Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

“Guess Bar — Soi Four. It’s not far.”

“Nana Plaza — amazing women, but they’re all dudes!”

Joyce always asked what life was like in Bangkok.

“I don’t know what to compare it to,” he told her, but thinking of Larry and Fred he wanted to say, “It’s like being young. I guess it’s a kick.”

Because when you were young you had a sense of choices, of not knowing how your life would turn out. Only the old foresaw the undeviating road ahead, and beyond it a darkness. That was how Osier had felt, but now his nights were empty.

In the shuttle bus Fred Kegler said, “Funny seeing you here.”

“Just thought I’d hitch a ride.”

“Maybe we can tempt you to have a drink,” Larry said. But he laughed, because Osier had rejected them before.

“Maybe one,” he said.

The shuttle bus dropped them at Patpong Road. They walked to a bar, Fred leading. “Here we are,” Larry said. It was dark inside, smelling of beer and incense, with side booths. Osier squinted ahead, wondering if he’d be recognized. He liked the bar for being dark.

“Pretty soon you’ll be out of all of this,” Fred said.

He meant Osier’s retirement. Were they gloating?

Osier said, “We’ve got a house. Near Rockland, Maine. My wife’s already there.” Out of fastidious sentiment he avoided mentioning Joyce’s name in this smelly bar.

“A lot of guys opt for the severance package and stay right here in Thailand. You have a bundle coming to you. You’re on one of the old contracts. You could have a second career.”

Creer again; it jarred on Osier and seemed like satire. They didn’t know the half of it, even Joyce didn’t. Yet Osier said in an offhand way, “But what would that be like?”

“That would be a wet dream,” Larry said, giving each word a meaningful lilt.

The bar was everything that Osier had objected to the first time, not just the rankness of beer and the slime of cigarette smoke on the clammy plastic cushions of the booth, the American rock music, and the Christmas lights, but the girls, too — six or seven of them, overfriendly, converging on the booth. They seemed to know Fred and Larry well.

Fred said to one of them, “This is our friend. Be nice to him.”

“We be nice to him.”

Each of the men had a familiar and favorite girl, who brightened at their arrival, almost like a steady girlfriend. Instead of talking to him, as he’d feared, they talked to these bar girls and took them aside, leaving him to nurse his drink with the remaining girls. The girls watched, whispering, as he took his diary from his briefcase. He sketched their pictures on a blank page. They laughed, but for a while they stood still, because he was drawing so carefully.

In the booth of four girls, only one was attractive — tall, thin-faced, slender, a bit aloof, possibly haughty or else shy, while the others fluttered around him.

Osier sketched her pretty fallen-angel face, her long lank hair, then said, “What’s your name?”

But she turned away and wouldn’t tell him. Sketching, he stared, and as he did, he heard Fred call from his booth to Larry in the next booth, “I’ll mud-wrestle you for that one.”

Fred laughed and said, “Reminds me. I told my ex-wife, ‘When you’re fifty you’ll be standing on a street corner waving at cars.’”

Hearing their voices, Osier put his sketchbook away and finished his drink. Larry looked at Osier, sitting with the four girls, and said, “A bevy of beauties! Hey, Boyd, we’re going back to the hotel. Are you staying?”

Surprised in his solitude, Osier said no and left with them in a taxi. This was all? A drink, a giggle, then back to the hotel? He felt kinder toward the two men.

Larry said, “They all have families. Like us. They send money home. Ask them what they want and they won’t say a husband. They’ll say, ‘I want a coffee shop,’ ‘A grocery store,’ ‘A noodle shop.’ Having a drink there, I figure we’re helping the economy.”

“Piss them off and you’re in hell. Horror show,” Fred said, and the hoor grated.

At the hotel, Osier said, “I’ll pay.” After Larry and Fred had gone into the lobby, he said to the taxi driver, “Take me back to the bar.”

“Casanova? Patpong Road?”

“I guess.”

The girls laughed when they saw him, the man who had just left, and that made him sheepish. Did they understand more of what was in his heart than he did? As though anticipating what he wanted, they made a place for him at the far corner of the bar in a small booth.

He said nothing, he hardly glanced at the tall girl, and yet one of the girls said, “You come back see her!”

They knew exactly why he’d come. They were so shrewd about men. But then, what was so complicated about men?

The tall girl emerging from the shadows looked even more like a fallen angel. She walked over, stately in her high heels, holding her head up, dignified, giving nothing away in her expression.

“Have a drink with me.”

She seemed to hesitate. Osier was not dismayed, because after considering the offer, she chose him. She sat beside him and ordered drinks — beer for him, lemonade for herself. They drank without speaking, and for once Osier was glad for the loud music filling the silence and the space.

Finally she said, “You make picture?”

He showed her his diary, flipping pages. She put her finger on the sketch of the king and touched her heart.

“You like Bangkok?”

“I like the railway station.” Though it no longer seemed safe to him.

“Nice station.”

“And I like you.”

She sipped at her lemonade and then looked away. “You not know me.”

“But I want to know you.” And as he sat closer, she made room on the bench, accommodating him.

I am out of my mind, he thought. What did I just say? Am I telling the truth? But at least the room was dark, the music loud, and he was alone. Osier was drunk, he could tell from his slowness, the numb warmth in his arms, his drowsy talk, a creeping weight in his body, his feet like cloth, all of it brainlessly pleasant, making him feel like a big fool. When he put his hand on the girl’s thigh she reacted sharply.

“What’s that?”

She said, “My knife.”

She had to repeat the word before he understood. Smiling, he lifted his heavy arm and placed it on the girl’s skinny shoulder. She shrugged but she didn’t resist. Then he kissed her — on the cheek, like an adolescent’s first smooch. She laughed and became shy.

“You’re pretty.”

She stroked her face with her fingertips. “What country?”

“America.”

He wanted to kiss her again. He felt reckless enough, no one was looking — who cared in this place? He was as anonymous here as he’d once been in the waiting room of the railway station. He winced at his memory of it.

But, drunk, with his drunken sense of sliding slowly out of control, he felt that he was at the edge of a dark pit, a wide bowl of night, about to tumble in face-first. When he leaned to pat the girl’s knee she recoiled again. That reaction made him hesitate and sobered him a little.

He drew back and said, “I have to go home.”

She smiled. She said, “Everybody always go home,” and as he left, staggering into the noise and fumes of the street, Osier reflected on the minimalism of her barroom wisdom.

Back at the hotel, alone with his guilt, he felt he ought to call Joyce. His cell phone was not in his pocket. The girl had stolen it. He deserved the anguish he felt. He used his room phone to call the emergency number to cancel his cell phone account. He was put on hold. Music played. He thought, I am off my head. He called his own number. After a few rings, a smoky voice.