Carl drove the car a hundred meters and turned left. There was no point in letting the colonel know that he was happier drinking alone in the club around the corner. In Thailand people hunted in packs and Carl’s lone wolf moments were beyond their comprehension. It didn’t matter that they didn’t understand him. He had ceased needing their approval long ago. Carl never followed the crowd for fear of getting lost in it.
If the colonel had known where he was going and that he would rather go there on his own he would have felt a loss of face, which is something that is taken very seriously in Thailand. Face was a big part of being Thai but remained an enigma to foreigners.
Carl had once been asked to explain ‘Thainess’, which had become the fashionable word to explain everything that was unexplainable to expatriates and tourists. He answered that the foundation of ‘Thainess’ was a desperate ambition to make it from birth to cremation without encountering serious embarrassment. He knew it was an oversimplification and therefore he was doing the Thai people an injustice but the audience had loved it. Carl played to his audiences and knew that they liked the shorter answers.
When the parking boys around the corner saw his Porsche they started shoving cars around until there was a big enough space for him to park. They usually required people to leave their car keys but Carl never did. He handed them a red hundred baht note and went to the back of the building. There were queues of people at the front door and an entry fee so he went through the back door. Carl used a lot of back doors.
Bar on Eleven was very busy and the customers were wall to wall. The club was constructed of smooth grey concrete. The walls were thick to keep in the noise, which made the outside of the building resemble a Second World War pillbox. The ground floor had a DJ and the music to match. The second floor was more laid back. It was not Carl’s kind of music but the downstairs was a mix of actresses, models and high-class prostitutes so he sometimes put up with the noise.
He found a space at the bar that was big enough to stand in as long as he kept his elbows tucked in. Carl made a cramped hand signal for a drink and looked around the bar. The usual crowd was there, plus some ordinary people playing at being movie stars. Men with dyed hair and Botox faces wearing skin-tight Versace shirts and looking for the best love that money can buy. The women had spent the whole afternoon and early evening preparing their appearance in the hope that they might get noticed and win the lottery of life and get somebody to buy them a house. If it was all so wonderful why did so many of them ended up so miserable? Carl knew that they weren’t all as happy as they pretended to be. Some of them had been his clients.
The girls were dressed to kill. These were women and not the young girls you saw on Patpong, Nana and Soi Cowboy. They were hand polished, wore skimpy designer clothing, mostly bi-lingual and well-travelled. Carl called them the Bangkok Hurricanes because they arrived with a lot of sucking and blowing and when they left they took your house. Most of the Bangkok Hurricanes didn’t like him very much. Carl had been around way too long for their liking. Even the ones who didn’t know him stayed away. Something in his attitude and body language told them he didn’t own a house.
Eddie the DJ moved in beside him. He looked middle-aged Californian, probably because that was what he was. His hair was dyed blonde and he wore wire-rimmed glasses on a tanned face smoothed with designer creams and massages. There was an aura of naive optimism about him and his face looked younger than his body. Californians had something different, a perpetual youth that was typically spiritual rather than physical. Possibly something to do with the air in California or maybe the copious amounts of marijuana they had smoked at school.
Carl had got him out of jail once and Eddie had had been eternally grateful. He had failed a urine test and his future had looked bleak. Eddie was scheduled to appear in court and advised to plead guilty to using drugs. Police would not be seen to involve themselves in assisting in drug related cases for fear they would be suspected of involvement in the trade. There was a war on drugs and it was not wise to be on the wrong side of it so the senior police were not available. Carl also didn’t ordinarily touch drug cases but he had a soft spot for Eddie.
Carl had been made aware of Eddie’s predicament the day after his arrest and he had done the only thing that he could think of. He paid thirty thousand baht to a police private to drop a tray of urine-filled glass beakers on the stone floor of the police station. This was performed with much overacting and an almighty crash. Without evidence the case against Eddie and five strangers had been dismissed.
Somewhere in Bangkok five people who had never heard of Carl Engel woke up every morning and thanked police clumsiness for not having a criminal record. Eddie knew it was art.
“Hi Carl, good to see you,” he shouted.
“How’re you doing Eddie?”
“Same old, same old. If you need some coke it’s on me. Just let me know, man. Anything you want,” he said in a shout that was only a tone down from the last shout. It was lack of discretion that had got him arrested the last time.
“I’ll pass on the Columbian marching powder. I need my sleep.”
“Yeah sure. Hey what do you know about this serial killer? Fuckin’ scary shit man.”
“Not much Eddie. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve never had it so good man. If they catch him I’m seriously fucked,” Eddie said in his low shout.
Carl studied him for a while and asked, “What do you mean, you’re seriously fucked?”
“Hey man, everybody’s scared and none of the girls in here want to leave with a stranger. They all know me in here. I’ve never had so much pussy in my life, man. There’s a queue of them just hoping for a chance to buy me a drink or slip me a free E.”
Carl laughed. “Never thought about it that way.”
“Surprised the hell out of me as well, I don’t want it to end. That’s for damn sure. Don’t get me wrong Carl. I still hope they catch him. You know what I mean, right?”
“Sure Eddie, I know what you mean. If you’re trying to make them all happy be careful mixing coke and Viagra. Remember what happened to Gianni?”
“Yeah, I remember. Fuckin’ Gianni man. He was only thirty-three.”
He had been following the progress of the music as he talked to Carl and he made a quick dash across the packed dance floor to the DJ booth. He always made it back to the turntables just in time to avoid an embarrassing silence.
