Everyone Burns (27 page)

“Gently, David, gently. Slowly, darling. I don’t want to come yet.”

But I can’t stop now, and I eat her greedily, her juices flowing into my mouth and down my chin. As she approaches climax, her hips rise and fall and she thrusts herself against my lips.  I have to be careful not to bite her.

“You – greedy – bastard,” she pants
, and suddenly she releases my head and arches her back. As she comes I wrap my arms around her thighs and press them against the side of my head, burying my wet face into her. I continue feasting on her more slowly until she shoves my head away.

“Enough, David. That’s enough.”

She pulls me on top of her and kisses me hard on the mouth. Then she wipes my face with her hand and observes, “I don’t think you’ve licked me dry, my pet. Just the opposite, in fact.”

“Sorry about that.”

“So you should be.” She rolls me off her, slaps my shoulder and says in mock disapproval, “I ask for gentleness and you eat me like some wild beast.”

“You love it.”

“Fuck you,” she says, and kisses me hard on the mouth again. “I didn’t want to come that quickly.”

“Next time will be longer.”

She looks down at my penis which is hard again and the glistening end is against her thigh, making it sticky.

“Are you ready for some serious penetration?” I ask.

She smiles and brushes back a strand of hair. “I need to ring my husband first,” she says.

“You’re not serious.”

“Oh but I am.”

She stretches her body across me to take
the cell phone from her bag.

“Do you expect me to lie here while you call the Chief?” I say incredulously.

“Why not? I’ll only be a minute. Otherwise he might get suspicious.”

She presses some buttons with one hand and strokes my cock with the other. Then lying on my shoulder she proceeds to have a conversation
about her friend and how she’ll be spending some money on the credit cards tomorrow to cheer her up. Charoenkul doesn’t argue.

Towards the end, she slides down me, still talking.

“No,” she says to her husband, “I haven’t eaten yet. I thought I’d have something in my room.” Her mouth hovers over my penis and she looks at me naughtily. She licks her lips and raises an eyebrow. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says into the phone, “something hot I think. I feel the need for something warm inside me.”

She hangs up. I pull her head away from my groin area and
pin her down while I slip on a studded condom.

“How romantic,” Kat whispers. “You do care after all.”

She slaps me and bites my neck, then pulls back suddenly.

“
Now David,” she says seriously, “I want you to fuck me very, very hard. Very hard. Do you understand?” Her eyes flash.

“Yes, Mrs
. Charoenkul.”

She
puts her mouth to mine and we go at each other like animals.

As I shower afterwards, I notice Kat has drawn blood from me in several places. There are scratches on my back, sides and abdomen from her nails and teeth marks on my neck, the inside of my right thigh and on my left forearm. My lower lip is swollen where she was chewing it over-enthusiastically. It looks like I’ve just been in a fight. Which in a sense, I have.

The lady herself, of course, is
completely unmarked; although she may have some internal bruising in one particular location.

I’d put my cell
phone on silent prior to our session, and now I see I have two missed calls; one from Charoenkul and one from Wayan. I tell Kat I need to make a few calls and I’ll be slipping out for a short while. Kat is too busy reapplying her makeup to be bothered about this.

“Hurry back,
tirak,” she says distractedly examining her mascara.

Before I leave the room I stealthily switch on the recording device that is in my camera bag, and leave the bag on the desk behind a vase
holding lilies, roses and baby breath flowers.

Outside
and away from the hotel entrance the street is dark and stuffy, but, as always there are people about. The mango seller is chatting to a friend, and a couple of bored taxi drivers are smoking in their cabs. There is no sign of the limping man.

I call Wayan and her voice has a frightened edge. She tells me there is a car parked on the unlit road opposite our house, and she thinks she has heard someone moving around outside. Given that Wayan is not given to imaginary fears, I am immediately concerned. I tell her to stay indoors and ensure all the doors are locked and the windows closed, and that I will call her back in five minutes.

Then I ring Charoenkul.

“How is it going?” he asks.

“Nothing happening, as I thought,” I reply. “Your wife went to the hospital with her friend and returned to the hotel a couple of hours ago. She’s still there. I’m outside the Indo-China now.”

He wants to chat further but I cut him off.

“Listen,” I say. “I think there is a prowler at my house. I want you to send a car around. There is a woman in my house on her own.”

He snorts. “Do you think my policemen have got nothing better to do? Your maid is probably just being hysterical.”

“My
housekeeper
never gets hysterical,” I shout down the phone at this slur on Wayan. “If she’s anxious, it will be because she has good cause. And if I wasn’t doing this favour for you,
I’d
be there now to sort it out. I want a patrol car sent to my house
immediately
, and I want it to stay there until morning.”

