I met Earn in the first few weeks of the new semester. Earn was not a teacher. She was a waitress. She worked at the Ayutthaya Hotel, where rooms went for five times the price of a hotel I would have chosen to stay at. The Ayutthaya Hotel had a swimming pool and real drip coffee. And, like I said, Earn.
After school, I went straight to the hotel. I got into my shorts and dove into the pool. I went from one side to the other without coming up for air. I did a handstand, a flip. I did the “dead man’s float.” Then, I burned my ass off in the hotel sauna and went downstairs for some real drip coffee.
Earn was my waitress. As hard as I tried (not very), I couldn’t stop myself. I fell for her, and two of the other waitresses working the afternoon shift. It was the same attraction I had for the schoolteachers on my first day in Thailand. Only the string of half hearted romances and drunken nights down south must have pushed some buttons in me. I no longer felt the desire to break down castle walls and lay down my life for this beauty. I no longer felt intoxicated in its presence. It was still there, the eyes, the lips, the hair, but its spell had ceased to charm me as it once did. I didn’t want any more fine wine from a secret reserve. I wanted mashed potatoes and gravy.
I wanted a relationship.
It wasn’t difficult setting up a meeting with Earn outside the hotel. She expressed a desire to learn English. I said that I’d be happy to help. On our first lesson, we met at an ice cream parlor with a big screen TV against the wall. The speakers were mounted in all four corners so that it was impossible to escape its noise.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” I asked in Thai.
“Where?”
I suggested Wat Yai. Wat meant temple and Yai meant big. Earn was all for it. I paid the tab and we took a tuk-tuk over to Wat Yai. Earn was so pretty out of her waitressing uniform. And so far she hadn’t shown any qualms against being seen with a foreigner. I asked about it after I paid the driver.
“Earn isn’t interested,” was all she said. Then she lit a cigarette.
“You smoke too!”
Earn nodded. We walked to the entrance and paid the price of admission. Foreigners had to pay fifty baht, Thai twenty baht. I handed the man in the booth a one hundred baht note. He put it into a drawer and waved us on.
“Where’s my change?”
The man gave us another sweep of the arm without looking up. Then Earn stepped up and began to argue with him. The man spoke roughly, then dug three ten baht coins out of his drawer. He slid them across the counter and turned ninety degrees in his chair so as not to face us.
“Kee kong ja dhai!” said Earn. The man in the booth was a cheating bastard. Earn said so.
We walked along the sidewalk that led to the wat. Strange flowers blossomed on trees while the centuries old chedi spirals cast long shadows upon the ground. We went up the stairs to the seated Buddha and made merit by kneeling down and waiing three times. Then she handed me a can of joss sticks which I shook until one popped out. Earn did the same. Each stick had a number on it. Off to the left sat a wooden board with tear away fortune pads. There were twenty-one different fortunes. Earn found hers and smiled as she read it. Then I found mine. She lost her smile and crumpled up my fortune.
“Mai pen rai,” she said.
“What did it say?”
She told me that since I didn’t believe in it, a good fortune was the same as a bad fortune.
“Still,” I said. “I shook the sticks. I have a right to know.”
Earn wandered off to the next set of stairs. I tore off another fortune and stuffed it in my back pocket before following her up.
§
The next day was Earn’s day off. We had agreed to meet in front of the hotel. I arrived first. The sun was bright and tuk-tuks honked their horns as they went by. One even pulled over directly in front of me. The driver stuck his head out the window and said; “Hello you! Where you go?”
I was about to answer “Japan!” when a motorcycle came to a stop behind me. Earn was driving. She wore sunglasses and a baseball cap. I got on back, gave the tuk-tuk driver a wink, and held on as we zipped away. Some moments in life just couldn’t be bought.
We went and went and didn’t stop until we reached a house in the middle of a soi. Earn opened the front gate and waited for me to unbuckle my sandals. The drone of a television could be heard from inside. We couldn’t go in just yet because the door was locked. Earn had to pound with her fist and yell “JAAAAS!” I was as lost as a ship in a dark dark sea.
A girl opened the door. Jas the girl. She was about my age with frizzed out curls shooting in every direction. “Hah!” Jas wasn’t terribly attractive, but something in the plumpness of her arms and ass made me think of junkyard sex and hayloft shenanigans. Girls like her weren’t soft like kittens. They scratched their armpits and didn’t cut their toenails and had to have their backsides slapped to dislodge a piece of chicken when they got to laughing too hard at the dinner table. She must have noticed me sizing her up because she let out a loud “Oho!” and went back to watching TV. Earn led me in and sat me down in a sofa. Then, without taking off her sunglasses and cap, she left again. Jas stretched out on the floor with the sound turned all the way up. Christ only knows what was playing. Commercials followed by game shows followed by commercials. Toothpaste commercials featuring teeth so white, the users looked like space aliens. Shampoo commercials featuring girls with computer enhanced hair. Funny commercials, tampon commercials, it all sucked shit. Within a few minutes, Jas was asleep and snoring.
Then another girl appeared on the stairway. All I can say is that an accompaniment of sleazy trumpets and blue cigarette smoke trailing behind her would not have been out of place. She was wearing a black velvet dress, for Christsakes, sleeveless, and sporting as much cleavage as she could pull off. The girl’s hair was long and black, curled only at the ends. Her lips were painted red. The funny thing about it was that once I got a closer look, she didn’t appear a day over fifteen, which made the horn section and cigarette smoke a little obscene in my eyes.
