The floor was wet when I left, and I needed dry land.
16. The Last Chance Saloon
I readjust my hips in the booth, sore from the chair and getting eaten. I sip my drink, Irish whiskey with a splash of good Javan coffee. No ice cubes, because Bangkok doesn’t do ice cubes, not even in the upscale hotels. Fuck what the tourists want because what they want rarely involves ice cubes.
The place is crowded, but it could be just me unable to mentally navigate groups of people until I get this first drink down. I don’t stand out here as much, sometimes being mistaken for a tourist by the new bar girls and some of the freshly deposited expats. Burned-out hippies, most of them, a few Australians on holiday, but also some real hard chargers, who want to burn their candle down to ash in the new Old West buried in one of the oldest spots in the east. They all hit me up for drugs and tips on the best brothels or sex clubs or places where men can rent village boys by the hour. One look from my eyes so new and different from theirs, that have seen the jungle and what lies beyond, usually sends them down the bar, but some of them stick around long enough to buy me a drink and endure ten minutes of strained silence. Either way, it’s a free drink for a man perpetually on a budget.
I look around the room, getting a temperature reading for the crowd tonight, looking for shadows in the corners. Nothing but the usual scene, for the most part. A bit of an edge in the air, or maybe that’s just my veins bulging under my skin, locked in the confused struggle of needing to purge narcotics while at the same time trying to conserve every bit of them.
A loud voice erupts from the front of the bar, the place with the most visibility, and vulnerability. I can’t understand what he’s saying, but the gibberish is most definitely English, mashed flat by the landscape of the Middle West.
Now that I know the score, my ears can’t help but comb through the background noise and braid his voice into words.
“…greased three gooners all by myself. Sure as shit did.”
He’s the right age, but isn’t the right type. He’s wearing a black beret, checkered black and white VC scarf around his neck, and a khaki safari shirt, all of them props from entirely different plays. New combat boots on his feet without a scuff on them, down below shorts held up by a brown dress belt. Fat legs. A face that hasn’t seen anything but the inside of a cheeseburger bag and too many matinees. No one who did what we did would talk this way, not in mixed company, in that tone of voice. Maybe I’ll let him wear my boonie hat for a while and see how he makes out with that.
“Four shots, three stuffed body bags,” this cheeseburger went on. “If those dirty bastards used them, which they didn’t. Just dragged them back into the jungle or God knows where else.”
The Vietnamese in the bar, and there aren’t many but enough, cast their glares on the man and his entourage of imports and locals of several genders. Bar girls, lady boys, sleaze tourists, and a Eurotrash couple ogling the king shit of Ugly America.
“You ever see the insides of a man? No, no… No women. What do you think I am, an animal? Warrior’s code, ladies and gentlemen and lady gentlemen.”
Laughter. Some applause. Fucking applause. Could be a diplomat or a businessman, special attaché or some shit like that, but I smell the stink of the long con all the way across the room.
“War is hell, know what I’m saying? And it was a hell of a party. Can we drink to that? I think it’s only right.”
They do, because apparently it is.
This man is embarrassing me, playing the part of one of my own but he most certainly is not. He’s shaming those slow dying deep roots, trained for drought and stubborn as weeds.
My feet move before my brain can tell them not to. The transplant Vietnamese, a lot of them veterans, won’t say anything. They have too much class. But I will. I’m a veteran, too, and I lost my class a long time ago.
I stand behind the guy and look down at him, see the shoe polish collecting around the fat behind his neck. Unless he was a general, this turkey is too old to have been there with us kids. No way in hell is this turkey a general.
“Hey there, cherry.”
Everyone seated leans to get a look at the new voice at the party. King shitbird squints up at me, annoyed, but not yet sure how much heat he should put behind that look. You run into all types in Bangkok.
“What did you call me?” he says.
“You the FNG, right?” I say with a chummy laugh. “I mean, around here. You definitely the FNG.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
I smile. It means I’m right, and it means that it’s on.
“You gonna ask me to sit down, cherry? We brothers, right? Yeah, we brothers. Come on, gimme them DAPs.”
“I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, friend, but you best keep right on steppin’.”
I squat down with my sore spider legs, speak softly into his ear. “I ain’t your friend, and I ain’t steppin’ for nobody.”
He pulls away and turns, finding my eyes. All of my eyes. What he sees there pushes the shiny skin back on his face. He hides it with a smile, closing the furnace doors. He raises his hand, offered up to the growling dog. You let it get your scent, and it maybe won’t rip out your throat, right? “Pull up a seat, son,” he says.
“Oh, you my daddy now?”
He laughs. “Oh, I ain’t your daddy, boy,” he says, emphasizing the “boy” like guys like him always did. I dealt with that shit for years up north, until I dropped the bayou just long enough to get the fuck out of there for good, trading insults in English for taunts across the wire in Vietnamese. “But I do have manners.”
“Nah, you don’t. You’re a swine, rolling in the mud and showing your ass.”
“You looking for trouble?”
“Wasn’t. But I think I found some.”
“War’s over, soldier.”
“No, it isn’t. Not for any of us who were there. It’ll never be over. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? You’re an actor. A clown in a costume.” I’m getting heated. His group is getting nervous.
“Let me buy you a drink,” he said, holding up a finger.
“Let me buy you one,” I say, slapping down a few bills. “At the hotel up the street. This place ain’t for you.”
He’s backed into a corner. Fight or flight, and the latter would kill the party and his rep, whatever that may be with whomever these people are. The former? Well, we’d just have to see. “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?” he says.
“Because what you’re talking about, in this place, is my business. We’re guests here. Act accordingly.”
“You’re an uppity one, ain’t you?”
I lean in close, smelling his sweat and everything he ate and drank for the last hour. “I’m as uppity as they come.”
He sizes me up, looking for angles. Bloodshot eyes narrow. “You ain’t military.”
“Not currently. Not anymore.”
“Probably went AWOL,” he says with a snort, bringing his drink to his mouth like a canteen. “No steel in the spine.”
Now my blood’s up, bubbling atop of that heat. I’d pull some Military Occupation Specialties and see where it takes us. Shit, I already know where it’d take us, and I can’t wait for us to arrive.
“What company were you in?” I ask.
“Special Forces.”
“Like hell. What station?”
“You think I’m going to tell you?”
“What’s your MOS?”
“I ain’t telling you that, neither.”
He’s not even good at the lie. Too lazy. Clown in a costume.
“Where’d you do basic?” I continue.