Chapter Five

Five

He woke only hours later in the dark, frigid room. Sleep deprived and still as exhausted as when he had first arrived, he checked the time on his watch and figured there were still three hours till daylight. He ached for coffee but found no phone in the room to call for the room service he doubted they had. He dressed in a mix of old soiled and more freshly soiled clothes and made his way to the reception hole where he found the seemingly ever present girl staring at the ever blaring television.

‘Is there coffee available?’

‘You want?’

‘Yeah, large, light and sweet.’

‘What you want?’ The girl asked still not looking away from her show.

‘Coffee, with milk and sugar.’

‘You want Café?’

‘Coffee, yes I want coffee.’

‘For café you must to go to seven.’

‘Seven?’

'You go to Seven, have café and some food.’

He shrugged exaggeratedly but she wasn’t watching so he asked aloud. ‘What is Seven?’

She looked away from the blue glow with an expression of wonder or perhaps pity on her face and pronounced slowly. ‘Seven Eleven.’

An orange phone bolted to the front of the store showed a list of rates for international calling. He ran his finger down the country names and saw the rate for America listed at .02. The currency wasn’t listed but whatever it was it couldn’t be expensive. The sign said to buy the calling card in the store.

The girl at the counter sold him the card and even came out and dialed the 28 digit access code and handed him the receiver so he could dial the rest. He had been in country for three days and hadn’t yet called his mother even though he had promised to on arrival.

She picked up on the third ring but said nothing as usual.

‘Ma’ He shouted into the receiver.

‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s Lon Ma, I’m calling from Bangkok.’

‘Lonny, Lonny are you calling?’

‘Yeah Ma, how you doing, you feeling all right, the nurse there?’

‘How long you been there and why didn’t you call?’

‘I’m calling now, we got to make this quick, the nurse all right? Everything OK?’

‘I think that nurse is a phony, and I think he’s stealing from my pocket book.’ She whispered.

‘No Ma he ain't a phony and he can't be stealing nothing from you. You OK? you feeling Ok?’

‘I feel alright. How you doing there, is it nice?’

Lonny looked over his shoulder at the city waking for the day. The food carts steaming and smoking. Traffic clogging up. Assorted drunks struggling stiff legged and half blind to get back to their rooms. The air was getting hotter and the day time odors of sewage and vegetable rot carried on the thermals.

‘Yeah, it’s Ok. You know different, it's real hot. I just wanted to make sure your getting along OK, if anything happens you call the nursing service OK. I gotta go now, Call you again soon.’ He hung up the receiver without waiting for the good by he knew wouldn't come.

*

When he returned to the room he crawled into bed still dressed with his coffee. He fumbled with the remote control bringing the TV mounted in a steel cage high on the opposite wall to life. Flipping through the channels he recognized some of the shows but they were all over dubbed in Thai until he got to Asian Hot TV Movie Channel which was showing an early eighties stock comedy where through half sleep clotted memory he recognized the youthful faces of character actors he had been watching his entire adult life.

He sat against the mound of lumpy pillows staring up at the steel caged television letting himself drift along the flimsy plot lines of the movie until the first strains of sun light were announced by birds screeching a call that sounded oddly like ‘fer-real, fer-real’.

When the sun came up the room was described in its full squalor by the day light so Lonny went out into the dark hallways to see if there actually was a pool. Wandering upwards floor to floor he found a steel door that had once been marked health center, though now the letters were desiccated by rust and faded from the broiling sun. This opened to another dark hallway with locked, glass fronted rooms on either side still holding a few remnant steel bars and cast iron couplings that once made up a weight set. The hallway let out to a terrace where a small pool filled with brackish looking water was surrounded by cracked plastic furniture, radiated colorless, like the bleached bones of ancient animals that had died after drinking there.

The place seemed abandoned long ago but there was still the faint smell of chlorine in the air so he stripped off to his underwear and dipped slowly into the cool, slimy water. He swam a few lengths but the water felt unusually dense and when he got out he was coated with a skein of chemical filth. Back through the dark halls he got to his room and showered off the ooze, dried himself with an already soiled towel promising he would change hotels that morning but when he checked his watch it was still only 6 a.m.

At the tiny desk built into the side of the wardrobe he found a thin pad of paper and began writing out names; Jerry Whitman, Jennny Whitman, Eddy Drabzyk, Tanner Bloodwright and Lonny Boyle the way he thought a detective might and linked the names with arrows. Tapping the end of the pen on the edge of the pad he studied the diagram for a while and then crumbled it up and threw it on the floor for lack of a waste basket.

