The Expat Diaries: Misfortune Cookie (Single in the City Book 2) (2 page)

He was so utterly sexy. Just thinking about him gave me that tickly stomach-churning feeling. He was the kind of kisser you definitely wouldn’t want to be away from for almost two months. ‘Thanks,’ I panted when we surfaced for air.

Hoisting my hot pink tote over his shoulder made him list slightly to one side. He grabbed for my hand again, possibly to steady himself. ‘What have you got in here?’

‘Only necessities.’ Wait till he saw my checked luggage. ‘You never know what the weather’s going to be like.’ I didn’t want to sound defensive, but jibes from fashion-backward boyfriends in the past had left their scars.

‘The weather’s hot. You don’t need much.’ He patted his rucksack, which was no bigger than a decent packed lunch. ‘I have all I need in here.’

I squeezed his hand. Hard. No one liked a show-off. I’d love to have been one of those girls who dressed (or packed) appropriately for the occasion, but I wasn’t. If it wasn’t an evening dress at a business dinner then I was wearing stilettos at a picnic. Like the fruit machine that never quite paid out, my fashion choices were always off by one event. That was how I found myself wearing cashmere in Bangkok: a city where you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. While very stylish in powder blue, every so often I got a whiff of damp dog.

Outside, a pack of hopeful cab-drivers and assorted touts peered through the doors, plotting to pick off the young and the weak.

‘Taxi? Taxi?’ A boy materialized at my elbow as soon as we stepped into the chokingly humid morning air.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Where you goiiing?’ He persisted. ‘Bangkok? You take taxi from meee.’

‘Ah, no thanks. Sam, where
are
we going?’

He was trying to deflect his own pre-teen peddler while putting his arm over my shoulder. I nestled into him. ‘I heard about this great hotel. It’s right out of the nineteen forties. I thought you’d like that.’

A grand old colonial hotel! I imagined four-poster beds and mosquito nets. Creaking old butlers with sweating cold drinks. Maybe there’d be a veranda. And palm trees and ceiling fans. ‘I can’t wait! I just need to get some money first.’

‘Over there.’

He pointed to the cash machine. It wasn’t even attached to a wall, just a free-standing plastic box. The kid who tried to sell us the taxi ride could have walked away with it under his arm. In fact, he might have put it there. ‘Sam, darling, I don’t think that’s real.’

‘I promise it is. I used it last night when I got in. Don’t worry; I’ll watch your bag. I mean your bags.’ He sniggered at my luggage.

Twenty minutes and five hundred baht later, we were speeding along the motorway to the beat of cheery Thai pop at ear-bleeding decibels. Red and white flower garlands swayed from the taxi’s mirror where Catholic drivers might have hung their crucifixes. In fact, there
was
a St Jude medal there too, and beside the dangling saint an entire shrine to Buddha perched atop the dashboard. The ceiling was papered in flock print to offset the tassels hanging from the door handles. It was more than a taxi. It was a speeding sitting room.

I tried not to be disappointed that we hadn’t passed a single elephant. Still, it definitely wasn’t London. Tangles of red and blue neon signs vied for space with colorful laundry hanging from the balconies of hundreds of rundown apartment buildings. Those buildings bristled with TV antennae and satellite dishes. Along the roadside, dozens of vendors with wooden pushcarts had constructed tarpaulin tents over scattered plastic garden chairs. They were serving up feasts from industrial woks, liberally flavored with exhaust fumes. Crowds of suited office workers shuffled along the highway’s dusty edge, as oblivious to the Grand Prix running beside them as if they’d emerged from London’s Underground. A family of four sped past on the kind of motorbike ridden by gap-toothed rednecks in the American South. A mom with babe in arms and two toddlers raced them on a mini-bike. And to think of all the money we wasted in the West driving our children around in vehicles with over-the-top safety features like seat belts, or locks. Or doors.

My observations were gleaned in the few moments when Sam and I weren’t aligning our erogenous zones. Being denied smoochy access for so long made me desperate to catch up. It wasn’t that we hadn’t made an epic attempt at round-the-clock orgasms before he left. Eventually we had to curb our appetites or risk dehydration and permanent muscle damage. Besides, sex couldn’t be stored up so, to be perfectly male about it, I really hoped the hotel was close.

