The Atlas

NO REASON TO CRY

In that street the Thai criers wore suits and ties. They looked at me in contempt or else they said: Japanese only! or they shouted: Members only!

How can I become a member? I said. How can I become Japanese?

But to this they had no answer.

At last I found a manager who led me upstairs personally. His place had been open for only two weeks. He could not afford to exclude me.

It was nothing but a long narrow lounge without windows. There were not even any girls at first, not until they brought in Ting.

She was dressed in a kimono and she spoke English like a Japanese. When she haltingly sang a karaoke love-song, she sang wirging.

Oh, are you a virgin? I said.

Nit noy. Little bit.

The woman on the other side of me, more experienced, probably sent to encourage and spy on Ting (who had been there only a week), laughed, patted her own rear and said: Me virgin here.

Every time I said something to Ting that she did not understand, the manager interpreted for her because he sat right across from me in the darkness and devoured us. Now and then he'd announce: She want you to kiss her! and say something to Ting and then that beautifully expressionless face would approach mine, after which Ting would arise to bring a napkin with which to wipe her lipstick off my mouth. The manager asked what I would like to eat from the Japanese restaurant which he just happened to own upstairs, and by some fine serendipity he had a menu with him, so I asked Ting to order and with the manager's help she chose the most expensive foods to chop-stick into my mouth. Betweenwhiles she sang solemnly into the microphone. I came to hate that dark place where the manager worked so hard at listening and Ting had to sing those country songs and love-songs over and over like hymns. The manager asked if I wanted another Johnnie Walker, and I said I'd finish the one I had first, so he motioned to Ting, and she picked up my glass and gulped it. — Good girl. — She still had sweetened colored water in her glass. I said I'd wait for her to finish that, so the manager gestured and she gulped it, too. Then the manager brought me another Johnnie Walker. I said to myself: This girl is so sad and trapped and needs my help; let me rescue her. .

Ting sat sulkily in the front of the taxi as it navigated the red-reflected wetness of the night expressway past the pink and yellow light-strings of the New Excellency Club and the glare-spidered construction booms. She had believed that I would be a quick and easy customer, but here I was taking her past the airport. At the giant camera and soft drink signs the traffic closed around us and we stopped for an hour, and she began to seethe. All in all, it was not going to be a lucrative evening for Ting even though I'd spend a hundred and twenty dollars; a Japanese no doubt would have spent more.

The upraised helmeted faces of the motorcycle drivers swarmed about us when I rolled down the window at Donmuang to ask for directions. Ting was pale with rage. A dog on the sidewalk growled. People interflitted on the narrow sidewalks beneath hanging sausages and roasted birds. We were lost. Ting and the driver turned to me, pointed at street signs written in Thai, and shouted: Binai? which means: Where? I had given them the brochure for the place, which contained a detailed map in Thai; what's more, I even knew how to get there, but the driver had not turned where I told him to turn, and now we were lost. He would not go back to the turn until a motorcycle driver assured him that he had to. Then Ting stared wrathfully into my eyes and cried: Whaiiiiieeeeeeeeee? while the driver shook his head in disgust.

Forty minutes later we were on the proper road, rolling slowly, ever more slowly beyond the sickening black glint of night earth at a construction site. The place had been deliberately located on an unfrequented lane of trees. Although it was only a couple of miles from the airport road, the taxi driver made us take a quarter of an hour because he was so sure that I must be wrong, and Ting sat twisting and turning with vindictive rage, which gradually gave way to fear as she saw that there were no people, no houses, on this dismal way. We came to the turnoffat last, and then the gate. The watchman came out with his flashlight. Recognizing me, he pulled up the rusty stop and swung back that hinged barrier. I made the driver turn left, then take the second right, and we were at the guesthouse.

I told the receptionist to call the nurse.

Ting sat by the door, refusing to speak to me. She'd told the taxi driver, to wait. Short time! she'd snarled. No all night you! Only short time!

When the nurse came the three of us went to the coffee shop, and the nurse explained why I had brought her here. She told Ting that the women who stayed here had all had that job before, Ting's job. They were learning to be seamstresses and beauticians now. She told Ting that she and I wanted to help her, that if she wanted to leave the bar she could stay here for free and learn to do something else.

Ting replied that she loved her job. She said that she liked to buy nice clothes, that she wanted to go to Japan someday, that her boyfriend was proud of her. Slowly she had calmed down; after an hour she liked the nurse, but when I asked her if she was still angry at me the nurse said: Nit noy. Little bit.

At the end, the nurse told her what AIDS was. I gave her a handful of condoms. Was it good or bad that when the nurse hugged her and she hugged the nurse back beside the waiting taxi (she scarcely touched my outstretched hand) she was crying? (She understand now AID, the nurse later told me, with weary satisfaction.) She was going back to work. A case can be made that if a girl is going to get AIDS there is no reason to cry while she is getting it.