Asian Heat (7 page)

Ay was in her
late twenties. She was a bit chunky but Dave figured that was probably because
she had only given birth a few months earlier. Ay had a tattoo of a dragon down
her right arm and he reckoned she had probably been a bargirl in the past.
 
Obviously she had fallen pregnant and
returned home which was why Zed had been sent to Bangkok.

Zed’s mother said
something in Thai and Lek nodded. “She say that she’s made the small house
ready for you,” said Lek.
 
“You can
sleep there. She’s put a fan there for you to keep you cool.”

“Great,” said
Dave, beaming. The fact that he was sleeping away from the main house gave him
more of a chance of linking up with Zed. That was what he hoped, anyway.

Lek and Zed took
him to show where he’d be sleeping. It was little more than a teak shed with a
corrugated iron roof and a wooden bed around which was gathered a mosquito net.
There was no bathroom and the floor-mounted fan got its power from a flex that
ran out of the door and up the side of the main house.

‘There’s no light
but there are candles,” said Lek. “Just be careful you don’t set your mosquito
net on fire.”

She drew back the
mosquito net and showed him the bed. It was a grubby mattress lying on the
floor. No sheet. No cover. Just the mattress. “Perfect,” said Dave, lying
through his teeth,

“If you want we
can take you to a resort,” said Lek.
 
“The rooms there have air.”

“This is fine,”
said Dave.

“Not five-star,”
said Lek.

Dave smiled at
Zed. “It’s your home and I’m happy to see your home,” he said.

Zed nodded
enthusiastically. As they walked back to the main house, Dave noticed three
young men, all dressed in dirty jeans and faded t-shirts and lounging on rush
mats. “Dave, can you buy them beer?” asked Lek.

“Beer?”

“They know Zed
has come back and they want beer,” said Lek.
 
Zed nodded in agreement.

“Who are they?”

“Cousins,” said
Lek. “Just two hundred baht enough.”

The two girls
were looking at him expectantly so Dave took out his wallet and gave the money
to Zed. She smiled and gave him a wai and then went over to the group. She
handed the money to the oldest boy and he grinned and the group walked off down
the road.

There was a
concrete structure under the stairs and Dave realised it was a bathroom.
Through the open door he could see a squat toilet and a large barrel that was
obviously what passed for a shower. There was a table next to the bathroom and
a single gas burner connected to a waist-high propane gas cylinder. The
kitchen.

As Zed and Lek
helped Zed’s mother prepare food, the teenagers came back with a case of Chang
Beer and a bag of ice.
 
The group
had now swelled to six.
 
Lek pulled
out some more mats and the men sat down and started opening bottles of
beer.
 
One of them waved Dave over
and Dave sat down with them. He was handed a beer and an ice-filled glass and
although he doesn’t speak much Thai he was made welcome.
  
There was an old dirt-encrusted
television on a wooden table and Lek connected it to one of the many extension
leads snaking around the floor and handed the remote to Dave. He managed to
find a channel showing Italian football and the Thais seemed to appreciate it
so he settled back and drank beer and watched the game.
 
The Thais drank quickly and within half
an hour the beer had gone and the guys were looking at Dave.
 
Dave realised that they expected him to
buy more beer and when he saw them looking over at him he grinned, took out his
wallet, and gave them five hundred baht.

Dave figured the
more beer he drank, the less he’d think about the food that he was about to be
served, all of which seemed to be being cooked in one large wok.
 
Once a dish was prepared it was placed
on a mat on the floor where flies would swarm around it. Large moths were
fluttering around the two light bulbs that illuminated the kitchen and bathroom
area, and mosquitoes were constantly settling on his exposed skin.
 
A couple of cats were wandering around
the cooking area and no one seemed concerned at the way they kept sniffing at
the plates of food.

Dave was on his
third beer when the food arrived and it didn’t taste bad at all. There was
barbecued fish that was really tasty and they had made a spicy prawn soup that
was as good as anything he’d eaten in a Thai restaurant.
 
Dave wasn’t a big fan of rice but he
was hungry and wolfed it down.

After the
food,
 
he drank another couple of
beers and he ended up being carried to his bed by two of the teenagers. The
last thing he remembered was handing over another five hundred baht for beer
and then he groped his way through the mosquito net and passed out.

It was late
morning when he woke, with a fierce hangover and a raging thirst. He wrapped a
towel around his waist, picked up his wash bag and headed for the bathroom. The
young men were still sitting under the main house, drinking beer and watching
TV. They grinned and cheered as Dave went into the bathroom.
 
The concrete walls were covered in
cobwebs and the smell from the squat toilet made his stomach lurch. He cleaned
his teeth and used a blue plastic bowl to throw water over himself.
 
When he left the bathroom, Lek and Zed
were sitting on a mat eating what appeared to be the leftovers from the
previous evening. “Are you hungry, Dave?” asked Lek.

Dave hadn’t seen
a fridge so he figured that the food had been left out all night. “I’m fine,”
he said. “I don’t usually eat breakfast.”

He went back to
his shack and changed into a clean shirt and jeans and pulled a Singha Beer
baseball cap out of his bag. The sun was fierce and he didn’t want to burn his
scalp.

Dave’s plan was
to show Zed what a good guy he was, and he figured that the best way to do that
was to spread a little money around.
 
He went back outside and asked Lek to show him the inside of her
house.
 
In fact there was very
little to see – there was just one large room that ran the whole length
of the house, criss-crossed with heavy beams.
 
There were two windows at one end but the rest of the
windows were boarded up with sheets of corrugated iron. In fact there weren’t
windows at all – just holes in the walls where windows had yet to be
fitted. He asked Lek why the windows hadn’t been installed. “No money,” she
said.

