Chapter Three

Three

Lonny woke in a tangle of bed clothes. Wrapped and restrained by comforter, top sheet and light blanket. A beam of sun light like a cutting laser bisected the room and sliced straight across his face. He could feel the hot blade burning his skin and struggled to get away from its eye. The room was cold, not cool but cold so that he actually shivered atop the mass of linen. The rumbling old air con unit spewed cold, ill smelling air over the bed at full capacity; there was no way to lower the temperature, no sort of adjustment at all. The thing was wired to an old toggle switch, screwed to the wall on a piece of wood with exposed wires running in and out. Drops of water hung from the bottom of the plastic casing until they got fat enough and plopped onto a darkened spot of the thread bare carpet in a constant slow rhythm, coating the near walls with a dun colored spatter.

The room was a petri-dish incubating slow death. Motes floated in the air so thick that the light streaming in through cracks of the ancient black out curtains quavered like oxygenated water in an aquarium. Lonny’s face was swollen and he could only just barely breathe through his mouth. His eyes burned and the mucus lining of his nose was swollen tight. The place was alive with every kind of microbe and virus ever imagined.

He stumbled to the bathroom and cranked on the water thinking he could wash himself clean of the germs and bacteria that had crawled into the holes of his head while he slept.

The water came from the shower in an impressive cascade. He stripped off the clothes he had traveled and now slept in, the only clothes that he had, and slipped under the stream of water. It was icy as mountain run off and Lonny began gasping for breath as his throat tensed with the sudden shock cutting off his only air passage.

He leapt out tripping on the edge of the tub and catching the sink in time to keep from cracking his face open on the toilet. The cold air rushing in from the room raised his flesh and he slammed the door already shivering. Above the sink was what he would consider a portable water heater screwed to another board with yet more exposed wire hanging from the box. Two dials indicated temperature and flow. Lonny toyed with one with no result and then clicked the other. There was the metallic thunk of an internal breaker cutting off and at the same time a fine bolt of electric arced into the ceiling, burning a circle the diameter of a trash can in the moldy tiles.

Lonny carefully opened the door and crept out to the bedroom, dressed and got his bag. His eyes were swollen to slits and his breath rattled in his chest. He would just limp out of there and find a place on his own, anything would be better.

The hallway was the same tunnel of gloom it had been when he arrived. His stomach sent out waves of hunger nausea, but with the strain of breathing he was able to ignore it and find his way back through the maze of fire doors and cramped stairs to the parking garage and out to the street already burning with fierce light.

As soon as he was out of the building his nasal passages cleared, the swelling of his eyes eased and his lungs opened and breath came easy. But the impact of the heat was like another physical ailment. He barely started to move and was already sweating profusely. It ran down his face and dripped from his chin, his shirt and pants stuck to his skin, the grip of his bag became so slick he could barely hold it.

He walked up the alley towards the main street where the larger, modern hotels sat surrounded by bars. There was bound to be food. He could eat at the hotel and get a room. He felt like he could go back to bed for another twenty hours, but first he needed to eat. Only minutes on the street and he felt his skin burning under the raw flame of the sun. He knew hot, New York City in July and August is hot, hot as any where he had thought, but this was an intensity he had never experienced.

The ache in his stomach had gone to his eyes. There were stainless steel carts outfitted with grills and steaming pots crowded along the sidewalk dishing up food to people sat on tiny plastic stools. The smell of boiled meat and frying oil was rich in the air. He inspected the food on the tables but didn’t recognize any of the multi-colored, glutinous dishes. Whatever it was it didn’t look like breakfast and he wasn’t in the mood to experiment.

Where the alley was bisected by another even narrower alley was a string of several small bars with silly names like Horny toad, Easy Bar, Charming Bar but a place called the Grill was open and had a chalk board outside listing the breakfast menu. Lonny didn’t bother to read it, just darted through the door.

The place was dark, the harsh light of day filtered to dank by tinted windows. The air-conditioning was set to a comfortable temperature but as soon as Lonny was in the door and sat at the horse shoe shaped bar he began to sweat even more heavily. He could actually feel the liquid passing through his skin, his shirt and crotch were soaked, his face streaming. A roll of toilet tissue sat on the bar and Lonny mummified his hand with it and passed it over his face where it stuck and shredded against his wet skin and stubble leaving him covered in a film of shit paper.

