Bangkok Knights (2 page)

Later, Eddie and I were to agree that this must’ve been
Trevor’s first champagne bottle. Unless it was just all the heat and
excitement.

Trevor was opening the bottle as Eddie was wiping a couple
of eight-ounce tumblers. That is to say, he was shaking the bottle furiously
and looking straight down at it as he worked the wire free.

“Hey...,” I started to warn him, but it was too late—it
went off like a mortar. The cork caught Trevor under the left eye, knocking him
butt over bewilderment right off his chair. He hit theback of his head on the
next table as he went over and mercifully, perhaps, was rendered unconscious.
Lightning quick, Eddie managed to catch the gushing bottle and get it to a
glass before the loss could assume tragic proportions.

Seeing that everything was under control, I figured I had
better minister to our casualty, poking him fairly gently in the ribs with my
toe, and saying “Trevor? Trev?”

“Hey, this is good stuff.” Eddie, meanwhile, had filled
both tumblers and the champagne flute, and he was sipping appreciatively.
“How’s old Trev?” he asked.

“Out cold. He’s breathing okay, though, I think. Reckon we
should get a doctor?”

“Naw. He’ll probably come around in a minute or two. Looks
like he’ll have a real shiner, mind you.”

In truth, his eye was already swelling, and it promised bigger
and more colorful things to come. Lek had slipped a towel under his head and
Meow was mopping at his face with another. Lek was also muttering under her
breath. The mynah birds had started a committee meeting, Nixon trying to bring
things to order by reiterating
“Mao”
in an unpleasant but authoritative
tone. The others mostly made traffic noises and assorted squawks and whistles.

“Holy smokes, if that cork had gotten him directly in the
eye...” Eddie started to snicker. We both collapsed laughing into our chairs,
taking care at the same time not to spill our drinks. “Did you see the way his
head snapped back?” “Do you think maybe it was a suicide attempt?” “This stuff
goes down a treat; top you up?” “Okay. Shouldn’t we leave some for Trevor,
though?” “He’s got that glass I poured him, there. We’re entitled to salvage
rights, aren’t we? I mean, if it hadn’t been for us, there wouldn’t be any at
all.”

“That’s it. Salvage rights. Yeah, fill ‘er up.” This was
turning out to be one of Eddie’s better Saturday brunches, all things
considered.

In the course of time, Trevor came to, and while waiting
for me to get him a taxi which he said should take him to the
other
Sheraton,
he gave his glass of champagne to Lek’s sister, who’d never tried champagne
before and who quickly got quite silly.

Eddie tried to convince Nixon he should say “Meow’s
mad”,
but this finally caused Lek to become angry and she threatened to set him
to painting the loft.

Such was his condition when he departed, that Trevor left
his computer print-out behind. Eddie had it delivered to him at the Sheraton,
and they all got a letter of thanks a week later.

About five weeks after the morning he shot himself, to
everyone * s surprise Trevor reappeared at the Cheri-Tone. Good old Trev was
carrying a big bottle of champagne, already chilled.

“All
right,
said Eddie. “This could get to be a habit.”

“I thought you were supposed to be in Manila,” I said.

“No need to look further,” Trevor replied, wearing the
inane grin of a besotted swain. “I may be in love.” The impression of
besottedness was exacerbated by his newly naked upper lip. He looked even
younger. “I canceled all my dates.”

“Whoo, boy. That cork did more damage than we suspected.”
Eddie looked pretty concerned “And she’s vetoed the moustache already, has she?
Where did you meet this girl, anyway?”

“She’s a waitress. Quite a nice place, really — it’s
called Sonny’s Cherie. She works in the daytime, but she’s got today off.”

Trevor asked me if I’d like to open the champagne, and Eddie
set up some nicely polished glasses.

Sonny’ s Cherie, eh? Eddie and I tried not to look at each
other.

“So where’s the lady; back at your hotel?”

“She isn’t
staying
with me.” Trevor was indignant.

“Why not?”

“What do you mean ‘Why not’?”

“’Why not’ is what I mean.”

“Listen, this girl still lives with her parents. I don’t
think she’s ever even had a boyfriend. She really likes me, though. She says we
should get married.”

“And you’re in love. How long have you known her?”

“I met her the day after I left here. At lunchtime.”

