Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 1

means… at least think I do… giving it an effin good try anyway.

He was in a business lounge at Heathrow. To prove his point to himself, he fished out his mobile and dialled a number he knew by heart, but had not yet assigned to autodial. It rang until her voice began reciting her automatic reply. She had gone out of her way to be charming to callers both known and anonymous: do, do, try me again later, I’m in a meeting just now… Except she wasn’t in a meeting. It was quite early Sunday morning. Fred had to leave the UK on his day off in order to start work on his assignment Monday night, in order to get back to the UK, the office and her before the end of the week.

He knew it would be quite a squeeze, but no reason why he couldn’t manage. It was a straightforward story with a nice dark theme: middle-aged Englishman falls for Thai bargirl, buys a house in the country and a car for them, both of which he puts in her name: a magnificent two story Spanish-Asian fusion job with double car port and a Toyota 4?4. Then she dumps him.

Legally both house and car are hers: he no longer has the right to live in his own home. It turns out she had a boyfriend her own age just down the road in her village. Then, if that were not tragic enough, the poor guy-his name was James Conway, aged fifty-five-gets shot in the head when walking home from the local bar one night.

Cruelty and murder were like porn: readers were automatically hooked.

And there were enough middle-aged Englishmen living with ex-bargirls, both in the UK and overseas-perhaps a little paranoid about their relationships — for the story to improve subscription numbers.

That’s why Fred’s editor wanted him to chase it. Fred was heterosexual and under thirty, which pretty much made him the obvious choice. More: Fred had spent a year in Paris, so he was cosmopolitan; it had to be him. Of course, the big-time media had broken the story already, for about a nanosecond. As far as Fred’s editor knew, no one was doing it in depth though. Except Fred, who would end up spending a whole week of his life on it, if you took the travel time into account.

‘While you’re there, see if you can dig up a few more yarns, the kind we can store for a while… You know the sort of thing.’

Of course, Fred didn’t know the sort of thing, and neither did his editor, but any old dark stories would do. Everybody said what a lucky chap he was, whilst secretly relieved they didn’t have to go themselves: such a long trip, no friends out there, not as if he was going to a beach or anything truly exotic, the murder happened in deep country, a place called Isaan. And, let’s face it, Thailand, for all its charm, was Third World, even though it wasn’t PC to say so.

The fact that she—her name was Penny, but since he could not claim a romantic connection with any other woman, she appeared in his inner life as simply she or her-was not answering her phone caused a mild panic, a fluttering somewhere in his stomach. She knew he was at the airport, waiting for a plane that would take him away for a week right at the beginning of their… whatever it was. He sent a text message with a much jollier tone than he felt: Off to the wild East in about an hour, missing you already.

He hesitated before pressing Send. On an emotional level the message expressed a deeper commitment than either had agreed to so far. All they’d done was get drunk and stoned and have sex, but the sex had been so good-

they’d discussed it in real time over their mobiles the next day—that a re-run was certainly on the cards. Apart from that, their budding romance was conducted electronically: texts for short Hi theres, emails for longer, more structured sentences: God your tits are just, well, out of this world, I don’t just mean size, I mean everything, shape, firmness, proportion… I was thinking of them at five o’clock this morning… Sorry if this is too, you know…

Don’t worry, Sugarplum, I think we both had the bang of our lives, didn’t we? I know I did. I never would have guessed you were so big… I woke up thinking about your bits too…

Love? Hardly, whatever that was, but a beginning of something that had a chance of survival? Maybe. He was just sick and tired of the endless chase for emotional stability, but you couldn’t fess up to that, especially not at the beginning. Nobody could afford to be someone else’s crutch amp; crotch for life, not if you wanted to stay in the race, keep upwardly mobile, pay off the mortgage on your studio flat, think about buying a decent car—finally. He pressed Send, anyway, wondering if he was being uncool. To be honest, he hoped for a reply within the minute. She took forty and, to his own astonishment, the wait caused him to come out in a cold sweat and an inner voice started saying nasty, vengeful things about her, until his phone whooshed—it was his main life style decision that he preferred whooshes to bleeps: Have a great trip, see you when you get back, you lucky dog.

No missing you too, he noted. And who was she with at nine o’clock on a Sunday that she couldn’t answer her phone or reply to a text message without making him wait more than half an hour? He felt the onset of depression.

Then his phone whooshed again: I’m gonna miss you too, Sugarplum.

Now he felt like a million. The odd thing, of course, was that their relationship-if they had one-would not actually change at all. Neither had had time to meet again for the action replay, and they could text and email just the same while he was in Thailand as when they were ten miles apart in London. So, in terms of cyberspace, nothing was going to change over the next week. Was it?

Fred took out a book he’d bought the day before by some expat Brit who’d made a name for himself writing noir novels about Bangkok bargirls.

He speed read it, skipping all the poverty-and-preaching stuff, grabbing what he needed. The main point was that Bangkok bargirls almost all came from this Isaan place, which was in the Northeast. He figured a smart move would be to spend Monday night doing the bars in Bangkok and learning about Isaan, so he’d have all the background he needed without having to schlep all over the countryside in a hire car. If he had any talent at all, he told himself, it was for finding the quickest smartest way to the guts of his stories.

2.

Fred wasn’t sure of anything except it was Tuesday and there was a body in the bed next to him. When he adjusted his mobile to Thai time, it was still Tuesday, but much later in the day and the brown girl was turned away from him. He stood up to walk around the bed and look at her. His first reaction was to congratulate himself on his good taste. This was a truly beautiful woman, with high cheek bones and an elegant gauntness, full sweet lips.

From the shape of the bed clothes, the rest of her was pretty well put together, too. When she smiled he felt even more pleased with himself.

‘Hi. I’m Lalita.’

‘Right,’ Fred said. ‘I’m Fred.’

‘I know. I wasn’t drunk last night.’

Fred nodded thoughtfully. ‘Would you mind telling me what happened?’

‘You got drunk and kept telling me how beautiful I was. You paid my bar fine, so I had to look after you. You were going to ring the bell, but I stopped you.’ Her English was almost perfect, with a mid-Atlantic accent.

‘Bell?’

‘Every bar has a bell. If you ring it you have to buy everyone a drink.

There were about fifty people there. I saved you about twenty thousand baht.’

He made the calculation. A thousand quid? Jesus. ‘Thanks.’

She smiled again. ‘But you were too drunk to get it up. You want to do it now?’

Fred blinked. ‘You want to?’

‘I don’t care. I want to get paid, but I’m not a beggar. So?’

He took a step forward, which brought him to the edge of the bed. He was naked except for his shorts, which she pulled down enough to expose his member. She rose to sit cross-legged on the bed, in T-shirt and