Thong Kon’s eyes shifted. “School,” he said. “School, books, movie, television. And you? Do you speak Thai?” Moisey shook his head. “Not a little bit?”
“Ra ka tao rai?”
said Moisey. How much is it?
Thong Kon laughed. “That’s all?”
Moisey counted from zero to ten, raising a finger for each number.
“You speak very nice,” said Thong Kon. “I teach you more. I teach you how to say everything beautiful in our country. Every word: sunset, moon, flower.”
The food came. Chicken and rice. Thong Kon added spices, and Moisey did the same.
“How long have you been in Thailand?”
“Six years,” said Moisey.
“No!” said Thong Kon. He covered his mouth. “And you don’t speak Thai?”
“I do, though,” said Moisey.
“Lot noi dai mai?”
Can you give a little discount? That he only knew how to speak about money embarrassed him. “Where are you from?” he asked, trying to change the subject.
“I’m from Bangkok. Ratchadamri? Near here!” Thong Kon pointed over his shoulder. “And you? Why you live in Thailand so long?”
The simple answer was that it was a better place to live than Israel. It had provided him with a tropical escape from his earlier life. But the more complicated answer had to do with the ease with which he could tamp out his inner black-nesses, thanks to the drugs, the sex, the sun. Also, of course, he had a job here. A very lucrative job, one he couldn’t easily duplicate anywhere else.
“I like it here,” he said.
They finished their food. Moisey paid, and they moved on to a bar chosen by Thong Kon. It wasn’t a gay bar, which made Moisey thankful—just a normal Bangkok place, with seats that faced out to the street. They drank Leo beers and smoked cigarettes. Thong Kon asked what Moisey did for work. Without thinking, Moisey responded “bartender,” and instantly regretted it. He saw Thong Kon study his face, and knew the man was measuring him in some way.
“Currently not working,” Moisey added.
The touching began with a playful pat. They laughed at some joke, and Thong Kon pushed Moisey’s shoulder. Even that felt weighted with sex. The dirtiness, Moisey noticed, didn’t extend to the man’s hands. He had clean fingernails, with large moons.
A healthy thyroid,
Moisey thought. He wanted to return the touch, but suddenly he felt shy. He hadn’t taken drugs in over a month, and now he wondered if that was what was slowing him down.
Moisey had a hard time placing the Thai man economically. His English, refined and grammatical, seemed the product of university study, though Thong Kon denied that. His movements, his countenance, his posture, all seemed upper class to Moisey. But underneath, in the corners of his eyes, there was something thuggish, something criminal in the way he scanned the street while they drank.
It didn’t matter to Moisey; he liked this Lump of Gold.
They drank beers and took shots of whiskey. Moisey grew drunk. He was having a hard time filling the silent moments between remarks, and his romantic feelings had mutated into a grumpy carnal desire. Thong Kon kept trying to teach him new words. The man’s face shined with sweat. Moisey wondered whether taking him home was a bad idea; maybe he should rent a hotel. He thought about the crystal meth tucked away in his freezer, and suddenly he wanted to get high.
“Let’s go,” he said. Thong Kon raised his eyebrows and downed his drink.
They shared a taxi, kissing almost the entire way. By the time they arrived at the apartment, their breathing was heavy. Moisey noticed Thong Kon studying the address above the door when they got out. There was something determined in
the way he stared at the numbers. When he noticed Moisey watching him, he smiled and said, “We live so close.” He held his hand up for a high-five, and Moisey slapped it.
They continued kissing in the elevator. Thong Kon wrapped his arms around Moisey’s shoulders and pulled him in. Inside, the Thai man stuck his head out like a turtle and moved it side to side.
“Nice,” he said, drawing out the word.
Moisey’s apartment was small, clean, modern, and open. He led his guest into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out two beers. He noticed himself breathing the way drunk men do, but he craved more. He needed more.
“Do you like ice?” he asked.
“In beer?”
“No, ice—sniff.” He put his finger to his nose and sniffed.
“Ice! Me?” asked Thong Kon.
Moisey had been trying to wean himself off the stuff, but he’d held on to this last bag the way a person quitting cigarettes will sometimes hold on to a pack. As if having it close at hand would make him crave it less. Now he pulled the baggie out and held it cold in his palm. Something about the moment was off, he knew, but he couldn’t stop. He held the bag up for Thong Kon to see.
