Aside from Bob and Monty, my new life was beginning to take shape. Gone were the cardboard bosses, gone were the brutal landlords, and gone was everything I had learned about embarking on a relationship with a woman, which wasn't much anyway. Things were different all of a sudden. Things went against the little I knew. Thai women flirted like maniacs. They smiled, giggled, threw their hair back, and whispered in their friends' ear while keeping one eye on me. This, however, was as far as it went. Displays of emotion, whether good or naughty or downright vicious were out of the question. Boyfriends and girlfriends walked side by side, barely casting a glance at each other. They sat down to eat and by golly, that's just what they did; eat. I remember having to hide the ashtray each time I had dinner with Wendy. If I didn't, there was a chance we'd get to fighting and she'd pick the damn thing up and throw it at me. Those days were over. I wouldn't have to worry about getting hit with any more ashtrays.
Then again there was the story of a Thai woman's revenge upon her cheating husband. The wronged woman snipped off her man's pee-pee and either fed it to the ducks or tied it to a balloon depending on whom you talked to. The poor fellow was forced to chase it down, provided he didn't bleed to death first. Whether this story was myth or reality was beyond me. Ask the ducks.
One evening, Bob and I went to a massage parlor. There was a row of them in the Grand Market, past the hotel, past the department store, just before the road turned into No Man's Land. Bob picked out a brightly lit doorway with shaded glass windows. Inside was a red-carpeted room with tables and chairs along the western wall. On the other side was a pane of clear glass sectioning off a portion of the room like a giant fish tank. Twelve or fifteen women sat on a stage behind the glass. A few more were gathered around a TV set. One was knitting. Most just sat staring off into space. All of the girls wore orange buttons with black numbers printed on them. Bob went to the counter and began haggling with a rather large woman in a blue and silver blouse. A girl wearing a short sleeved black number looked at me through the glass. I wasn't sure how I felt about girls sitting behind glass for men to come and pick out. It seemed that some part of me ought to have rejected the whole notion. But there she was, the god damnedest angel I'd ever seen. And all she did was sit there, cute as a button, smiling and melting my heart like an ice cube in the sun.
“Let's go, Chief. She wants four hundred for two hours. There's a place down the street that's only three fifty and I might be able to talk it down to five hundred for the both of us.”
I took one more look at the girl behind the glass. Number twenty-eight. Her eyes wouldn't leave me. Those eyes made my head spin. Bob kept talking. He was saying something about how the woman in the blue and silver blouse thought we were a couple of dumb farangs. Number twenty-eight kept smiling. There was true love in her smile. There was hot sexy sex in her smile. There was the wisdom of ancient tradition and utter idiocy in the face of twenty-first century know how. There was this and there was much much more. Bob slapped me on the shoulder and jerked his head towards the door. Bob was all Love Boat. Bob was eighties country and Pop-A-Matic games and bean bag chairs. He had the smile of a football coach after one of his boys put the star quarterback of the opposing team out of commission. I probably wasn't any different, but I liked to think that I was.
I followed him outside and into the maze of noodle stands. We crossed the street. Bob couldn't remember which alley his discount massage parlor was down. He picked the one next to the bus station. At the end was a glass door with a red curtain preventing anyone from seeing in. A white light flashed above.
“This is it,” said Bob.
“Look,” I said. ” think I fell in love with number twenty-eight back at the other place.”
“There'll be more girls in here. At a better price, too.”
“I don't want more girls. I want that girl.”
“C'mon, Chief. You'll thank me later.”
Bob opened the door and pushed the curtain aside. It was basically the same set-up, maybe ten girls this time, sitting on three couches, watching TV, reading comic digests, sleeping on each other's shoulders. I looked at their faces and their eyes and their smiles. I wanted to be let down. I wanted ten wretched women to be in there so that I could run back to my number twenty-eight and feel somewhat better about myself. But the girls weren't wretched. They were as cute as bunny rabbits in pink pajamas.
