fullness is apparent. The way her hair tapers down above her shoulders makes her neck look a yard long, and she thinks, Stork's neck, and then instantly, Swan's neck, and the words strike her like lightning. She instinctively lifts her chin to make her neck even longer and pulls open the cloth Tra-La wrapped around her, to see the way her collarbones wing out on either side at the base of her throat. She has no idea how long she has been looking at herself when she says, at last, 'Is this really me?'
Fon says, 'It is now.'
'Darling,' Tra-La says, leaning on Fon as though she's exhausted. 'You are going to make a fortune.'
'You are, you know. Do the job right and you'll earn so much money you can buy your whole village. If you want it, I mean.' Fon pours herself an inch of white wine and offers the glass to Kwan, but Kwan shakes her head yet again, and Fon drains it. The half bottle at Fon's right hand is mostly gone, and the dishes that litter the table are empty on Fon's side and almost full on Kwan's. The food was strange to her, and anyway, she's too unsettled to eat and she doesn't want to ruin her lipstick. She feels like she's been turned into something new, like she just woke up in someone else's life.
She forces herself to remember what Fon just said. 'Before I make money,' she says, 'I have to decide to work.' Without thinking, she takes a rambutan from a pile of them in front of her and peels it by feel, her eyes roaming the room in which they sit, a room unlike any she has ever been in, although it seems familiar.
'You will,' Fon says. She leans back in her chair and picks up her cigarettes.
The restaurant is a geometrical landscape of crisp, square white tablecloths and dark corners. At odd intervals, spotlighted on the walls, hang paintings of-Kwan supposes-Europe. They depict farang people in odd, old- looking clothes, and horses, dogs, and dark, hazy forests. Here and there, usually glimpsed in the bluish distance, is a house big enough to be a palace. One of the horses is white and has a horn coming out of its forehead, and dogs are leaping at it. She has seen pictures of paintings like these in school, but she never thought she'd see the real thing.
In the center of each table is a small golden lamp with a pale pink shade, and Kwan thinks the light makes Fon look younger and softer, her cute face restored to the freshness it probably had when she was sixteen. Waiters in white shirts and black slacks stand idly by; it's early still, and only a few of the tables are occupied. She and Fon have walked just a few blocks from the noise and glare of Patpong, but it could be a hundred miles. This is a different Bangkok. And then she knows why the room seems familiar: It makes her feels like she's in one of the television programs she watched in the village. She's at the edge of the life in which people have things.
'I don't know if I can do it,' she says.
Fon says, 'You can. You have to.' She starts to light her cigarette, but a waiter is suddenly there with a lighter outstretched. Fon nods and smiles thanks as though it happens every day and says, 'You're never going to make enough money to send some home until you start going with customers.'
Kwan waits, her eyes on the tablecloth, until the waiter is gone. 'It doesn't… bother you, talking about that in front of… I don't know, people like him?'
Fon laughs. 'He knows what we do. How else could a couple of girls dressed in jeans and T-shirts afford a place like this?'
Kwan thinks, What you do, but doesn't say it. What she says is, 'Why are we here? We've never gone anywhere like this.'
'It's your Bangkok birthday,' Fon says. 'Today, for the first time, you look like you belong here.'
'I'll pay you back,' Kwan says. 'For all of it. For Tra-La, for dinner, for everything.'
'Really.' Fon picks up the small crystal ashtray and hefts it, as though surprised at its weight. 'With money you earn from what?'
Kwan says, 'I should tell Nana I want some of what the mama-san paid her.'
'She's spent it by now,' Fon says. 'She sold you. I wasn't sure you realized it.'
'But she helped me, too. My father was going to sell me. And it would have been a lot worse than the bar.'
Fon pours the last of the wine, hoists the glass, and eyes Kwan through it. 'She wouldn't have lifted a finger if there hadn't been something in it for her. She'd have let them grab you without even thinking about it. Nana doesn't do favors.'
Kwan pulls back her newly cut hair. 'She's not so bad.' She turns her head to display the earrings. 'She gave me these.'
Fon picks up the little lamp and tilts the shade so she can see more clearly. Then she puts it down again and says, 'Real sapphires? Real gold?'
'Sure,' Kwan says. 'Why?'
Through a mouthful of smoke, Fon says, 'Because they're turning your earlobes green.'
Chapter 15
'We're late,' Kwan says as she and Fon thread their way through the Patpong crowd. Their progress is slower than usual because they're holding hands. In the village Kwan had always envied the girls who were good enough friends to hold hands as they walked, and now, for the first time, she has someone whose hand she can hold. Even here, on this street, it's a comfortable feeling.
'We want to be late.' Fon slows their pace and then stops, anchoring Kwan beside her. 'Take it easy,' she says. 'I want to do this right.'
'Do what?' But Fon's not listening. They're four or five meters up the street from the Candy Cane, and Fon's leaning forward, watching the two overage schoolgirls who control the curtain across the door. 'When I say go, we go fast,' she says. 'Understand?'
'Sure. But why?'
'Go,' Fon says, almost pulling Kwan off her feet. One of the schoolgirls has stepped inside the bar, and the other is facing the other way. Fon drags Kwan to the curtain, throws it open dramatically, and then pushes Kwan in, standing beside her with both arms upraised, demanding attention.
The first girl in the bar to notice them is Oom, dancing as always at the pole nearest the door. She glances at Fon, and then her eyes travel to Kwan's face, and she looks puzzled, as though she's never seen her before. Then she stops dancing, and there's a spark of recognition in her eyes, and for the first time since Kwan met her, Oom smiles broadly. She takes a hand off the pole and gives Kwan a thumbs-up. Kwan feels herself smiling back and hears Fon smother a laugh.
Oom's gesture draws the eyes of the other women onstage. Some of them stop dancing, too, a couple of them gawking openmouthed. The women who are in Fon's group grin and nod their heads or repeat the thumbs-up. One of them puts two fingers into her mouth and whistles loudly. The girls in the other group look at Kwan and then through her and return to their dancing, their focus on the customers, most of whom are staring at Kwan. The plump girl pulls the corners of her mouth down sharply and turns her back, then slips her hand under her long hair, and flips it up in Kwan's direction, a gesture of dismissal. Some of the women who are sitting with men desert their customers and come running. Hands touch Kwan's hair, a mix of perfumes surrounds her, and two of the girls hug her. Everyone seems to be talking, but they fall silent simultaneously.
The women crowded in front of Kwan part to let the mama-san through. Small as she is, the mama-san is given a wide path, almost enough space to swing her arms on either side. She wears her usual uniform: a plain T- shirt and blue jeans. Her hair is, as always, pulled painfully back, and her face is makeup-free. She seems bent on making herself as drab as possible, in contrast with the primped and painted girls who surround her. She stops a few steps away from Kwan and lets her eyes slide slowly over Kwan's hair and face. Her expression does not change. Then she leans forward, and for a moment Kwan thinks the mama-san is going to sniff at her.
But what she does is say, 'Take off those earrings.'
Kwan removes the earrings Nana had given her, and the mama-san holds out a long, thin hand for Kwan to drop them into. When she does, the mama-san waves past her, and Kwan turns to see one of the women at the