Carl picked up his drink and started to look around the place. She had spotted Carl before he had noticed her standing in a raised corner with a group of the beautiful people. She was already looking at Carl when he saw her across the heads of the crowd. Her name was June and she was a marketing executive at one of the five-star hotels, which meant that she spent most of her working day in Starbucks drinking coffee and talking to her friends. Like a lot of beautiful women she was extremely insecure although you wouldn’t know it to look at her.
Carl knew her without her clothes on and people say things when they are naked and it is three o’clock in the morning. It is not unusual for women in Thailand to have experienced some kind of sexual abuse whilst growing up. There are claims that as many as half of the women in Thailand have been raped or physically abused. It is a society built on levels of power and bullying is all part of the norm. June had her unfair share of dark secrets. The dynamic of abuse is the victim’s need to cover it up. June lived behind a mask but Carl had seen what was underneath.
He was very fond of her but he knew a lot of that was because she made him feel like a hero due to her emotional dependence. He made damaged women feel safe, June had once claimed. She had told him he made her able to sleep without having bad dreams for the first time in her life. She always said such things when she was lying down and looking up at him with her big brown eyes. The relationship was made in heaven as long as they were lying down. When she stood up it was a whole different story and she was a very different person. It always ended badly, but such relationships typically do.
She separated from the group and pushed her way through the crowd. She was all perfect white teeth and waving arms as she got close to him. The people standing near to him moved away to avoid getting hit by her flying hands. June threw her bangle-adorned arms around Carl’s neck and kissed him on both cheeks. The dress she was wearing was loose and shiny with a very low back that showed the top of her bottom. Maybe there was a sale on, thought Carl, remembering the dress the young Russian girl had been wearing in the club. When June leaned forward to kiss him he could see all the way down to her little G-string and bare buttocks.
“Carl, you bastard, where’ve you been? I was worried the gangsters had got you,” she said in perfect English.
“Not gangsters, it was the police that got me,” he replied over the noise.
“They are worse! You’re joking, right?”
“Yes, only joking. They haven’t got me yet.”
“You should be careful. You make me worry all the time,” she said with a frown that gave her dimples.
“How are you?” Carl asked her.
“Mad as hell you horrible person. Where have you been for the last year? I’ve been so lonely.” She followed this up with a punch to his chest.
“I heard you had some old Hungarian man buying you diamonds and flying you first class to Paris and London for long weekends.”
“What do you expect me to do? You’ll never marry me,” she said pouting.
“That is the story of my life June, I like to have rich friends but I can’t really afford them.”
She had got closer to him as the conversation progressed so Carl could hear her above the music. He could feel her warm breath in his ear and her breasts pushed up against him.
“Let’s get out of here,” she whispered, breathing right into his ear.
She said goodbye to her friends while Carl paid his bill. Somehow, her Champagne cocktails had been added to his bill even though she had not been standing anywhere near him when she had been sipping them. Carl had always wondered how they managed to do that with such efficiency in a country where it takes a week to change a light bulb. They left by the back door even though it wasn’t really necessary. Carl took her that way because it always made her happy to show people that he was different.
They were in the car driving towards Carl’s place. The roads were empty and Bangkok was a good place to be in the early hours of the morning. If you can be home by four in the morning and never go out until ten at night then Bangkok is probably an ideal place to live. The empty roads and the cooler night air made the Porsche a pleasure to drive. The air-cooled engine purred and roared along Sukhumvit Road. All the girls loved the passenger seat of the red Porsche.
June had taken her shoes off and had her feet tucked under her. Her head was resting on his left arm and bouncing every time he changed gear. Carl could see down the front of her dress and it looked very good. It was nice, comfortable and warm. They had been very good together once, for a while.
“Why can’t we be together?” she asked him.
“What about your Hungarian?” Carl asked back.
“He’s not important. He’s in the business of money, financial markets, something like that, you know the type. My friends call him Sashimi, cold fish. I am lonely and bored Carl, all those money guys are the same, no warmth, too serious and always working. I am happy when I’m with you. I like how you make me feel. I never get bored when we’re together.”
“We tried it June, remember? It is all happy and wonderful until one day you can’t have a two hundred thousand baht handbag or a first class ticket to Europe. Then the trouble starts.”
“I don’t want anybody else. I don’t care how rich they are,” she said, meaning it, or meaning it at the time she said it to be more precise.
“June, this is me and this is my life. I’m not making a career change at my age and I’m not apologizing for not being born with a silver fork in my tongue. You always love me when another man is paying your bills. Last time we moved in together it was a catastrophe. You may be happy to be with me but we both know you will never stop flirting with other men’s bank accounts,” Carl told her sternly.
“You make me sound like a whore.” Her face was becoming red with anger and she was sitting rigidly straight.
“I am just saying this is the way it is.”
“Fuck you! Stop the car!”
A fuck was already out of the question so he gave her half of what she had asked for and stopped the car. She grabbed her shoes and designer handbag and leapt out of the car in bare feet slamming the door behind her. Carl lit a cigarette as he watched her beautiful rear disappearing angrily into the distance. He hated to see her go and there had been a time when it took him a while to get over her. Carl felt regret that she was gone again. What bothered him most was that under all of the conflicting emotions he mostly felt relieved. He had once been accused of having an overly protective sub-conscious that looked after him without him being aware of it. Maybe they were right and, who knows, maybe he had pissed her off on purpose. “Carl,” he muttered to himself as he drove home, “Can you really afford to be throwing beautiful women out of your car in the middle of the night?”