“Me? No!” said Thong Kon. “I am sober,” he added, pointing at his chest, although he was clearly drunk. Moisey shrugged his shoulders. He told himself the only way to salvage his mood was to sniff the drugs.
“You stupid, go, do it,” said Thong Kon. He pushed Moisey’s shoulder. “I don’t care! Me, no. You do it. Sex, boomboom, too much!”
Moisey opened the bag, and tapped a crystal out onto his kitchen counter. A small amount, the size of a large peanut. He pulled a spoon from the silverware drawer and began crushing the crystal into powder.
“I need use bathroom,” said Thong Kon.
Moisey pointed. “That way.”
He pulled out a card and pushed the powder into a line. Then he rolled up a thousand-baht note—the king’s handsome face staring at him—and sniffed the burning drugs up his nose.
That’s it,
he thought—meaning both that’s all I’ll do and that’s exactly what I needed. He rubbed at his nose, drank from his beer, and became aware of the quiet all around him. He listened. What was taking the boy so long?
Finally, the toilet flushed, and his Lump of Gold walked back into the kitchen. His face looked sad. Moisey decided to pretend he hadn’t done the drugs. “If you won’t do it, I won’t do it,” he said.
“We need music,” said Thong Kon.
They moved to the living room. The view showed the city stretching in all directions. Aware that Thong Kon would taste the drugs in his mouth when they kissed, Moisey sniffed and tried to clear his nose. He drank more beer, swayed, put his arm on his guest’s shoulder, went to his laptop, and scrolled through his music. He found his favorite song, the one by Katreeya English, and played it. A love song. They began a slow dance. Moisey bent down and smelled Thong Kon’s neck, kissed it, pulled the man into him. They danced like that for a long time. Moisey waited to kiss him again, drawing it out until he couldn’t bear it.
The drugs had moved from his nose to his brain. Finally he felt a sense of peace. He rocked on his feet and pulled Thong Kon closer. With his eyes closed, he pictured what he was going to do to this Lump of Gold, and what was going to be done to him.
And then, almost predictably, the moment was interrupted by a loud banging on the door.
Thong Kon stepped away, a vacant look on his face. The knocking stopped for a moment—silence—and then picked up again, stronger. Moisey turned the music off. He was aware, instinctively, that only cops and gangsters knocked like that. He walked to the kitchen, opened the freezer, found the baggie, dumped the rest of the drugs down the drain, and turned the water on. The little button-sized baggie was stuffed into the bottom of his trash bin. His mind felt like a boiling kettle. The drugs were hitting home.
Thong Kon hadn’t moved; he stood in the other room with the same downcast eyes, but now with both hands covering his mouth. Moisey took a moment to think. He’d dumped the only drugs in the house. There was nothing to connect him to his other business, nothing incriminating on his computer. He went to the door and looked through the peephole.
Four Thai men stood in the hall. Three were in Metropolitan Police uniforms, which made them look like soldiers. The fourth man wore a gray suit over a blue shirt and a maroon tie.
“One moment,” Moisey said in English, through the closed door.
He stepped back to the living room. He wanted to warn Thong Kon not to say anything, but even as he turned toward
him he knew the boy was responsible for his trouble. He balled his fist and pressed it against his visitor’s jaw. “I’ll fucking bury you,” he said in Hebrew.
The knocking started up again, Moisey’s heart racing to match it as he returned to the door. He wiped at the insides of his nostrils and cracked the door open.
“Yes?” he said.
The man in the suit stepped forward, put his hand on the door, and tried to push it open. For a moment, the two men stood there silently, leaning against opposite sides of the door.
“Yes?” Moisey said again.
“Open please,” said the man. He said something in Thai, and one of the uniformed men, the biggest one, stepped toward them.
Moisey opened the door. He stood facing them, blocking their way with his body.
“What is it?” he asked. He tried to smile, but it felt fake.
“Big problem,” said the man in the suit. “You speak Thai?”
“No.”
