Butterfly Stories

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He was feeling sick again; his balls were aching again. He certainly didn't know what he'd done to deserve that. At the Pink Panther, lights reflected through his mixed drink; high heels clickclacked on the bar-enclosed platform; black bathing-suited ladies danced slow and sure while overhead the balloons aped red traffic lights. The first one that came to him was very fat and desperate. She kept sticking her tongue in his mouth. - I'm sick, he said, but she started jouncing on his lap. -Pussy accident, he said, and she laughed. - I have VD, he said, and she laughed. She kept asking him to buy her out tonight, tonight, and he said maybe tomorrow and she started screaming no no no and cramming her tongue into him, becoming more horrible every second until he almost wanted her to catch the white fungus on his tongue.

Finally she gave up. - You sick OK no problem you come bar tomorrow darling buy me out tomorrow?

OK, he said.

Promise? You promise? I say you promise me now?

Sure, he lied. I promise.

On a cocktail napkin she wrote NAME and then her name, first and last; she wrote NO. and then her bar number; then she wrote:

forget me not

and seeing that, how much she needed him, how deeply she longed for even one night's worth of his money, how much she was counting on him to come tomorrow when if he could help it he'd never come to this bar again, he was so sorry for her that he looked down at the floor; she; misinterpreting this or perhaps understanding all too well but still hoping to make something of it, spread her legs and jiggled her crotch into his line of sight; when he gazed into her sweaty face she hissed: You sick OK! You go other Thai lady I see you I. . - and she leaned forward, panting her desperate wet breath into his nostrils, and slid her hand's knife-edge across his throat -

I can't take you anywhere! the photographer cried in anguish. Whenever a girl asks you to buy her a drink, you buy her a goddamned drink! I can stay in a bar for hours and tell 'em all to go screw, but you're such a pushover it just blows my mind. You'd better never leave your wife. You need someone to take care of you, man!

I agree a hundred percent, said the journalist, who like the photographer agreed with everyone on everything; it was so much easier.

Then he felt contrite and said: In the next bar I'll do better. I'll watch my money better.

So in the next bar, just barely out of sight of the Pink Panther, a woman said to him: You buy me drink? and he said no and she said: You buy me drink? and he said: Sure, honey. If it'll make you happy I'll buy you two drinks.

In that bar, which he was to think of as Noi's bar, Noi being the name of the woman he was buying all those drinks for, he kept handing out Cambodian money like party favors and they swarmed around him; Noi on his lap pleaded with him to give her another even though he kept telling everyone that the money was worthless in Thailand; the boy-girl on his left kept wriggling a nightmarishly long tongue at him like some corkscrew parasite that penetrated into his all too fresh memories of the Pink Panther whore's tongue whose sour-sweet uncleanness he could still taste, and suddenly he wondered how often these girls thought of penises as he was now thinking of tongues, these slimy snaky things that were determined to enter him whether he wanted them to or not; glumly and with aching balls he sat at that bar (a weird open-air place in the middle of the alley, hot crowds passing on either side) while the boy-girl bartender wiped the journalist's nose for him and cleaned his glasses: — you buy me drink? prayed Noi, already sloshed (such a tiny girl! such big drinks! it seemed so cruel that the girls couldn't drink colored water; that would be the journalist's first reform if they ever made him King of Thailand); the boy-girl on his left held his hand captive on a squishy bazoomba; Noi (45 kilos) now more firmly in his lap had his other arm cuddled around her most tenaciously; with that hand he sluggishly unzipped her fly and stuck a finger in to see if she were hairy or shaved — so many things to learn about Thailand! — and she was hairy. After that she had him buy her another drink, and since in his situation he couldn't clink glasses with her she clinked hers against his and even raised his to his mouth for him while the moon-faced bartender rubbed his nose once more; he felt like a king surrounded by ass-wipers… — Buy me drink? said the boy-girl on his left. - One more, he said. But just one. - Why not me? wept the bartender.

When at last he took all the slips from the wide teak cup and added them up, he saw that he was short by almost 500 bhat. He had to call to the photographer for money.

I don't fucking believe it, said the photographer in the most genuine amazement that the journalist had seen in a long time.

