Bangkok Noir

Although there was no oncoming traffic, he crossed the soi at an angle, as though carried by the same current that would bear the cars along. Once across, he lowered his head and struck out at a brisk walk with the lights of New Petchburi behind him, half-certain that in a hundred yards or so, there would be light and noise and the sound of English.

But there wasn’t. Thinking about Jah, he passed a narrow cross-street, almost turning into it, but it was too dark. Bars are lighted. The tuk-tuk driver brought me to the wrong place and tried to cheat me. Bangkok is changing. He walked more briskly, leaving New Petchburi farther behind, moving in the certainty that sheer decisiveness would get him where he wanted to go.

It wasn’t hard for him to imagine, in front of him, the strings of Christmas lights and the scattering of neon, the neon not as plentiful or as vulgar as at Patpong, that upstart street, but enough to lure him forward, enough to suggest the warmth and friendliness of a bar, the smell of the beer, the music of women’s voices. The softness of women’s faces. Jah’s face, the slightly overlong upper lip, the permanent upward curl at the corners of her mouth that made her look like she was always suppressing a laugh. He could almost smell her, the salt sea-smell of her secret places.

Another cross-street approached, promising in its furtiveness, but he stopped, the street slipping from his mind as he registered the floating ribbon of concrete suspended against the dark sky far, far in front of him: an elevated highway. That’s why I’m turned around, he thought. That wasn’t there before, and the moment he had articulated the thought, he saw the boys.

Three of them, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, facing inward in a tight circle around a faint glow of light, as though they were warming themselves at a candle. Wallace felt his chest, which had begun to feel cramped, expand, felt his lungs fill with air as certainty coursed through him. Boys always knew where the action was. And he liked Thai teenagers, so open and friendly, unlike the sour, angry, overprivileged American kids with their long, dirty hair and thrift-store clothes, the ones who had sneered at him, shouted at him, when he went home. The pretty girl, her hair wild curls down her slender back, who spat at him. He felt a smile stake claim to his face.

As he approached, he called out, “Sawatdee.”

And time went wrong. The comfort and assurance and youth drained out of him as the boys turned and separated, and he saw their faces, despite his efforts to keep them young and friendly, turn old. He saw, in one blunt-force glance, the glittering eyes, the crumpled tinfoil pipe, the disposable lighter with something jammed into the jet to create a thin blue needle of flame. Smelled the sweet methamphetamine smoke curling from the sizzling pills at the bottom of the pipe.

“Hey, Papa,” one of them said. Smoke snaked out of his mouth and he squinted against it.

“Never mind,” Wallace said, shaking his head.

“No problem.” He angled across the sidewalk to the road, intending to cross. The block was dark and quite deserted, no cars in sight. Nowhere to go.

“Papa!” the man called, following. Maybe 23, 24, gaunt and dirty, with lank, greasy hair and a smile that looked stolen pasted to his face. “Papa, got money for friends? Got baht, got dollar?”

“No.” Wallace saw the other two men floating along behind the leader, one of them with the foil pipe at his lips, a red glow lighting the upper half of a misshapen face, crimped on one side as though someone had pressed it in with the heel of a hand before the bones hardened. “Go away.”

“Nowhere here to go,” the leader said, picking up his pace and angling across the soi toward Wallace.

“Give money, we take taxi, go. Okay, Papa?” He spread his hands to show they were empty. “Then no problem, yes?”

Wallace felt a flare of young man’s anger. He said, “Fuck off. Get your own money and leave me alone.”

“Oooooohhhhh, Papa,” the boy said. He called something in Thai, and the other two laughed. The one with the crimped head stuck out his chest and beat it, gorilla-style, and they all laughed again. The two who were farther away were closing in, and within a few seconds all three of them would be within striking distance.

Always move toward trouble, Wallace thought, and he drifted toward the closest boy, saying, “What is it? What is it you want?” He cupped his ear and leaned toward the boy whose grin hardened as he came up directly beside Wallace...