There were several old men sitting around the dark arc of the bar; reading newspapers and drinking from mugs or staring blank faced at a silent television playing a twenty year old football game where the Pittsburgh Stealers were routing the Denver Broncos 49 - 7. A soundtrack of vaguely familiar country rock from the sixties and seventies played at a low level to no one in particular.

Three young woman sat on stools on the other side of the bar eating and talking in the same high pitched cat like language that Lonny was starting to identify as being the language of the country. He sat for about five minutes undisturbed, his stomach groaning, sweat drying and his body temperature falling, trying to make eye contact with one of the girls, another costumer, anyone who might get him in contact with a menu.

Then as if he had just walked in the door, he was finally noticed and two of the girls jumped up out of their seats and performed a wild kind of run jump, one screaming ‘WHY’ while the other pushed her.

‘Accuse me sir may I help you?’ the first one asked as the other stood next to her laughing.

‘Menu please.’ He asked.

Neither of the two moved, but shouted to a third still seated, who shouted back, got to her feet stamping mad, then began laughing and performed the same crazy legged hop run for three or four steps with a menu in her hand.

All three stood over him now poised for some kind of action, staring intently, one held a pad and pen while he looked through the menu. It didn’t take him long; he ordered a set menu that included every pork product known to man as well as eggs, home fries, baked beans and coffee. It was listed as breakfast #1.

He pointed it out, none of the three moved but shouted the order towards the back in glass shattering tones to some cook hidden in an unseen kitchen.

‘You want to do drink?’ One of them asked.

‘Coffee, its part of the breakfast?’ Lonny asked.

‘You want beer have Heineken, beer Sing, Leo?’

‘No, just coffee.’ That moved one of the girls back to her seat.

‘Very hot na? You want cold cloth, clean you face?’ Another asked. Without waiting for an answer she took a pre-packaged cloth from the beer refrigerator and popped the sealed plastic with a slap of her hand. Unfolded it and handed it to him then returned to her seat.

He buried his face in the cool, soothing towel. Scrubbed beneath his eyes and around his nose and the white cloth came away smeared with black. As he did this the third girl standing behind him began to knead his shoulders and asked ‘you come from?’

He tensed against her touch and slouched forward but she leaned into him.

‘I’m from New York.’ He answered tersely.

‘Emm.’ She said, tweaked him twice more and then wandered back to her chair.

‘Over staffed and under serviced.’ The costumer closest to him said.

Lonny decided to ignore it and sipped at the coffee he had sugared and milked to the light sweet concoction that is the life’s blood of a New York truck driver.

‘Five girls doing the job of one, and still they don’t quite manage it.’

Lonny glanced at him. The guy was about forty, baby faced, but tired looking. He sat with a section of newspaper folded in his hands drinking a Bloody Mary. He wasn’t speaking directly to Lonny but seemed to be trying to pull him into a conversation. Lonny looked at the clock on the far wall and saw that it was seven thirty. He had only slept a couple of hours which hadn’t done him much good. He was thoroughly exhausted, but his hunger pains came from a place he hadn’t known in a long time, maybe never.

‘As long as I get my food.’ Lonny said and laughed self consciously out of habit.

‘It’ll come, it’ll be all wrong and then you’ll ask about what it is that you got and they’ll crowd around you with menus in their hands arguing with each other for a few minutes while your food gets cold and then your plate will disappear to the kitchen and then come back unchanged after ten more minutes and by that time all five of them will be asleep in the corner. Every day for them is like their first day on the job.’

Lonny shrugged, he wasn’t up for bonding. ‘I ordered the set menu, anyway I don’t care what comes I’m so hungry I’ll eat anything.’ Lonny closed his eyes, and then spoke softly to himself, ‘I just want to eat and go to back to bed.’

‘Just arrive?’

‘Yeah, this morning, early this morning.’

‘That’s a bitch of a flight. How many hours was it? Twenty two-three?’

‘Something like that, then I got held up at the airport, so yeah by the time I got to my hotel it was around five or something. I only got a couple hours of sleep, hotel is disgusting. I woke up with my face all swollen, nose blocked up. Dirty air-con or something.’ Lonny rambled senselessly not quite sure what he was even saying but knowing he had opened the channel of small talk.