Her name was Bee. She was slightly more polite than Jas. She brought me a glass of water, then went into the back to check on something. Food, I imagined. The scent of spices hit me when I sat down.
After a few more minutes, Earn’s motorcycle pulled up outside. I heard the gate open and close. Then another voice. A man’s voice. A farang.
“You have turkey? Tomorrow is a big holiday in America. Its called Thanksgiving. Everyone eats turkey. Do you know what a turkey is? GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!”
Earn walked through the door. So did the farang. He was thin with hairy arms and legs, though three quarters bald on top. He wore cut-offs and a T-shirt with the Laotian flag across it. Gym socks and sneakers that he didn’t bother to remove at the doorway.
“Wait a minute,” he said upon seeing me. “There’s another guy here.”
Jas began to stir from her resting place. Bee looked out from the screen door that separated the television room and kitchen. The fellow suddenly noticed that all eyes were on him and became nervous. At first, it seemed as though he were going to run back out the door. He jerked his body from left to right, then fixed himself in place like an officer of the law trying to control an angry mob.
“OK,” he said in a naturally loud voice, “My name’s Simon. I don’t speak Thai. Am I—oh shit—am I supposed to take my shoes off?”
Simon tiptoed back to the doorway and slid out of his shoes. The screen door opened and Bee came out with two glasses of water. Simon’s face lighted up. They had apparently already met. Bee smiled and giggled while Simon waved his hands and spoke in his odd, simplified English.
“After I see you I go to store. Have to buy medicine for head. Have sunburn.”
Earn sat down beside me and asked whether I was hungry. I told her that I was. She followed Jas and Bee into the kitchen, leaving me alone with Simon.
“Boy, I tell ya. I wasn’t expecting this. Don’t get me wrong. I know how things work here.”
Simon picked up the glass of water and emptied its contents.
“You’ve got to understand. I hardly know this chick. One minute I’m talking with her at a restaurant and then—shit, I don’t know. The thing is, I brought my dog out with me. Cost me two hundred bucks. I don’t like leaving him alone.”
“Are you a teacher?”
“You know Michaluk?”
“Ted Michaluk?”
“You know him?”
“Yes. He and his wife taught at my school for a semester.”
A smile appeared on Simon’s face. “You’re a Chullingsat teacher, aren’t you?” he said. “Are you the Aztec ruler or the suck up?”
“I’m the suck up.”
“Ted told me all about you. He described you as the last person he’d call if he had car trouble in the middle of the night. But to answer your question, yes, I’m a teacher. Only not at the school Ted had supposedly set me up in.”
“It sounds like you’re faring better than the other teachers he’s responsible for.”
Simon was all right, so long as his springs weren’t wound too tightly. He became nervous when I asked how long he knew Bee and even more nervous when she reappeared in that dress of hers.
“You gotta help me out. You speak Thai, don’t you? I mean, I left my dog back in the apartment. He’s probably lonely by now. I’m really worried about him.”
Dinner was served. We all sat on the floor and ate. The TV continued to blare. Only afterwards did Jas turn the sound down to put on some music. Simon sat on the couch next to Bee. He said whatever came into his mind. Obscenities, sports scores, dog stories, traveling stories, and what it was like to lose his hair. Bee just laughed and threw back her long black mane. Earn and I went out on the porch to share a cigarette. When we came back in, the two of them had their faces pressed together. It was a very odd scene considering Earn and I had yet to hold hands. Then Jas dug out a bottle of whiskey and gave us all something else to do. Simon was suddenly in a good mood. He still had some of Bee’s red lipstick smeared across his face.
“Yes sir,” he said. “I may never go home.”
Later, Earn brought out two pairs of pajamas, yellow for Simon, blue for me. There was some confusion over where we were going to sleep. The house had only one bed. Simon and I opted for the floor, thinking it to be the gentlemanly thing to do. In the end, Jas and Earn and I were to take the bed. Simon and Bee moved the sofa aside and spread blankets out on the floor. While Simon was changing into his jammies, however, Bee rolled up her dress, got on the motorcycle, and sped away. I figured she was off to buy cigarettes or something. Simon figured the same until half an hour went by and still no Bee.
“Can someone tell me what just happened?” said Simon.
I asked Earn what happened to Bee. Earn asked Jas. I couldn’t understand Jas. I could understand Earn.
“She says Bee’s cousin saw a ghost last night and doesn’t want to sleep alone.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” said Simon. “I mean that’s got to be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard some pretty lame excuses.”
Jas clapped her hands together loudly. “Bpai nawn!”
“You might as well go to sleep,” I said. “There’s nothing you can do until morning.”
“No, no, fuck that.” Simon began to unbutton his pajama top. Earn and Jas thought he was going to strip down naked and ran upstairs to bed.
“You don’t understand. I’ve got my dog. He’s at home waiting for me. He probably thinks I’ve been kidnapped or something.”
“It’s a long walk to the main road.”
“What was that girl thinking? Her cousin saw a ghost? A ghost? Fuck that, I’m going home to my dog.”
Simon got back into his clothes and left. I sat down on the couch and thought about the night, about Earn, and when my turn would come. After about ten minutes, I heard her creep down the stairs in her little white nightie. She smoothed out the blankets, fluffed the pillows, and looked at me with her big brown eyes.
Home » Press » The Hot Season