The two of them went back to Joy and Pukki's to sleep. They couldn't afford the Hotel 38 anymore except on special occasions; it was 300 bhat. (They'd given Joy twenty dollars apiece, each without knowing what the other had done; but all the same, Joy told them that they owed the landlord 200 bhat per night. .) Her room was an oven at night, bright and bleak and reeking of insecticide. Splashing sounds came from the hall where ladies took turns doing the laundry. In the corner crack, a foot or two below the ceiling, a hairy curled wire protruded. The wire began to vibrate. After awhile the photographer got up and pulled it; something squeaked; it was a rat's tail. .

While we are waiting for Joy and possibly Pukki to come back from work, while the two sexist exploiters sleep (at rest, the photographer's face still looked almost sweet sometimes the way his eyelashes curved and his lower lip swelled; his cheek rested against his bent-back fingers), I may as well describe Joy's place, which one gained by going down a dark corridor deep in toilet-smelling water; then, just at the foot of the stairs where another girl stood scratching her shoulder-bites, one turned right down a hall whose left wall was a barred partition behind which a family lived with big slow rats (one as big as a piglet); on the right were tiny padlocked doors like entrances to storage lockers. Joy unlocked one of these. The room, whose walls were part concrete and part wooden slats, was maybe ten by twelve feet. The floor's grey cement was partly covered by a sheet of green plastic patterned like bathroom tiles. On the wall hung a broom; Joy and Pukki kept their room very clean. In the corner was a one-piece unit of open wire shelving, then a beaten-up card table on which the two women kept their purses, some lotions, a photo of Pukki with her English boyfriend; then there was a wastebasket where they kept their dirty laundry, and a narrow vinyl "wardrobe" for all the clothes. These items were all ranged along one wall, on the bare concrete. On the green plastic, which covered most of the cell, there was nothing but a fan, an ashtray, a box of matches, and in the corner a folded length of ticking too skinny to be called a futon. Joy kept her stuffed animals there. - This baby for me, she said, squeaking her soft pink teddy bear. I love. - That was everything. There were no pictures on the walls. (On the ceiling was a mobile of shells, it's true, hung from the same beam the bare incandescent bulb was mounted on. I'd forgotten that.) The rent was 900 bhat per month.

My place no good, said Joy softly. You no angry me?

She came in at four in the morning, staggering, falling, laughing, stretching her long legs over the pillow, her brown toes soaking up light, saying: I drinking too much! I'm sorry I drink two beer, three whiskey, one champagne, two vodka -

It's OK, said the journalist. You're a good girl -

Thank you, she whispered.

Early in the morning a rat squeaked upstairs, and the monsoon rains came steadily down, eating all light except for a dreary brown or khaki luminescence that showed the clothes hanging outside the window-bars and then the stairs, underneath which was the toilet on its raised platform. Pukki had never come home. She'd had to go to Pattaya for an Australian boy's holiday. (The girls seemed to dread those "holidays" more than anything else, probably because they could never get away from their assignment then and always saw the same things, just beaches or hotel ceilings. .) Joy and the photographer were lying very still. The journalist waited as long as he could, the sweat gushing from every inch of his body, and still they slept; he got up and put his sandals on. Outside, the alley was now a gutter calf-deep in brown water through which sandaled people slowly splashed; radios were playing beside the families on the open platforms brushing their teeth and spitting into that canal; scraps of newspaper floated by; there was the usual crush of flies, as eager as boys (or girls) at Pat Pong; men sat on their wooden porches which had become docks; ladies splashed steadily from stand to stand, buying food; awnings stretched across the narrow sky, almost meeting each other, and beneath them ran the unreal canal city. By ten in the morning it was hot and sunny, the street bone-dry.

He went back inside, down the hall, past the toilet and right to the tiny door with the padlock; when he pulled the door open he caught a gleam of thrusting buttocks and said: I'm sorry but Joy said his name and said no problem.

Back to the National Museum he went alone, to enjoy an hour of beauty without love, but he was just like the photographer who'd shouted on the bus: I can smell a pussy a mile, away! because after a diversionary visit to some bird's head swords he found himself sniffing out Khmer art (there was more here than in Phnom Penh! — the Khmer Rouge hadn't forgotten much); raining his fever-sweat down on the courtyard grass, he stood lusting for the Bayon-style Dvarapalas of the early thirteenth century.

