Jake Needham - Killing Plato

“Want to go in here?” I asked, but Anita kept walking without bothering to reply.

A few moments later I spotted a McDonalds. It was pretty nice looking, too. The brick patio out front had some white plastic tables scattered around under a red and yellow striped awning and the place was jammed with an assortment of tourists and locals knocking back the Big Macs, reading newspapers, and generally engaged in what appeared to be some pretty vigorous hanging out.

I half turned toward Anita, but she spoke before I could manage to say anything.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said.

“Hey, okay, maybe it’s not all that great a place to eat, but at least you got to admit the fries have a lot going for them.”

Anita shot me a look.

“It’s not the food,” she said. “And you know it.”

“Know what?”

“You don’t see anything wrong with it, do you?’

“Wrong with what , Anita?”

“Those people.” She gestured with her head at the crowd lounging around in front of McDonalds. “Look at them.”

I looked.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “It’s mostly just tourists hanging out with their girlfriends.”

“ Girlfriends ?” Anita snorted. “Those women are whores, Jack.”

Ah-ha , so that was it.

“Young Thai girls hanging around with scruffy middle-aged westerners who are probably twice their age? What do you think those women are, Jack? Schoolteachers on holiday?”

“What is it that bothers you so much, Anita? Is it that those men give the girls some money while they’re here? Or is it that the men are middle-aged and the girls are young.”

Anita didn’t bother to answer, but I wasn’t ready to let her off the hook yet. I was still harboring some resentment from the dinner table conversation at Karsarkis’ party.

“Or maybe,” I pressed on, “it’s mostly that the men are white and the girls aren’t.”

“I don’t make judgments based on skin color,” Anita snapped.

“Excuse me,” I pointed out, “but you just did. Western women usually do when it comes to Thai women. You see a Thai woman with a white man and you assume the white man is there because he’s getting sex and the Thai woman is there because she’s being paid for it. And the worst part is you’re not even ashamed of assuming that.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Oh yes, it is. It’s exactly that easy. I made a deal with guys like those over there a long time ago, Anita. They don’t judge me. I don’t judge them. I figure it’s a pretty fair arrangement all around.”

Anita let the subject drop, which I took to be a pretty good sign, and we walked on for a while after that in a silence.

Eventually we came to a waist-high stone wall behind which black iron tables were scattered across a brick courtyard shaded by a thick canopy of palm trees. The tables were dressed with white linen and folded pink napkins and the whole thing made an undeniably pretty picture. When we stopped to take it in a very young woman of uncommon beauty approached with a shy smile, bobbed her head in a diffident greeting, and proffered a menu. I took it and pretended to study its offerings, but mostly I sneaked surreptitious glances at the girl.

She was wearing a traditional Thai sarong made out of green and gold silk that encased her slim figure from head to toe in a sheath of shimmering color. Her long hair was tar black and glowed with a sheen that held its own even against the vivid luminescence of her dress. She had the wide, unblinking eyes of a cat-a Siamese cat, I thought, but quickly dismissed the comparison as far too obvious-and her face formed a warm yet slightly shy smile that for the life of me I could not imagine to be purely commercial.

“That looks good, Jack. Don’t you think?”

“Yes indeed, I do.”

Anita was considerate enough not to require me to acknowledge we were referring to different things altogether.

The yo kstirateung woman showed us to a table positioned between two thick palms, one which had a fine view of the ocean just across the road. I ordered a bottle of some no-name white wine and we sipped it as we studied the menus. The wind rattled the palm fronds above us, the surf rolled with a basso drumming in the background, and the smells of grilling lobster drifted on the warm, salty air.

It was a nice moment, I had to admit, but not nice enough to make me stop wondering why Anita had wanted us to drive to Patong in the first place. Anita had just made it unmistakably clear that Patong was hardly her kind of place and I knew there was something on her mind other than lunch and a walk through town. I just didn’t know what it was yet.

That was the very moment Anita chose to close her menu, put it down, and tell me what was really going on.

“I thought maybe after lunch we could have a look in some of the real estate offices, Jack. I’ve been thinking it might be nice to buy a house down here. Someplace I could get out of Bangkok to paint.”

I examined Anita carefully. She seemed to be completely serious.

Anita’s career as an artist had recently taken off. Her London agent was a genius at PR and he had hyped Anita as an Italian woman living and painting in exotic Thailand at exactly the right time to make her sound like the next great hot find. Of course, she had a lot of talent, too, and that was probably the biggest reason for her success, but great PR never hurt anybody. Everything she painted was selling and the prices she was getting were jumping, so I had no reason to doubt the guy’s pitch that Anita was hot. That had always been exactly my own point of view.

Regardless, none of that led me to conclude we ought to be buying a house in Phuket.

“No way, Anita. Absolutely no way. We have a perfectly nice apartment in Bangkok, and don’t forget I’m just a poor business school professor. I can’t afford a vacation house in Phuket.”

“I didn’t ask you to buy a vacation house in Phuket, Jack. I said I was thinking of buying a place here to paint. It won’t be your money and it won’t be your decision.”

Uh-oh.

“I’d like your help and your support, Jack. But it’s not absolutely necessary.”

“Okay, Anita. Calm down. I’m sorry if I was a little harsh. I was just surprised, that’s all. We’ve never talked about anything like this before.”

“Well we’re talking about it now.”

We were indeed, and something about it was already making me uncomfortable as hell. The subject had only just come up, but already I had the distinct feeling we weren’t just talking about a house here. Worse, I couldn’t see exactly what it was we actually were talking about.

The rest of lunch went quietly without either of us mentioning real estate again. The palm fronds continued to rattle, the surf continued to roll, and the smell of lobster continued to drift, but everything was different all of a sudden. It felt to me like Anita had just taken several giant steps back into a place where I was not invited.

When our plates had been cleared and we had both declined coffee, Anita scooted her chair back slightly by way of preface. I had no trouble guessing what was coming next, and of course I was right.

amp;ldq nstira sliguo;I’m going to walk around to a couple of the real estate offices and see what they have listed. Are you coming?”

“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s fine. I won’t be long.”

Anita’s voice was matter-of-fact as she stood up.

“Where will you be?” she asked.

I looked around, but nowhere particularly interesting came to mind, so I shrugged. “I guess I’ll just have another glass of wine here,” I said. “I’ll meet you back at the jeep in…what? An hour?”