“No Thai?” he asked again, in the same incredulous way that Thong Kon had. He pushed past Moisey, moving into the apartment. The other uniformed men followed. One of them went to Thong Kon, turned him around, and put him in handcuffs. It was for show, Moisey knew, but he watched as the cop sat Thong Kon down on the couch and the man in the suit proceeded to give him a long speech. Thong Kon listened with his eyes glued to the floor, nodding his head as though receiving a lecture from a parent.
Moisey only understood the curse words. But it was a setup, clearly.
He could see the whole thing in his head. Thong Kon worked with these men. Whether he did it voluntarily or not didn’t concern Moisey. He found gay white tourists, waited until he saw drugs, and then made the call. They probably did it a few times a night. Earned fifty thousand baht on the side. The problem seemed manageable—regular corruption. No sign that it was part of a larger investigation.
“You live here? Or are you visiting?” said the man in the suit, sounding out each syllable like an English student. Moisey saw that he was older than he’d first appeared—over fifty, he thought. He had black eyes, bad skin, and a mole on his cheek.
“I live here, sir,” Moisey said.
“And your business is?”
“I’m a bartender. But I’m between jobs at the moment.”
The man in the suit swept the apartment with his eyes, the corners of his mouth dropping down. His face suggested that it was a nice place for an unemployed bartender to be living. Moisey could see the cost of the bribe rise.
“Your state of origin?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What country do you come from?”
“Israel.”
“This man is a known drug dealer!” said the man in the suit, changing gears and pointing at Thong Kon. “We follow him here. You have a known drug dealer in your apartment. Very big problem!” He was speaking loudly now. “I ask you one question: Do you have drugs in this house?”
“Drugs?” asked Moisey. “No, of course not.”
“Please, sit on the chair,” the man said. “Don’t rise again.” He pointed at one of the chairs, and Moisey sat in it.
The man said something in Thai, then, and one of the uniformed cops walked into Moisey’s kitchen. Moisey heard the sounds of drawers opening, dishes being moved. He steadied himself, picturing the baggie in the bottom of the bin.
Fine,
he thought.
Find it. Let’s just get this over with.
The man in the kitchen called out, and one of the other uniformed men went to join him. The man in the suit had moved to Moisey’s desk, and was calmly looking through the things he’d left on top of it.
What, Moisey wondered, would happen if he stood and kicked Thong Kon in the head? He thought he could do it before the cops could stop him. The humiliation of having actually liked this dirty-shirted hustler stung him the most.
The man in the suit walked to one of the windows, took out a walkie-talkie, and began speaking into it. Again for show, thought Moisey. A performance meant to inspire fear that his troubles were becoming bigger by the moment. He pictured kicking the biggest cop in the knee, and breaking it.
The men came back from the kitchen. At first, Moisey thought they looked disappointed: their expressions were flat, slack, tired. But one of the men, the youngest, held up a plastic baggie pinched between his finger and thumb. For a moment, Moisey thought this was the empty bag, but then he noticed a small girth to it. It held something.
The suited man stepped that way. When he’d taken the bag, he bent his head, tapped something out onto his palm, and examined the substance like a jeweler.
“You have methamphetamine in your kitchen. Very bad,” he said. The man shook his head. “Very bad for you.”
“It’s not mine,” said Moisey. He sat up taller.
The suited man nodded to the biggest cop, who handcuffed Moisey roughly. A series of calculations ran through his mind as the man yanked at his arms: planting evidence put these cops on a different level, more dangerous, more criminal, but it also decreased the likelihood that they were looking for a bigger arrest. He allowed himself to relax a little bit. He’d be done with them by the time the sun rose.
“I have a daughter,” said the suited man, holding his head back. “She is grown now. Twenty-three years old. She was in college, study to be an engineer, you know this? Then she meet a
farang,
look like you. Same shaved head. Same skinny, tattoos. He maybe is your brother?” The suited man looked at the larger cop, who nodded his head. “Maybe you know this man? He give my daughter this same kind of drug. Make her sick from it. You farangs bring it here, ruin our great country. You ruined my family.”
Moisey couldn’t help himself; the man’s story was ridiculous. He smiled. In response, the suited man slapped him in the face. The sound, like a loud clap, shocked him. He kept his head down, and felt tears come to his eyes. Rage swelled in his stomach, but he decided it would be better to seem scared.
“I’m sorry,” he said.