The dashboard gods answered my smutty prayers when the driver put his indicator on for the first time since we’d left the airport. It wasn’t the first time we’d turned, but indicators, like seat belts and the speed limit, seemed to be optional on Bangkok’s roads. We drove past a beautiful, tall, modern hotel on the corner into a potholed street that threatened to shake loose my fillings. Keeping the uncertainty (accusation) out of my gaze, I peered at Sam.

Obviously my expression reassured him that I was confident in his hotel choice. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, beaming. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine.’ Two mangy (rabid?) dogs trotted alongside the car. I’d seen jackals on TV take down baby wildebeest this way. Several empty lots grew tall weeds and garbage heaps. It was dusty, dry and barren. There wasn’t a tourist in sight. There weren’t any locals either, and no cute shops, interesting bars, funky cafes or restaurants. Just dust. And dogs. My hopes for a miraculous detour into paradise were dashed when we reached the end of the street – a dead end. The building in front of us hadn’t seen a coat of paint since Yul Brynner filmed
The King and I
. The windows were grimed over and the air conditioners hanging from them had peed great brown stains down the side of the once-white building.

‘Is this it?’ I didn’t bring bedbug repellent.

‘I guess so.’ Now he looked uncertain, probably wondering why he hadn’t just kept his room in the airport hotel.

‘Three hundred fifty bahhht,’ the driver informed us.

‘Three fifty! Sam, I only took out five hundred. This guy’s ripping us off.’

‘Han, it’s okay,’ he said with a grin, holding my face to kiss my indignant lips. ‘Three-fifty baht is about five pounds.’ He took a wad of bills from his pocket, paid the man and wrestled my suitcase towards the curb. The odds on this match weren’t in Sam’s favor. That bag was costing me, and not just in reputation. The airline check-in clerk took a very inflexible view of my baggage allowance, even after I explained all about moving here, and meeting Sam, and most of the highlights of the last year. She warmed up a little towards the end, but the line was growing by that time, and she still made me hand over my credit card to pay for the extra weight.

Sam eventually got the case to the front door, after only a few astonished glances and one grimace like he’d strained something he might need when we got upstairs.

Despite its exterior looking like it had survived an assault by the Khmer Rouge, I shouldn’t have doubted Sam about the hotel. Inside it was an oasis of forties glamour. The walls were paneled in red and the floors checkered in black and white. Funky red chairs and round tan leather footstools dotted the tall-ceilinged lobby. Nina Simone gently crooned from speakers in the rafters, giving the mood-lit, cool interior the feel of a sexy jazz club. Art deco signs dotted the walls and tables, wire fans stood in corners, and there was a groovy round sofa in the middle of the lobby. It was the perfect setting in which to lounge wearing an evening dress, with a cigarette holder in one hand and a martini in the other. Not that I’d brought an evening dress. Or smoked. Through an archway next to reception I spied a veritable jungle, and a pool. It was magical.

‘Sawasdee kahhh,’
sang the woman at the front desk, bowing with her hands in prayer formation at her breast. ‘You pay first. Eight hundred bahhht.’

She reminded me of a cat, meowing in the tentative hope that I might feed her, but not in the mood to be demanding.

‘Wow, that’s cheap.’

‘Get what you pay for room,’ she said, smiling.

We kissed all the way up in the elevator, risking public indecency fines by the time we manhandled my suitcase into the room. Sam steered me to the bed where we fell together, still kissing. This was movie passion, only I wasn’t acting. With Sam all sense of decorum disappeared, along with the embarrassment that usually made me back out of the room, geisha-style, when naked. That translated into some amazing sex. In fact, I’d had the best sex of my life with him. Being totally in love with him meant that every minute we spent on, in and under each other was perfect, because he was Sam.

… Even when there weren’t that many minutes. ‘Sorry, Han. I was excited to see you,’ he whispered into my hair. I was snuggled into his chest, not even minding the sweat against my cheek. And I hated sweat. ‘Oops,’ he said, shifting away to grab his phone. ‘It’s just my boss, texting to see if I got here okay.’

‘And you’re texting her back
now
?’

‘What? Oh, right. No, of course not. Sorry! I’ll text later. It’s not important.’ He settled back down, opening his arms again for me.

‘Good. Because that would be weird after, well, you know.’ I sighed deeply, marveling that I was there with him in Bangkok. ‘Thank you, Sam.’

