Bangkok Noir

The Mistress Wants Her Freedom Tew Bunnag

Was it destiny? According to Pi Nok there was no doubt about it. His regular fortune teller in Onnut market had told him that very morning that it was going to be a special day, one in which someone from the past might reappear, and that he should be prepared. Admittedly he had already put that piece of cheap, innocuous advice out of his mind by the time he saw Nong Maew later in the Siam Paragon shopping centre for their weekly gossip session. Of course the conversation turned, as always, to her love life, or rather the lack of it.

“It’s so unfair,” she was saying as they peered through the smoky glass display window of a designer store at the ridiculously expensive pair of red suede Italian loafers that they both lusted after.

“He’d buy them for his wife, if she asked him. But I have to wait for him to give me the presents that he chooses.”

Without taking his eyes off the shoes, Pi Nok replied in a sarcastic voice, “You’ve had a sweet Japanese sports car off him, and a sweet luxury apartment and a wardrobe full of clothes and your regular little envelope...”

“All right, he takes good care of me,” said Nong Maew, giggling. “But why do I have to wait around for him all the time? I’m fed up with it. I’m twenty-three. I want a life!”

This was a line he had heard a dozen times — the unhappiness of the kept woman — and he never found it convincing. Usually, out of friendship, he commiserated with her, but today her words grated on him. Having lost his own foreign benefactor the previous year and now working in a massage parlour, struggling to keep afloat, he found it hard to sympathize with her poor little mistress number.

“Well, you can always go back to your old life,” he said cattily.

Nong Maew was annoyed at this remark. Even though Pi Nok was her closest friend and confidant, her “gig”, he had no right to be unkind. She did not ever want to be reminded of what she had done or what she had been.Without answering him, and with a petulant swish of her young, lithe body, sheathed in its blue polka dot dress, she turned and headed straight for the escalator.

Pi Nok walked behind her and said, teasingly: “Don’t be so touchy. You know you’re beyond all that now.”

“Oh, you’re such a bitch today. I don’t believe it!” she half-whispered, and they both laughed out loud.

As she looked up towards the floor above, she stopped in her tracks and, to Pi Nok’s surprise, took hold of his hand and squeezed it tightly. Without turning around, she said in panic: “That’s him with his wife. And that must be his grandson. Don’t look, they’re coming down. Oh no! What do I do? Where do I go?”

Without hesitating, Pi Nok pulled her gently onto the escalator. Now he too looked up and saw a man with grey hair carrying a yellow plastic shopping bag. He was in a dark, well-cut suit and looked like a businessman taking time off from the office to do some shopping with the family. Next to him was a stout woman in a Thai silk outfit, wearing thick sunglasses and a complicated, stiff hairdo, and behind them a small boy whose hand was touching the man’s shoulder. As they came closer, to his utter astonishment Pi Nok recognized the man’s face. “It’s destiny,” he thought to himself, suddenly remembering the fortune teller’s prediction. Nong Maew had never divulged her patron’s real name. She always referred to him as Darling, using the English word but stressing the last syllable so that it sounded Thai. It was the way they addressed each other, she had said when she first told Pi Nok about the man who had picked her up in the club two years earlier and who then, one day, out of the blue, proposed that she should be his mistress. She had added that he was good-looking and fit for his sixty-eight years, and that, naturally, he was loaded. This last detail was the most important one. For why else would she be wasting her youth on a married man nearly four times her age who had no intention of committing himself to her in a million years? As the family passed Nong Maew and Pi Nok on their way down to the second floor, the man she referred to as Darling looked over in their direction. The woman was turning the other way while the boy’s attention was drawn to a colourful film poster that was hanging off the balcony. Nong Maew did not return the gaze. Instead she put on a hard, artificial expression of indifference and fixed her attention on the space in front of her. In doing so, she was unaware that it was not at her that Darling was directing his gaze, but at her companion, for as they passed each other with only the two feet between them, he too recognized Pi Nok and in that moment, involuntarily, his whole face lit up with a spontaneous expression that can only be described as remembered pleasure.

They were in a Japanese restaurant on the ground floor. Pi Nok swallowed his mouthful of sushi and said nothing for a while. His fine features registered a moment of choked sadness, enhanced by the pungency of the wasabi dip. He had been explaining to Nong Maew, who sat in attentive silence, how he had met her “Darling” Khun Taworn two years before she did, what had gone on between them and how they had parted company.

