Mr. Bones (21 page)

She sipped at her lemonade and then looked away. “You not know me.”

“But I want to know you.” And as he sat closer, she made room on the bench, accommodating him.

I am out of my mind, he thought. What did I just say? Am I telling the truth? But at least the room was dark, the music loud, and he was alone. Osier was drunk, he could tell from his slowness, the numb warmth in his arms, his drowsy talk, a creeping weight in his body, his feet like cloth, all of it brainlessly pleasant, making him feel like a big fool. When he put his hand on the girl's thigh she reacted sharply.

“What's that?”

She said, “My knife.”

She had to repeat the word before he understood. Smiling, he lifted his heavy arm and placed it on the girl's skinny shoulder. She shrugged but she didn't resist. Then he kissed her—on the cheek, like an adolescent's first smooch. She laughed and became shy.

“You're pretty.”

She stroked her face with her fingertips. “What country?”

“America.”

He wanted to kiss her again. He felt reckless enough, no one was looking—who cared in this place? He was as anonymous here as he'd once been in the waiting room of the railway station. He winced at his memory of it.

But, drunk, with his drunken sense of sliding slowly out of control, he felt that he was at the edge of a dark pit, a wide bowl of night, about to tumble in face-first. When he leaned to pat the girl's knee she recoiled again. That reaction made him hesitate and sobered him a little.

He drew back and said, “I have to go home.”

She smiled. She said, “Everybody always go home,” and as he left, staggering into the noise and fumes of the street, Osier reflected on the minimalism of her barroom wisdom.

Back at the hotel, alone with his guilt, he felt he ought to call Joyce. His cell phone was not in his pocket. The girl had stolen it. He deserved the anguish he felt. He used his room phone to call the emergency number to cancel his cell phone account. He was put on hold. Music played. He thought, I am off my head. He called his own number. After a few rings, a smoky voice.

“Hello.”

“Who's that?”

He heard smoky laughter but no reply.

“You have my cell phone. I need it.”

“I give you tomorrow.”

“When? Where?”

She spoke the name of a bar, she repeated the street, but even so, writing it down, Osier was not sure he'd heard the name correctly.
Free
had to be three. What was
nigh
?

The next day was Saturday. Osier hailed a taxi after lunch and read the scribble he had written. The driver said, “I know, I know,” but he didn't know. They discovered the
soi
in Sukhumvit, but he guessed at the bar—Siamese Nights.

From the outside, it was indistinguishable from six other bars nearby: neon sign, opaque window, strings of beads hanging at the entrance. But inside it was large, vault-like, and quiet, gong music playing softly, like the melody in a children's toy. Out of the back window he could see a canal, and plump lotuses in it, floating on their outflung petals, light falling across the water. He was looking into a Bangkok that was enclosed and placid and pretty.

She wasn't there; hardly anyone was in the bar. He sat in the mildewed air of midafternoon and drank lemonade—it was too early for alcohol. Besides, a beer would tire him, and this being a Saturday, he planned to spend the rest of the afternoon walking—not to the railway station or the big flea market, but simply to exhaust himself in the heat—then an early dinner and bed.

At a quarter past three he saw her. She entered the bar and without hesitating walked straight to him. He was reminded of the directness of the man-woman at the railway station who'd confronted him.

He was relieved to find her manner the same as the previous evening: assured, casual, undemanding, as though they knew each other fairly well. He was glad the place was dark. He'd thought of taking the cell phone and leaving, but now he felt like lingering. He loved her piercing eyes, her thick hair, her height—even sitting down she was almost his height, their eyes level. She was not a sprite, not kittenish like the other girls, but a cat-like presence.

“Lemonade,” she said to the waitress.

A shaft of sunlight slanted through some boards near where they sat, and he could see through that crack the brightness of water, the glittering canal, the floating flowers, the bubbly stagnation shimmering in the hot afternoon.

“This is nice.”

“Everything nice for you!”

She remembered that he'd said she was nice, but what he wanted to say was that he was less lonely. Her accurate memory made her seem intelligent, impatient with small talk.