He had worked for Jerry’s family for nearly twenty years but he barely knew him. They had grown up at the same time in the same area but they were separated by a lot of factors. Jerry was from the affluent west loop and Lonny from the lower class east side. They went to different schools. Jerry was a good looking, popular kid who had played three sports and drove a nice car. His family had made real money in the upturn years of the fifties, sixties and even through the seventies. Doubling, tripling and finally quadrupling the size of the business his grandfather had grown from his own father's rag and bone cart.

When they graduated Lonny went off to the army where he mooked and humped in civilian bases across the country for eight years performing menial tasks. Jerry attended Stony Brook where he played basketball and prepared to take over the family business, famously slamming ass right and left. Lonny interviewed at ACP the week he got home from the Army and probably never spoke for more than five minutes at a time with Jerry over the years he drove trucks for him until the day he was fired.

When Jerry laid out his tale of woe, the murder of poor Jenny and his own fragile state Lonny took it as an opportunity to get something back from him. Now here, Eddy wasn’t what Jerry said. His description of the man as his eyes and ears on the streets of Bangkok was either an out right lie or a delusion created by his own desperation. Jerry's plan was a revenge fantasy that couldn’t possibly play out. Lonny had been asked to kill a kid for money and flew 9000 miles without any intention of really doing it but playing the part any how and that made him not right as well. Thinking things over he lay across the bed and fell back to sleep.

He woke with a start some hours later to find Eddy sitting in the chair facing the bed with a dough boy grin on his face.

‘Jesus, why can’t you knock instead of sneaking in here all the time when I’m asleep?’

‘I have a pass key’ Eddy held up the block of wood the size of a building brick from which a single silver key dangled glinting sparks of light. ‘El key del passo.’

Lonny sat up rubbing his face. ‘You’re weird.’

‘I’m weird? Look at you, I swear it looks as if you’ve been assaulted again. What are you doing? Beaten twice in the same day? In a city where you don’t know anyone? That’s mighty peculiar if you ask me.’ Eddy continued smiling, dangling the key. He was relaxed, sitting in the cheap vinyl upholstered chair, changed from the nervous, sweating man he was the night before but still wearing the same outfit or one identical.

'This city's full of goddamned lunatics.'

'Not the whole city, just the places where you’ve been going. Godless places attract godless people- even angels fear to tread’ Eddy hummed.

‘The place you sent me. What time is it?’ Lonny got out of bed and started to undress.

‘It’s nearly 6, looks like you slept all day again, sloth. So what happened last night, where I left you.’

‘What happened? I saw the kid, watched him work the corner and then he left and so I left.’

‘Is it done?’

‘ Done? No it’s not done. What did you expect me to do walk up and hit him over the head with something?’

‘I don’t want to know anything about it.’ Eddy waved his wands in front of his face. They were soft and feminine looking, hands that had never toiled. They were money counting hands and as he waved them around Lonny saw the nails were manicured and finished with a clear polish.

‘You just asked.’

‘Jerry’s anxious; he wants to know when you’re going to do it.’

Lonny undressed, threw his shirt and pants on the bed and went into the bathroom. He had a date to meet Pearl in two hours and wanted to get out of the Mansion with plenty of time to stop and pick up clean clothes somewhere.

‘I’m going to do it before I head back, more than that I don’t know yet.’ He spoke at the closed door. He turned on the shower and found the water to be a comfortable temperature this late in the day. He scrubbed himself down but forgot the only towel was the one he had used to get out of the scummy pool. ‘Can you get me a clean towel?’ He yelled.

When no answer came he asked again and then cracked the door but found no one there. Eddy had slunk off as he had snuck in.

*

Lonny arrived at the address Pearl had written out for him a little early. He wore new clothes and had stopped for a shave in a barbershop where the girls working there took pity on him and draped his face in hot towels and dabbed his wounds with ointments until they declared with satisfaction that he was lup law, picture handsome. He thanked them with a large tip and wondered if the place wasn’t so bad after all.

He stood anxiously on the side walk in front of the pub, as Pearl had said it popping the P with her lips, Pub. He wished for a cigarette but hadn’t smoked in ten years and didn’t understand the sudden urge. He waited on the sidewalk a few minutes but the steady heat was smearing the clean feeling he had from the barbers shop and so he stepped through the dark doors.

Inside the place was bigger than the meager exterior of the building suggested. To his right a serpentine bar ran round a large center stage surrounded by tables and chairs. The walls were decorated with posters of Jazz musicians and retired instruments were bracketed to the bare brick walls. Saxes, trombones, guitars and even a French horn were highlighted by subtle spot lights.

Lonny sat at the bar and ordered a beer thinking a place like this might be able or interested enough to serve beer that wasn’t spoiled. Behind him a couple of young Thai guys were working out on guitars, playing blues scales up and down the frets in easy graceful riffs.

The place was as opposite to the chaos of the massive open air restaurant she had taken him the night before as it was the aggressive girl bars around the dark streets where he stayed. It was a cool, subtle atmosphere and when his beer came he drank it down out of a long glass; cold and clean.