The stone head leaned forward and down, not quite smiling, not quite grimacing, the balls of its eyes bulging out like tears. Too familiar, that face; he wished now that the photographer were here, to take a picture of it. - Marina? — Maybe. Yes, Marina, plump, blurred and round. Her mouth was definitely grimacing. He stepped back, stood a little to the left so that her eyes could see him. She looked upon him sadly, without interest or malice; this Marina was long dead. Her nose was eaten away as if by syphilis, her breasts almost imperceptible swellings on the rock, her navel round and deep, her vulva a tiny slit that may have been vandalism from the same axe that cut off her right hand and left arm. . She stood square-toed and weary in the heat.

Beside her was another Dvarapala in the same style, stunningly beautiful, the contours too soft to be human; her face, neither a Buddha nor an Egyptian deathmask, merged eerily into her sweep of hair and bust; she could barely see him; her thick lips smiled; to make her smile at him he stood slightly to the right to meet her gaze; she smiled the way a whore smiles when you didn't pay her enough -

She looked into the photographer's face very earnestly. - You boyfriend me, or you butterfly? If you butterfly, we finit.

I love only you, the photographer grinned. Me no butterfly. Me suck only your flower. You my sweet rice girl.

That night while the photographer went to turn his cruel hawkeyes on other bargirls until Joy should arrive, the journalist sat drinking and preparing the final draft of his article, which would surely appear on the front page of the New York Times: Thailand's 3 main cash crops: rice, fish and women…and he started to feel something crazy lurching up inside him just like that time in Phnom Penh when Vanna wasn't there and he hopped on the back of the cyclo driver's vehicle and started pedaling the driver crazily down the street, the driver covering his eyes and smiling in dismay, everyone else laughing and pointing and staring, and the journalist had been full of spurious mirth that made him pedal desperately until he crashed the cyclo; now, knowing that something similar was about to happen, he left his friend, made his speedy escape from the square white, red and yellow lights of Pat Pong glowing down the alleys like soft drink signs. He didn't take Noi because she'd gone home early. The bartender said that a man had bought her too many beers and she'd gotten drunk and puked. For every 55 bhat per beer that the man had paid, Noi received 20 bhat, and she was required to drink it down to make the man happy; otherwise how could she wheedle another one out of him? — The journalist was sorry. He'd been thinking all day about what a tight pussy she must have. (But he loved only Vanna, of course. .) Sitting in the tuk-tuk, he smelled the blue smoke of the stalled traffic; he watched a lady with shoebutton eyes sitting side-saddle and miniskirted on the back of a motorbike, carefully gazing at nothing; then his tuk-tuk driver switched the motor on; the golden bulb lit up the naked green LADY OF HIGHWAY decal guarding the driver's back and the bloodspatter decals on the window; now they were moving so fast that the breeze was actually cold. Stop again. More blue smoke. Another side-saddle girl beside him, this one staring wide-eyed through her crash helmet. He saw other faces suspended behind the dark windows of taxis. Then the tuk-tuk growled off again. They turned by the lighted garden of the World Trade Center, bound once again for the Hotel 38.

Short time mean I fuck you two time, one hour, said the Hotel 38 girl. All night mean until twel' o'clock. Then I go home Papa-san.

He tried to tell her that he was a journalist, just to tell her something, just to reach her, and then he asked if she understood and she said yes and then he wondered how many men asked her if she understood and how often she said yes.

He showed her the rubber. - You want to use this? Up to you.

Yes, she said. Good for you, good for me.

Well, he thought (a little dashed), now my perfect record's spoiled. Now I've actually used a rubber from the beginning with one of my girls.

That's how the cookie crumbles, he said to himself.

Well, there was that one I caught the white fungus from, but I started by eating her out so that didn't really count.

This girl cost three hundred bhat. He'd told the night manager to pick one out for him, whoever wanted to come. - Be good to her! the night manager had said. He tipped her two hundred. When he saw the expression on her face, he thought:

Well, at least once in my life I've made another human being completely happy.

He tried to get her to stay a little longer, but she wouldn't. Later, though, she came back because she worried that he might not have had a clean towel. .

