blow job, you would never even have known. You’d just think it was the best head you’d ever gotten. It would have become one of your most cherished memories.” I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. “You never would have stopped telling me about it.”
“Do you want another drink?” he asked. “I think I need one.”
“How many, Dox? That’s the question. How many times before.”
He signaled the waitress for two more, then shuddered. “Damn, that was a near thing. I’d thank you, if you’d stepped in a little sooner and were enjoying yourself a little less.”
“Enjoying?”
“Yeah, yeah. Very funny.” He drained his Stoli and shuddered again.
I thought about going on, something about how, with all his local expertise, he had still almost unintentionally gone off with a lady-boy. Or presumably unintentionally. But he looked so glum that I decided to give it a rest.
The band started up again. A few minutes later, Dox leaned over to me and said, “If you don’t mind, I’m ready to try something different. You’re welcome to join me, but I don’t know that where I’m going is apt to be your kind of place.”
“Topless girls with numbers attached to their bikini bottoms?”
“I’d say that’s likely, yes.”
“Good. If they’re undressed, you’ll have a better chance of making sure . . . you know.”
He scowled. “Are you coming?”
“No, I’d better let you go alone. I wouldn’t want to interfere with a man’s quest to recover his masculinity. On the other hand, who’s going to warn you if you run into another . . .”
“I’ll be fine alone, you Yankee degenerate.”
I smiled and held out my hand. “All right then. We’ll talk in the morning?”
“In the morning,” he said, and we shook. He got up, tossed a few hundred baht on the table, and headed for the door.
I chuckled to myself. It was going to be good to have something in my arsenal that I could bring up anytime Dox gave me grief.
I chuckled again, a little more softly. It was odd that she’d been in here, though. She seemed to have been on the make, and Brown Sugar was the wrong place for that. Sure, she could have come here to enjoy the music, to take a break, whatever, but the way she’d been looking around right away, the way she’d immediately zeroed in on Dox . . .
Maybe that was opportunistic.
Didn’t feel opportunistic. It felt focused.
I chewed on that. Then, in a sort of semiconscious shorthand that was more suddenly present in its entirety than deduced piece by piece, I realized:
If someone wanted to get to you and Dox, the first thing he’d look to do would be to separate you. To do that, if he were smart, he would employ some means that could distract, at least temporarily, your sensitivity to disparities in the local environment. Give you something you could focus on. A katoey, for example. Make you say, that’s what was bothering me—she’s not really a woman! Or, if you didn’t spot it, and one of you went off with her . . . boom, there you go, you’ve found your way to divide us.
Maybe it would have been easier, more straightforward, to use a real woman as the bait. But a katoey would have certain advantages. A lady-boy could take better care of himself in a scrape. And he’d be used to acting, to passing himself off as something he wasn’t, to fooling people, lulling them.
I felt the blood draining from my face, my heart begin to pound as an adrenaline dump kicked in. If Dox had still been at the table, he would have laughed at me. I didn’t care. There were certain things I would try to change about myself to accommodate our partnership. The way I go with my gut would never be one of them.
I stood up and walked briskly to the door, as fast as I could move without being obvious. I was hoping I was wrong, but I knew I was right.