Behind the Night Bazaar (2 page)

She turned back to the Australian, ready with her usual spiel about acting within the laws of Thailand, when she felt something wet and warm running down her left arm.

Jayne saw the blood but couldn’t feel the bleeding, light travelling faster than pain. She looked up from the gash in her arm to the knife in the Thai woman’s hand. Her face was a mask of fury, her arm raised to strike a second time.

The Australian man moved towards Jayne from the left, the security guard from behind. Shouting in Thai and English, they lunged forward.

But it wasn’t Jayne they were after. The two men grabbed the Thai woman’s arms and the knife clattered to the floor. The guard kicked it out of reach, and the woman slid to the ground. ‘Are you all right?’ the Australian man said, but Jayne couldn’t tell who he was talking to. The guard looked at her wound and blanched. At that moment, the pain set in.

Her legs shook and she crumpled to the floor. Still clutching her camera, she took the weight of the fall on her right shoulder, bringing her eye-to-eye with the Thai woman. They met each other’s gaze and in that moment, Jayne understood her mistake. It was, she realised, her first case in which the unfaithful party was a Thai female. And she’d seriously underestimated her quarry.

Her girlfriends would give her hell about it. But she could rely on Didier to make her feel better. An overwhelming urge to be with him was the last thing she remembered before passing out.

J
ayne sank into a rickshaw outside Chiang Mai station. Two weeks had passed and the stitches were gone, but the wound was still tender enough for her to accept the
tuk-tuk
driver’s help with her backpack. Her luggage was mostly books. When she’d phoned Didier from Bangkok, she called a book club meeting as an excuse to see him. She planned to tell him about the attack in person—once she figured out how to bring it up.

She directed the driver to head for the Rama IX Bridge, then turned around to take in the view. Chiang Mai was no longer the sleepy town it was when Didier moved here fifteen years earlier—‘so quiet, you could hear the chanting of the monks in the middle of the day’. Thailand’s second-largest city now had its share of traffic, high-rise buildings and fast-food restaurants, though trees still lined the roads and there were almost as many push-cart vendors as cars. At the town’s centre, ancient ruins were surrounded by immaculate gardens and a square moat, which was lined with flaming torches during festivals.

But the biggest difference between Bangkok and Chiang Mai was the sky. In Bangkok towering office blocks and condominiums obscured the horizon, freeways stacked like shelves. Pollution turned visible patches of sky a noxious shade of grey that at dusk blazed red like a chemical fire. In Chiang Mai, Jayne could breathe again.

The tuk-tuk turned onto the road that curved along the Ping River, and she drank in the sunset, the sun dipping behind the jagged mountains that ringed the town, turning the sky and water a matching shade of pale gold. Jayne felt like a creature coming out of hibernation, revitalised by the light after months in a cave.

Not that she would admit this to Didier. Almost as much debate took place on the merits of ‘The Big Mango’ versus ‘The Rose of the North’ as on their other favourite topic, crime fiction. Didier read what Jayne scathingly referred to as ‘cosy’ authors, while she preferred darker fiction, which he found ‘unnecessarily grim’. Perhaps that was how she could raise the issue of her injury: proof that the violence in modern detective novels wasn’t exaggerated.

The tuk-tuk driver veered left after the bridge, passed the market, and stopped in a narrow soi. Didier’s place was built in the traditional Thai style. At the front of a lush, tropical garden was a
sarn phraphum
, a small house-shrine for the land spirits, piled high with offerings of fresh marigolds, rice balls and smoking incense. Set back from the street, the house was made of teak and built on stilts. A steep staircase led to a large verandah furnished with triangular pillows and rattan tray tables. Didier and Jayne had spent many nights lounging there in the mottled light cast from lampshades made of eel-traps and sticky-rice baskets, drinking gin and tonics and arguing about books. While the interior of the house reflected his Thai partner’s love of all things modern, preferably plastic, the charm of the balcony and garden was all Didier.

Jayne was paying the driver when Nou came to the gate. He was wearing a grey Calvin Klein T-shirt, which Jayne suspected was an original. Didier’s boyfriend’s real name was Sanga. His nickname, Nou, meant ‘rat’ in Thai, an apt moniker in Jayne’s opinion. Though Nou was always polite to her, she sensed the dislike was mutual. They greeted each other with a
wai
—the prayer-like bow—and he insisted on carrying her backpack into the house. It was a gesture of hospitality and she let him do it, but after more than three years in Thailand she still felt uncomfortable being waited on by Thai people, and especially by Nou.

