Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

The bathroom is tiny and dirty, and it smells sweetly awful. She has to lean against the door to get her skirt off, terrified that it'll swing open beneath her weight and she'll be standing there in her frayed underpants. Once the skirt is off, she hurries into the jeans, having some trouble with the left leg because there's nothing to balance herself against except the door, and the train is turning, as the young man said it would. With the jeans finally up and buttoned, she pulls the school blouse over her head and chooses her best T-shirt, the one that nobody else owned before she got it, and slips it on. She looks at herself in the mirror, avoiding her eyes, and smooths the wrinkles in the T-shirt with the palms of her hands. She lifts the blouse by its shoulders to fold it and feel the weight in the pocket. The stone.

She stands there, swaying with the train, holding the stone in her right hand and feeling the distance between her and her village open and stretch. She shoves the stone into the pocket of her jeans.

Then she carefully folds her school uniform and places it in the bottom of the book bag, takes a last glance at herself, and pours water over her hands so she can scrub her face and smooth down her hair. She finds herself thinking of the young man as she dabs her face dry with her spare T-shirt.

When she passes him on her way back to Nana, his eyebrows rise again and stay up as he takes in her jeans and shirt. His smile, when their eyes meet, is more measured than it had been before. "BUT WHAT DO you want?" Nana has been filing her nails for the past twenty kilometers or so, but now she looks over at Kwan, who has her nose pressed to the window, watching Thailand slide by.

"Want?" She realizes that Nana has been talking for a few minutes but has no idea what she's said. "I don't know."

"There must be something."

There is, actually, something she's always wanted. "A wristwatch."

Nana laughs, a laugh as sharp as glass breaking. "In the village? A wristwatch? Why? The whole village is a clock. Sunrise is at sunrise, noon is at noon. When the sun disappears, you pee and go to bed. When it comes up, you pee and wash your face. Everything you have to do, everything everyone has to do, it's got its time, and everybody knows when it is. And if you're wrong, by a few minutes or a few hours, so what? You can do it at the right time the next day. Or the next." She looks critically at her nails, her arms outstretched and her fingers spread. "That was one of the things I hated most. Every day, every day, exactly the same, like the week was Monday, Monday, Monday."

"I still want a watch," Kwan says stubbornly.

"Well, that's easy. If that's all you want, you're going to be happy."

"That's not all I want."

"Then what? What else?"

A better life for my brothers and sisters. Safety for my sister Mai. Someone who will love me. Someone I can love. A place that's mine. Being clean all my life. What she says is, "Never mind."

"Oh, don't sulk. This is an adventure."

"I'm not sulking."

"Don't worry, then. There's nothing to worry about. Don't you want a cell phone? Pretty clothes? A gold bracelet? Two gold bracelets?"

"Yes," Kwan says. "All those things."

"Fine. Don't talk." Nana goes back to work on her nails.

"What time is it?"

"You really do need a watch, don't you?" Nana puts the emery board between her teeth, fumbles with the catch on her own watch, and hands it to Kwan. "Here. Put it on."

"Oh, no, I-"

"Stop that. I just gave it to you. Stop saying no. Life is about getting things. You get nice things, and you give them away. You make money-you never say no to money, never-and you give it to your family. You have food, and you share it with friends. You have spare change, you give it to monks or beggars. But you can't do any of that until you have things."

Kwan says, "Thank you," and tries to put the watch on, but she doesn't know how to work the catch.

"You're absolutely hopeless," Nana says, and she reaches over and snaps the catch closed. "See? You fold it here and then just fit it over the inside piece and press."

"Thank-" Kwan begins, but realizes she's just said that. She looks at the watch. "Almost four," she says. "Mai will be getting home in a few minutes."

"Your mother will be making something for her to eat," Nana says. "Isn't that sweet? And your father will be off in the woods with the three guys who are waiting to tie you up."

Kwan swivels to face her. "That's not-"

"If you're going to remember any of it," Nana says between her teeth, "remember all of it." She looks back down at her nails and frowns. "I don't have the color I want."

"Do you…" Kwan falls silent, and Nana makes a show of folding her hands to hide the unfinished nails and turning her eyes to Kwan's. She waits. "Don't you ever think about it? How you used to be? The people you knew? I mean… I mean-what your life was like?"

"No. My life was covered in shit. I stepped in shit all day long. Buffalo shit, dog shit, sometimes human shit, someplace where some little kid took a squat. I was fat, I was angry, I was lonely, I was hungry. I didn't even know you weren't supposed to be able to be fat and hungry at the same time. Now I'm full and I'm thin. Better, right? I never step in shit. I can have anything I want. Another watch? No problem. Ten pairs of thousand-baht blue jeans? No problem. A man? Anytime I want one. And yeah, sometimes when I don't. But you know what? If that's the worst thing that ever happens to me, I'll die happy." She stops and looks beyond Kwan, at the scenery blurring past the window. When she speaks again, some of the edge is gone from her voice. "You have to wait, baby. You have to see how you feel when you've been there for a while. You're scared. You don't know what your life is going to be like." She puts her hand on her own chest, fingers flat. "You never liked me. Well, I didn't like you either, but that wasn't your fault. I didn't like anybody. So forget what you thought about me then and look at me. Do I look unhappy? Do I look like somebody who's going to jump off a bridge? Do I look like I'm about to burst into tears?"

"No."

"I lived through this. I know hundreds of girls who lived through this. And you know what? You'll live through it."

The train is slowing. Kwan leans against the window and peers ahead. A small station is gliding toward them. People in worn village clothes stand there, clutching plastic bags.

"Nowhere," Nana says, without even looking. "We're nowhere."

The doors open at the end of the car, and the young man Kwan almost fell on walks through them, carrying a cloth traveling bag. As he comes toward them, his eyes find her and then slide past to Nana. The smile on his face loses its energy. He looks straight ahead and passes them without slowing.

"Mr. Nowhere," Nana says when he's gone.

Kwan looks at Nana, seeing her blouse the way the young man had seen it, high on one shoulder and low above the opposite breast. Then she closes her eyes, places a hand over the stone in her pocket, and waits for the train to start again.

She smells Bangkok long before she sees it. The train is slicing through the night, and Nana's watch-her watch-says it's almost nine. By now her family would normally be asleep, but her father is probably stalking the village in a rage, his pockets empty again, while the children stay out of sight. During the past hour, the dark expanses between villages have grown shorter, until now there are always lights on both sides of the train and she's surrounded by a brownish back-of-the-nose smell, like standing behind a bus, and she thinks, This must be Bangkok, but the train keeps going and keeps going, and the lighted windows get higher and higher, and there are more roads, and then the roads have cars on them. At one point cars pass above them on a bridge, and Kwan cranes up to stare at them.