Lost in Pattaya (4 page)

* *
*

On the flight, tears, they just flooded my
face. Having slept a full eight hours, and relatively substance free, the
grieving began, in the company of strangers. They ignored me, knowing that in
every crowd there is a pensive one. They were cautious when I began weeping,
given that we were airborne, but in a few minutes my flight neighbours simply
left me alone, realizing I was just another broken man, not intending to harass
or harm anyone. In about twenty minutes, I had refused food and booted my
laptop up, scanning the papers that I would show the manager of purchases at
the Bank of Manila. The reading was important for me to prepare for my
meetings, and, my half-heartedness in grasping what lay on the screen was
enough preparation given my years of experience. My preoccupation though, was
with the other gnawing half of my con-sciousness, the loss of Li Ya, and the
fate that this day would bring upon her, and, the days ahead, moving her
towards monochrome adulthood. She would be left colourless before the month ran
out.

In my estimate, a month as a child
prostitute would be enough for her to be left unsalvageable, even if I found
her.

Would she be prostituted incessantly, day
and night, looting what was made available in the narrow window of age and
freshness that some seek? Customers would mentally map her age before selecting
and laying waste the remains of abuse that would live on, dead inside her.

A child is convinced easily with narrative
of fable and fake. She would be taken in by the mere presence of promises,
losing what she would never gain back, the colour of childhood truncated by
acts that some might be committing upon her right now, as I, her father headed
business-like for meetings, knowing not what else to do. I imagined her being
promised the fluffiest of dolls if she simply spent the next hour in that room
at the end of the corridor. To a child, it would be a profitable trade, even
after the hour passed, since it takes years to realise the joyless evil that
soft toys hold. During lean periods, would she be hoarded in rooms with other
girls, where they would play ‘house’ and rest, before getting to work again.

These thoughts sent me into an anxiety of
panic, inescapable, since the pills that could help were checked in, angularly
cluttered in the belly of the plane. A sardine packed flight did not help as I
sought a free-personal-space around me. From the window it seemed the plane was
perched upon clouds, mid-flight, screeching noisily, above a vacant empty blue
plunging space, which is not calming in the presence of the turbo din and the
sense of emergency that physical altitude can leave the first few hours of
turkey in. I simply shifted, breathing and taking the name of god, one name
with each inhalation and another with a stretched measure of exhalation. The
moment passed in about seven minutes.

Even in choosing the name of God there is
confusion, since urbanity exposes all religions, each of which has a salience
of comfort that can be leaned upon in an hour of panic.

Religion fails in pre-empting the moment of
misery. It is the miserable who are forced to be religious.

In utopia, one should always walk away from
the infant ward, with another’s child.

Across the aisle right opposite me, a
family of three attacked their meals, with a child adventuring the world of
cutlery in a mess, his caring parents managing one meal, the child’s.

Me and Fang Wei, we could have another
child, if only we could sit, talk and conclude on what we wanted for our
future. I doubted sane conversations would help, unless I planned an evening of
construed love, synced with the fertile period that a woman experiences each
month.

This was the silly plan of resurrecting my
broken family, a plan I knew had no possibility, but it bubbled up, in the
absence of any other thoughts that lent any possibility of building back my
broken family.

The words and the numbers on the computer
screen, those that I kept scrolling without comprehension, it was a bit like
reading a book without really assimilating anything that is written, ignorance
flying past the eyes, and the brain beyond.

As the plane descended, I asked for tea,
the request awkward since the ‘belts’ lights were on, but the stewardess
complied, having been witness to my sorry state all through the flight. I
slurped black dip-tea, completely drowned by the landing of a jet liner. What
is it that pulls us towards the unacceptable, like waiting for all of the two
legitimate flight hours, before wanting and asking for a hit of tea, right at
the point when it is unserveable?

* *
*

Ortega, the manager of purchases at the
RBM, was a man who held me in suspicion, and confessed he had never been asked
for a meeting with an auditor from one of his vendors. Outwardly he was
cordial, but inside, he was reticent, wanting to ascertain what had drawn me to
him. In the meeting room, he was accompanied by a seemingly ordinary clerk, but
whose presence was orchestrated, in matters that one wants to remain above
board on. What put me out was the confined space, since the room did not have
any access to the welcome externality of day, like what windows provide, or
daylight itself, on a beach, or in an open meadow. The room wasn’t ventilated
at all, discounting of course the steady hum from the draught that the strong
air-conditioner spewed its processed air in. I simply hoped that the sweat and
its sheen under my clothes, despite the low temperature, were not evident to
the manager of purchases and his silly clerk, revealing to them my long
hung-over week end.

If you cannot tackle prolonged highs, stick
to alcohol because all other mixed in stuff leaves you in waves, well beneath
the high and the exhilaration, the crash of it being particularly violent,
needing fortitude that only a few are blessed with.

With long indulgent years, it is the heart
that gets stained with the sin of life, eventually arresting.

“Are you OK?” Ortega noticed my unease
under the grey silk suit and the silk-brown Buddha neck-tie around my neck, the
knot of which I reached for and loosened.

“Actually no,” I said, tears suddenly
streaming in torrents, triggered by his stupid question. The rest of my body
was held business-like, funnily, as if I were completely normal.

For a lone and desperate man, the company
of strangers assumes a magnitude that one would fake as if he were with
relatives and friends, who normally help work through the psychological detail
of life and the loss it all holds. The detail of each passing day is buffeted
on the foam of family and friends. Folks like Fang Wei and Georgy, in at least
where I was then, a kite, cut-off, adrift, seeking the mooring of anything
around me. Strangers, like the commonplace manager of purchases at the bank in
front of whom I wept, childlike, letting my loss flow like a river in the spate
of its own flood.

