Lawrence Osborne - Hunters in the Dark

He ran into the doorway and the doorman shone the light into his face and ushered him into a corridor. At the end of it rose a flight of steps and a single light fixed to the wall. The man told him that the power might go out at any moment but led him all the same to the stairs and swung the beam of the flashlight up them, indicating permission and normality.

Davuth shook off the rain and wiped his face and waited to regain his composure and then went up the steps to a landing plunged in darkness and stagnant heat. At its far end, reassuringly, the pink lights projected their aura of harmony and calm.

He went to the end of the landing and turned into a larger room where the mama-san sat with her pot of steaming tea behind a desk with a good-luck cat and a gold Buddha. The only customer in the rain, he caused a mild stir and the mama-san told him how brave he was to venture out in such filthy weather. She took his ten-dollar entrance fee and told him amicably to just wander down and look at the girls behind the glass window. They only had a dozen in that night, most of them had stayed away because of the difficulty in getting around in tuk-tuks. Take your time, she said, and went back almost immediately to her knitting. He wandered down toward the window, which was lit softly, and he saw the girls sitting on two rows of seats, one higher than the other, texting into their phones and not looking up until they saw him in front of them.

The rain was loud here and he stood there indecisively while some of them smiled at him and waved and made come-on motions with their hands. There was a minder on his side of the glass to help him with his choice. He scanned the faces one by one and he found a girl that he liked and motioned to the minder; she was a slightly plump girl with a glossy fringe. The minder went into the room and pointed to her and she got up.

Davuth went back to the mama-san and asked her how much it was.

“It’s between you and the girl,” she said flatly.

He knew it was about twenty dollars for a local for an hour. The mama-san gave him a room key and said the girl would bring towels. He could go to the room now and wait for her.

“You can even take a little more time,” she said. “There’s no other customers.”

Davuth took the key with its number tag and went back out onto the landing. His back was still soaked and his hair was dank. I must be repulsive to such a pretty girl, he thought. The rooms were at the other end, arranged around the stairwell, and he went up to the next floor and found the room. It was a stifling, tiny hotel room with a tiled floor and a wooden bed. He turned on the light in the bathroom and then the ancient AC unit above the door and then slowly took off his soaking clothes and laid them over the television. Then he sat on the bed and waited.

While he was doing this, the girl had risen from her chair behind the glass and was about to exit the room when another girl at the end of her row held up her hand and asked her if she could take the client.

“What?” the minder cried.

“I’ll give you the fee,” the other girl said to the one Davuth had chosen.

It was such a surprising offer that the girl chosen simply looked at the minder and shrugged.

“Well, all right then,” she laughed.

The minder looked over to the mama-san.

“What if the client is angry?” he whispered to both girls.

The intruder said, “He won’t mind. He won’t care. There’ll be a blackout any moment now anyway.”

There was a general burst of cynical merriment and the girls nodded and one of them said, “Try it and see if he complains. He’s probably a cheap bastard anyway.”

The replacement girl had the Thai nickname Pom, a ruse to make the Japanese men think she was Thai. There was little similarity between them and so there was a risk that the client might throw a fit but she was determined to try it anyway. She went into the bathroom and powdered her face and took one of the condoms and a towel and went back out and arranged everything with the mama-san. They were allowed not to tell management how much they obtained from a client and so it was up to them to get the most they thought they could. The Koreans and Japanese overpaid and so they were the most popular clients. Obviously, Khmers paid a lot less and consequently they were much less desirable, though they were more likely to accept a darker-skinned Khmer girl. It was why the chosen girl had relinquished her client so readily. Pom knew what she could get from a Khmer man dressed like this one and as she made her way down the corridor she made that calculation easily. She would ask him for way too much and see what he did. But there were other considerations at work. The reality was that she had recognized him. Her heart was racing and her skin had gone hot all over her face and neck. She had seen him only once before, though it was not a face one could easily forget. She came to the door and she paused and listened. He was sitting quietly in the room doing nothing. She wondered if she should wait until the lights went out, as they surely would. Then, deciding to risk it anyway, she put her hand on the handle of the door and pushed it. At that very moment, as if the gods had been listening all along, the lights did go out and there was an amused groan from the ground floor. She slipped into the room as the air con gave out and closed the door behind her and locked it. The man looked up and saw little more than a shadow carrying a folded towel with a condom placed upon it.

“Blackout,” she said and they sighed together and the mood was not at all bad between them. She put down the towel and went to the bathroom and opened the little window above the sink.

“It’s just my luck,” Davuth said, and sat there quite sadly, waiting for his small miracle to come and go.

“The girl you chose,” she said. “She got sick suddenly. Headache. So I came instead. Is it all right?”

As she had expected, he shrugged passively.

“Doesn’t make much difference now, does it?”

“I guess not!”

“What’s your name?”

“Pom.”

“It’s a Thai name.”

“But I’m Khmer. It’s just for the Japanese.”

“Everything for the Japanese,” he muttered.

She came onto the bed after a cold shower and rubbed herself dry with the bare towel. He had already done the same. His muscular body lay on the bed expectantly and he did nothing but try to see her face as she came next to him and placed her hand on his chest. He could feel how emotional she was and he tried to figure out why. But there was no explaining it. She asked him where he was from, what his name was. He didn’t lie. There was no point lying to a girl like that. They spot a lie in a second or two. They know men better than they know the backs of their own hands.

“What do you do?” she asked as she laid her head on his chest as if listening to his insides.

“I’m a policeman up in the country.”

She asked him if he was down on business and he said, as vaguely as he could, that he was. She asked what town he was from.

“Near Battambang.”

“I guess you need some entertainment,” she said.

“I need some entertainment, as you say.”

Yet he didn’t make a move, he just sat there in the dark as if thinking.

“Are you tired?” she asked after a while.

“Sure I’m tired. What does it look like?”

“It’s fifty for the hour,” she tried.

“Don’t try that with me. It’s twenty.”

“It’s fifty today. Today is a special day.”

“What’s special about today?”

“It’s blackout day — didn’t you notice?”

It took a while for the heat to come back into the room. About thirty minutes before they began to sweat and feel short of breath. That was the moment he chose to agree to her fifty and pull her on top of him.