Bangkok Noir

Without hesitating, Pi Nok pulled her gently onto the escalator. Now he too looked up and saw a man with grey hair carrying a yellow plastic shopping bag. He was in a dark, well-cut suit and looked like a businessman taking time off from the office to do some shopping with the family. Next to him was a stout woman in a Thai silk outfit, wearing thick sunglasses and a complicated, stiff hairdo, and behind them a small boy whose hand was touching the man’s shoulder. As they came closer, to his utter astonishment Pi Nok recognized the man’s face. “It’s destiny,” he thought to himself, suddenly remembering the fortune teller’s prediction. Nong Maew had never divulged her patron’s real name. She always referred to him as Darling, using the English word but stressing the last syllable so that it sounded Thai. It was the way they addressed each other, she had said when she first told Pi Nok about the man who had picked her up in the club two years earlier and who then, one day, out of the blue, proposed that she should be his mistress. She had added that he was good-looking and fit for his sixtyeight years, and that, naturally, he was loaded. This last detail was the most important one. For why else would she be wasting her youth on a married man nearly four times her age who had no intention of committing himself to her in a million years? As the family passed Nong Maew and Pi Nok on their way down to the second floor, the man she referred to as Darling looked over in their direction. The woman was turning the other way while the boy’s attention was drawn to a colourful film poster that was hanging off the balcony. Nong Maew did not return the gaze. Instead she put on a hard, artificial expression of indifference and fixed her attention on the space in front of her. In doing so, she was unaware that it was not at her that Darling was directing his gaze, but at her companion, for as they passed each other with only the two feet between them, he too recognized Pi Nok and in that moment, involuntarily, his whole face lit up with a spontaneous expression that can only be described as remembered pleasure.

They were in a Japanese restaurant on the ground floor. Pi Nok swallowed his mouthful of sushi and said nothing for a while. His fine features registered a moment of choked sadness, enhanced by the pungency of the wasabi dip. He had been explaining to Nong Maew, who sat in attentive silence, how he had met her “Darling” Khun Taworn two years before she did, what had gone on between them and how they had parted company.

“He went to China, on business, and the club was closed down overnight while he was away. That’s why we lost touch, and after that I never saw him again,” he said, continuing his tale and addressing these words to his own reflection in the window as if reminiscing a private and painful episode. If Nong Maew was surprised by what she was hearing, she managed not to show it. She had long suspected Darling of being bi, but she had not expected her intuition to be confirmed by such a personal connection. With her best friend, of all people! And now Pi Nok was trying to paint what must have been a professional encounter into some kind of grand love affair. She kept her composure on the outside, but her mind was swirling, especially when he had the nerve to try convincing her to share Darling with him.

“Come on, he’s got enough for both of us,” he pleaded unashamedly.