“He went to China, on business, and the club was closed down overnight while he was away. That’s why we lost touch, and after that I never saw him again,” he said, continuing his tale and addressing these words to his own reflection in the window as if reminiscing a private and painful episode. If Nong Maew was surprised by what she was hearing, she managed not to show it. She had long suspected Darling of being bi, but she had not expected her intuition to be confirmed by such a personal connection. With her best friend, of all people! And now Pi Nok was trying to paint what must have been a professional encounter into some kind of grand love affair. She kept her composure on the outside, but her mind was swirling, especially when he had the nerve to try convincing her to share Darling with him.

“Come on, he’s got enough for both of us,” he pleaded unashamedly.

Nong Maew, who had hardly touched her food, took this as the cue to comment on what Pi Nok had been saying. She chose her words with care and put on a fine show of well-tempered indignation. In a high-minded tone she told Pi Nok that the supposed romance between him and Khun Taworn had taken place in a gay brothel, albeit a high-class one, but a brothel nevertheless. And how dare he try to muscle in on her good fortune when she had done all the running? But even as she was discouraging him from making a play on her Darling, Nong Maew was well aware that Pi Nok, given his hunger and lascivious nature, was probably already planning his moves. Khun Taworn, one of the wealthiest industrialists in Thailand, was a prime catch for any ambitious hustler. Nong Maew herself could not believe her luck when, true to his word, he installed her in the condo by the river, because she had not made any effort at all to lure him exclusively to herself. He had picked her in the “Twilight”, an exclusive private club where she was one of the part-timers who worked there for extra cash. You had to be both beautiful and discreet because the clientele consisted of the very rich and powerful of the land. Khun Taworn had chosen her out of a roomful of young women who looked like starlets, and in their first sexual encounter in the VIP suite he seemed pleased with her services. After three visits he asked her out to dinner, which was quite normal and encouraged by the management since it reinforced the illusion that the girls were not professionals but companions who were sufficiently attracted to accept the invitation.

That night, in a candlelit French restaurant, Khun Taworn had explained that he was thinking of returning to politics, reminding her that ten years earlier, when she was only a young girl, he had been tipped to win the election to be leader of his party. But he had been betrayed, he was quick to add. Now he was ready to return to the fray. Because of this he could no longer risk being seen anywhere that could cause a scandal for him or his family. He had decided not to go to places like the “Twilight” anymore. But he wanted to continue seeing her. And that was when he asked her outright to become his mistress. Without letting her have time to think about his proposition — as though, in the style of men used to having their way, he was sure that she would not resist — he went on to give her the details of the arrangement that he had worked out and which, in fact, were so generous that she would have been foolish to have refused.

Nong Maew had been overwhelmed by his offer. It meant the end of having to make all the effort of going to work and worrying about paying off the debts that she had accumulated and living in shared, cramped accommodation. It would give her time to go back to finish her university degree, if she chose to do so. And if she played her cards well, she could even set up her own business one day. Suddenly the future was wide open. Everything was possible, and all she had to do was to give pleasure to a man whose vanity, with the help of Viagra, was soothed by possessing her firm, trim body. So, without thinking of the consequences, she accepted.

At first she had been drunk with her new life. Moving out of the small rented apartment she shared with two other working girls into a pad in an exclusive condo with its own small swimming pool on the balcony and a view of the city spreading out in all directions was like arriving in the Deva realm of the angels. Khun Taworn visited her three or four times a week, often bringing a bottle of champagne and a little gift. They never went out again after that evening in the French restaurant, but delicious, elaborate meals were ordered in from the best establishments in Bangkok. In those early days, when he had finished talking about himself, he would ask her about how she was spending her spare time and whether she was happy. But as the months rolled slowly by, he became less and less interested in what she did or thought or felt. He would arrive and take his pill and wait for the effect to kick in and then fuck her as though he was offloading some pent-up aggression. Then, afterwards, while she massaged his back, he would ramble on about politics or his family life. Often he would tell her how difficult his relationship with his wife was. It seemed that she hated him. Once Nong Maew made the mistake of giving him her opinion about his dysfunctional marriage, but the way that he cut her short made her realize that he required neither her response nor her sympathy. He merely needed her to be there as a beautiful trinket to bolster his selfesteem and as a receptacle into which he could pour his artificially stimulated desire.