You butterfly too much, Joy said to him when she and the photographer came in that night. Too much Thai lady! No good for you, no good for her. She no good, no good heart! She have boyfriend! Not me. I no boyfriend. I love you, I go with you; I no love you, I no go. Before, I have boyfriend. He butterfly too much. He fucking too much! (Joy was shouting.) One day he fucking one, two, three, four. I say to him: OK, you no come here again, we finit. I say: You want marry me, see Mama me, Papa me — why? He crying. He say: I don't know. I say: You don't know? You finit! Finit me!

What did you think of that? laughed the photographer. Boy, you looked scared for a minute!

He pointed solemnly to the journalist and said to Joy: He butterfly too much!

Lying in that absurd round bed at half-past four in the morning, he blew his nose, cleared his throat, coughed, and spat on the floor, listening to the rain outside while the air conditioners droned and the blue curtains hung dirty, fat and listless like diseased cunt-lips. It was not very dark because the rooms with round beds had windows at the tops of the doors to let hall-light in, probably so that the whores wouldn't lose money for the hotel by falling asleep. He coughed. Finally he got up, turned on the light, and sat alone in the middle of the round bed, weary and calm. The shrill shouts of the whores had ceased; he could hear nothing but the rain and the air conditioner. A big bug scuttered across the floor. (In Pat Pong he'd seen the whores eating bugs roasted on a stick.) The late night feeling went on and on, and he cleared his throat and spat white fungus.

There weren't any other rooms in the hotel, and though he'd invited the photographer and Joy to take the round bed (he didn't mind sleeping on the floor), they went home to Joy's to sleep.

When he went into Joy's box, there was nothing but smallness, heat and darkness humid with sleeping breath; the photographer and the two women didn't make any sound as they slept.

You go Pattaya? said the journalist to Pukki.

She looked guilty, and he was sorry he'd said anything. - How you know?

I know everything, he said with a wink. My name King Pat Pong. Your boyfriend good?

So-so. Not good, not bad.

When the photographer had gone out to the toilet, Joy said to him right in front of Pukki: Do you love me?

The journalist didn't want to hurt her feelings. He didn't know who he loved anymore. He was fond of her… — Yes, I love you, he said lightly. She didn't say anything.

After awhile he said: Do you love me?

No. I like you. I don't love you. I love only him.

Then he felt a little ashamed, as usual; why did he have to either hurt people or lie?

But maybe he did love her. Like a brother, of course. .

Joy seemed so sweet and patient and all-seeing with the towel around her, cigarette in hand, other hand between her legs, casting her black shadow against the day, her eyes and mouth and nostrils perfect slits, the towel folds fanning down like sandbars from her left breast, a dark fingertip of shadow between her right breast and her arm, her expression maybe not quite so sweet after all, maybe only neutral.

Well, 200 bhat for a stifling sleepless night at Joy's place versus 300 bhat at the air-conditioned Hotel 38; perhaps (thought the weary white boys) Joy's place was a false economy. - Back to the 38.

