When things go wrong between us, Chanya and I try to mend our relationship by going out to eat. We’re both too shy to yell at each other in public, and we love food and wine, so there’s nothing for it except to make polite intelligent conversation on all topics save the ones raging in our hearts. If we’re still mad at each other after the cheese course, we tend to settle scores in the cab on the way home.
Tonight we’re eating at a brand-new Italian place that’s just opened on a soi off mid-Sukhumvit, impelled not so much by rage as by sadness that we seem to be drifting apart in separate rudderless boats. Chanya orders a Caesar salad, I order mozzarella with tomatoes drizzled in extra-special extra-virgin olive oil from some olive grove in southeastern Sicily; the bottle sports an explanatory tag with a coat of arms to prove it. For the main course we both order fegato alla veneziana, because it’s almost impossible to get in the tropics. Chanya tells me to order the wine, in deference to the oenologique education I received from my mother’s richest client, Monsieur Truffaut. But that was more than twenty years ago, and all the finest vintages have changed. Since we’re eating on Vikorn’s tab via his black Amex, I figure the simplest selection procedure is to choose the third most expensive Barolo, my thinking being that the two most expensive wines on any list are always irresponsibly overpriced by reason of glamour and cachet, but the cost of the third is probably fair value for an excellent wine. When the sommelier has me taste it, I’m fortified in my strategy and gaze at Chanya with triumph.
“It’s good,” I tell her.
“I can see that from the smug look on your face,” Chanya says.
It becomes clear to both of us that the ensuing awkward silence can be relieved only by gossip, and the subject of that gossip is going to be the same as everyone else’s.
“One of my women’s groups has access to news stories the police try to suppress,” she tells me as she sips the wine. “Apparently he brutally raped an army wife.”
“He hurt her? So far he hasn’t been violent. That story about the maichi almost rehabilitated him.”
“I know. We were so proud of her, all the women at Uni sent her congratulatory e-mails. Such dignity, courage, compassion-a great example of womanhood at its best. I had an argument with a feminist who moaned that the maichi was a product of a medieval paternalistic exploitative system and she’d only prevailed against the predatory male by neutering herself. I was so mad I nearly punched her.”
I sip the wine-actually, it’s more a glug than a sip. “I agree. I felt sick in my heart after I heard the story. It made me realize how I’d strayed from the Buddhist path. Even my thought processes seem to have become superficial. I find myself fixating on things that don’t matter, like a farang.”
“Yes,” Chanya agrees. “I’m so glad you finally said it-all those eyes. You were really freaking when you came back from Dubai. But you’re probably still not seeing the full horror-you’re in denial, that’s what makes people superficial. Look at the Brits, still in denial about the atrocities of empire and superficial as hell. They all watch East Enders, like Dorothy. That’s not culture, it’s despair in disguise.”
Affronted by her lack of kindness, I return to an earlier topic. “So, the rapist-he beat up his latest victim?”
Chanya shakes her head. “I didn’t say that.”
“You said ‘brutally raped.’ ”
She takes another sip of wine. “You can’t do that to a terrified woman without hurting her, Sonchai, no matter how much KY Jelly you use. The harder the thrust, the worse the psychological damage.”
I stare at my mozzarella and tomato salad, which has been drizzled with that deep green olive oil that looks so special. “I guess.”
From the Sukhumvit Rapist, we move on to the extension to the Skytrain; then over the main course Chanya reports on Dorothy.
“You know what’s amazing? She seems to have tamed Jimmy Clipp.”
“Who?”
“You know, that American civil engineer who was in your mother’s bar that night getting a hand job and then took Dorothy to the short-time hotel where she fell in love with him.”
“She tamed him? What did she do?”
“Apart from threatening suicide about fifty times, I’m not sure. He’s American, so maybe he’s seduced by pubescent adulation. You know how they are.”
That story sees us safely through the fegato, and neither of us wants to risk our waistlines on a sweet, tempting as they are (I have an almost insurmountable weakness for profiteroles, but with superhuman will I decline the whole desert trolley), so I pay with a dark flourish from BlackAm and add a hefty tip for the Thai man-and-woman team who have been trying so valiantly to follow the arcane system of HiSo farang restaurant rituals, not to mention forcing their tongues around such lingual torment as profiteroles, Barolo, et cetera: we tend to hold the r sound in contempt and whenever possible substitute the infinitely more elegant and playful l; few Thais can hear the difference. (The Balolo cost roughly two hundred dollars, by the way, DFR; I know you’ve been dying to ask.)
Chanya and I take a cab back to the hovel. We’re silent for most of the journey, and my mind eventually flips back to the case. The deeper I sink into it, the less I am able to understand Vikorn’s part. And now that he’s popped into my mind, I realize the Colonel is the only remaining source of relationship-neutral conversation.
“He’s a control freak,” I tell Chanya as the cab turns into our soi. “For more than thirty years he has outmaneuvered, outcheated, outwitted, outflanked, outsold, outbought, and outkilled his enemies so that he could have total and absolute control of his kingdom. Now, suddenly, he decides to enter politics, we have three Americans running his life, and everything is in the hands of people in Beijing. It’s not like him.”
“Isn’t it out of character for him to run for governor in the first place? It just isn’t his style-he’s way too shrewd to want to become a minor public figure. Is someone making him do it?”
“Force Vikorn to run for political office? Who in Thailand would have the power to do that?”
“Someone he owes a lot of money to-or someone with the power to blackmail him.”
“Blackmail Vikorn? Vikorn in debt? He owns everyone.”
Chanya shrugs. It’s my problem, not hers. Then she says, “What about that Yunnan trip all those years ago? Something happened to get you all excited for a day. You were running around all over town and wouldn’t tell me what it was about except that it was on urgent Vikorn business and that he was stuck in Yunnan with Ruamsantiah. Then it all suddenly faded, and next thing I knew Vikorn and the sergeant were back in town. I was sure there would be a coda to that one day. You told me Vikorn got himself into a tight spot and had to throw money at it. Maybe he still owes someone a favor?”
I blink. Stare. She points at my mouth, which is hanging open. I close it, give her one huge smacker on the chops, and say, “D’you know you are absolutely fucking brilliant?” I’m experiencing a non-narcotic ecstasy of the loving kind and cannot stop. “You’re just the most fantastic wife a cop could ever hope to have. I just totally adore you to bits. You’re just unbelievable.”
She enjoys adulation as well as any woman, but she has known me for a long time. “Did I say something to crack the case?”
“Yes.”
“So can I get laid tonight before you dash off to Phuket or Hong Kong or some other damned place?”
I hesitate-a bad mistake, which I have to cover by saying, “Sure,” and placing her hand on my cock as an earnest of my troth. Once inside the hovel and naked, I make a supreme effort to dedicate all my energies to the task at hand and wait the regulation period of post-coital silence before beginning to make restless movements.
“It’s okay,” Chanya says with a sigh. “I realize I’ve had my twenty minutes. You can get on with your case now. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me exactly what I said that’s gotten you so excited?”
“Later,” I whisper. “I’m just popping out to make a call, I want a good signal.”