Bob got his price. The massage lasted for an hour and forty minutes, with a ten-minute break after the first hour. My girl cut off the circulation in different parts of my body, then beat and rubbed as the blood began to flow again. She asked questions and told me I had a beautiful nose. I was surprised at how much I understood. My body was in her hands. It was as if a separate, universal language had squeezed into the space between us. I imagine the same understanding occurs between soldiers and their foreign captives awaiting execution. Her name was Oy and she was twenty-five and came from Udon, where her mother and sister lived. Her father was dead. After the last round of gymnastics, Oy and I went into the lobby and waited. She rested her head on my shoulder and I held her hand. I wanted to say something kind but our ability to understand each other was fading. Then Bob came out, walking two steps in front of his masseuse. We paid, tipped, and said good night.
“My girl wasn't so hot,” said Bob, out on the street. “She didn't seem to be into it. Granted, she probably had a better time massaging me than some old fat guy, but I don't feel like I got my money's worth. How was yours?”
“I fell in love.”
“But how was the massage?”
“It was all right,” I said.
We caught a tuk-tuk back to the school and that was the end of the night.
§
Oy didn't leave my head as easily as I expected her to. During the day, I found myself walking past the massage parlor, hoping to run into her. A few nights passed before I gathered the courage to go in for another massage. But as soon as I approached those red velvet curtains and heard the siren calls from inside, I turned around and walked off. I just couldn't do it alone. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed Bob.
“Say,” I said to him over dinner. “How about a massage?”
“It's better to wait awhile. Two massages in the same week can do more harm than good.”
I thought about asking Monty. Then I thought better. Chances were he'd go in there with his body shaved and stinking of olive oil and get us both kicked out.
“But if you really want one,” said Bob, ”'ve got a friend coming to visit tomorrow. He's an American I met while traveling in India. I told him that when he got to Thailand, I'd set him up with a place to stay in Ayutthaya. Then, you know, show him a night on the town. If you want to take him to the massage parlor tomorrow night, I'd be relieved of having to provide all the entertainment.”
“What's this guy like?”
“He's a good guy. You'll like him.”
A warning bell rang in my head. There was a distinct possibility this “good guy” could be worse than Bob and Monty together. But there was Oy to think about. I told Bob I'd escort his friend to the massage parlor with the option of backing out if he proved to be a wacko.
“What's your idea of a wacko?”
The screen door opened and Monty came in with his dinner. A little white dog walked alongside him. The dog left tiny black paw marks wherever it stepped.
“Hey, shit man,” I said. “Look at our floor!”
“Okay, okay,” said Monty. ” just gave him a bath. He must have stepped in some mud before coming in.”
“That's all right,” said Bob. “It's good to have a dog in the house.” He bent over and patted the dog's backside.
“I have a favor to ask,” said Monty. “The school is loaning me a VCR for the weekend and I'd like to watch my motivational videotapes on your television.”
“The Koran isn't doing it for you, huh?”
Monty didn't respond. He didn't even flash his trademark grin.
“So what's your friend's name?” I asked Bob.
“Stuart.”
“Does Stuart have any strange habits I should know about?”
“He's a perfectly normal guy.”
“So then I have your OK?” asked Monty.
“Sure, Monty,” said Bob. “You can get motivated at our place anytime you'd like.”
Bob laughed at his remark. I knocked on the table to get his attention.
“Seriously,” I said. “What's wrong with Stuart?”
§
The next day, I came home from the market to find a ragged looking backpack sitting on our sofa. Bob was at the kitchen table spreading peanut butter onto white bread.
“Stuart?” I asked, jerking my thumb in the direction of the backpack.
“Yes,” said Bob. “He was exhausted when he got off the train. He's upstairs taking a nap. Say, have you seen Gambler around?”
“Who's Gambler?”
“Gambler's the dog.”
I walked quietly up the stairs to get a look at Stuart. Bob's door was ajar. I opened it, slow, slow, and looked in. Then I ducked out and went back downstairs.
“Bob,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Bob!”
“What?”
“Stuart is black!”
“So?”
“So!” I paced around the kitchen. “So he's black!”
“I never took you for a racist, Chief.”
“I'm not racist. It's the Thai I'm worried about. You know the importance they place on skin color. If I take Stuart to a massage parlor, the girls might take one look at him and – what? Scream? Hide? Pass the worst of the lot to him?”
