Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

"You can do that?" Kwan asks. "That's allowed? You just stand there? Without having to, you know, to…"

Nana is studying the side of the cigarette, where a tendril of smoke is escaping. She licks her forefinger and presses the wet finger against the tear in the paper. When she's sure she's sealed it, she says, "Sure. But a door girl doesn't make any money. Just enough for noodles in the street and a bare room you share with six other girls. And they make you buy the schoolgirl's uniform, too, and they subtract part of that money from your pay every week, so you wind up with even less."

"Ah." Kwan hugs her knees more tightly but remembers to keep her back straight.

"And you couldn't do it anyway," Nana says. "You'd look silly in a schoolgirl's uniform."

"I look okay," Kwan says, stung.

Nana blows out, wafting the argument away with the smoke. "Oh, sure, for here. Who cares about here? Down there, where there are beautiful girls everywhere, you'd look stupid, like somebody too dumb to get out of seventh grade. With your height you need to be glamorous, not all little-girly."

Kwan says, "Glamorous?"

Nana faces her full on. "Kwan, you have to get used to this. You're beautiful. With a little work, I mean. You're tall, but in Bangkok that would be good. You'd stand out, and that's what matters. There are a lot of girls, and you have to stand out somehow. The girls who work down there learn to make as much as they can out of what they've got. That's their job. They have to figure out what their best look is. Some girls are short and plump, so they act cheerful, with little bows in their hair and big plastic bracelets, teddy-bear knapsacks, things like that. Some girls are little, and they try to look young, pigtails and bangs. A lot of men like young girls best. The prettiest girls get great haircuts-I know somebody who could make your hair look amazing, by the way, even while it's growing out." She reaches over and rubs the ends of Kwan's hair between her fingertips. "Perfect hair." She stops. "What was I saying?"

"About the pretty girls, how they-"

Nana pats the air to show she doesn't need the prompt. "Right, they get their hair cut just so, and they find someone to teach them about makeup, and they just go out there and look beautiful. But you-you could be the star of any bar you worked in."

"A star? You make it sound like the movies."

"It is," Nana says. "Sort of. I mean, it's like there are stars and there are those other actresses, the ones you see all the time, but they never play the girl the hero loves, and then there are ordinary girls, the girls who stand around in the background in the big scenes. Some girls never get taken out until everybody else is gone. Other girls, girls as beautiful as you, they've got men fighting over them, they're doing three or four short-times a night. Making big money."

"What's a short-time?"

Nana closes her eyes for a second, and Kwan has the feeling she's reproaching herself for having said too much. "A trip to a hotel. With a customer."

"Four of them in one night?" Kwan can feel how wide her eyes are. "You mean, with different men?"

"Honey," Nana says, "if there's a man anywhere in the world who can do it four times in one night, I hope I never meet him."

"I have to go now," Kwan says, and she puts both feet on the ground.

"Two hundred dollars," Nana says. "Maybe more. That's how much those girls make. In one night."

Kwan's head is ringing. "My father doesn't make five hundred dollars in a year."

"Three nights," Nana says. "You'd earn more in three nights than he does in a year. And you can send most of the money home. Your parents could build a new house."

"That's… that's twelve men." A new house?

"Those are the best girls. And you might not have to do that. You might be able to get more every time. But I think you'd get that kind of attention."

Kwan turns away, unwilling to let Nana look any more deeply into her eyes. "I could never do that. I've never… I mean, I've never even…" She can't finish the sentence.

"I was going to ask you about that," Nana says. "Have you or haven't you?"

"Of course not."

"Lots of us had. Before we went down, I mean. I had, twice. Well, okay, four times. But it's better if you haven't."

"It doesn't matter-"

"Oh, yes, it does. You could get five hundred, six hundred dollars, twenty or twenty-five thousand baht for the first time. Maybe more."

Once again, for the fourth or fifth time during the evening, Kwan has the sense that people are speaking some form of Thai she doesn't understand. The first time? Six hundred dollars? "That's not what I meant. I mean, I'm not going."

Nana takes the neck of Kwan's T-shirt and gives it a sharp tug. "Listen. You have to think about this, because if you don't, your life might as well be over. You can come with me, to Bangkok. Day after tomorrow, we have to go day after tomorrow. I'll pay the train fare, I'll lend you five thousand baht. You come with me, I'll take you into a bar, and you can start out as a waitress. All you have to do is give people their drinks and collect the money. Smile once in a while. You don't have to go with anybody."

"I wouldn't."

"I just said you wouldn't have to." Nana's voice has sharpened. She pauses before she goes on, and then she takes a corner of the blanket and drapes it over Kwan's shoulders, too, so they're both covered. She smooths it down gently. "You can see the way things work. Get to know the girls. I'll be there. I'll take you to the bar where I work, so you'll already have one friend. You can watch the girls, talk to them, see whether you think you can do it. See how much money there is down there. You can't imagine how much money there is. See how well the girls live." She thinks for a moment, feeling the focus of Kwan's attention, and says, "See how much it means to them that they can help their parents and keep their brothers and sisters in school."

"Keep them in school?"

"If you're sending money home, there's no reason for them not to stay in school."

"My sister Mai," Kwan says slowly. "She's very pretty. Not like me, really pretty."

"Three or four years from now, your father is going to start looking at her and seeing money."

"But he can't," Kwan says. "My teacher, she says that the police-"

"Forget the police. I'm telling you, you have to come down to Bangkok with me. And you need to make up your mind right now, because you have to leave the day after tomorrow."

"But tomorrow he'll get the money to keep me in school. Then I won't have to worry about-"

Nana's hand lands on top of Kwan's. "Be quiet and listen," she says. "Tomorrow he'll get the money to keep you in school. The day after tomorrow, he'll sell you."

The colony of small frogs that makes its home in the little creek behind the houses, somehow staying alive even during the long dry season, chooses this moment to start a conversation. The two girls sit there, still as a painting, wrapped in the chirping and thrumming from the creek bed.

At last Kwan says, over the noise, "Before you say anything else, I want an answer to my question."

Nana pulls out another cigarette, raises it halfway to her lips, and says, "You've asked a lot of questions." With a practiced flick of the wrist, she lights it, taking the first drag in a businesslike fashion this time, no fancy inhaling techniques. She blows smoke and leans back slightly, and the movement tugs the blanket off Kwan's shoulder.

"Why I should believe you. And… and how you know. About my father. About the sixty thousand baht."

"When I got off the train," Nana says, "somebody was there, somebody who probably knew I was coming. Not from this village, and you don't know her. But she told me not to try to take you with me."