Killing Plato

Suzuki and set out walking, this hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.

The surf was rolling in as we walked, a low shore break that was useless f kwasa aor anyone hauling a board but otherwise suitably picturesque, and a warm breeze washed our faces with heavy salt air. The wind carried a jumble of pungent smells from which I could swear I could pick out the sharp spices of Madagascar and the moist veldt of Tanzania. Of course, I hadn’t the slightest idea what either of those things actually smelled like, but I was still pretty sure they were in there somewhere.

“You hungry, cowboy?”

I was just about to remind Anita we’d eaten breakfast pretty late and it was probably still too soon for lunch when I realized the salt air was already working its customary magic on my appetite.

“I could eat,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. What do you feel like?”

“Seafood.”

Anita laughed and the sound of it tinkled in the warm breeze like wind chimes.

“Now there’s a surprise,” she said.

We crossed Beach Road and turned north. Open-air seafood restaurants lined the sidewalk, all of them displaying the day’s inventory on beds of ice spread out in big metal tubs. Offered for inspection were local lobsters, giant prawns, mussels, calamari, oysters, and an array of whole fish that were largely unidentifiable, at least to me. Most of the restaurants also sported huge outdoor grills where the seafood was cooked after it had been selected. The cloying smell of burning coconut shells mixed with the meatier odor of charcoal tugged at the river of tourists that flowed up and down the sidewalks of Beach Road.

Young women dressed in traditional sarongs of dazzlingly colored Thai silk greeted passers-by in front of most of the restaurants. Some offered diffident wais, while others bowed and held out menus. A few cut straight to the chase with smiling shouts of “Come inside, please, sir and madam!”

Anita and I wandered past a dozen or more such places without stopping. I had never been very good at this sort of thing. The technique of picking a restaurant or a place to stay in a town I didn’t know very well was always a puzzle to me. How could I be sure a better choice didn’t lurk just a little way up the road?

Anita and I walked past something called the Pizzadelic Internet Pizzeria, which seemed pleasant enough in spite of its name. It offered a blue and white tiled outdoor bar and functional tables set up near the sidewalk underneath a mural that looked like it had been ripped off from a Grateful Dead concert.

“Want to go in here?” I asked, but Anita kept walking without bothering to reply.

A few moments later I spotted a McDonalds. It was pretty nice looking, too. The brick patio out front had some white plastic tables scattered around under a red and yellow striped awning and the place was jammed with an assortment of tourists and locals knocking back the Big Macs, reading newspapers, and generally engaged in what appeared to be some pretty vigorous hanging out.

I half turned toward Anita, but she spoke before I could manage to say anything.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said.

“Hey, okay, maybe it’s not all that great a place to eat, but at least you got to admit the fries have a lot going for them.”

Anita shot me a look.

“It’s not the food,” she said. “And you know it.”

“Know what?”

“You don’t see anything wrong with it, do you?’

“Wrong with what, Anita?”

“Those people.” She gestured with her head at the crowd lounging around in front of McDonalds. “Look at them.”

I looked.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “It’s mostly just tourists hanging out with their girlfriends.”

“Girlfriends?” Anita snorted. “Those women are whores, Jack.”

Ah-ha, so that was it.

“Young Thai girls hanging around with scruffy middle-aged westerners who are probably twice their age? What do you think those women are, Jack? Schoolteachers on holiday?”

“What is it that bothers you so much, Anita? Is it that those men give the girls some money while they’re here? Or is it that the men are middle-aged and the girls are young.”

Anita didn’t bother to answer, but I wasn’t ready to let her off the hook yet. I was still harboring some resentment from the dinner table conversation at Karsarkis’ party.

“Or maybe,” I pressed on, “it’s mostly that the men are white and the girls aren’t.”

“I don’t make judgments based on skin color,” Anita snapped.

“Excuse me,” I pointed out, “but you just did. Western women usually do when it comes to Thai women. You see a Thai woman with a white man and you assume the white man is there because he’s getting sex and the Thai woman is there because she’s being paid for it. And the worst part is you’re not even ashamed of assuming that.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Oh yes, it is. It’s exactly that easy. I made a deal with guys like those over there a long time ago, Anita. They don’t judge me. I don’t judge them. I figure it’s a pretty fair arrangement all around.”

Anita let the subject drop, which I took to be a pretty good sign, and we walked on for a while after that in a silence.

Eventually we came to a waist-high stone wall behind which black iron tables were scattered across a brick courtyard shaded by a thick canopy of palm trees. The tables were dressed with white linen and folded pink napkins and the whole thing made an undeniably pretty picture. When we stopped to take it in a very young woman of uncommon beauty approached with a shy smile, bobbed her head in a diffident greeting, and proffered a menu. I took it and pretended to study its offerings, but mostly I sneaked surreptitious glances at the girl.

She was wearing a traditional Thai sarong made out of green and gold silk that encased her slim figure from head to toe in a sheath of shimmering color. Her long hair was tar black and glowed with a sheen that held its own even against the vivid luminescence of her dress. She had the wide, unblinking eyes of a cat-a Siamese cat, I thought, but quickly dismissed the comparison as far too obvious-and her face formed a warm yet slightly shy smile that for the life of me I could not imagine to be purely commercial.

“That looks good, Jack. Don’t you think?”

“Yes indeed, I do.”

Anita was considerate enough not to require me to acknowledge we were referring to different things altogether.

The yo kstirateung woman showed us to a table positioned between two thick palms, one which had a fine view of the ocean just across the road. I ordered a bottle of some no-name white wine and we sipped it as we studied the menus. The wind rattled the palm fronds above us, the surf rolled with a basso drumming in the background, and the smells of grilling lobster drifted on the warm, salty air.

It was a nice moment, I had to admit, but not nice enough to make me stop wondering why Anita had wanted us to drive to Patong in the first place. Anita had just made it unmistakably clear that Patong was hardly her kind of place and I knew there was something on her mind other than lunch and a walk through town. I just didn’t know what it was yet.

That was the very moment Anita chose to close her menu, put it down, and tell me what was really going on.

TEN

“I thought maybe after lunch we could have a look in some of the real estate offices, Jack. I’ve been thinking it might be nice to buy a house down here. Someplace I could get out of Bangkok to paint.”

I examined Anita carefully. She seemed to be completely serious.