‘What the hell are you staying in such a shit hole for? God, a good hotel here is only about 30 bucks.’

‘I don’t know, someone else made the arrangements.’

‘Well there you go, you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, especially here.’ With that he pulled a fresh high ball glass from over the bar, filled it with ice from a small aluminum bucket he had at his side, poured in about three shots of vodka, topped it off with tomato juice, peppered and tabascoed this. He added a dash of Worcestershire sauce, carrot and celery slivers from a tray on the bar and slid the works down the counter to Lonny.

‘That's what you need, full of vitamins and essential minerals with just the right amount of alcohol to take off the edge. Trust me, I’m a qualified naturopathic healer.’

Lonny accepted the drink hesitantly, nodded and took a long sip. The tang of the pulpy tomato juice laced with spices and the bite of vodka did seem a health giving concoction and he took another longer sip and nodded his thanks again.

'Where you from then, New Jersey.' The stranger asked.

'Long Island.'

'Same thing, you a Jew?'

'No' Lonny answered, bristling at the intimacy of the question.

'Relax, I'm half a heeb myself. So what, Irish?'

'Kinda, you know American.'

'Mic-Catholic, same as being a Jew. All the old testament superstition and guilt.'

Lonny didn’t respond, just drank his coffee hoping the guy would shut up.

‘So you’re staying in some dump back in the Soi and that explains how you ended up in this joint, first place you came to.’

Lonny nodded and felt a smile flutter at the corners of his mouth for the first time in two days.

‘Don’t get me wrong it’s not the worst place, opens early and the foods not too bad, but for the most part it’s like a retirement home for drunken republican whore mongers.’ He laughed even as he said it. There were a few grumbles and glares cast down from the vintage football game.

The old men all seemed about the same age, some indefinable post retirement stage of life when wearing golf shirts tucked into khaki shorts atop calf high white socks and off brand shoes with Velcro closures becomes de-rigor. None of them spoke, some read sections of newspapers but most sat silently watching the twenty year old drama of the game play out above their heads while they silently drank beer at seven in the morning.

‘It’s kind of strange coming all this way to end up in a place that I could find a couple a blocks from my house.’ Lonny said.

The bar was decorated with the trappings of Americana. Beneath the glassed over bar Playboy pin ups spread their legs going back thirty years. The walls were covered with sports memorabilia. A collection of Wheaties boxes featuring various heroes from golf, baseball, basketball and football sat high up on a shelf. License plates from across the union were nailed to the walls. The menu listed chili dogs, and sliders. Nothing could be more blue collar east coast.

‘Where’s the owner from?’ His Bloody Marry already down a third.

‘Boston.’ The man said, mixing another Bloody Mary for himself he nodded at Lonny’s glass. ‘You ready for another?’

‘Oh, sure thanks. I guess I expected something different, more exotic?’

‘There’s plenty of exotic out in the streets, but for most people, they want just what they had at home. Repetition is a great comfort to lazy minds.’ The complainer smiled.

There was more grumbling from around the bar. Then one of the older men yelled across. ‘What the hell you doing here all the time then?’

It was a challenge more than a question and croaked out in a tone of dismissal and the complainer ignored it all together.

He passed Lonny’s drink to him and gestured with a tip of his head, a big grin on his face. ‘I come here in the morning cause it’s the only place open when I get off work. Third shift on the Thailand Times, eight hours of reading gibberish written by Asian correspondents and I need to drink.’

Lonny’s food arrived and though it was poor fare, prepared without interest, it was served with a formality that transcended the place. A mat of woven rattan and silk was placed over the playmate of the year who would be in her late fifties or early sixties by then. Fork, knife and spoon were carefully folded into a napkin and set above the plate. A wooden basket full of condiments was placed to his right and another cold towel was handed to him to swab his hands and face again.

He ate blindly, barely tasting. The two Bloody Marys had worked a kind of magic on him so that he felt revived, his hunger changed from a dull ache to a ravenous desire to consume. He slurped his coffee and cleaned his plate in a manner of minutes, plunked his fork and knife onto the ceramic plate and leaned back on his stool. He could feel the fats from the bacon, sausage and egg coursing through his veins with the vodka and felt strong again.

