'Yes. Tell Toy I want to talk to her.'
The plump girl has picked up the cola, but now she puts it down and pulls the hair back from the wandering eye. It searches the mirror behind the tall man as the other eye studies his face. Whatever she sees there, she lowers the hair over her face again and turns her back on him, heading for three very drunk Japanese men who have just staggered in, their bright red faces upturned toward the stage. They brush past the plump woman as though she isn't there, and she stands where they've left her, hands hanging loose at her sides, looking at a spot on the floor. One of them points at Toy and says something, and the others laugh.
The tall man checks his watch, sits back, and smiles at Toy. AT 9:22 by the policeman's watch, two beer- sodden Australians begin to clobber each other in the street in front of a stand selling fake amber beads. The Aussies throw their punches slowly and deliberately, as if rehearsing for a fight that will be filmed later, but the blows land with a flat, heavy sound, like cuts of meat falling to the floor. The prize over which they are fighting-a slight, narrow-shouldered, heavily tattooed Thai female of twenty or so-chews thoughtfully on a hangnail as the larger of the two men grabs the smaller by the hair and slams his head against the edge of the booth. The small man starts to bleed immediately, even before the beads hit the pavement and begin bouncing among the feet of the onlookers. The girl scratches her shoulder, snags the offending fingernail on her T-shirt, and looks down at it with irritation.
The bleeding man emits a high, reedy, choked sound. He rips off his football jacket and hands it to the girl and then leaps forward, wrapping his fingers around his friend's neck. The two of them begin to topple over. The policeman steps forward, arms spread wide, thoughtfully clearing a space in the crowd for the struggling men to fall through. He steps over the fighters without a downward glance and begins to help the vendor pick up her beads. The girl takes a quick look at the fighting men and rifles the pockets of the jacket. Whatever she finds there, she slips it into the pocket of her jeans. She drops the jacket onto the street, and her eyes meet the policeman's. He gives her a shrug, and she melts into the crowd.
He sits back, watching her not look at him. Her glazed fascination with her own reflection has been broken. She's even picking up her feet a little, although she's turned her back to him, almost shyly. But he can still see her face in the mirror on the opposite wall, and her eyes come back to him again and again, and then they slide away and search the room as if she's looking for an ally.
He orders a Singha beer from the mama-san, a thickset, brightly dressed woman with gold on her wrists and fingers and nothing merry about her. The Lap Bar is a typical upstairs joint. The bar is at one end of the room, the women dance on a raised platform in the middle of the space, and the customers sit either at stools pulled directly up to the stage or on a long, cigarette-scarred bench against the mirrored walls, with a small table every few feet to hold their drinks. The tall man is on the couch, and he keeps his eyes on Number 27.
Chased by his gaze, the girl has worked her way down the stage until she's directly in front of the three drunk Japanese. One of them calls out to her, placing both hands over his heart in a gesture of exaggerated romanticism and then forming a circle with his right thumb and forefinger and pushing his left index finger in and out of it. His companions burst into raucous laughter, an explosion of sound that the tall man can hear even over the loud music. The girl misses a step, as if she's tripped on the laugh. She stands still for a long moment, not looking at the Japanese men, not looking at the tall man who watches her, and then she turns and trudges the length of the stage until she is in front of the tall man again. She walks as though she weighs five hundred pounds.
The three Japanese men are drumming their hands on the bar, a rolling rhythm over the music, to call the girl back down to them. They flash fingers in the red light, playing a game of rock-paper-scissors to see who will have her first, and Number 27 makes her decision. She turns and forces a smile at the tall man.
It isn't much of a smile.
The Australians have their arms wrapped tightly around each other's shoulders. Their anger has been redirected.
'Bloody hell,' says the smaller one. He wears the blood on his face like a veil, like a disguise. 'She buggered off and took my money.'
'Is that so?' says the policeman, clutching a fistful of fake amber like a talisman.
'You're wasting your time,' the larger one tells his bleeding friend belligerently. 'You think he's going to help you? He probably gets a cut of everything she steals.' He leans down toward the policeman, bringing his big red face so close that he can see his own eyes in the policeman's Ray-Bans. ' 'At's right, innit, mate? You pocketing the proceeds?'
'Bangkok police are very honest,' the policeman says, not wasting much conviction on it. 'Fortunately, finding her will be easy.' He releases a smile into the night air to show how easy it's going to be. 'You remember her name, of course.'
'Name?' asks the larger man. He takes a drunken, involuntary step backward, dragging his bleeding friend with him.
'Her name.' The policeman looks from the larger to the smaller man, his eyebrows high and querying. 'You know. What everybody called her.' He waits. 'The short, one- or two-syllable sound to which she answered when others spoke it.' The policeman has developed a faint British accent. 'Name,' he says again, and smiles encouragingly.
'Who the fuck knows?' asks the bleeding man.
'I see,' the policeman says. 'Listen. Let me give you a tip.' The policeman lowers his voice confidentially. 'In case this happens again.'
'I'm bleeding,' the smaller man says.
'We are poor in Thailand, compared to you,' the policeman says, dropping his voice even further. They lean in to hear him. 'There are many things you take for granted that we do not have. But all of us-' He reaches out and taps the larger man on the chest. 'Every one of us-even the poorest, even the destitute, even the beggars, even the girls who work in the bars-every one of us has a name.' He places the false amber beads on the counter from which they have fallen and catches sight of his watch. 'Oh, my,' the policeman says. 'Look at the time.'
The tall man goes down the stairs first, with Toy trailing a few steps behind. He can smell her, a damp, sweetish mixture of makeup and perspiration. When he'd put his arm around her shoulders after the mama-san accepted the five-hundred-baht bar fine-worth about fourteen dollars in California, where the tall man used to live- she'd shrunk back. She hadn't met his eyes since she stepped off the stage.
At the bottom of the stairs, he turns and watches her come, now wearing a T-shirt, a bright orange skirt that ends midthigh, and lizard-skin cowboy boots. He gives her a smile, but she's got her eyes on the stairway, as though she's never gone down one before.
'Here we go,' he says. 'I hope you're ready.'
He opens the door.
The policeman's sunglasses reflect the words LAP BAR. The words are written in fuchsia neon set into the center of a bright heart, a cheap electric valentine sizzling fifteen feet above the Patpong sidewalk. He takes a final look at his watch and then leans against a metal pole that once had some sort of sign atop it, now amputated. The crowd, sweating, wrinkled, and ripe-smelling, divides on either side and flows by.
The boy who has been assigned to watch the door to the Lap Bar looks at the policeman and fails to recognize him. Patpong is a very profitable beat, and the police assigned to it have paid dearly for the pleasure. They know the rules. A new cop means trouble. The boy abandons his post and does a discreet fade, stopping a few yards away to watch. From that vantage point, he sees the policeman climb two of the four steps to the door. The door swings open, pulled from the inside, and a tall man comes out, followed by the youngest and newest of the girls in the bar-what was her name? — Toy.
And the policeman puts an arm up, resting his hand against the edge of the door, to block Toy and the tall man from coming all the way outside. Toy makes a scrabbling move backward, but the policeman snakes his other arm out and grabs her wrist. This is completely outside the boy's frame of reference: a policeman interfering with a customer and a bar girl at the door the boy is supposed to be guarding.
The boy decides it is time to go home.
The policeman looks past the farang, directly at Toy. 'How old are you?'
'She's eighteen,' the tall man says.