While the journalist squatted at his ease in the puddled bathroom, having diarrhea and cleverly vomiting between his legs at the same time, the photographer caught a tuk-tuk to Pat Pong to buy Joy and Pukki (whom the photographer, though he no longer hated her, still enjoyed calling Porky). The journalist was not that interested in Pukki, but he wanted to do Joy a favor, and it seemed important to her to set him up with Pukki; fine, he'd stick it in. (I want to kin kao her. — No problem, she said tonelessly.) So many times now he'd seen Pukki dancing on top of the bar beside Joy, grasping the cool shining pole whose reflected light rocketed invitingly up her half-cocked thighs, and Joy would be looking away, moving her knee up and down while Pukki in the silverlime bathing suit smiled open-mouthed hi! like some comedian brining thumb and forefinger together in a circle which summed up all holes, poor Pukki dancing on, never getting as much attention as Joy. . So all right, let's be Mr. Nice Guy. Oh, the problems you can have with women when you're popular. . They came in already half loaded, and Joy had bought a giant-sized Singha beer for each of them. Pukki sat on the journalist's bed scarcely paying any attention to him; her face was full of Joy, who lay hugging the photographer and glancing over her shoulder every ten minutes or so at Pukki, who would giggle again; the photographer had said he thought they were lesbians, which the journalist hadn't believed, but now he wondered and said quietly to Pukki: You go with ladies sometimes? and Pukki blushed and said: Sometimes and he said: You go with Joy sometimes? and she nodded. - He said to her: You no want stay with me. It's OK, honey. I pay you same you stay, same you stay; up to you. . — and Pukki whirled on him in a flash, scared now, and started snuggling him, and he felt very sad. — I stay I stay! she whispered. I stay short-time you want short-time; I stay all night you want all night! and this got his hopes up a little bit; so maybe he'd finally found a Thai lady who'd stay all night with him (all the photographer's had been all-nights), so he said: OK, you stay all night, please, Pukki and she smiled. - Joy said something to her very sharply and she opened her fingers to show him a condom and said: You use this please. - That's only fair, he said. I've been telling you I'm a butterfly. - Butterfly no problem me, she said. - Kap kum kap,* Pukki. Why don't you go and take your shower? — So, not too long afterward, she'd fumbled the condom onto him and for variety's sake he put K-Y jelly on the condom instead of inside her and after a few half-hearted caresses he slid it in good and deep, semi-erect like a banana leaf, wanting only to sleep, and he pulled it out and stuck it in and pulled it out and stuck it in and could feel himself starting to go soft just like with Vanna, from whom he was sinking farther with every thrust, and he got softer which he didn't like one bit because it would only make Pukki feel worse about herself (as it was, she couldn't be exactly enjoying herself, but the similarity between whores and wives is that you don't have to consider their pleasure when you fuck them, unlike sweethearts such as Vanna who probably don't enjoy it, either), so he did his best to feel in the mood and the bed creaked cheerfully and he stopped noticing the other two in the other bed and her face was gentle and kind; she was trying to make him happy; and after awhile he started thinking he'd finally mastered the art of enjoying himself with a rubber; it felt better than it ever had before; he could feel the heat of her cunt right through the rubber, and the harder and faster he did it to her the hotter and wetter and more slippery she got and he was sailing and flying thinking to himself this is great! and her cunt was so good, almost too good, and then just as he came he saw the same thing in her face that he'd seen in rush hour people at the beginning of a sudden rain, the lady running with her shopping bag, the man in the soaked white shirt, the man on the moving truck quickly throwing pieces of plastic over a cargo of cardboard, raindrops spilling off the tuk-tuk awnings, the air no cooler, a sudden hot wind coming, the pavement now a river, and she said urgently: Let me see condom please! and he pulled out of her with a slurp and the condom had dissolved.

Now I have bay-bee! she wailed.

* Thank you.

He helped her wash. - I go now! she said. Go talk friend stop baby, sleep home, not with man, OK?

Whatever you want, Pukki.

You not angry?

You butterfly me, I butterfly you, no problem, I not angry, Pukki. .

All morning and all afternoon the photographer lay in bed, helpless without his fix of pussy. The journalist wandered in and out with his heart racing for Vanna. At the park gate two men were playing checkers with bottlecaps on a piece of cardboard, and the journalist went in and sat beside the mud-brown lake as rainclouds guttered like greasy candles in the sky.

He reread her letter, as he'd done every day. .

Joy had told the photographer that she had to see someone before she came that night, so she'd be late. - Probably got to make some money, said the photographer. It's not like I've been giving her much. .

She came at four or five in the morning, smiling and swaying. - I drink too much! she giggled.

Are you happy? asked the journalist quietly.

Yes, me very happy, 'cause I drink too much! I bring something for you. Here your clothes; I wash them for you; your shirt not yet; I no iron -

The photographer lay on the bed, his eyes closed.

You angry me?

No, not angry, Joy, just tired.

Look! I got toy monkey! You see? From lady! She like me too much! You go America Friday, I go her Saturday for holiday. No make love! No make love! Only go with her. . You not angry?

Nope, yawned the photographer.

He looked at the monkey on the bed for awhile. Then he flung it to her, or at her; what he was doing was never entirely clear. But surely he was only playing with her. .

She froze in just the same way that Thais jogging in the park freeze into rigid attention when the national anthem comes on the loudspeaker. Then she whirled on him. - Why you do that? You angry me?