‘Look, I need to check into a place that’s, you know, better than where I did last night, this morning, whenever it was. Can you point me in the right direction?’

The man, the complainer, slid Lonny another drink. ‘Why not check into the NANA Hotel? Its close, just up the street. I know it has a sleazy reputation but it's fine, a lot better than where you’re at by the sound of it.’

Lonny fingered the fresh drink. He felt well now and didn’t want to upset the balance. ‘I’m staying at some sort of NANA now, NANA mansion.’

The man shrugged. ‘But it’s a dump right. Finish that drink and I’ll walk up there with you. It’s almost eight o’clock, they’ll be plenty of potential company around. You gonna get your bags later?’

‘This is it.’ Lonny held up the small carry on.

Outside the heat and light were as much of a shock as they had been earlier. Like stepping into a boiler room fitted with a thousand, hundred watt light bulbs. Lonny staggered as he left the cool, dim bar. His legs felt as if he were suddenly yoked to a nearly immovable weight.

‘Do you ever get used to this?’ He asked the complainer who had slipped on a pair of dark glasses and strode ahead.

‘No one gets used to this.’ He called back. ‘Doesn’t matter how long you live here, even the Thais aren’t used to shitting heat like this, hot season is the wrong time to come my friend.’

‘Is this hot season?’ Lonny asked feeling the alcohol throbbing in his head and the big meal shift in his stomach.

‘It sure as hell is.’

They walked less than ten minutes and though it wasn’t yet eight a.m. the heat was such that Lonny felt he couldn’t go any further when his companion turned into a dark open air bar where fans exhaled a cool mist through tiny jets that blew around the interior in waves. Girls sat in a row facing the street, sleepily toying with their phones or actually sleeping, heads cradled on folded arms in-spite of the booming bass of the dance music that was playing already.

The bar was decorated with strings of Christmas lights that flashed on the walls where posters of waterfalls, mountain tops and island paradises lit up in the multiple colors in contrast to the over all tawdriness of the actual place. In one corner a kind of mini shrine was festooned with flowered garlands, plates of fruit, shot glasses filled with yellow and green liquids as well freshly opened bottles of soda. Bundles of incense stood smoking on either side.

‘We’ll sit here for a minute.’ The complainer said and took a seat far into the interior where the harsh sunlight couldn’t reach.

Lonny was soaked again; his shirt wringing, his thighs had chafed against the damp inseams of his jeans on the walk. He sat down in a hump while the complainer spoke to the bar tender in a somewhat subdued version of the feline language.

‘What are you drinking?’ Lonny shook his head, ‘water.’

‘Water’ the complainer said in English to the bartender who looked to be around forty though she was dressed like a teen. She cocked her head in a clear sign of not understanding and the complainer repeated it in her language, two punchy notes and she was off.

Lonny wiped his face across his shirt front but still sweat ran into his eyes and mouth. He could feel it welling up out of his skin and sliding down his forehead and cheeks.

‘It’s going to be hot today alright, few drinks, maybe find a little something here and off to the air con. It’s a good thing to work at night in this city, daytime is worse in every way.’

‘It’s already hot. You can speak this language?’ Lonny asked.

‘Eh, I babble on. I communicate but it’s a very imprecise thing. Surface is OK, but try and delve into it and it makes little sense to a western mind. I mean I’ve been here for 11 years and at first I tried hard to learn, but then it’s almost pointless. You have to be able to think like them to hold a conversation which is impossible. Anyway, most Thais see your big nose and that’s it, they won’t listen to you no matter how well you can speak. It’s always your first day in this country no matter how long you’ve been here.’

‘But this is the land of smiles and everyone here is going to be friendly, that was in the in-flight magazine,’ Lonny chided.

‘Land of sneers more like it. Thailand, Thai people they’re just like everyone else I guess, ten or so percent good people, ten or so really bad and the rest are just your normal assholes trying to make it through the day. The problem is millions of tourists come here every year and piss away what is a small fortune to most of them. That money changed the place, the people, greed and jealousy.' He shrugged.

‘Doesn’t sound like you like living here?’ Lonny took his bottle of water and drained most of it in a thirsty series of gulps.