“Oh, well, then; it’s been quite a courtship,” Eddie
conceded. “Friendship blossoming into love, don’t you know. Exchange of
background details, and all that. That’s okay, then. You’ve got my blessing.”

I figured Eddie could’ve eased off a bit; after all, he was
drinking the man’s champagne. Again.

“So where is she, then?”

“She’s here, in the front, talking to Lek and Meow. I’m
going to get them.”

As soon as Trevor had disappeared inside, Eddie and I
exchanged bemused stares.

“It’s a miracle,” I said. “A virgin working at Sonny’s
Cherie.
A virgin!”

“Could be one of these ‘born-again’ virgins you hear
about. That must be it. I wonder how long she’s been a virgin?”

At that moment the happy couple emerged from the back to
be greeted by wolf-whistles from the birds, not to mention a startled chorus of
“Legs!” from Eddie and myself. Not what you’d call discretion, but it was a
Saturday morning, and we were more than a little surprised. For it was none
other than the legendary Legs, aka ‘Long Tall Lek’, who used to be the star
dancer at Shaky Jake’s,’ way back, before her feet started acting up and she
had to retire.

“Eddie. Harry,” she said, not too thrilled to see us. And
I don’t know how she could have gotten my name wrong after all those colas I’d
bought her when she was thirsty.

To say Trevor was registering consternation would about
sum it up, though maybe on the side of understatement. His ears were
practically incandescent, and, even without his moustache, he looked sterner
than I’d yet seen him.

We drank his champagne, though this time Trevor managed to
scarf more of it than anyone else, and we talked about old times with Legs.

Eighteen months is a long time for any single, healthy man
to spend in Kuwait. Eighteen
days
is a long time, come to that. When such
a man does finally come out, not just into the world, but into the world of
Thai womanhood, then perhaps he can be forgiven if he loses his sense of
proportion. Even if his name is Trevor Perry and he has to keep his
girlfriends’ phone numbers on a floppy disk.

Lek and her sister are very keen on Trevor. They say he
looks ‘smart’, he’s polite, and his ears stick out just like Prince Charlie’s.
Not only that, but he’s blond and almost rich. And this is not evento mention
his refined British accent, though Meow says trying to understand him is worse
than trying to understand a Chinese speaking Thai. They’ve sworn to help him
find a nice girl when he comes back in eight months time on another foray.

Trevor came around again the day before he left for Kuwait, bearing yet another bottle of the bubbly. Meow, for one, was developing quite a
taste for the stuff. All’s well that ends well, Trevor allowed, and he thought
he’d come out of it in better shape than he might have. In fact, he said, he
felt somewhat beholden to us all, and felt there were rich lessons in life to
be salvaged from the whole experience. Meow smiled at him fondly, though I’d
give you ten to one she’d really understood no more than the word ‘rich’.

“Good luck! Auk! Wow! Ha, ha.”

“Shut up, Nixon,” Eddie said. “I´ve got a headache. I
should never drink champagne in the morning.”

I had a funny feeling, nevertheless, that there would be
further occasion for champagne breakfasts at the Cheritone. Meow was just
smiling and smiling.

“Now, gosh,” Leary roared. “Just what is this darned slop
you have put on my plate, here?” Leary always roared, mind you, so nobody took
much notice.

A few of us had come over for Sunday brunch and to have a
look at Leary’s new house. Deep in a lane , a
soi
off Sukhumvit Road, with a big jungley garden and fish ponds, the place was intelligently
designed, combining some of the best features of traditional Thai architecture
with the option of air-conditioning. We were in the spacious dining nook,
looking out through glass doors flanked by cast iron temple lions into an
enormous stand of bamboo and yellow-green crotons.

Nancy, Leary’s long-time girlfriend, and the maid had gone
to a lot of trouble, laying on a lavish spread of both Western and Thai foods. Nancy was Singaporean Chinese, but she loved Thai food.

I’m something of a picky eater, myself, and, having
already had two bowls of
jok,
a delicious savory rice porridge with
garlic and pork and stuff; sausages, eggs, and home-fries; toast and peanut
butter; croissants and jam; as well as a phat
-thai,
or Thai-style noodles,
that my lady-friend couldn’t eat, I was quite full. I was really only picking
at a plate of pineapple, papaya, watermelon, and rambutans, just to be polite.
Eddie Alder, who on the other hand was a bit of a trencherman, was still on the
second helping of his sausage-and-egg phase.