None of that mattered when Didier appeared at the top of the stairs. His face was perfect—strong chin, straight nose, high forehead, thick, honey-coloured hair. And at this point in the hot season, his skin was at its deepest shade of olive. He hid hazel eyes behind black-rimmed glasses in an effort, she suspected, to make himself look less attractive. But the ugliness of the glasses only enhanced his beauty. Jayne felt better just for laying eyes on him.

He stood aside to let Nou pass and held out his arms.

‘It’s good to see you,
chérie
,’ he said, pulling Jayne close and kissing her on each cheek.

She winced as his hand gave her injured arm an affectionate squeeze.

‘What is it?’ Didier said, holding her at arm’s length. ‘What’s the matter, Jayne? You look pale.’

‘I always look pale,’ she said, shrugging off his hold. ‘Besides, I’ve been on a train for fourteen hours and desperately need a gin.’

‘Of course,’ Didier smiled, though the concerned look remained. ‘You settle in, I’ll make the drinks and then we can talk. We’ll sit outside, yes?’

‘That’s a rhetorical question, right.’ Jayne returned his smile.

Didier held the door open. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ he said. ‘We have so much to talk about.’

Nou watched Didier hand Jayne a drink then take a seat on the balcony beside her. They were talking about books. Nou had a reasonable grasp of English, but he wasn’t interested enough to keep up with what they were saying. He wondered why Didi wanted him there, since he never paid him any attention when his
farang
friends were around. The farang friends didn’t pay him much attention either. Jayne only talked to him when Didi was out of the room. Otherwise her focus was on Didier, one hundred per cent.

There were often nights like this when Jayne came to stay. Their friendship did not surprise Nou: he knew plenty of Thai women who preferred the company of men who were
gae
because it was safer than going out with normal men. But Nou did resent the effect Jayne’s presence had on his boyfriend. She seemed to bring Didier to life. He talked faster, used his hands when he spoke and smiled more than usual. Didi never paid attention to Nou the way he did to Jayne. With her there, Nou might as well have been a dog asleep at the foot of the stairs. As he slipped inside to change his clothes, he was glad he’d made his own plans for the evening.

He and his friend Jet were dropping by Loh Kroh to turn a couple of tricks before heading off to the card game Jet had set up. They were going to take on a couple of southern Chinese tourists with more money than brains. It would be easy to outwit them once they started to play by Thai rules.

Nou chose his clothes with care. He selected a new, black Boss shirt and clean beige slacks, fixing his hair in place with a trace of oil. He checked his appearance in the mirror. Though he wished his skin wasn’t so dark or his nose so flat, he was otherwise pleased with what he saw. His cheeks were smooth, his eyes round, and his lips looked ready to be kissed—or so more than one customer had told him. Nou pulled a lot of business with those lips.

He looked smart but not slick. He wanted to put his opponents at ease, lose a few hands to begin with, before going in for the kill. Nou needed a big win. His creditors were not men who liked waiting.

He didn’t mention any of this to Didi. Sometimes he needed to prove to himself—and to friends like Jet—that just because his boyfriend was a farang with plenty of money and a good education, that didn’t mean Didi controlled Nou’s whole life.

Nou returned to the balcony. Didi and Jayne were arguing now, their voices growing louder as they fought to interrupt each other. It baffled Nou the way farangs appeared to enjoy conflict when Thai people worked so hard to avoid it.

He busied himself with clearing away the empty plates and glasses, keeping an ear out for Jet’s motorbike.

‘Oh, Nou, you don’t need to do that.’ Jayne followed him into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. ‘What will you have to drink?’

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I’m going out.’

He saw her smile as she leaned down to get the tonic water.

‘Why don’t you and Didi get married?’

‘What?’ Jayne blushed.

‘You’re both getting older,’ Nou said. ‘You should think about having children.’

To his satisfaction, he seemed to have left her speechless. But he didn’t have time to savour it. Hearing a motorbike, he hurried out to the balcony. Didier was sitting on a cushion, leafing through a book.