‘I don’t, I hate this city, I have another year or so and then I’m off, off to Chile. There are good places in Thailand, but Bangkok isn’t one of them, unless of course you’re rich and then all cities are good. But I’ve had enough of this country. Unbelievable Thailand, how long are you going to be here?’

‘About two weeks.’ Lonny answered automatically reverting to a script he’d memorized to rebuff all such inquiries.

‘Right, and what do you want to do while you’re here?’

‘Just relax.’

‘Ok, so do you like mountains or the beach?’

‘I don’t know, both I guess?’

‘He likes both.’ The complainer laughed. ‘So this is what I would do. Take a week on the beach, and a week in the mountains. Book yourself in somewhere nice. Let them take care of transport and all that shit. Don’t try to save five hundred baht here and there, it’s not worth it. You’re not gonna discover the real Thailand in two weeks so don’t even try, besides the real Thailand isn’t anything you’d want to discover. Can you imagine someone going on vacation to New York and saying I want to discover the real New York?’

Lonny nodded, what the hell was this man talking about, he had no idea about tourist agendas. He was here to kill a 19 year old boy he'd never met. He was supposed to meet Ed Drabzyck, and what the hell happened to him? Lonny motioned to the bartender and easily got a beer.

‘Another thing, pick up a girl and take her with you. I’m serious. You may feel a little like a schmuck at first but it’s better than going to bed by yourself every night. Or sitting single around a bar waiting for something to happen, just get it over with.’ The complainer continued without pause.

Lonny squinted at the bartender. She had bad skin covered up with too much make-up and sat staring into a pink hand mirror propped up on the bar playing with her eyelashes.

‘It doesn’t have to be a straight bar girl, I can ask some of the girls I know if they have a friend that would like a two week holiday.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Lonny shook his head and took the first pull of his beer. It was sour and sweet, skunked from the heat.

The complainer watched him. ‘Good huh? That’s why I drink vodka.’ He chuckled and held up a finger.

His drink came and his phone rang at the same time so as he spoke in the puzzling language and swilled his drink Lonny studied the girls who sat at the front of the bar to attract customers.

When he had made his decision to come to Bangkok he checked out some websites about the city and most of them were mainly about the girls. How young, how beautiful, how cheap and available they are. Now as he ran his eye over them he thought they looked sickly and defeated. They were badly dressed and covered in Tattoos. Most were small framed but over-weight. They had beer guts and scars and smoked menthol cigarettes. Their hair was limp and tinted strange orange colors. They were knock kneed and pigeon toed. They had the sullen, aggressive air of ghetto girls.

The complainer snapped his phone shut. ‘It’s all set, that was one of my many LBFM’s and she is going to meet us in half an hour, with a friend for you.’

Lonny took another swig of the already warm, spoiled beer, winced and set it on the bar. The complainer followed his grimacing gaze towards the line of girls outside.

‘No, don’t worry. They’re not like that, my girls are nice, or human anyway, not like those troglodytes. In fact let’s get the hell out of here.’

He swallowed the last of his drink, set the glass on the bar along with a couple of the pinkish bills and headed for the door with Lonny tagging behind.

Back on the sidewalk the girls in front came awake and called out to them, ‘where you go? I go with you.’

Lonny turned away but the complainer responded in their own language which prompted the one at the end to jump up and following them begin screeching in guttural, threatening tones. Lonny turned and saw her distorted face full of hate, cigarette clamped in her hand, she met his eye and switched to English‘fuck yo- fucking man, eh you- fuck you boyfriend in the ASS!’

The other girls broke out laughing. The one on the sidewalk returned to her seat extending the middle finger of her free hand while smoking with her other hand angrily and then broke out laughing with the others.

The complainer took no notice at all and led Lonny into one of the four large bars on the corner that sat in front of the first hotel he had come to earlier that morning.

Lonny could sense the cool air conditioned rooms with their clean sheets stacked up above his head. Just a couple more drinks he thought, meet this guys friends and then check in. Collect the bags later.

The complainer took a seat at a small round table on the sidewalk side of the bar. Lonny sat opposite. ‘My names John by the way.’ And he extended his hand. Lonny automatically converted it biblicaly in his head ‘ John the Complainer.’

‘Lonny.’

‘Lonny? Like Lon Chaney? Or, is that short for something?’