But Leary had found something strange on his plate, and he
wanted us to believe he wasn’t pleased. He always made it clear he wasn’t one
to eat this crazy foreign food, never mind he had lived in Thailand on and off
for quite a few years, not to mention Indonesia, Singapore, Korea, and probably
some other places as well.

“Okay, Nance, now I know man ain’t nothin’ but a device
for turning food into fertilizer. Gosh, you know. Darn. That’s common
knowledge. But here you’ve gone and made Mankind
redundant!
Do you hear?
That’s
right.
Redundant Gosh.”

Nancy simply smiled and took away the offending plate.
Eddie’s Lek also smiled, and she asked Leary if he’d like more coffee. When he
said sure, gosh darn it, she smiled some more and managed to miss his cup and
pour a wee dollop of the steaming brew right into his lap. Accidentally, of
course, although you had to notice she didn’t leave off smiling.

“Gosh,” said Leary. “Darn it!” I don’t believe that coffee
was very hot, however, or he would’ve said more than that.

Nancy, for her part, never paid much attention to Leary’s
little ways. I guess she couldn’t have lived with him for the past five years,
if she’d been bothered.

Leary habitually seasoned his conversation with ‘gosh’ and
‘darn’. Gosh was salt, and darn was pepper, you could say. Sometimes, if a
communication required a bit of mustard, he might go so far as to say
‘frigging’. That’s how I knew the coffee wasn’t too hot, otherwise he would’ve
almost certainly described it as ‘friggin’ hot’, and maybe even asked Lek if
she wasn’t a friggin’ spastic, as well, taking care to direct an apologetic
‘gosh’ towards Eddie at the same time.

I had it on good advice — no less an authority than
Eddie’s Lek — Leary’s language used to be rather more pungent still; in fact,
he reportedly could use linguistic condiments so exotic even his associates on
the oil rigs had been known to blush as brightly as young maidens at a
pantie-raid. Lek had told me it was Nancy who was responsible for Leary’s
retreat to this blander salt-and-pepper vocabulary, with occasional lashings of
mustard. But of course that couldn’tbe so, because Leary always said that a
woman’s place was two meters behind her man, preferably with an armload of
groceries and a sock in her mouth. You knew that Leary wasn’t ever going to
take any guff from any broad, no sir. That’s
right.
Gosh.

Leary was an expert on women. You only had to ask him.
What he didn’t know about the ladies was probably wrong and you wouldn’t want
to know it anyway. So when he heard of young Ernest’s problem, that Sunday
morning, he stepped in with both feet to set the wounded swain straight.

“Is that all? Haw! Let me tell you this: if you lose a
fiancee and seventy-five cents, then you’ve lost six bits, and that’s just
about nothing, these days. Gosh!” Leary bellowed. Then he laughed, and the
doors to the garden rattled in their frames. “Darn!” he added.

Ernest hadn’t been saying much of anything; he had merely
been circling the breakfast buffet like an ailing shark—puzzled and a little
hurt that he couldn’t bring to this feast the gusto it deserved. It had taken Nancy and Lek about two minutes to determine the problem and to pump him for the details.

Ernest and his fiancee, the lovely Noi, were no longer
affianced, as of the previous evening. It seemed Ernest had suddenly gotten the
sneaky feeling that Noi was more in love with his robust bank account than she
was with his also robust person independently of its bank account Or so Ernest
told the ladies, at least in words to that effect

In just the past month, Ernest had become acquainted with
a sick uncle from upcountry who would probably live, but only if certain
expensive medical measures were taken without much delay. Then there was Noi’s
sister, who had been struggling to survive her eighth term at Ramkhamhaeng, the
open university, and who had been living on bananas because they were the
cheapest fruit on the street right then and they fill you up. Joy at these
opportunities to contribute to the common welfare had been mixed with some
unease. Then Ernest, already annoyed to find that certain astrological advice
was going to delay the marriage for some time, discovered another complication
— there was to be an unanticipated expense, unanticipated, at least, on his
part. He was going to have to reimburse Noi’s parents for the cost of bringing
her up such a lovely and gracious young thing. The amount of this lump payment
could be negotiated, but there would be considerable loss of face all ‘round if
he made any real fuss.