“I meant it's quiet.”

“Other bar too noisy. Too many people. Crazy people.
Farang
ba-ba boh-boh.
This better.”

“What's your name?”

“I Song. What you name?”

“Boyd.”

“Boy,” she said.

He smiled. “That's right.”

The gong music seemed to slip through him and beat like a pulse, relaxing him. A small boy in a red shirt approached, selling single flowers. Osier bought one for Song, and he felt as he had on his best night at the railway station—serene, calmed, triumphant. The sunlight glancing from the
klong
glimmered in a bright puddle on the ceiling. He thought, This is all wrong, but this is bliss.

“I'm happy.”

“Why not? Life too short.”

She'd heard that from someone, another
farang,
and yet it pained him to hear it. It was true. He felt absurdly tearful, thankful to her for saying that.

And now he remembered himself at the railway station, mourning, seeing the travelers leaving on life-altering journeys while he sat sketching their faces, as though grieving for them. He had believed his waiting was a death watch for them, but no, he was grieving for himself, as he waited for retirement. I don't want to go, he thought, and glancing across at Song, he was creased by a pang, something deeper than hunger, like the foretaste of starvation.

“You're so young,” he said, and heard fear in his voice.

“
Khap khun ka.
Thank you. Look young, but not!”

“How old?”

“I hate this question.”

Impressed by her rebuff, he said, “Me too. Any children?”

She laughed and tapped his arm as if gratefully, and said, “No children.”

“None for me either.”

“We same!”

Bar talk, flirty, facetious, but a little more than that, with the revelations of foolery, Song emerging as clever and gentle and self-mocking.

Then Osier remembered. “My cell phone,” he said. “Where is it?”

Song took the phone out of her bag but she didn't hand it over. She said, “You give me?”

“Why?”

And because he'd hesitated, she gave it to him.

But because she gave it to him so quickly, he said, “Why do you want it?”

“So I can talk you.”

He loved that. He tapped her arm as she had tapped his. He said, “Yes. I'll get you one. Let's go.”

He still sat. He didn't want to leave this shadowy place, Siamese Nights, the coolness of it, the girls huddled on the banquette, laughing, their knees together, the one other
farang
at the bar shaking dice onto the counter out of a cup and talking to the bartender. The watery light from the
klong
outside dappling the ceiling gave its fishbowl completeness an illusion of life's essence.

This is who I am, this is where I belong, this is a place where I can tell the truth. Guessing that Larry and Fred were consoled by places like these, he understood them better. He told himself that he had no wish to possess Song, but only to ease his famished soul by being with her, to relieve his gloom.

But this was peaceful. He thought, I have someone I can tell this to. He told her. She listened with bright eyes, saying nothing, not judging him, her skin so lovely he wanted to stroke her like a cat.

And when at last they were on their way to the cell phone shop, in the traffic and the heat, he wished he were back in Siamese Nights, sitting with Song, looking over her pale shoulder at the canal beyond the back window. Song had sat placidly with her hands on her lap. Osier liked her size, not one of those tiny bird-boned Thai sprites, but rather tall, angular, with a deep laugh, and a presence he hadn't associated with the Thais he knew. Song was a woman confident in repose, sweet without being submissive, with the melancholy he'd first seen that made him think of a fallen angel.

He said, “Why don't you have a phone?”

“They cancel. I no pay.”

The clerks in the shop were so helpful, Osier let them explain the calling plans, though he knew most of the details by heart. He chose the simplest one, a six-month plan, renewable, inexpensive. Song picked out a red phone, and Osier signed the agreement.

Side by side in the taxi, he called her number.

“Hello, Boy.”

“Hello, Song.”

“You happy?”

“I'm happy.” But he caught a glimpse of himself in the taxi's rearview mirror and turned away from that idiot face.

“Who are you calling?” he asked, seeing her tapping numbers into the phone.

“Mudda,” and, hearing a voice, she smiled and broke into Thai. Osier heard gleeful croaking from the other end and was content.