No. Just tired.

You no like me?

I like you fine, Joy.

Why you angry me?

After that, the photographer's face hardened. The journalist knew that something bad would happen.

Joy stood by the mirror. She had been about to undress. She fingered the topmost button of her Pat Pong uniform, undoing

it and then doing it up again. Then she began to speak in a rapid monotone:

You no like me? You no like me OK I go home sleep. You no like me? You no like me?

The photographer said nothing. He didn't even open his eyes.

OK you no like me I go. I go now. You no like me. OK.

She began to pack very rapidly. She slipped her sandals back on. She stood waiting for the photographer to say something, and the journalist wanted to call out to her and take her in his arms, only to take her pain away — as if his embrace could do anything; he had to PAY to embrace. . and he wanted the photographer to say to her once more that he loved her (although that probably wasn't true) but he knew that the photographer was not going to say anything, and even if it had, that wouldn't have helped her, and even if the journalist or the photographer or anyone could have smashed the collar of anguish that was strangling her, she'd be choking again tomorrow night; so he lay watching her in silence, saddened to the bottom of his heart, knowing that there was nothing he could or should do, nothing to do, in that long long time when she stood by the doorway waiting, and then she said: OK. I go. - And she waited a little longer. Then she turned out the light, opened the door, and shut it behind her. Now she would be walking toward the stairs; the photographer could still have leaped up and caught her; now she was downstairs; now she'd be walking very very quickly in the rain to find a tuk-tuk. Lying in the darkness, he heard the photographer groan.

In the morning he decided to set out for Joy's to tell her that he was worried about her, and possibly to give her flowers or money. The photographer had her address, written in Thai for the tuk-tuk. He didn't want to tell the photographer where he was going;

the photographer might feel (and rightly) that it was none of his business. He decided to walk. He didn't know exactly where it was but he thought he knew the direction that the tuk'tuks went. It was near a large park, which he was confident he'd find. Soon he was in places he'd never been before.

The fungus between his fingers itched. Thais immaculate in pressed and sweatless shirts eyed him as he trudged and dripped. - Where are you going, butterfly? a man called. - He came to a translation service, and remembered that he had a letter for Vanna with him. - Can you translate from English to Khmer? he said. - No, they laughed. - They always laughed. It was the tenth place he'd tried. He came to an international calling service and asked them if he could call Cambodia. Yes, but he must wait one to two hours to get through. - Anyhow, he didn't know whom to call, how to reach her… He came to a department store and then a vast spacious park with fountains and playing fields; a grand white structure rose in the distance, multiple-roofed like a wat. Probably it was a girls' school. Everywhere he saw girls in white blouses and navy blue skirts. They sat in ones and twos on the edge of a brown pool, their homework on their knees. No, evidently there were boys, too; here came a procession of them in white shirts, navy blue trousers, marching along the outer perimeter of the pool. - Too bad there had to be boys. Now the place was polluted. - He sat for a long time and watched the water.

He arrived at Joy's with his heart in his throat, and knocked, seeing light under the door. At least they weren't sleeping.

Joy? he said. Sawadee-kap.*

Yes, she finally said listlessly.

* Thai greeting.

He went in and said: My friend no angry you. I worried you. You drink too much. No problem. OK?

Pukki's face had lit up when he came in, but now it dimmed. - You no come for me?

I have something for you, Pukki, he said, giving her his last twenty dollars.

For me? Why?

I sorry maybe you have baby.

OK. No problem.

The girls were not their bar selves. They sat sweating and trying to rub away beer headaches. Two Thai boys (whom they vehemently assured him were not their boyfriends, and he thought: Why does it have to be my business? Why can't they

be your boyfriends? We have no claim on you; we're only sick butterflies) were lying on the futon. Soon Pukki began to pay the journalist his due attentions. She sent one of the boys out to get lunch. When he came back she spooned the journalist's food onto the plate for him, just right. She peeled the skin off his chicken. She poured his water while the boys ironed his shirt and bluejeans. She had him lie down, and she sat fanning him. - Time to work. He wrote: Article about a whore who kisses a locket with her (dead?) boyfriend's photo before every sex act. -You good wife, he teased, and she laughed in delight.