“My, my, we are tetchy this evening, Braddock. I’ll see what I can do.”

“I want you to do better than that,” I say firmly. “I’m calling my housekeeper back now, and I’ll stay on the line until your car gets there. Otherwise our deal is off, and you can get the guy with the limp to watch your wife.”

I can sense him pursing his lips in disapproval at this
farang insolence, but after a beat he says, “All right, I’ll send a car. But it’s probably nothing.”

I redial Wayan’s number and tell her a police car is on the way. She is instantly apologetic, but I tell her not to worry and that I want her to stay on the phone until the car arrives.

I talk in a soothing voice about nothing much in particular. After about ten minutes she reports the patrol car has turned up; and the other car has driven off as it was arriving. One of the police officers comes to the front door and I instruct Wayan to hand him the phone.

I tell the officer in my most commanding Thai that I am a personal friend of the Chief and that I want him outside my house and awake until morning. I don’t give him much chance to speak other than to say a compliant
very well, I understand, sir,
at the end of the call. Then I tell Wayan to go to bed: I will leave my phone on all night and she is to call me if she is at all worried.

“Thank you, Mr
. David. I am sorry I cause such a problem for you.”

“It is no problem, my dear. Now go and get some rest. I’ll ring you tomorrow morning.”

Back in Kat’s room, she has changed into a black silk negligee and there is a bottle of champagne on ice.

“Why did you put your makeup
on again?” I ask. “You know it’s going to get smudged.”

She laughs.

“You wish.”

*       *       *       *       *

The digital clock says 02:47, and I become aware that Kat is not in bed beside me. The curtains to the sliding door are partially open and through the glass I can see her outline on the balcony. She is wearing one of the white hotel robes and is leaning over the railing with her back to me.

I slip on a robe and join her. I put my
hands around her waist, and as she turns I can see she has been crying.

“Kat,” I say alarmed, “
what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Give me a cigarette,” she says.

“But you don’t smoke.”

“Just give me a cigarette.”

I fetch my Marlboros and light one for each of us.

“What’s the matter, darling?” I ask softly.

She shakes her head slowly then rests her body against me.

“My best friend is dying,” she says quietly. “We treat life like a game, and we laugh at it. But it’s serious.
You know? We can’t joke about it forever. There comes a time when –”

She stops and wipes away the tears from her face.

I have never seen her vulnerable before. I pull her to me and kiss the top of her head. I don’t know what to say.

We stand like this, smoking in silence until she throws her cigarette over the balcony towards the river. Then she takes my cigarette and throws that away
too.

Kat
wraps my arms tightly around her and looks up into my eyes.

“David,” she whispers, “I would like you to hold me and make love to me gently.
I know you don’t love me. I know that. But just for an hour I’d like you to pretend that you do. Will you do that for me? Please?”

9

“In the morning they wore each other’s face”

Ted Hughes, Lovesong

Some people are straightforward. What you see is indeed what you get. Their words have no subtext and their hearts are open. Such individuals possess a naïveté which is both striking and humbling, and which inspires trust in others because these people are themselves trusting. They see life essentially through childlike eyes and, because of that, the more cynical members of the human race often consider them foolish and unsophisticated. Those more experienced in the ways of the world view them as easy marks, such stuff as the con-man’s wet dreams are made on.

Straightforward people are very much in the minority, and in today’s world where idealism
has become unfashionable and the concept of self-sacrifice unfathomable, they are in all likelihood an endangered species.

For the rest of us, lying and deception is a necessary social skill
. One we practice every day. Those – like myself – suckled at the breast of Perfidious Albion especially see the public expression of vulnerability as anathema. We harbour an abhorrence for emotional weakness; and we Brits are by no means the only ones. On a dog-eat-dog planet if you are to thrive, you have to be in control of yourself. Or at least appear to be.

So we wear masks. We hide behind them. We feel naked without them.
They are our public face. So far as our acquaintances are concerned they
are
us. Sometimes we even fool ourselves, at least for a while.

Our mask is like an energy shield, fabricated of our own deep insecurities and fears. But the cost of maintaining the shields day after day is high. Without someone with whom we feel safe to remove the mask and power down the shields, we exhaust ourselves. Absent a trusted loved one and
the respite from role-playing they can bring, there is always the risk of neurotic collapse: the mask is torn away and the exposed human face is presented to a mocking world.

Last night Kat’s mask slipped. For an hour I glimpsed the real woman who dwells behind the façade of the Police Chief’s wife; a flesh-and-blood person with fears and complexities and needs. But by this morning she had disappeared again.
The energy shield was once more firmly in place, and the tenderness of the moonlight consigned to the land of never-was.

