Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

Kwan says, "Because…"

"Because these people talk to each other, and somebody, most likely someone from my bar, told somebody else I was coming up here. Probably got paid five hundred baht for the information. So she-the woman at the train station-wanted to make sure I knew that you were bought and paid for."

"But I haven't been. Paid for, I mean."

"You're wrong. He's already got some of it. He'll get the rest when they come and take you."

Kwan leans forward as though that would drive her words home. "He can't. He'll sign the paper tomorrow. He'll take the money from Mr… Mr. Pattison."

"The scholarship fund," Nana says, not even leaning back to reestablish the distance between them. She makes a pfft noise between her teeth and lower lip. "Small change."

"But… but Teacher Suttikul, she said she'd tell the police if I wasn't in school, and the police would come looking for me."

"Oh, they will," Nana says. For a moment Kwan thinks she is going to laugh, but she shakes her head. "They'll be here in no time. They'll drive a hundred miles an hour."

"Well, then my father can't-"

Nana's hand comes to rest on the top of Kwan's head. To Kwan it feels as if a circuit has been created between them. "Because they want the money. Your teacher will complain to the cops right away. That day. She'll want to get you back fast, before anything happens to you. So your father will still have the money, all of it. The cops will come and demand to see you. Stamp around the house and scare everybody. There will be two of them, so one can keep an eye on the other, make sure he doesn't pocket anything. When they discover you're not there, which they already know you won't be, they'll tell your father he's going to jail unless he gives them half. Thirty thousand baht, probably. It was sixty thousand, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Kwan says, more breath than voice.

Nana takes her hand away and turns a palm upward. "They're getting a deal. If they could see how beautiful you are, your father could hold them up for a hundred thousand, maybe more. You're a bargain because you're tall."

"But my teacher-"

Nana scrubs the air with the open palm. "Your teacher, your teacher. Your teacher can't do anything. Didn't you hear me? The cops will take the money. Then they'll go and tell your teacher that they're mounting an investigation. They'll say they'll find you wherever you've gone. They'll throw your father in jail for a week or two, but he'll get good food and they'll treat him well because it's just a show, because they're going to want more money from him later. After a month or two, they'll tell your teacher you've just vanished. By then she'll have some other girl to worry about."

The half-moon, cream yellow now, hangs at a slant just above the treetops. It looks to Kwan like it's spying on them. Lanterns shimmer through the windows of the two nearest houses, but the ones farther away, at the village's edge, gleam with the hard, bluish, skim-milk light of fluorescent bulbs. In the farthest of the houses, the light is snapped off. It's getting late. The frogs chatter in amphibian, back in the dry creek.

Kwan reaches behind her and grabs the blanket and wraps it again around her shoulder. She is surprised to find that she's shivering. The image of the wide, dark door, banished while she talked with Nana, yawns open again. "What… what will happen to me?"

"Here's what will happen if you go with me," Nana says. She puts the cigarette on the edge of the platform, spreads the fingers of her left hand, and ticks them off with her right index finger as she makes her points. One. "You'll work in a bar." Two. "You'll take your time before you have to get up on the stage." Three. "You'll make friends with the girls who work there, and they can be like your map, they'll show you what to do and what not to do." Four. "Once you decide to dance, you'll go with men once in a while, if you want to. Some of them are even handsome. The way you're going to look, you'll be able to pick and choose. You'll be able to get the men all the other girls want to go with. And you won't have to take the ones the other girls don't want. Remember, you don't have to leave the bar with any man you don't want to go with. If he's too fat or crazy or too drunk or anything, you can say no. Nobody can force you." She waggles the spread fingers at Kwan's face like a spider and then remembers the cigarette. She picks it up and takes a leisurely inhale. "In fact, you don't really have to go with anybody at all. You won't make much money, but you can live off the commission on the Cokes the customers buy you. You'll get fined part of your salary if you don't go a few times a month, but you're going to be so beautiful they'll never fire you. You just won't have much money to send home. You won't have money for fun."

"I don't need fun."

Nana shrugs. "You're not there yet. There are more ways to have fun than you can imagine."

"Maybe. But I'm not going."

"You're even thicker than I was afraid you'd be." Nana takes a long, angry drag that turns the coal on her cigarette a brilliant, hellish red. Kwan looks away from it, letting the darkness soothe her eyes. "You haven't asked the important question."

"What is it? What's the important question?"

"What happens if you don't go with me. And don't talk to me about your wonderful teacher. She can't do anything."

Kwan lifts her feet again and puts them on the bench, her long legs folded vertically in front of her, knees as high as her chin. She puts her hands, fingers spread, on top of the familiar curve of her bent knees. Nothing there comforts her. Her knees feel like they belong to someone else. "What happens?"

Nana looks down at the cigarette in her hand and then drops it into the dust. She shifts the blanket a little, making sure Kwan is covered, and slides closer, so that Kwan can feel the other girl's body warmth and smell something sweet and flowery on her loose, thin clothes.

Nana sighs. "Day after tomorrow, on your way home from school, three men will grab you. They'll wait until you're walking alone. They'll cover your mouth with tape and put these tight things on your wrists that will hold them behind your back. They might do that to your feet, too. They'll throw you into the back of a car and drive you to Bangkok. One man will drive. Two will sit in back. They'll touch you any way they want to, but they won't do anything that would cost their bosses the money they're going to make from selling you as a virgin. But they can think of plenty of things to do without that. By the time you get to Bangkok, you'll feel like filth."

"My father wouldn't do that to me."

Nana doesn't say anything. Kwan closes her eyes and listens to the frogs as they sing the songs she's heard her entire life. She feels a tear slide down her cheek. She says, "Then what?"

"You'll be taken to a house. It'll be dirty, and it'll have windows that don't open. Some of the rooms will have bars on the windows."

"Bars?"

"What do you think this is about? You think you're going to work in a flower shop? You're going to be in some filthy, rat-filled cement house in Bangkok with bars on the windows and a lock on the door. You're going to get put into a room with a bed in it and a bucket to pee in, and you're going to stay in that room for months without ever going out. You'll get fucked, you'll rest, you'll get fucked again. They'll bring you some food, and then you'll get fucked again. At night you'll sleep in the same bed you fucked in all day, with the sheets still dirty from all those men, and whenever a new man comes, no matter what time it is, they'll wake you up and you'll have to fuck him. Doesn't matter if he's fat, filthy, drunk, mean, ugly, smelly, toothless, diseased. Doesn't matter if he wants to slap you around. You'll fuck him. Every day, seven days a week, all year long. For two or three years, until you've paid back the sixty thousand baht they paid your father, and they'll cheat you on that. They'll charge you rent for the room they lock you in, they'll charge you for sheets and towels, for food. Whatever it costs them, they'll charge three times as much. Until you've paid back every baht of the sixty thousand, plus interest."