Now, two years later, she was desperate with the sheer boredom of her existence. Darling’s visits were less frequent, and when he dropped by, she found it harder and harder to play the role of dumb listener. In short, she had discovered that the routine of being somebody’s mistress just did not suit her character. Being a sex object made her feel like an idiot. Her cocooned comfort did not compensate for the sense of despair that overcame her with growing frequency. There were days when she wanted to pack up and leave. But then she could never forget the money and all the perks that came with her status. She had become used to the ease and luxury, and she knew all too well that to regain her freedom, she had to be prepared to give up this honey-coated lifestyle that everyone she knew and probably most of the country dreamed of tasting. For them it would always remain a distant dream. But for her it was what she awoke to every morning. This was what made it a tough choice. While he was waxing lyrical about his affair with Darling, Pi Nok had spared no details, as if to prove that he, as a man, could do a better job at satisfying Khun Taworn’s desires than she, as a woman, could ever imagine. While she listened to his lurid descriptions of her Darling’s likes and dislikes, Nong Maew’s mind was busy weighing up her options. And later, when she was trying to dissuade her friend from competing with her for Darling’s favours, and even going so far as to say that, if he decided to do so, it was going to mean the end of their friendship, she knew that her efforts at dissuasion would only challenge him to go ahead and run after her man as soon as the opportunity arose.

A voice in the back of her mind was telling her how easy it was to merely say to Pi Nok: “Okay, have him. He’s yours if you think you can really catch him.” And she would be free. It was what she wanted, after all. But another voice, the promptings of Lobha, or Greed, was already suggesting ways of making use of the information that Pi Nok was giving her to achieve the same goal without losing the benefits that she had come to feel she deserved. That same evening Darling visited her. They greeted each other warmly. Neither mentioned the encounter on the escalator at the shopping mall. He declared immediately that he was not in the mood for sex. He told her to open the champagne and then, after taking a big gulp from the glass that she handed him, said casually: “And who was that boy you were with this morning?”

Nong Maew had expected the question. “Oh, that was an old friend of mine from university,” she answered brightly.

“Are you going out together?”

Nong Maew smiled broadly before replying: “No, he’s gay. Couldn’t you tell, darling?”

Khun Taworn nodded his head without changing his expression and took another big sip of his champagne. Nong Maew felt that it was the moment to take the gamble.

“Would you like to meet him, darling? He’s very interesting. He used to study economics, you know. He’s brilliant. He told me that he recognized you straightaway because he is an admirer of your party. He thinks you’ll win the next election for sure, especially with that line you’re pushing about the family and the community.”

Darling took a couple of seconds to scrutinize Nong Maew’s face for any sign that she was being anything less than ingenuous. Satisfied, he nodded again.

“Why not? Yes, I’ll meet your friend. If he’s as clever as you say, I might be able to use him in my research team.”

Nong Maew smiled inwardly. This was her first step to freedom.

During the days that followed Nong Maew was in a strange mood. The fact that her plan involved betraying both her friend and her benefactor was something that filled her with conflicting emotions. It was not exactly that she felt guilty for what she was doing, but there was, nevertheless, a certain unpleasantness that she could not easily shake off. After all, Pi Nok had never done her any harm. On the contrary, he had always been patient, supportive and generous to her when she was down. As for her Darling, he had given her a few years of affluence that she had not expected to come her way. The only real complaint against him was that he had treated her as a body and nothing else, but then all the men she had met, with the exception of Pi Nok, had done that. To counter her uncomfortably acute sense of disloyalty to both of them, Nong Maew kept reminding herself what her mother had taught her when she was a little girl: that you are totally on your own in this world, and you have to look after your own interests first. And in the end her mind yielded up the justifications she needed to go ahead with her treacherous scheme. After that it was merely a matter of finding the nerve to carry it through.

With her newly found sense of purpose, Nong Maew now took the decisive step towards her freedom. She called Pi Nok and asked him casually if he had any luck contacting Khun Taworn. Pi Nok, thinking that Nong Maew was provoking him, answered coldly: “I’m in no rush. I’m not that desperate, whatever you may think. I’ll get to him when I want.”

“Well, then, you can come to dinner,” she said.

“He’s interested in seeing you.”

There was silence on the other end. She could sense Pi Nok’s excitement. She knew him.

“What’s your game?” he finally asked.

“I’ve been thinking, that’s all. I don’t want us to be rivals. And I know you’ll find some way of meeting him. When you’re determined, there’s no stopping you. So why can’t we be cool about it?” Pi Nok, touched and flattered by her words even reassured her that he would never try to steal Darling away from her.

Satisfied that there had as yet been no communication between Pi Nok and Darling, Nong Maew sent Khun Taworn a text on his mobile phone. It was a rule that she never called him directly because, given his position, he was afraid that his phone was bugged. His paranoia had affected her to such an extent that she often imagined someone listening in to her own phone and was constantly noting little odd sounds which she could not account for. But that day, as part of her plan to go against the guidelines, she decided to take the risk and sent him a blatantly lascivious text message telling him how she was sad and lonely and needed to see him urgently. She made it sound like she was a bitch in heat. He was around that very afternoon and made no mention of her transgression. Having taken the medicine in the limousine, as soon as he was through the door he was ripping off his jacket and was soon on top of her. Passion over, he said that he had a meeting to attend and could not stay. He showered quickly and began to put his clothes back on.