‘
Nong pai tieow
,’ Nou said casually, smoothing back his hair.

Didier looked up. ‘Going out where?’

‘With friends, to talk, you know, like you and Jayne.’ He nodded towards the kitchen.

‘Do you want to take the motorbike? It’s OK if you do, I mean, if you’re not planning to drink and—’

‘No.’ He waved towards the front entrance. ‘Jet’s here to pick me up. I won’t be late. But don’t wait up.’ Nou slipped on a pair of loafers and, calling out ‘
chowk dee
’ over his shoulder, jumped down the stairs two at a time. He skipped to the gate and climbed up behind Jet.

‘All set?’

‘For sure,’ Jet said.

‘This is gonna be our lucky night.’ Nou grinned. ‘
Ja pai
rew rew
!’

But Jet had revved the accelerator and Nou’s words were lost.

Watching Nou sprint down the front steps made Didier feel older than his thirty-seven years. Old and foolish. Nou often withdrew when his farang friends were around, but he thought things were different with Jayne. Didier had hoped the three of them might spend a relaxing evening together.

He knew his life would be a lot easier if he found a partner within Chiang Mai’s community of expatriate gay men, but he hadn’t met any who appealed. It wasn’t merely a question of aesthetics. It was as if the very factors that complicated his relationships with Thai men—the differences in culture and class—were part of the attraction.

Didier had met Nou in one of the bars where he did his outreach work. Nou had sauntered over to his table with an offer to suck his cock for 1000 baht, ‘fixed price’.

‘It’s good to hear you charge such high rates for your services, younger brother,’ Didier had replied in his most polite Thai. ‘That’s the mark of a healthy self-esteem. But I’m not in the market for a blow-job. Ask the other boys about me.’

When Didier returned to the bar three nights later, Nou approached him again, this time with less attitude but with no sign of embarrassment from their previous encounter.

‘
Sawadee krup, Khun Di
,’ he said, taking an adjacent seat. ‘So you think I have a healthy self-esteem?’

‘Well, the boys here usually ask only 500 baht to
samoke
,’ he used the Thai slang, ‘and most of them will let themselves be bartered down.’

‘That’s because they have no ambition,’ Nou grinned.

‘And what’s your ambition?’

‘I want to settle down with a nice farang who’ll take care of me.’

Didier had smiled with genuine delight.

Because Nou was up front with him, Didier believed he’d be spared the tortuous second-guessing that characterised his other relationships with Thai men. But despite three years together, Nou’s behaviour this very evening suggested Didier still needed to expect less.

Jayne reappeared on the balcony with fresh gin and tonics and a bowl of peanuts, looking slightly flustered. Didier smiled. Here was one relationship that never disappointed him. Even if the rest of his life was going to the dogs, he could rely on Jayne to make him feel better. When she phoned to invite herself to Chiang Mai, Didier took it as a sign: he’d been meaning to bring her in on a situation he’d uncovered through his work and it seemed like perfect timing. But now that she was here, with Nou gone, all he wanted to do was to forget about his problems, have a few drinks and get on with arguing about books.

They raised their glasses in a toast and both drank deeply.

‘So,’ Didier said, ‘
The Big Sleep
.’

‘I really liked it.’ She leaned against a triangular pillow and picked up the novel.

‘You sound surprised.’

‘I am,’ she said. ‘This is the third Raymond Chandler you’ve recommended and I’ve enjoyed them all. I’d have thought he was a bit hard-boiled for you, more like the authors I usually read.’

‘He’s not as mindless as that,’ he grinned. ‘Philip Marlowe isn’t just clever at solving crimes, he wants to right social wrongs. I like that he cares about justice.’

‘That makes sense,’ Jayne muttered, adding, ‘The language was great—quite poetic.’

‘And the character descriptions are wonderful.’

‘True,’ she said, ‘though there was one part I thought would put you off.’ She turned to a page marked with a postcard. ‘The bit where Marlowe meets Geiger’s boyfriend. First he calls him a queen and a fag and then—here it is. “I still held his automatic more or less pointed at him, but he swung on me just the same…I backstepped fast enough to keep from falling, but I took plenty of the punch. It was meant to be a hard one, but a pansy has no iron in his bones, whatever he looks like.”’ She looked up. ‘Pretty disparaging,
n’est-ce pas
?’