‘No, my ma, she’s a big Montgomery Cliff fan, so she called me Lonny.’

‘I see, anyway, Lonny, here we have the best seats for the weirdest show in town. We’re at the crossroads of debauchery, Nana Plaza straight down there. The Nana hotel above us, Sukumvit at the intersection. Soon these streets will be filled with every kind of atavistic transaction ever imagined.'

Lonny looked around at the bored old men in the smoke filled bar drinking beer mid morning. It didn’t look like much.‘This place isn’t much different than some of the bars I drink in on a Sunday morning at home.’

‘Sure, sure but get in close and observe.’ John the Complainer waved at the bar. ‘All of these men came here in search of something, something different from what they get at home. Yet as soon as they arrive they seek out the familiar. Someone who speaks their own language, who they can sit with and complain to while drinking cheap beer and maybe, when the day gets old and hot, a girl to bed. That’s what they’re here for, but already they’re in over their heads.'

'Sharpers. These girls know what they’re doing and the ones who aren’t girls find the guys who can’t tell the difference or have come especially for them. They have their claws in them, soon these guys will have spent more money in this crappy bar than they did on their air fares to get here.'

Lonny examined the bar again and saw only what he saw before, mostly older guys drinking beer, some in groups, some with girls, others simply by themselves.

‘No.’ He started but the complainers phone was ringing and he was already snapping it open and engaging in another alien sounding conversation.

A waitress came and stood at the table. The complainer acknowledged her while still talking on his phone.

‘You want beer?’She asked Lonny.

‘No, no more beer.’ He shook his head dramatically to make it understood.

‘Good move.’ The complainer snapped his phone shut. He turned to the girl. ‘We want vodka, Schmirnov, none of that shit on the bottom shelf, two doubles, and two tall glasses with ice and two cans of tonic water.’ He watched her, but she wrote nothing on her pad and so he repeated it all in Thai. It sounded like a well rehearsed skit to Lonny, maybe performed for his benefit.

The drinks came and the girl curled up the wad of receipts and shoved this sheaf into a holder made from a coconut shell. The complainer mixed the drinks up and handed Lonny his just as a motorcycle taxi that cut in and out of the stalled traffic pulled onto the sidewalk in front and two girls hopped off the back waving to the complainer.

‘Here’s our girls.’ The complainer smiled and waved back sipping his drink. ‘Mines the short one, I likes ‘em dark.’

The girls bounced up the stairs and sat to either side of the complainer.

‘Lonny this is Ning and Dao, Dao means star, Ning means nothing as far as I know.’ He turned to the girl and spoke in Thai, both the girls giggled and then Ning slapped him across the arm.

‘Girls, this is Lonny. Lonny is a businessmen from New York!’

The girls looked at Lonny, pressed their palms together in front of their faces in unison while the complainer introduced them.

The complainer ordered orange juice for the both of them and the three conversed in rapid, strangled tones, referring to Lonny with nods and smiles.

‘I told them you're in town for some meetings, that you’re going to check in here for the afternoon because you’re tired and don’t want to go all the way back to your big fancy hotel. So Dao will accompany you; when you’re ready.’

‘I don’t really want... I just want to go to sleep. I mean how old is she?’ Lonny stuttered faced with the reality of being paired up with the tiny brown girl.

‘She’s old enough, you don’t want to do anything that’s up to you, get her to give you a massage, whatever, but I already told her you were good for 1,500 baht.’

Lonny’s face flushed with heat, embarrassment and alcohol thinned blood. ‘I never told you I wanted you to call me a girl.’

The complainer stood up with his girl draped over his arm. ‘Do what you want, we have a date with a whirlpool, I’m leaving you the check.’

‘Hey.’ Lonny called after him

‘See you in the Grill tomorrow morning, you can fill me in.’

Lonny turned to look at the girl who smiled and asked. ‘My name is?’

Lonny sagged and grumbled then got up, pointed towards the bathroom, the girl nodded and went back to sucking the straw stuck in her orange juice.

By the time he made it to the urinal he was dripping with sweat again. He leaned his head against the greasy tiled wall that was cool and damp against his forehead and shut his eyes while he drained his bladder.

He washed his face with water from the broken tap and ran his wet fingers through his ever thinning hair, pushing the front strands over the pink oval of baldness that gaped wider across his crown each year.