You marry me?

Maybe next time.

When you come back?

I don't know, Pukki. I no lie you. Maybe never. I no good. I butterfly. I butterfly you forever.

But later, when she snuggled against him and the boys massaged his legs, calling him Papa-san and bumming ten bhat off him (he gave them twenty), he thought: Well, I could do worse than marry Pukki; Pukki is really a dear, dear girl. .

The photographer came and made up with Joy. The journalist stayed and stayed. - I really should cable something to the newspaper, he thought. Well, maybe I shouldn't; if they know how to get hold of me they may tell me I'm fired. Shit. Maybe I'll write something. What I need's an idea… an idea — by God, I have an idea! That means LIGHT BULBS!

Finally Pukki said to him: OK you go hotel now.

You come with me?

No. I go see friend. You come bar nine o'clock, say goodbye me. I buy you beer from money you give me.

OK.

But at nine o'clock, rolling into Pat Pong on a tuk-tuk with the photographer, who should he see but Noi, the short girl he'd bought all those drinks for and hadn't seen since, and Noi ran up and grabbed his hand, crying: I wait you, I wait you — every day I wait you!

Noi, I don't have any money left.

No matter me. Mariée say you save your money come looking me; you have good heart -

I can't even buy you out of the bar. How much is it, three hundred bhat?

How much you have?

The journalist turned his pockets inside out. He gave her everything he had: a hundred fifty.

OK, she said. No problem. I love you. .

She paid fifty bhat for the drink he'd bought her. She paid another fifty for the tuk-tuk.

It was raining again. She was very little and frail; she barely came up to his waist. He took off his raincoat and gave it to her. She squeezed his hand. She draped the raincoat around her like a cloak. He put the hood over her.

You have raincoat at home? he said.

No. I am poor.

I give you.

Thank you. It rain Bangkok every day; sometimes I sick. .

They reached the Hotel 38, and Joy was standing on the balcony looking down. She called his name.

Pukki little angry you, she said. She see you. She say she love you. She cry little bit.

I don't think she really does love me, Joy. She hardly knows me.

Oh? OK.

Yep, said the photographer, his hand on Joy's ass, I get the feeling old Porky's used to disappointment.

Joy kept showing skin for the journalist, looking at him over the photographer's shoulder, making sure to herself that she could still cast her spell on him even when he had a new girl. She was only twenty-one (she said), but looked older, though she was still gorgeous. The smoking and drinking were working against her. - You like my girl, Joy? he said. - She shrugged. - You like her I like her OK no problem, she said. (Later she told the photographer that Noi was no good.) — Lying in bed with Noi, the light still on, the butterfly fluttered excitedly knowing that Noi's vulva was going to open up for him like one of those Ayutthaya-style gilded lacquer book cabinets: — gold leaves and birds and leaf-flames on black, every line in black; it was almost as tall and wide as a tomb; and like a tomb the doors could not be opened to just anyone; that was why it was so neutral and pretty like Joy's face, its birds bright and open-beaked, a tense-antennaed butterfly questing below, more leaf-flames, like swirling golden kelp, enclosing a lion, an elephant, dragons, horses dancing, their manes scaled like leaves and butterflies' wings; monkeys clutching at branches, a bird gobbling berries, a bird feeding her little ones; all gold on black, gold on black. . but on one side the gold had been worn half away, as if a black night-fog were streaming down poisonously; it was the same black that had been so beautiful elsewhere. That was her wizened old face, her wrinkled belly. He saw himself, though, as some old white palace with gilded lacquer doorways and windows, the courtyard still and green, his bamboo hearts curving up from a common hillock, his stonewalled pool rippling green. Inside him there was definitely room for Noi. Inside Noi there was room for him.

It was the best yet. Noi let him eat her out to his heart's content and didn't make him use a rubber. It felt so good inside her that he almost went crazy. When she left he was very sorry. - When Joy left, saying goodbye to him forever, she kissed him on the lips. (He'd told her to tell Pukki that he was sorry.) He said to the photographer: Joy really has class. I hope you do marry her. - Aw, yawned the photographer, I doubt I'll see her again. I never cared about her one way or the other.

THE END