She booted me unceremoniously out of her bed and sent me to my own hotel for a shower
, shave and change of clothing. Trust was manifestly not on her agenda at this juncture, neither was a desire to repeat our intimacy of the hours before.

On the issue of trust, maybe she had a point. While she was attending to her toilet the previous evening I had lifted from her mobile phone the numbers she had called yesterday, and switched off the recording device, slipping it to the bottom of the camera bag for later playback.

Now sitting in my hotel room I reflect that she had called three phone numbers. Judging from the time of the calls, I’m guessing the first call was to her friend Sumalee; the second (of course) was to her husband. As for the third? Well, the time of the third call was when I was outside on the phone to Wayan and sorting out a police car. With luck my recording device – which is pretty sensitive, the best the private surveillance industry can offer – has captured one side of the third conversation. I rewind the tape and switch it onto ‘play’.

For the first couple of minutes there is just the sound of Kat moving around the room
, humming to herself. Then she makes a call. I can’t hear the voice at the other end, but from the tone of her voice and the words that follow I know it’s a Thai man.

Hello, tirak. I’m so sorry … Yes, I know, it’s not exactly what I had in mind either. My friend has just had some really bad news … She’s very upset, I’m going to have to stay with her tonight, but tomorrow I’ll see you, I promise … I know, I know … I’m going shopping with Sumalee tomorrow morning to cheer her up, but I should be able come to you
, my dear, say around three o’clock … Yes, to your room. I can’t wait to see it, I’ve never stayed in a penthouse before, especially one frequented by members of Arabian royal families … Good view of the river? Even from the Jacuzzi? Sounds wonderful! I wish I could be with you tonight, but I can’t … I know … Oh, not far. You’re only a couple of hundred metres from my hotel. I might even walk to you … [sound of Kat’s laughter] ... I’ll be wearing high heels, don’t worry, and something black … Ha ha, you’re a naughty boy … Of course, I’ll stay tomorrow night ... Yes, ALL night. So you’d better get plenty of rest tonight, you’ll need all your strength tomorrow … [Kat laughs again] … Oh, that’s so bad … Now you will leave a key card for me at reception, won’t you? I don’t want to have to call your room from the lobby like some common prostitute … You are outrageous … ha.

There is only one
Sheikh-friendly hotel on the river with a penthouse close to the Indo-China. The outrageously expensive Carlsson Sharifah.
The lobby has a truly enormous water feature you could drown an elephant in, the manager is reputedly a baron and
the bell-boys all wear Prada. Nice: somebody’s got some cash to splash. Oh frailty, thy name sure is woman. One woman, at least. Plus
she might even
walk
. Kat volunteering to walk, for goodness’ sake. Must be quite some guy she’s seeing.

I listen to the rest of the tape then erase everything from the
end of her phone conversation.

I check my watch: time to ring Wayan, she should be up and dressed
by now.

“Mr
. David?”

“Wayan, are you OK?”

“Yes, yes, I am fine. You don’t have to worry about me. The policemen have gone now. Everything is all right.”

“I
do
worry about you. Did you manage to get some sleep?”

“I am fine, Mr
. David. Yes, I have slept. Now I have to go and do some shopping.”

“Do you want me to come home today? I’m not sure I want you to be alone tonight.”

“It is not necessary.”

“I can have the police car back again.”

For sure I want a police car back there again tonight.

“Please, I do not want to make a fuss,” she says, embarrassed.

“Well, I’ll call you later.”

I consider what to do about Mrs. Charoenkul. But then she calls me.

“David,
tirak, how are we going to handle today?”

“How do you mean, Kat?” I ask with my best innocent voice.

“Well, Sumalee will be here shortly. She’s just phoned me. We’re going to go shopping, we’ll have a good girls’ chat and then later I’m going to her house. I’ll probably stay the night there.”

“Sounds like a good idea. I’m sure she could do with your support.”

“Exactly. She spoke to her husband last night and – well, I don’t want to bore you with all this.”

I have to hand it to Mrs
. C: it’s not everyone that could use an old friend’s terminal illness as cover for adultery without
some
pang of guilt. But she carries it off beautifully.

“Listen, Kat, there’s no point in my following you around today,” I say doing my own bit of bare-faced lying. “Your shopping will be sufficient evidence of how you’ve spent the day
without my needing to take photographs. Besides, the Chief can check out the credit card receipts for himself if he’s not satisfied.”

“That’s right, he can,” she says, sounding relieved.

“I’ve got other stuff I’d like to do today, so just call me later and let me know which shops you’ve been to so we can co-ordinate our stories in case the Chief rings. I’ll then see you on the flight back tomorrow.”