Dave told her to
ask Zed’s mother how much it would cost to install the windows.
 
While Lek went outside to talk to Zed’s
mother, Dave had a look around.
 
Not that there was much to see, just three double mattresses surrounded
by mosquito nets, and two racks with clothes on hangers, and cardboard boxes
full of clothes. There was dust everywhere and stains from where the rain had
come in through the roof and the boarded up windows. There was a single
electric socket into which were plugged two extension leads, one to a fan and
the other to a light bulb on the wall.
 
There was no furniture. No tables, no cupboards, no chairs.
Zed’s family slept on bare mattresses and sat and ate on the floor. It was
worse than a prison, though truth be told everyone seemed happy enough.

He went
downstairs where Lek was waiting for him. “The builder says he can do for
fifteen thousand baht,” she said.

Dave thought
about it for a few seconds and then decided, what the hell, it was less than he
earned in a couple of days driving his minicab. And he was starting to feel
genuinely sorry for Zed and her family.
 
He told Lek that he needed to get to an ATM and she said the nearest was
in the town but she had a friend who had a pick-up truck who could drive them.
 
Zed came over and asked what was
happening.
 
“We’re going shopping,”
said Dave.

And that’s how he
spent the rest of the day.
 
Lek’s
friend turned out to be an uncle who had a rusting Toyota pick-up. He and Zed
squashed into the front seat while Lek and two of the young men sat in the
back.
 
They drove to the town and
Dave withdrew money on two of his credit cards.
 
He gave Zed fifteen thousand baht and told her that was to
put the windows in and she yelped and hugged him.

Then he took her
to the one department store in town and bought a Chinese-made LCD TV for six
thousand baht and a fridge for four thousand baht. There was a small furniture
department and Dave bought a small table and four chairs and then he took Zed
shopping for clothes and bought her half a dozen dresses, a couple of pair of
jeans and some Nike trainers. Each time he bought her something she would
squeal and hug him.

There was a small
supermarket and Dave bought a loaf of bread, some slices of cheese and a can of
corned beef, figuring that would get him through the day.

They drove back
to Zed’s house and Zed rushed up the stairs and returned with her mother. Zed
excitedly showed her mother the things they’d bought and then took out the
money that Dave had given her.
 
At
first she didn’t understand about the money but Zed and Lek explained again and
she solemnly thanked Dave with tears in her eyes.

Dave helped tune
the TV and spent the rest of the day drinking beer with the local men.
 
Zed arranged a couple of fans but even
with them playing it was still almost unbearably hot under the house.
 
The group had now swollen to eight and
while they were nice enough guys they were clearly bone idle and expected to be
waited on hand and foot by the women.
 
They must have known that the girls were working as hookers in Bangkok
but didn’t care so long as the beer kept flowing. Dave was starting to realise
just how tough – and unfair - Zed’s life was.

Each time Zed
walked by she flashed Dave a beaming smile, and she kept checking that he was
all right and didn’t need anything. In the afternoon she borrowed a motorcycle
and drove him to the family’s farmland. There were a few acres growing some
crop or other but her English wasn’t good enough to explain to him what it was.

He spent the
evening watching television with her and swatting the mosquitoes that seemed to
prefer his Western skin to the Thais.

Dave decided to
have a shower before he turned in. He grabbed his towel and headed for the
bathroom. He was thinking about Zed and how he could get her into his bed that
night so he didn’t realise that the bathroom was occupied. It was Zed’s mother,
and she was bathing herself.
 
She
had her back to him and it took a second or two to realise that it wasn’t Lek
because she had a fit body and her skin was beautifully smooth and unblemished.
She hadn’t heard the door open and he stood transfixed as she threw a bowl of
water down her back. Her skin glistened under the light from the single bare
bulb and the water cascaded down her back and legs.
 
Dave gasped. She was quite stunning. She bent down, scooped
another bowlful of water and poured it over her back. Dave caught a glimpse of
soft, perfect breasts and his heart raced.
 
She straightened up and shook her long black hair and it
snaked across her back like a silk curtain.
 

Dave realised
that she was about to turn towards him so he slipped out, just in time to see
Zed walking down the steps. She was carrying a candle and a box of matches.
“For you,” she said.

He thanked
her.
 
“I’m so glad you brought me
to your home,” he said.

She nodded and
smiled.

“I’m happy to
help you and your family,” he added.

“Thank you so
much,” said Zed.

“You know I’m a
good man, right?”

“A very good
man,” said Zed. “You make me very happy.”

“I want to ask
you something, Zed.”

Zed nodded.
“Okay.”

‘Tonight, can you
stay with me?” She frowned, not understanding him. He nodded at the shack. “I’m
not happy to sleep alone.”

“If I stay with
you, my mother not happy,” said Zed.

“Please,” said
Dave.

“Okay, maybe,”
said Zed, but Dave could tell from the uncertainty in her voice that she really
meant to say “no”.

“It would really make
me happy,” he said.

Before Zed could
say anything else, the bathroom door opened and Zed’s mother came out, dressed
in a long nightgown and carrying her towel.
 
She smiled at Dave and said something in Thai.

“She said good
night,” said Zed.
 
Zed’s mother
headed up the steps.

Dave went into
the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and threw a few bowlfuls of water over
himself but he didn’t feel much cleaner. He wrapped himself in his towel.
 
When he went back outside, Zed had
gone.
 
There were two young men sitting
on a mat watching the new LCD TV and they waved bottles of beer at him but Dave
had learned his lesson from the previous evening and he went straight to bed.