For the next few days they called each other. He did so just to hear her voice. He didn't want to think why she called him, but she seemed happy to hear him. He remembered how, when he'd seen her in a group of five or six girls in a bar, Song had seemed the most feminine, the most mature, the softer, the more self-possessed, the only one not reaching out, not trying to catch his eye. She had not been looking at him at all; she'd been looking at the other girls posing for him, smiling slightly, and her narrow smile made her seem strong. She was not a coquette.

Her looking away had allowed him to study her body, which was fleshier than the others', heavy-breasted. Song sat straight, her legs crossed, and he saw that her makeup had been more carefully applied. He felt a connection: she was the first real woman he'd seen since arriving in Bangkok, and he felt as he had when he'd met Joyce long ago, a pang of desire that was like a seam of light warming his body.

In a reflex of self-consciousness he called Joyce.

“I miss you,” she said.

Burdened by her saying that, with a catch in his throat, he could not reply at once.

He said, “I miss you too,” and wondered if she heard the strain in his voice. They talked a little more, about some trees that needed to be trimmed in the yard, and then he said he had to go to a meeting.

Joyce said, “Please don't be angry. I know how busy you are.”

Too confused to reply, he said, “Take care,” and called Song a minute later. He said, “I miss you.”

“You make me feel like a million dollar,” Song said.

“I want to see you,” he said.

“See you when I see you,” she said.

Another of her catch phrases; she'd learned these quips from men. The thought made him vaguely jealous, but he was not possessive. He wanted her to be happy.

The next time he saw her—in the friendly bar, Siamese Nights, which was like a refuge by the
klong
—he said, “I'm going to the States.”

“Always they say that to me.” Though her eyes looked pained, she shook her head as if she didn't care.

“But I'm coming back.”

“They say that always too. ‘I coming back, honey. Love you!'”

“I mean it.”

“Maybe you not come back. Maybe you be glad. ‘No more Song. No more trouble.'”

What trouble? he wanted to ask. He didn't know whether he'd be back. He hoped so. The decision was not in his hands. There was a meeting in Boston—headquarters. Then he'd drive to Maine, swing by on the way to check on Joyce's mother. His return to Bangkok depended on the presentation of the accounts, whether his continued presence in Bangkok was justified.

Perhaps this bewilderment showed on his face. Song said, “You come me.”

He knew what she meant.

“I get taxi.”

Song gave the driver directions. They went through a district he recognized from its noodle shops and street life, not far from his hotel. Off the main road, down an alley, into a smaller lane to a courtyard and a doorway. Song paid for the taxi. A young man in a white short-sleeved shirt at the doorway gave Song a key on a wooden tag.

“You give him baht.”

Osier opened his wallet, and Song plucked out the equivalent of ten dollars.

The young man led them to a ground-floor door, showed them in, switched on the air conditioner. Osier sat on a wooden chair and saw that the room had no windows.

“You want drink?”

“Beer.”

Song left the room, and when she came back with a tall bottle of Singha beer and two glasses, she sat on the bed across from his chair and poured his beer slowly. They clinked glasses. Osier thought: This is how criminals conspire, this is how they behave, hardly speaking, over beer, in windowless rooms, rationalizing their heads off. Yet—giddy, defiant—he thought, I am happy.

Song said, “You take bath”—and she had to repeat it before he understood what she meant.

In the shower, he thought to himself, This is reckless, this is absolutely stupid. And then, Life too short.

When it was Song's turn for a shower, she turned off the light in the room, left the light on in the bathroom, the door slightly ajar. A stripe of light from the cracked-open door lay across the bed, where Osier was propped against the pillows with his glass of beer.

Wrapped in a towel, Song crawled next to him. Her skin smelled sweetly of vanilla. Her full breasts were cool and damp against his arm. While he drank, saying nothing, she caressed him, stroked his chest. He put his drink on the side table and closed his eyes, loving her touch. And he touched her, not longingly or with any passion, but merely holding her breasts, weighing them in his hand. He made to steady her arm but she shrugged, she wouldn't let go, her hand went lower.