“OK,
tirak, that sounds like a plan. Are you going over to Patpong today to see some girlies, then?”

“
That’s hardly likely. My penis looks like a cheese grater’s been at it. Actually most of my body does. I’ll need a couple of days to recover before I go anywhere near a woman again.”

“You say the sweetest things. I’ll call you later.”

“Looking forward to it. Missing you already,” I say in my best American accent.

Kat
smacks me a kiss and hangs up.

There is a powerful smell of mendacity in the air.
Kat and I are both such good liars, we really should be married. Either that or in politics together.

I feel ever so slightly miffed, although I have no right to
be. It’s not like Kat owes me anything; not even an honest account of the real reason for her presence in Bangkok. It’s the Chief who should be miffed, having a wife who betrays him with two men simultaneously (well, not
exactly
simultaneously, but you get my drift). Of course, that poor bastard doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Moreover he’s not about to learn the truth from me.

My only consoling thought is that Kat’s lover will be stirring
my
porridge, not the other way round. Anyway, leaving all that seamy stuff aside it’s time for a scrub up and a good breakfast. I didn’t eat much yesterday – if you discount Mrs. C – and I’m hungry.

I jump on the back of X’s bike and we roar off into the Bangkok traffic. I’ve told him to ride like we’re being followed and I want to lose the tail. That’s because I’ve started wondering if I
am
being followed – not by the limping one, that would be too obvious; but by
somebody
. This may be paranoia, but of course just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.

X takes
his instruction seriously and tears between the cars and other bikes, giving a hair’s breadth clearance at times. I get the impression he’s done this before. Maybe he’s related to the taxi driver I had yesterday. He cuts up a tuk-tuk driver who yells something obscene at him. X merely gives him the finger. I could get to like this guy.

T
he rushing air against my face is hot and seemingly devoid of oxygen. The capital is baking hot already. The fumes, heat, noise, dust and overweening presence of excess humanity combine to evoke a world straight off one of Hieronymus Bosch’s canvases: hell on earth.

How I love Bangkok! It’s so teeming with everything that should be forbidden. I’m not just talking about the sex trade. I also mean
the ways of driving, the ways of putting up buildings, environmental management arrangements, the continual attention of con artists and snatch-thieves, and the quaint local custom of peeing in side-streets. This urban potpourri currently incorporates election posters splattered onto any unguarded vertical surface and coloured lights and other decorations sprouting up ahead of the Chinese New Year festivities. If I could get enough air into my lungs I would laugh with joy.

X drops me
at the Krung Thep Plaza off Sukhumvit Road. I don’t want to hang around here too long. There is always the remote chance that Kat’s shopping spree will bring her here at some point in the day and I don’t want to bump into her accidentally. I’m keen not to arouse any suspicions that I might be following her, otherwise my task becomes doubly difficult. However, as I’m in Bangkok I want to use the opportunity to drop in on my partner at our shop, Sutra Arts.

Asda Nueng, the working half of our partnership
, is busy charming an elderly American couple with his knowledge of Buddhist statuary. He is, as always, immaculately turned out (and I’d say looking handsome, if I were a woman). An attractive (I’d say) Russian girl is examining a display containing an oversize bronze
mudra
, presumably awaiting the arrival of her sugar daddy and his credit card.

I’m always struck by the tasteful and expensive feel of
Sutra Arts, from the gorgeous tapestries and fabrics to the Asian religious iconography: Asda is not only a wizard at selling and buying but also at displaying. I remember once suggesting to him we stock some Timor primitive sculptures and he looked at me and wrinkled his nose like I’d suggested I sleep with his wife.
I think not, David,
he said drily.
That would not be in keeping with what we are trying to achieve here.
I leave it up to him.

He hands over the Americans to his female assistant to complete some shipping paperwork, asks solicitously if he can help the Eastern European Barbie, then comes over to greet me.

“Hey, Asda,” I say, “you finally sold the giant Garuda.”

He smiles. “David, surely you had no doubt I would sell it?”

“None whatsoever.”

We talk business for a little while, with occasional interruptions from wide-eyed customers. The Russian sugar daddy arrives and the
mudra is sold, along with a large Siva statue and an ornate hanging from Northern India. The assistant makes us a coffee, but the street door keeps swinging relentlessly open.

“Business is brisk, Asda,” I observe. “I’ll leave you to it. I’m just in the way.”

“If you stay around long enough, David, I can sell
you
. Many of our clients like old, interesting pieces.”

“
I’ll be back in a few weeks for a proper visit,” I tell him. “I have other work to do today. I just wanted to drop by while I was in town.”