Bangkok Noir

The business farthest from the street was a glasssided cart with a long piece of plywood laid across it, perhaps seven or eight feet long, beneath a signboard that said “NOT FAR BAR.” Hand-painted below that, in letters of many sizes, was “oNe Bar ComE to YOU!” Four stools had been pulled up to the plywood. Three of them were occupied: a bentspined man in a blindingly white shirt sitting beside a woman with hair too black even for Thailand, and on the third stool, a plump woman in her late fifties or early sixties, her body popping out of a black cocktail dress that might have fit her twenty years earlier. At one end of the plywood plank, a small boom box was playing “Hotel California.”

A portable bar. Wallace had seen a few of these on the sidewalks following the overnight demolition of Sukhumvit Square, but here one was in front of him, as unexpected as an oasis with camels and palm trees. He looked behind him, saw the shoppers thinning and the merchants closing, and went to the empty stool and sat. He couldn’t have run another yard if there’d been wolves chasing him.

“Beer Singha,” he said, trying to steady his breathing. Now that he was sitting, he felt his legs trembling violently. His left elbow sent up a neural yelp of pain, and the plump woman, who had gotten up to get his beer, took a second look at him and straightened. The powder on her face looked like chalk in the hard light.

“Honey,” she said. Her hands indicated the cut shirt, the blood on the cloth. “What happen?”

“Some kids,” he said, hearing the quaver in his voice. “It’s okay. I just need to sit a minute.”

“Poor baby, poor baby,” she said. “Kid. Kid no good now. Not same before.” She reached into the glass case and pulled out a relatively clean hand towel, then scooped a handful of melting ice and wrapped the towel around it. She lifted the dripping mess, gave it a professional-looking squeeze and held it out. “Here,” she said. “For...” She flexed her own left elbow and pointed at it and her forearm with her right hand.

He pressed the wet, cold cloth to his arm, and the fire of pain was banked slightly. A few of the vendors were stretching up, holding towels or potholders to unscrew the bulbs over their carts. The kids were nowhere in sight.

“You say kid…” the woman in black said. She popped the cap off a Singha. At her end of the bar was a big Chinese cleaver on a circular wooden cutting board, piled with limes. She grabbed the cleaver and expertly sliced a lime, then remembered to ask, “Glass?”

He shook his head.

“Kid how old? How many?” She dropped the lime slice back onto the board, thunked the cleaver’s edge into the wood, wiped the bottle dry and put it in front of him. Then she hoisted herself onto the stool beside him and rested her hand on his thigh in the eternal gesture of bar girls everywhere.

“Three. Not kids, really. In their twenties. Smoking…” He mimed the little pipe with his left hand. “Yaa baa,” she said. She nodded. “I see before. Bangkok now no good.”

A fat Thai with a Chinese face waddled out of the darkness. Behind him Wallace saw an aluminum lawn chaise with a blanket on it. “We close soon,” the man said. “Order last drink, please.”

“Aaaaahhhhhh,” the man with the bent spine said. “I’ll quit now.” He put a couple of bills down and dropped some coins on top and pushed the stool back. Standing, he was no taller than he was sitting, his back as crooked as a question mark. “You,” he said to Wallace. “You oughta see a doctor. That arm’s busted.”

“I think so, too,” Wallace said.

“Little shits around here,” the other man said.

“Know we’re old. Know what days the pension checks arrive. Little fuckers. Oughta carry a gun if you’re gonna come here.”

“I won’t be back,” Wallace said.

“Smart guy. Get that arm looked at, hear?” To the woman beside him, he said, “Coming?”

“I go with you?” the woman said, doing her best to look surprised and pleased.

“Sure, sure. We talk money later, okay?”

“No problem.” She grabbed a tiny purse and darted a quick, victorious glance at the woman beside Wallace, then took the bent man’s arm, and the two of them headed for the street.

“Why you come?” asked the woman in the tight dress.

“Golden Mile,” Wallace said.

“Ah,” she said, her face softening. “Golden Mile, yes. Very good.”

“You know a girl named Jah?” Wallace asked.

He got a moment of silence as she gnawed her lower lip. “I know many Jah.”

“At Thai Heaven.”

“No,” she said. “I no work Thai Heaven. Work Tidbit Bar.”

“Mmmm,” Wallace said and knocked back half of the beer. With the bottle halfway down, he froze.

She followed his gaze and saw the three of them in a loose triangle at the edge of the lot. She pointed at them with a tilt of her chin. “Them?”

“Yes,” Wallace said.