“I am angry with you,” she blurted out, as she lay exhausted and naked on the bed while she watched him dressing.

“You and my friend were lovers once, weren’t you? He told me, so don’t deny it. He gave me all the sordid details.” Her voice was more hurt than angry. Khun Taworn stopped what he was doing, looked at her for a while in surprise and then burst out laughing.

“So he told you.”

“And you’re still hot for him. I know you are.”

He made no reply to this last remark, which she had spat out accusingly.

“I want out! I can’t stand it. It’s awful.”

She was now raising her voice to match her emotions.

“Come on, calm down. Don’t be jealous.” Khun Taworn’s face suddenly looked weary and dark.

“No! I mean it,” Nong Maew continued, undeterred. “I’ve had enough. You don’t really care for me, and now I know that you prefer men. It’s obvious. So let me go. I’ll fix you up with him. He can take over this apartment if you like. Just give me something for the years you’ve had from me, and I’ll be out of your life.”

Nong Maew was sobbing now, and as she did so, she remembered Darling’s hard advice to her at their first dinner in the French restaurant, when he was setting out the terms of their contract: “I don’t want any emotions in this. If you’re going to get possessive and jealous and cry because I don’t love you and that kind of stuff, then don’t even think of being with me because I don’t have time for any of it.” He had said it all bluntly enough.

Now, even without looking up at him, she could feel his annoyance and realized that she had reached his point of intolerance. So with every second her sobs become more intense. She was burying her head in the pillow and gripping it with both her hands.

“Oh, stop it! That’s enough!” Khun Taworn was shouting as he closed his ears with his palms. “I told you that I can’t stand this kind of thing. And by the way, I told you never to get in touch with me by phone unless it’s an absolute emergency. You’re getting to be a real pain in the neck.”

“Then let me go! I’ll leave you in peace. I’ll let you have Pi Nok, even if it breaks me up. But I can’t share you with him or anyone else anymore. It killed me to see you with your wife the other day. I can’t live with jealousy. I just can’t. I’ll do something to myself that you’ll regret if you carry on treating me like this.”

Eventually she calmed down, but not before Khun Taworn agreed to let her have her freedom along with an interesting sum that would last her for a couple of years — a pittance for him, but a golden handshake for her. In gratitude she told him that she would arrange a farewell dinner, so that he could be properly reintroduced to her friend Pi Nok. It would serve as a kind of handing over ceremony. Khun Taworn, relieved that he was getting a hysterical, jealous girl off his hands and at the same time overjoyed that he was rediscovering a treasure he thought he had lost for good, accepted Nong Maew’s offer without hesitation. So a date was fixed.

If Nong Maew had been content with what she had achieved so far with her convincing theatrics, she might have had the freedom she desired the next day when Khun Taworn made the transfer to her account of the sum he had promised. But things had gone so well up till then that she was encouraged to carry her plan through to the final stage. In fact, by now she could not stop the momentum of her actions. For the first time in years she felt alive and creative. But apart from the existential high that she was enjoying, it came down to the fact that she wanted much more than she had been offered, and she was sure it was within her reach. This was why she had suggested the dinner.

The scenario that she had rehearsed in her mind over and over again required one outsider. This was an electrician she had befriended while working at the “Twilight.” He had already done some work for her when she had first moved in. She called him now and offered him a decent fee to set up a hidden camera system in the apartment. This was something that presented no problem whatsoever to him, and he managed to get it done in a couple of days. Nong Maew’s plan with the cameras was that on the night of the dinner she would find an excuse to leave the two men alone at some point. They would not think it strange, given the fact that she was playing the pimp for them. There was a special switch near the front door which would activate the cameras as she left. If everything that Pi Nok had told her was true, then they would be all over each other even before she had reached the ground floor in the lift. She planned to be away long enough for Khun Taworn to leave, with or without Pi Nok. He never stayed later than 9:30. If they were still there, Nong Maew was quite prepared for a threesome. She had covered all the possible scenarios. The only gamble, which seemed to her a sure bet, was that the two men would hit it off. The tapes that she was going to obtain from that evening of gay pleasure between a prominent member of Thai society and a handsome young hustler would set her up for life. She would not be too greedy. Like those Hollywood divorcees she had read about, Nong Maew would merely ask for, and receive, a monthly income from Khun Taworn that would keep her in her accustomed lifestyle in a different part of the city, or in another city in Asia — Hong Kong, perhaps, or Singapore — in a bigger and more luxurious apartment. In return she would agree not to sell the tapes to the other political parties or put them up on YouTube. And just in case he had any ideas of arranging for her disappearance from the face of the earth, she was taking out insurance, so that if anything happened to her, the tapes would be immediately made public.