Straightening up, he extracted the gold chain and cross from inside his T-shirt and let it drape through the v of his unbuttoned outer shirt. A look he had cultivated on nights out cruising when he was in high school. In the mirror his eyes were little more then heavily hooded slits with streaks of fat red veins. He slapped himself on either cheek. ‘Tired’ he said aloud. ‘God I’m tired.’

He turned out of the toilet and started back to the table, now surrounded by a group of young men with shaved heads and full sleeves of tattoos covering their arms, wearing warm up pants and muscle shirts. Instinctively he veered to the right and kept walking towards the exist, thinking to just walk away. He didn’t want the girl anyway. Just to check into the hotel and tuck himself between sweet smelling clean sheets and go to sleep in a cool dark room.

Then he looked askance and saw the girl watching him. Smiling, she waved as the group of four crowded her in. Christ, Lonny thought. He had spent his entire adult life ducking thugs and big mouthed tough guys on loading docks and warehouses. He knew how to talk to bullies, how to diffuse anger with self deprecating humor and turn aggression into compliance.

He turned and ambled towards the table with a crooked knowing smile and stood a few comforting feet back from the hunched figures. ‘Hey guys.’ He called out amiably.

None even flinched, they kept on talking to the girl in a half English half Thai pidgin while she laughed and nodded.

Lonny met her eyes, she smiled again and he smiled back. Clearing his throat he said a little louder, ‘Excuse me guys I’m sitting right there.’ and took a step forward.

The one directly in front spun to face him, a cigarette clamped between his teeth, smoke jettisoning from his nose ‘Fuck off you cunt’, he said, in as menacing an accent as Lonny had ever heard.

He was nothing but a boy and a head shorter then Lonny as well as probably fifty pounds lighter but everything in the way he turned said he was capable, fearless.

Lonny meant to turn away but instead raised his finger and pointed to the glass on the table mumbling ‘my drink.’

The kid in front of him lunged and struck Lonny between the eyes with his forehead making a solid bone on bone crack that brought flashes of light to his eyes.

Then he was on his hands and knees and they were all around him. Pointy toed running shoes lashed at him, kicking him in the face, the ribs, the arms - up the crack of his ass and when he toppled he saw the bottoms of the shoes rain down across him.

When they judged he’d had enough they returned to the table where the girl still sat. The entire bar had gone quiet, just the rhythm of classic rock and the jumbled commentaries from several televised sporting events filled the sonic void. Eyes stared from every table as Lonny, gasping, pulled himself to his feet against a column and gazed dumbly around the room.

No one would look at him. He stumbled towards the entrance and heads turned away as he passed. He took the stairs unsteadily and stood in the hot sun sweating and bleeding, his vision blurred against the traffic passing by, trying to make out how to get back to his room.

A voice called from behind; ‘You, hey you.’ As he turned the waitress came out of the bar behind him waving a packet of white slips of paper. ‘You pay bill. Where you go? You no pay bill.’ In Lonny’s blurred vision she was a sketchy fluid shape. He fanned out the pink bills in his hand and let her take what she would.

One of the moto taxis that fluttered back and forth from the corner pulled to the curb and the driver said, ‘You hospital’ and pointed off in the vague direction where it must sit among the jumble of buildings in the haze of heat, exhaust and pain.

‘Take me to my room.’ Lonny said.

‘You go?’

‘The Mansion, Nana Mansion, I have a room there.’

The driver scrutinized him, ‘You money one hundred.’ He held his hand out. Lonny paid out another of the pink bills and mounted the rear of the bike painfully, his ribs hurt and his head spun. As the bike pulled away the patrons of the bar were in full discussion about the origins of the beating, pointing at Lonny and smacking fists into palms. Mimicking his head being battered and laughing as he made his retreat.

In his putrid room he stripped off his clothes letting them fall in a trail on the damp carpet, flipped the switch that set the air conditioner rumbling and stood under a cold shower. Now, with even his carry-on bag gone all he had left to prove he existed was his wallet and passport. Blood and grime from the bar floor washed off of him, circled the scum encrusted drain and emptied out through the unseen system of pipes into an open sewer somewhere in the streets below which emptied into the canal just visible from his balcony.