As he sat over his second beer tossing bar nuts into his mouth a diminutive Asian man with a long gray pony tail hopped on to the stool next to him and yelled out an order to the bartender in Thai, turned and nodded to Lonny.

‘How are you man?’ He asked.

‘I’m alright, and you?’ Lonny shrugged.

‘My name Kwan, I own this place, this is the jazz and blues type of bar, where do you come from?’

‘ New York.’

‘America. Yes I know, New York City where many of the great jazz musicians come from.’ He went on listing names, none of which Lonny recognized, though one or two seemed familiar until he mentioned Louis Armstrong.

‘Sure, Louis Armstrong, he was good’ Lonny said struggling to remember any of his songs.

‘The great Sachmo, terrific.’ Kwan trailed off and sipped at the goblet of wine the kid behind the bar had brought. They sat together in awkward silence working at their drinks, nodding to one another until a wild giggling sound penetrated the room causing both to turn and look. Six flamboyantly gesturing, laughing, loud talking girls wiggled into the room and sat at a table filling the empty club with enough noise for the rest of the night.

Kwan mumbled, smiling a smile that wasn’t a smile, looked at Lonny, rolled his eyes and pinched his nose, ‘Katoey’s.’

‘Sure’, Lonny nodded.

‘Sure’, kwan repeated with an authentic smile.

Lonny shrugged again, ‘I don’t know him.’ His name came out over the giggling and loud talk. Pearl stood up from the group at the table and waved to him. ‘That’s my friend,’ Lonny waved back. ‘I’m going to go and sit with them.’ She was dressed for a night out showing off leg and cleavage. He swallowed the last of his beer.

Kwan narrowed his eyes, ‘You like Katoey?’

‘Yea, he’s great,’ Lonny said and walked over to sit down amongst the noise of the six girls. Giggling and grabbing Pearl and then exclaiming as Lonny approached and individually making an effort at restraint while being introduced. Pearl ran off the names like a song which rang in his ear for a second then drifted off into the clatter of the bar.

The pub got packed quickly and when the band started the music was deafening. Lonny understood very little of what went on for the three hours he and Pearl sat at the table with her friends. That they spoke in Thai, except when asking him one of the repetitive questions he had already answered was only part of it. The volume and pitch of their voices would sometimes blot out the band that played at top volume only feet from their table making even their English words indecipherable.

They got up in pairs and disappeared into the crowd throughout the evening and when they returned the groups energy rose up in a flurry to hear what had happened on their sojourn around the bar. They screamed and high fived as they shared photos of men they had encountered on the trip through their smart phone network.

Pearl more or less ignored the drama of her friends and sat close to Lonny. They ordered three or four times as much food as they could eat and brightly colored mixed drinks by the pitcher. As the dishes arrived Pearl would select samples from each dish, plate them and feed Lonny, imploring him to eat. Some of the foods were delicious with flavors so odd he had nothing to compare them to, a few made him gag and others burned so that his eyes and nose ran and he had to go to the bathroom and flush his face with water while the girls laughed.

He refused the bright, sugary alcoholic concoctions and stuck with beer, but the girls pounded down the pitchers. They grew louder and more lascivious and when they slipped into English they were crass and sexual. One continually called out loudly for whiskey dick addressing the entire pub.

When they finally left Lonny was exhausted by the frantic energy. The girls were twenty years younger and he was out of his element to begin with. Outside, in the heat of the thick night the girls discussed going on to a disco, but Pearl declined having to work the next day and Lonny offered to escort her home. When the two got a taxi the gang waved and leered from the sidewalk, puckering their lips and shouting suggestions that made Pearl giddy with embarrassment.

In the dark of the back seat Pearl snuggled up to Lonny’s side making him feel young and lustful. He understood at that moment why so many men came here. It wasn’t the sex; or even the beauty of the girls; it was the feeling of youth and power. It was the hunger and violence of a young man's libido gone for so long that rushed through his veins like a drug as it had three decades earlier.

He draped his arm around her shoulder and she held his hand in hers and then looked up and kissed him. Her mouth tasted like cherry syrup and cheap vodka. He smiled and she kissed him again, sinking her cold tongue deep into his mouth, pulling his arm around her so that she clung tighter to his side.

They kissed and petted until the cab arrived at her building. Slowly she released herself from his embrace, wiggled her way sideways toward the door, reached over and kissed him on the cheek and asked him in her oddly formal way to call her in the morning.

The cab re-joined the lurching traffic lines and Lonny suddenly realized he was going back to the mansion. ‘Christ, I’ll never get out of this shit hole.’ He said aloud. The driver flashed his eyes at him, but Lonny shook it off. In the morning, first thing in the morning, a new room, a clean room with towels and food.