Three weeks ago Fabo and I sat at the garden bar of the Welkom Inn on Soi 3. I hadn't seen the Belgian oil explorer in a year. Both of us had suffered long exiles from Pattaya. His place of banishment was the North Sea for the last three months. I had been stuck in Luxembourg for six months. We were equally glad to be away from either.
He greeted me with a kiss on the lips. The girls on the patio regarded the gesture with disgust. They only liked straight men. Preferably newcomers to Thailand. Newbies spent money like bankers on a cocaine binge.
"Papa." Fabo thought that we resembled each other.
"My son."
I didn't see the likeness, but I drink San Miquel. It's made in the Philippines. Heineken is my pseudo-fils' preferred beverage. He was 31. I had been in Brussels at the age of 36 in 1988, a year before his birth. A Walloon girl had taken me back to her parents’ house in the working-class neighborhood of The Marolles. Her mother had made breakfast croissants and cafe creme in the morning. Her daughter wasn’t Fabo’s mom.
"Welcome back home." His skin was tanned from the sun's reflection off the China sea. Fabo looked healthy. He had gone a month without a drink. We ordered more beers. The time was noon. The popular Thai band Loso was playing on the radio. Fabo’s months on the oil rig boiled own to six words.
"No fun. No beer. No girls."
I also had six words to describe my months away from Pattaya.
"New York. Cold beer. No girls." Six syllables to his seven. The economy of age. I was faithful to my wife. Too lazy to not be.
"One plus. Two negatives." Fabo had once shown a photo of his mother. The skinny punk girl with wide eyes looked familiar. I still didn’t think I was his father.
"Now we're here." Too many accidents and fights had mashed his nose, but his eyes were arctic blue. Mine were high Nordic steel.
"Paradise." Saying that I felt like Adam waking on the day after his Maker created 'woman', except the almighty hadn't the heart to destroy his previous failures. The line-up at the Welkom Inn's entrance offered a woman for every man's desire.
"You can say that again." I was blind to their allure. Mam dominated my libido. She was too nah-lak or lovely for words. Fenway's mother knew that I was here. Trust. I had no choice, but to be true. I ordered another beer. The first bottle died after forty-seven seconds. The heat of May on the Gulf of Siam gave any human a thirst.
"Paradise, and I blame it on our position." He didn't speak about his wife or her German ex-. It was better to not say SS Tommy's name. "So close to equator?"
I had heard his hypothesis on more than many occasions. My one attempt to explain the menage-a-trois to Mam, my wife, had met with her contempt. She had little patience for 'tawh-lay' or bullshit. All women say the same about men.
"Only 1200 miles south of here."
"I know." I had crossed the equator in the jungles of Sumatra. The relative speed of the Earth's rotation is meant to send more blood to your head. "Speed."
"Not speed. The reformulation of the theory of gravity." These words were spoken in French. Fabo loved the idea, but recognized his conjecture was full-on mad or 'bah mak' as say the Thais.
We argued about acceleration measured in m/s2, air resistance, and the downward weight force. The 3rd beer cured the affliction of banality. We were happy to sit at a bar. Happy the phone wasn't ringing. Happy heading toward drunk. The afternoon sun stretched into the west.
We watched the men run the gauntlet of bar girls at the entrance of the Welkom Inn's bar. The interior was night. The mama-san played any song from any year. The male clientele liked 1977. No matter what the nationality everyone knew the words to Abba’s DANCING QUEEN.
Four Middle Eastern men entered the garden. Jeans. White shirts. No robes. Arabs normally frequented the smoking bars at the end of Walking Street and never ventured this far north, but they weren't Arabs.
"Egyptian." Fabo sniffed the air. Strong tobacco.
"Turkish." They weren't speaking Arabic. Neither did I, but I had heard enough Arabic in Paris to know the difference. I bet Fabo 500 baht on their country.
An hour later they exited from the bar. They had barfined eight of the hostesses. One produced a bottle of Sky Whiskey. Half-empty. Another man flourished a handful of banknotes. The colors were strange.
Not dollar green or the green, blue, red, and purple of Thai currency.
One girl looked over her shoulder. Prueng. A shortcake angel with soft hair and small breasts. The tomboy was almost twenty-four. Six years older than the first day she worked the Welkom.
Her kathoey or ladyboy girlfriend worked at a big hotel. Preung saved money to pay for her girlfriend's penis operation. 200,000 baht. She lifted a thick fist of money in the air. Her co-workers cheered her order for more whiskey.
Five minutes later she brought two glasses of whiskey-coke to the bar. Preung slapped a big pile of foreign money on the bar. Zaïre Francs. Value almost zero. Fabo sat frozen on his seat. Belgium had ruthlessly ruled the Congo now Zaire under their King Leopold II. A horror.
Someone had to pop her balloon. A bottle of Spy Whiskey was close to 500 baht at the Welkom. I was down to 300. Preung reached for the free drink bell. There were about over thirty people with the range of its peal.
Drinks for everyone.
"Don't."
I read the finance section of the Herald Tribune, studied currencies, and studied Karl Marx's Manifesto. An exchange rate came to my head.
“62 baht per million.”
Preung was holding ten million.
The imagined git of a buffalo herd for her father was kidnapped by disappointment. Her daughter remained banished in the hicks or ban-nok. Her girlfriend stayed a woman. 600 baht for a short-time trip to heaven was the asking price at the Welkom. Her math was good.
"I not win. I not lose." Preung dropped her hand from the rope hanging off the bell.Like most Thais they accepted things as they are. Especially for Isaan people, Thailand's poorest region.
"Where were they from?"
Preung answered. Neither of us were right.
"Nice rich one minute. You want go short-time?" Preung was asking me, but Fabo seized the gauntlet. He had been at sea three months. Six words. No fun, no beer, no women. I was one hour late for Mam.
"Another step closer to a million." His arm encircled Preung's waist. She was no longer an heiress. A common girl. One with a good heart and smooth skin. Fabo paid the bill. 300 baht was tomorrow's breakfast or five beers tonight.
Paradise.
I was heading home. Fabo and Preung strolled to room 101. It was the closest. He did look like me me from twenty years ago, if I had a broken nose. I had been only forty-four the year of his birth.
Not young, but younger and therefore rich, because youth was always worth billions in both dollars and baht.
Much more to come.