It was the clerk who moved first, towards
the door before looking at the manager, who simply nodded in bunched brows,
signal enough for the clerk to leave us alone.

Ortega too got up, and walked out before
re-appearing with iced tea and bottles of water in a few minutes.

“I am sorry Mr. Ortega, I have been
un-elegant,” I said; face still damp, with t ears that became the failure of
that afternoon.

“It’s ok, may I offer you some water?” he
asked gently in a very decent Pilipino accent.

“Yes, No, I mean, can I get some air,” I
said, wanting to escape from the little room on the thirtieth level of the
bank’s tower, a building that rose like a needle from the earth, swaying
perceptibly, depending upon the strength of gale.

“Come let us take a break for a smoke,” he
grabbed a bottle of water, barking instructions in Pilipino, across the office
space before descending through the moving horror of the elevator, the shaft of
which still retains the vision of hell in my mind. It was simply a metal box
attached to cables and pulleys, moving through the building’s arteries; yet it
was ghastly, churning the vertigo of fear in my stomach. Finally the elevator
jerked to a stop, its doors opening, through which I jumped, even before they
slid completely open.

Outside, we were street side, with
jeepneys
and the local, urban-provincial people, contrasting the suits that we wore, as
we stood there with them.

“Here, you can have some of mine,” Ortega
thrust his pack of smoke sticks towards me.

“No, thanks, I don’t smoke,” I simply said.
Ortega retracted his hand with a smile, “Feeling better?”

“Yes,” I was better, feeling infinitely
freed of the musty office that had contributed to my claustrophobic misery,
even though we were now standing in a haze of street-side pollution that he
smoked his noxious cigarettes further upon.

Afterwards, back inside his office, I asked
if we could simply settle in the café on the lower level of the bank’s
monolith. The café was large with plenty of tall windows.

We sat down for coffee and I apologized
again, “I am sorry for my inelegance, I hope you will excuse me.”

“That is OK, I hope you are freed from the
pain that you may be feeling and I wish you all the best. Now, you wanted to
see me?” he straightened his back, like when one reaches the end-point that a
conversation is meant to arrive upon.

“Yes, it is about the receivables that have
been outstanding, almost four million dollars. I simply want to understand the
situation and assess for myself the timeframe by when the payment will be
received,” I was pointing to the screen of my tablet, on which were an
assortment of scans, mostly purchase orders and invoices.

“Well, we cannot make a payment in the
absence of a contract; and the contract itself, our respective legal teams are
still negotiating. Between you and me, they are deadlocked and I don’t see them
resolving their differences anytime soon,” he said, brushing aside the tablet
and its contents.

In the stream of sunlight, I noticed a
lizard sunning itself, indoors, in the cool of conditioned air.

“But, you are using the equipment that BMI
supplied, are you not?” I asked, genuinely wanting to get a fair appraisal of
the situation.

“They supplied the equipment, in their
eagerness to recognize
their
billings, for
their
business to look
good in
their
Quarter, almost nine months ago. We did not even put a
purchase order in place when they supplied the equipment and sent the
invoices,” he looked at me, knowing well that I was taken by surprise. “And, to
answer your question, yes we are using the equipment,” he added.

“So, in short the question of payment does
not arise till the contracts are mutually agreed upon and accepted by both
parties, which in your opinion will take a lot of time and doing,” I concluded,
clearly wanting him to elaborate a bit more.

“Look, it is very simple; BMI went ahead
with the supply, hoping they would clean all the paper-work up quickly, within
weeks if not days from the supply. This has weakened their position, since now
the bargaining power is with us, and our lawyers are extracting to the last
penny what they can from BMI. This is their job you know. In some sense we will
keep using the equipment while the negotiations drag tiresomely on. In our
landscape, months, even years can go by, leaving a dead lock profitable,” he
said, being matter of fact.

“Thank you Mr. Ortega, I have my
assessment, and the information that I was seeking. I have just one more
question. How does one resolve a situation like this?” I asked.

“Simple,” he was smiling “Use forklifts,
after sending a notice informing us that you are wheeling the equipment out,
which would be well within BMI’s rights since the contract is still under
negotiation. That would hasten things because the applications that we run on
those servers keep our economy ticking, including the stock exchanges and all
other banking transactions,” he was still smiling, as we stood and shook hands.

“Promise me, you will take care of yourself,”
he said in a kind melting way, and then turned away, showing me out.

On the plane back home I prepared my
assessment, which was due on the following day.

I had to recommend a write down of the four
million dollars worth of revenue that BMI had falsely accounted for more than
six months ago. There was no outlook of getting that payment in a reasonable
timeframe, given what I had heard from Ortega. I knew this would open up a
completely new stream of work, with paper and e-mail trail, revealing dubious sales
and accounting practices. Billings in the absence of contracts, purchase orders
dated post supply, installation inconsistencies etc., each pointing to
individuals who may have acted in complicity with greed, from bonus payouts
linked with the revenue and profitability that the deal brought in. This trail
would implicate key management figures at BMI and more importantly, call for a
complete revamp of their internal audit and order fulfilment systems. It could
steep in doubt my client at BMI, the Head of Finance, who I was sure was in on
the decision to realise revenues and profits prematurely, well before they were
legitimately due.