“I know. He knows it too. I think it's damn brave of him to travel alone in Southeast Asia. He told me that he's encountered so much discrimination; he knows how his grandfather must have felt growing up in Alabama. Now, I already told him you were going to take him to the massage parlor. If you back out –”
“I'm not going to back out.”
Stuart came down an hour later. He was short but muscular, solidly built. He wore an earring in one ear and maintained a constant grin on his face. He sat at the kitchen table and resumed swapping traveling stories with Bob.
“You know, I had people spitting on me in the streets of India,” said Stuart. “That was new. Half the time, I didn't even see it coming. It was like the air around me was hacking up its lungs, getting ready to take aim.”
I asked, “How's Thailand treating you so far?”
Stuart's smile got bigger. “You're a little bit nervous taking me to the massage parlor, ain't you?”
“It's nothing personal.”
“It's personal,” said Stuart. “But I don't hold it against you. I'm a magnet for ill will in this part of the world. Not from everyone, but I wouldn't ask another person to voluntarily draw these feelings upon himself simply by being in my company.”
Stuart was all right. I no longer cared about the reactions of the massage parlor girls. We left the school at eight and stood before the velvet curtains less than a half hour later. I went in first. Stuart followed. The girls were watching a television that sat on a table on our side of the glass. I didn't recognize any of the faces.
“Hello you! Want massage?” It was the woman who had set us up last time. She sat at her table with her crutches propped against the wall behind her. “Ah! I remember you! You come here last week.”
“That's right.”
“Where go other one?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where your friend?”
“He's at home. I brought a new friend.”
My eyes happened to land on the television set that I was yelling above. A woman had her face covered in white skin cream. Next to her, a clock ticked off minutes in the corner, and a series of stage shots appeared, each one overlapping the last. The shots were of the woman's face without the cream. Her skin tone in stage one was a dull brown. By stage four, it was a sparkling white. The woman was very happy. When I looked back at the woman at the desk, I could clearly see her eying Stuart.
“Five hundred for the both of us?” I asked.
“OK,” said the woman. “Which girl you want?”
“Number seven,” said Stuart.
“Is Oy working tonight?”
“Oy? Yes. Oy working.” The woman leaned back in her chair and hollered out: “OY!”
Stuart tapped me on the shoulder. “Number twelve. Forget number seven. Number twelve.”
“What's wrong with number seven?”
“Bad vibes. She's looking at me like I was a piece of dog shit.”
“That doesn't have anything to do with being black. They sometimes look at me that way too.”
The woman yelled again. “OY!”
“Wait a minute,” said Stuart. ” don't want number twelve. I want number twelve's friend. Where's her tag? There it is! Number two.”
“Listen to you! Here, try this game. Imagine half a dozen girls from home; sisters, ex-girlfriends, co-workers, anyone at all. Now put them in tight skirts with numbers pinned to their breasts.”
“Oh shit! You just burst my bubble!”
A girl appeared on the stairway. It was Oy. She was wearing a long T-shirt with a picture of Tweety on it. Her hair was slightly messed, and she wasn't wearing any make-up. She was a completely different Oy, better in some respects, though hardly awake. She looked at me through half open eyes, yawned, then turned to the woman at the table.
“Oy not yet wake up,” said the woman.
Oy turned to me again. One hand pretended to hold a dish while the other made a scooping motion to her lips with an invisible spoon.
“Eat rice,” she said.
“Oy not yet eat rice. Choose another lady.”
The lack of anything in Oy's face told me it was a mistake to have come back. I was the machine and she was just there to work the gears. Whatever emotions came into play were batting in my field without any balls. If I wanted her for another two hours, I'd have to pay, just like all the rest. I'd be swinging at nothing.
“Stuart,” I said. “Let's get out of here.”
“I'm cool, John. I think these girls are starting to warm up to me.”
“All right. It's your call. I'll be at the outdoor restaurant across from the fruit market. Do you think you can find me?”
“No problem.”
Stuart shook my hand and I left. I walked to the outdoor restaurant across from the fruit market and ordered a beer. I wondered which girl Stuart was going to pick. Number twelve or number two.
It was going to be a long, lonely night.
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