He smiled, raising his eyebrows. Cheeky sod, misinterpreting my appreciation. Honestly, men sometimes. ‘I
mean
for this holiday, not… that. Though that wasn’t bad either. It’s such a great way to start out together–’ He smirked harder. ‘Again, I mean the holiday, Sam, not that. Get your mind out of the gutter.’

‘But I like being in the gutter. With you. Han, I’m so happy you’re finally here. These last few months haven’t been easy, have they? I didn’t realize when I left how hard this would be. I’m glad you’re here now. And we can do
this
again!’ He made a playful grab for my thigh.

‘Mmm, me too. I’m so happy, you can’t even imagine. A huge thank you to your boss for letting you take time off so soon after starting.’ Sam had just finished his PhD in political-economic something or other, and gone to work in Hong Kong advising the government about very important matters. That’s why he had to leave London to take the new job. He was destined to be a top political-economic something or other one day.

‘She knew it was important to me.’

Hmm, yes, I thought, so important that she texted you while you were with your girlfriend.

‘Besides,’ he went on. ‘You can’t see Bangkok
and
Laos in just a week.’

‘Of course we could. We’re American; we could see all of Europe in a week. We often do.’

‘You’re right,’ he agreed, stroking my shoulder. ‘Though not my friends. They can spend years travelling and call it research.’

‘How nice to be perpetual students. Mmm, this is so nice. Sam, why don’t we just stay here? Then we wouldn’t have to take the extra flights.’ I wasn’t a great flyer under the best of conditions (and those conditions involved a GP’s prescription). I couldn’t point to any single traumatic flight, and it wasn’t only small planes that made me chew away perfectly good manicures. Bigger planes meant bigger body counts. Over the years I’d developed a sharp sense of dread upon hearing the question,
Would you like a window or an aisle seat?
I descended into full-scale paranoia when the ‘fasten seat belt’ sign was lit.

‘But then we’d miss Laos’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be such a magical, unspoiled place. You’re gonna love Luang Prabang. There are hundreds of monks in the monasteries there. It’s beautiful and peaceful, on two big rivers. The people are wonderfully friendly and kind…’ He wore a beatific look. I was in love with a dreamer. I knew this when we first got together, when each date was like an adventure with the Pied Piper. This was the man whose recipe for English trifle ended in a chocolate custard fight that wiped out his security deposit. He positively glowed at the prospect of visiting Ikea’s charming warehouse, or finding new season asparagus at Waitrose. He made it entertaining to wait in for the boiler man. Everything in Sam’s life turned out positive and fun. Laos would be wonderful. I kissed him on the nose. ‘’Scuse me a minute.’ As I got up I took my first real look at the room. ‘Sam, what kind of hotel is this?’

‘Hmm?’

‘This. This– room.’ The floors were puke-green linoleum. The walls were concrete blocks; the beds (singles) were metal. A desk squatted in the corner. We were in a dorm room. I expected a knock on the door any minute inviting me to a keg party. ‘Who recommended this hotel?’

‘My professor. He stays here whenever he’s in Bangkok.’

Now I understood what the front desk clerk was telling me. ‘You get what you pay for?’ I said.

‘Yeah, that’s what these rooms are called. Isn’t that great? Where would you find a place like this anywhere else in the world?’

I loved his enthusiasm. His capacity for joy at life’s small wonders was astonishing. He’d texted me once in London, a few minutes before we were due to meet:

Sorry darlin’, pretty sunset, 15 mins late
.

Nature’s light show had caught his attention and he couldn’t pass up the chance to watch it play out. For him it was pure bliss, and perfectly natural to stop his life briefly to marvel at it. I’d never encountered so much positivity, and it was infectious. Yes, this
was
great. I loved it. And I loved him for finding it.

Though we thought about staying in the room to perform all the prohibited activities we’d seen on the ‘No sex tourists’ sign in the lobby, Bangkok’s treasures called to us. So after a quick shower we found ourselves back on the swanky hotel corner looking for a taxi. Every thirty seconds a young guy driving a three-wheeled motorcycle-cum-ice cream cart stopped and said ‘tuk-tuk?’. The streets were full of these belching accidents waiting to happen, and they didn’t seem to be just for tourists. Like the motorbikes, entire extended families thought them a nifty mode of transport.

‘They want to know if we want a ride,’ Sam explained as he shook his head at another hopeful driver.