It seemed foolproof.

On the night in question everything went even more smoothly than she had envisaged. The food came from an Italian restaurant and was beautifully presented. The wine, Brunello di Montalcino, cost $200 a bottle. Khun Taworn had asked for it especially. It was his party, and he wanted the best. Over dinner she noticed that Pi Nok was already tickling Darling’s leg with his toe under the table — a good sign for things to come. As for Khun Taworn, he was aglow with lust, and the Brunello di Montalcino made him more verbose than usual. When she brought the dessert into the room, Nong Maew suddenly gave out a convincing cry of regret.

“Oh, I am so sorry. I forgot the Patron tequila in the lobby of the Oriental. I was having tea there this afternoon, and I must have left it on a table.”

Patron tequila was Khun Taworn’s favourite drink.

“And this is such a special occasion, this lovely reunion. Look, if you two gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll just nip down there. I won’t be more than twenty minutes. It’s just up the road. Of course I could call them and ask for the concierge to send it... but I’m sure you’ll have a lot of catching up to do while I’m out...”

Neither Khun Taworn nor Pi Nok objected to her suggestion. By now they seemed so besotted with each other that they were only too pleased for her to leave them alone. So, making sure that she flicked on the switch as she left the apartment, Nong Maew left the two of them to what she knew was going to be a torrid renewal of friendship.

Precisely an hour later Nong Maew returned to the apartment, having collected the bottle of tequila, not from the Oriental Hotel, but from a nearby bar in Sathorn Road where she often went. There she had ordered a dry martini in anticipatory celebration and flicked through a fashion magazine, all the while allowing herself to daydream of the clothes she would buy, of the places in the world that she would visit, of the freedom that she would finally have. When she returned to the condo she was mildly surprised to find that the men were still in the bedroom. She could hear the sound of their lovemaking as she walked through the front door, and it was so abandoned that it made her blush for a moment. And yet a second later she registered that there was something wrong. Her eyes scanned the living room. Clothes were strewn everywhere. She looked over to the bedroom and saw that the door was slightly ajar and a light flickered from inside. The sound of sexual pleasure was now pulsating. Instinctively she hesitated before taking another step forward. Just then a fit-looking young man with close-cropped hair, dressed in a pink polo shirt and chinos stepped out of the room in such a nonchalant way, as though he lived there in the apartment, that Nong Maew suddenly felt she was in a dream, dislocated somewhere between the familiar and the unexpected. Then, as she began to open her mouth to speak, she saw a gun in his hand that was pointed directly at her heart, and her whole being went cold. The man nodded slowly as though he understood how terrified she was.

“I’m sorry, sister,” he said, as the sounds of love from the bedroom subsided. “It’s just a job.”

Khun Taworn’s wife sat on the edge of the bed, wearing a cream silk dressing gown. Her wig was off, and she was rubbing moisturizer slowly over her pale, bald cranium. When she finished, she wiped her hands on a small towel, leaned over to the bedside table and poured herself a glass of tequila. When the mobile phone shuddered to life, she did not rush to answer it but stretched her free hand behind her to pat the body that was stirring — the beautiful, naked body of the young actress she was grooming to be a star.

“I have to answer this, darling.” She too used the English word but pronounced it correctly. “Go back to sleep.”

Now she picked up the phone and took a sip from her glass.

“It’s done,” said the man’s voice on the other end.

“No hitches?”

“None. But the girl was making a home movie. That’s why she called the electrician from the “Twilight” the other day.”

“Then he has to go too. And get rid of the tapes.”

“No problem.”

“Tell me. How was it? My husband?”

“He promised me the moon.”

“He was always a bad liar.”

“The gay boy cried. The girl tried to talk her way out of it. She wasn’t making sense. She kept on saying that all she wanted was her freedom.”

“She should have taken the money and run. Why are people so greedy? Anyway, now she’s free.”

“The papers will have a field day.”

“Yes, it’ll be juicy. You’ve done well. Thank you.”

With her drink in her hand she walked to the window with its view of the city stretching south. Her sad eyes looked down at the lights twinkling in the streets below and at the giant billboards on the sides of the tall buildings, then slowly towards the horizon, where the glow of the city gave way to the dense, dripping dark of the tropical night. Then they started to fill with bitter tears.