"You don't know anything, do you? It's instant. You just boil water and put the powder in."
Kwan stares down at the cup. "Is there any way to get it out?"
"Yes. You drink it."
Kwan holds the cup out. "I'll share it with you."
"Smell it first," Fon says. "Smell it and then drink it."
Kwan sniffs the cup. "It smells better than it tastes."
"Well, then smell it every time before you drink. Get the smell in your nose first. But drink it."
"Why?"
"Because you need two things." Fon picks up the towels, and beneath them is a new, still-wrapped cake of hotel soap. "You need to get cleaner than you've ever been in your life, and then you need to talk. And that stuff"-she nods toward the Nescafe-"will help you talk." "HE COULDN'T DO anything at first," Kwan says. She is on her back on the couch, with her knees drawn up because the sofa is too short for her, with her head resting on Fon's lap. Beneath her hair, wet from the cold-water shower down the hall, is a folded towel. She wears clean, fresh-smelling pajamas that belong to Fon, bright primary-school yellow, with happy teddy bears and birthday cakes all over them. It seems to be the teddy bears' birthday. The pants come to a premature halt just below her knees, although they reach the tops of Fon's feet.
"I could have told you that," Fon says. She lifts a strand of wet hair and lets it fall. "Your hair is so nice. He usually can't. He drinks too much."
"Oom said the same thing."
Fon's eyebrows go up. It makes her look even more like a child's toy. "Oom? Oom actually bothered to talk to you?"
"She asked why I was saving my hymen. Whether anyone was paying me interest."
Fon laughs, just a short syllable. "Our bar's little nun. Talking you into going to work."
"She's in love-"
"With that big guy," Fon says. "Too handsome for me. But for a while now, he's the only one she'll go with. He buys her out and we don't see her for three or four weeks, and when she comes back, she might as well have stayed away. She just hangs on to that pole all night and doesn't go with anybody."
"He pays her."
"Well, of course he does. Oom's pretty, but she has to eat, same as me."
The buzz of traffic from the street below floats into the room through the open window. Kwan can feel a warm energy coursing through her, a little kernel of electricity beneath her heart. She lifts her head and takes another swallow of the Nescafe. It's starting to taste better. "Oom's beautiful."
"Beautiful is easy. Keeping a good heart, that's hard. But you know what? In twenty years she won't be so beautiful, but you and I-you and I will still have good hearts."
"You think I have a good heart? How can you tell?"
"Kwan. You're as transparent as water." Fon kisses the tips of her fingers and then places them dead center on Kwan's forehead.
Kwan puts a hand over the place Fon touched. "I never had a friend like you before."
Fon is silent for a moment, but then she says, "Be careful. Lots of girls will act like… oh, well, you know. Nana." She smooths Kwan's wet hair. "Everybody in the bar wants something. They want to borrow money or they want some man who likes you or-this could happen because you're beautiful-they'll pretend to be your friend so they can drag you into threesomes."
"Threesomes?"
"Two girls and one man. Some of the girls who are ugly will do that, make friends with a beautiful girl so they can say to a man, 'You want me and my friend over there? Two ladies? No problem.' "
Kwan says, "That's awful."
"It's okay sometimes. It's less work, and it's a little safer. Most guys won't try anything with two girls in the room. And if he doesn't speak Thai, you can talk about him while you're working, as long as you don't laugh too much." She runs her palm over Kwan's slick hair again. "But," she says, "speaking of ugly."
"What?" Kwan holds up the cup, nothing inside but a thick black paste on the bottom. "Can I have some more?"
Fon takes the cup out of Kwan's hand and puts it on the three-legged table. "No. You're going to want to sleep eventually. Ugly. You know, Captain Yodsuwan. Talk about it. Get it all out, and then you can go to sleep."
"I slept at the hotel, a little. You're the one who stayed up."
"I'm used to it. You're a farm girl."
"That's what he called me," Kwan says, and suddenly the coffee seems to be rising in her throat. "Just after he called me a whore."
Fon puts her hand back on Kwan's forehead. "It doesn't mean anything. You're the same person today you were yesterday."
Kwan says, "Not exactly."
"Oh, well, if you never lose anything more valuable than that, you'll have lots of tears left over when you die. Why did he call you that?"
"I don't know. Because I am?"
"Oh, shut up. When? Where? What was happening?"
"We were in the bar. The back room. I was trying to decide whether I could do it."
"That was the mistake. You always have to make them think you want to do it."
"But… but they're giving us money to do it. Why would they have to give us money if we want-"
"Doesn't matter. They all want to believe you're thrilled to go with them. They want to feel like they just give you money because they're generous." Her hand, which is still stroking Kwan's damp hair, stops. "I shouldn't say 'all.' There are a few men who hate us. They're happy that we don't want to do anything. They like to force us. They love to make us feel like dirt."
"I did feel like dirt. Keep playing with my hair or I'll cry again."
"If you cry about that, I'll slap you."
"You would not."
"I would. Listen, baby sister, this is how it is. We're poor. We've barely been to school. We're doing the only thing we can to help our families. We may hate it, but we do it, and we don't do it for ourselves, at least not mostly. We do it for people we love. Them? They're rich. They have houses, families. They fly thousands of miles to come into the Candy Cane or the King's Castle so they can pay us money to fuck us. Who's dirt? Them or us?"
Kwan rolls over onto her side, her knees against the back of the couch, her nose inches from the warmth of Fon's belly. "I don't want to do it."
"Nobody does. Do you think this is what I dreamed about, back when I was a kid?"
"No." She looks up at Fon. "What did you dream about?"
"Doesn't matter. This is what I'm doing. Do you think it's made me into a bad person?"
"Oh, no." Kwan puts her hand on top of Fon's and presses down. "You're a wonderful person."
"Coffee," Fon says. "Maybe I shouldn't have given you coffee."
"I mean it. You've taken such good care of me. Nobody-" She swallows, hard. "Nobody in my family ever cared about me this much."
"Sure they did. They just didn't know how to show it. Kwan. You can do this job and still be a good person. You can do this job and still honor Buddha. You can do this job and keep your heart clean."
Kwan says, "He opened me with his finger."
"Because he couldn't-"
"He was too drunk, so he did it that way. Later he could, and he did. And it hurt. Then he drank some more and he couldn't anymore."
"Did you help him?"
"Help him?"
"Help him do it again."
Kwan turns her head to look up at her friend. "Why would I help him? And how?"
"Those are two different questions." Fon reaches over Kwan and picks up the coffee cup, looking down into it. "Was he angry?"
Kwan has to think about it. "I don't know. He didn't seem happy, but he didn't tell me to go away. He made me sleep there."
"Did he say anything about seeing you tonight?"
"No."
"Get up." Fon waits until Kwan's sitting at the far end of the couch, and then she takes the wet towel off her lap, folds it, and rises. "More coffee," she says. "This is serious. If Captain Yodsuwan is angry with you, you could have a very bad time in Bangkok." AN HOUR LATER Kwan puts down the cup and says, "They're like dog tricks. I feel like the new puppy."