“So we’re starting back on the road to catastrophe?” Chanya says.
“Personally, I think we’re at the end, on the brink.”
“That’s why we all find the Asset so fascinating,” Chu says as we reach the bars.
“So what is escape velocity in this context?” Chanya asks, too late because we are all distracted getting out of the car. Then we are distracted by Chu. We remember the formerly most intriguing question of the night: which way did he swing?
–
The answer was, with hindsight, inevitable: katoeys. I’m afraid the Professor turned quite coy about those bars he most wanted to visit, which led Chanya to put him in her Total Jerk file even before he turned giggly. It was amazing. Krom and I finally decided to try him out in one of the tranny bars after seeing no serious spark of desire generated in the gay or the straight bars. In the Love Me Tender, however, the quality of the surgery together with the unnerving beauty of its products was damned impressive. Chu grew a beam on his face that quickly developed into an attitude of gratitude and generosity toward us for bringing him to paradise. He insisted on paying for round after round of drinks, while round after round of exquisite products of the gender reassignment industry came to pay him close attention. By the time he had settled on three that he wanted to take home, Krom had already disappeared to the lesbian bars on the other side of Surawong. Chanya and I caught a cab.
–
“Krom made a pass at me,” she said to the window in a soft mutter.
“She did? When? In the bathroom at the restaurant?” That was the only time they were alone together, as far as I could remember.
“Yes. It wasn’t aggressive and I’m not even sure she wanted to do it. I mean, something like that could ruin this little partnership she has with you, couldn’t it?”
“So why did she do it?”
“Because she couldn’t help herself.” A pause. “I turned her down, of course.”
15
I decide that the evening with Professor Chu definitely constituted work and I am therefore entitled to take the day off. But I have to visit the station that evening to clear the backlog of e-mails, which turn out to be a good few hours’ work. I stroll home and find Chanya still awake and watching an old Thai soap on YouTube.
“Did you switch your phone off?”
I check my phone, see it is switched off. “Yes. Shut it when I was trying to clear the e-mails. Forgot to switch it on again.”
“Uh-huh.”
She wrenches her eyes from the movie. Now I see it is not a soap but a comic version of the Nang Mak ghost story, about a Thai woman so devoted to her husband that she manages to return from the Other Side and serve him as a ghost-until he finds out and she has the kind of destructive tantrum only ghosts can do well (half the village dies from her curse in this version). Chanya pauses the movie in order to speak in a gentle voice. I have a feeling we are about to have a serious conversation about me.
“Sonchai, Krom called earlier.”
“Ah-ha!”
“She said she was looking for you, but maybe she was looking for a chance to talk to me.”
“To chat you up?”
She scowls. “No, to talk about you.”
“What about me?”
“Your mental health.”
“Really.”
She turns from the screen to give me her full attention. “We had quite a talk, but it kept coming down to the same thing. I told her what kind of state you are in. Sonchai, now that you’ve at least come out with your father obsession-we both agreed that’s a good sign, so much better than having it festering away inside-surely you’ve got to see your mother about it? About him?”
“I will. Soon. A good detective doesn’t question the key witness until he has his ducks in a row.”
She grabs my chin and turns it until I’m looking at her. “You’re scared, aren’t you? It’s Psychology 101: people are plagued by two opposing drives-the drive to know and the drive not to know.”
I break away from her to go to the window. On the road all is still under the streetlights. “You spoke to Nong?”
“Yes, after Krom called.”
“And?”
“She said she’d be in her bar tomorrow at about nine in the morning-there’s some inventory she needs to check on. She said you could stop by then, if there’s something you need to say or know.” She lets a couple of beats pass. “Frankly, Sonchai, how likely is it that she doesn’t even know his name?”
“His name’s Jack,” I say plaintively.
“C’mon, Sonchai.”
“Are you sure Krom wasn’t using me as an excuse to get close to you? You’re the one said she made a pass at you at the Heaven’s Gate Tower.”
“Maybe I was mistaken. It was ambiguous anyway.”
“Or did you make a pass at her?”
She slaps her desk and glares at me. “Okay, you win. You don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.” She turns back to her soap. I figure she’s going to watch the movie all through, and I can’t sleep with the light from her screen blazing away, so I decide to smoke a joint-I’m not sure I’m strong enough for more oil just now. I’m pretty mellow when she comes to bed. I assume she is still pissed off with me after our little spat, but instead she curls up beside me and starts to play with my dick.
“I’m not in the mood,” I say.
“So why is it getting bigger?”
“A man lies down to relax, the blood in his head makes its way downwards. Not every erection is a tribute to the love object.”
“Really?” She jiggles a little more at exactly the right calibration of touch and rhythm. We’ve been together a long time, after all.
“Okay, I’m persuadable.”
She disappears under the sheet to go to work on me. When she pops up again she has reverted to manual labor, but very skillful. “Sonchai,” she says in the cozy voice she uses for moments like this.
“Yes?”
“Suppose I did have a little fling with Krom. Would it upset you very much?”
I freeze for a moment, then relax and scratch my jaw. That’s quite a question. “I’m not sure.”
“It wouldn’t be the same as if I went with a man, would it?”
“Maybe not.”
“I mean, it wouldn’t be like some rival had usurped my womb and thereby threatened the survival of your line, your DNA? The sort of thing male lions get het up about.”
“I guess not.”
“But you would be hurt?”
“I’m not sure.”
The hand goes on strike. “Sonchai, I’m trying to have a mature adult dialogue here. You’re my number one relationship, that’s final. I don’t want to damage us by being selfish.”
“I hate it when you do this soft, liberal, middle-class stuff. It’s so condescending. Like you hold all the cards and aren’t you great for not acting like a fascist bitch.”
Now the hand has relinquished the love object altogether. This has the effect of making me feel lonely. Under the guiding influence of cannabis I grab the hand and put it back. I hold it there in a viselike grip. “Why don’t you admit that was what her call was all about? You discussed having an affair, didn’t you?”
Instead of pulling back, because I won’t let her, she tries to strangle it. “Okay, yes, we did kind of touch on the subject when she called. You were definitely the main point, but then we talked about it.”
“And?”
“I said I would want you to be okay with it.”
“Okay with it? What does that mean?”
She sighs. I release my hand. She relaxes her grip and returns to the traditional up-and-down motion. “It means if I had the fling with Krom would you use it as an excuse?”
“To do what?”
She pauses and grips tight again. “Screw that new girl at your mother’s bar. I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
I honestly hadn’t thought of that. Her name is Katrina, a leuk kreung like me with a Russian absentee father, twenty-three, stunning, with everything still firm. Now my dear wife has really given me a hard-on. “You bet,” I murmur.