Three years ago my ex-wife came back from the country. Her entire family was with her. She checked my phone. No calls from strange girls. I had deleted any messages from Mint. She were ‘friends’ and wouldn’t call until my ex-wife returned to the country. I didn’t go out to the bars, because during low season the clientele tends to be as old as extinct creatures and I’m scared shitless of catching olditis if these wizened geezers farted dust in my direction.
I played good man or poo-chai di and stayed with my daughter. My ex-wife was on the phone with a man. The same one from before. I was glad she had someone, so she didn't have to have me.
I drank 3-4 Leo beers a day instead the usual onslaught of 10-12 Changs at the Buffalo. Sleep came early. Not like in the country, but 10ish with a book lulling in the direction of Nodville.
My little compound near 3rd Road had two houses separated by an open-air garage. The larger had two bedrooms, kitchen, and TV room, in which my ex-wife, mother, nephew, sister, my daughter and niece watch a never-ending supply of Thai Soaps.
I wrote and listened to punk music in my office.
The twains met when the mobile food carts beeped their horn. My daughter runs to my desk with an outstretched hand. “Twenty baht please.”
My ex-wife asked for a hundred. Her family ate like they had been warned of famine, so I keep lots of small bills in my ATM dispenser ie wallet.
Last night the Jam were playing on the stereo Nick gave me before his dreaded return to the UK. The family was mesmerized by the bootleg version of HARRY POTTER in Thai. The phone rang in my pocket. I answered without hesitation.
“Hello tee-lat.” It was Ort.
“Where are you? Singapore?” I cupped my hand over my mouth. My ex-wife has big ears.
“No, can’t get a flight. I’m in Pattaya. you have time for me.”
Ever since my good friend from New York, Jamie Parker had stopped seeing Ort for health reasons, I had been expecting a phone call at the least opportune moment possible. A week went by and then two. It appeared I was off the hook.
Several of the dancers at the Paris A Go-Go said Ort was traveling to Singapore to work with Chinese businessmen. I offered a silent prayer for her good luck and thanked the stars she was gone. The go-go vixen liked sex, especially if she was on Ice.
Ice and sex was a 21st Century formula for disaster.
Here there and everywhere.
Ort was nothing, but trouble. Temptation was appealing, if only for revenge. MY ex-wife had left me for another man. A Thai. She thought that I didn't know about it. I was not as big a fool as I looked in her eyes, but Ort was more than temptation. She was the devil's own handmaiden.
My mother had warned that if I saw trouble that I should walk the other way.
For once I was heeding her advice.
“No, I’m with my ex-wife.”
“Can’t you come see me. I have Ice and want you to play my master.” Ort was also a masochist. She didn’t know why other than to say that she liked it rough.
“Sorry, I don’t have any money.” Feeding my ex-wife’s relatives had sapped by ‘fun’ funds.
“Not problem. I have money. Have Ice. I want you. Not have to have sex. Can only talk.”
“Talk?” The devil was trying to buy my soul for a free night of sex with a tramp. I leaned back in my chair. I could see my daughter’s head. She was bouncing on the sofa. Nobody would miss me for an hour or two. Least of all my ex-wife.
“I talk to you and you talk to me.” Ort’s 3rd language was 69.
The DVD of her plans played within my brain at 32 times the speed of light. She would smoke her pipe and then mount me cowboy-reverse, telling me not to move until she finished with brown eyes rolling into her skull. I was getting hard as a 40 year-old on Viagra.
‘C’mon, you know you want it.”
I’m fairly sure my final destination is down rather than up and I’m sure that on my death bed I would be ruing refusing Ort this favor, but I said, “Sorry, I can’t, my ex-wife is coming. Bye.”
I shut off my phone and went over to the TV room.
My ex-wife looked at me with a smile. She knew that her presence was unwanted, but also that she had the power to refuse me the right to see my daughter. My ex-wife was cruel.
“Good movie.” If it weren't for my daughter, I'd have left my ex-wife 5 years ago.
“Okay. You watch with us.”
“Why not?
It wasn’t like I had a choice. Trouble was where you found it. I sat on the couch and my daughter joined me to watch SID AND NANCY. My ex-wife hated the movie. She hated all things farang. Not my daughter. She was happy to lay her head on my shoulder.
And so was I.
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