Bangkok Noir

Now, two years later, she was desperate with the sheer boredom of her existence. Darling’s visits were less frequent, and when he dropped by, she found it harder and harder to play the role of dumb listener. In short, she had discovered that the routine of being somebody’s mistress just did not suit her character. Being a sex object made her feel like an idiot. Her cocooned comfort did not compensate for the sense of despair that overcame her with growing frequency. There were days when she wanted to pack up and leave. But then she could never forget the money and all the perks that came with her status. She had become used to the ease and luxury, and she knew all too well that to regain her freedom, she had to be prepared to give up this honey-coated lifestyle that everyone she knew and probably most of the country dreamed of tasting. For them it would always remain a distant dream. But for her it was what she awoke to every morning. This was what made it a tough choice. While he was waxing lyrical about his affair with Darling, Pi Nok had spared no details, as if to prove that he, as a man, could do a better job at satisfying Khun Taworn’s desires than she, as a woman, could ever imagine. While she listened to his lurid descriptions of her Darling’s likes and dislikes, Nong Maew’s mind was busy weighing up her options. And later, when she was trying to dissuade her friend from competing with her for Darling’s favours, and even going so far as to say that, if he decided to do so, it was going to mean the end of their friendship, she knew that her efforts at dissuasion would only challenge him to go ahead and run after her man as soon as the opportunity arose.

A voice in the back of her mind was telling her how easy it was to merely say to Pi Nok: “Okay, have him. He’s yours if you think you can really catch him.” And she would be free. It was what she wanted, after all. But another voice, the promptings of Lobha, or Greed, was already suggesting ways of making use of the information that Pi Nok was giving her to achieve the same goal without losing the benefits that she had come to feel she deserved. That same evening Darling visited her. They greeted each other warmly. Neither mentioned the encounter on the escalator at the shopping mall. He declared immediately that he was not in the mood for sex. He told her to open the champagne and then, after taking a big gulp from the glass that she handed him, said casually: “And who was that boy you were with this morning?”

Nong Maew had expected the question. “Oh, that was an old friend of mine from university,” she answered brightly.

“Are you going out together?”

Nong Maew smiled broadly before replying: “No, he’s gay. Couldn’t you tell, darling?”

Khun Taworn nodded his head without changing his expression and took another big sip of his champagne. Nong Maew felt that it was the moment to take the gamble.

“Would you like to meet him, darling? He’s very interesting. He used to study economics, you know. He’s brilliant. He told me that he recognized you straightaway because he is an admirer of your party. He thinks you’ll win the next election for sure, especially with that line you’re pushing about the family and the community.”

Darling took a couple of seconds to scrutinize Nong Maew’s face for any sign that she was being anything less than ingenuous. Satisfied, he nodded again.

“Why not? Yes, I’ll meet your friend. If he’s as clever as you say, I might be able to use him in my research team.”

Nong Maew smiled inwardly. This was her first step to freedom.

During the days that followed Nong Maew was in a strange mood. The fact that her plan involved betraying both her friend and her benefactor was something that filled her with conflicting emotions. It was not exactly that she felt guilty for what she was doing, but there was, nevertheless, a certain unpleasantness that she could not easily shake off. After all, Pi Nok had never done her any harm. On the contrary, he had always been patient, supportive and generous to her when she was down. As for her Darling, he had given her a few years of affluence that she had not expected to come her way. The only real complaint against him was that he had treated her as a body and nothing else, but then all the men she had met, with the exception of Pi Nok, had done that. To counter her uncomfortably acute sense of disloyalty to both of them, Nong Maew kept reminding herself what her mother had taught her when she was a little girl: that you are totally on your own in this world, and you have to look after your own interests first. And in the end her mind yielded up the justifications she needed to go ahead with her treacherous scheme. After that it was merely a matter of finding the nerve to carry it through.