Jack Golf

Jack Golf’s Cambodia was a flute run down a police gauntlet near Buriram. While waiting for overstayers to decant the others smoke. She rang then, one tingle, my phone locked on vibrate due to an obscure fault.

Not out of the blue exactly

‘Why you no call me’?

‘I think you want finish’ I said, remembering the faint white sounds on the line after she had put the phone down last week

‘No. I think you want finish me’ confounding relief in her voice.

‘Where you stay now’?

‘Now I stay Cambodia…. Get visa’ added as afterthought

‘I no want finish you’

What I thought, beyond the pale mercenary was still in this for her.

‘When you come Bangkok?

‘Today’

‘OK. I call you tomollow’

Line dead.

To complete the tired ritual of the assisted visa run I ate a vouchered breakfast in the gaudy casino complex at the border and wandered back to the coach past vegetable laden handcarts swinging my name tag mischievously. I was happy. Though I know now there was a madness about those days like a crazed barnacle and jewel encrusted ubership on course to demolish a wooden jetty

Back home with Kit and Catherine wreathed in the cardboard boxes of departure, the phone thrilled again:

‘Tonight I do show Shark. I want you come’

‘Cannot’

You no want see me do show’? Flicker of coquette.

I resisted 2 more nights ignoring texts and calls until this broke my resolve

>I mai sabai you come now<

The Old Dutch is almost opposite the bar but still I didn’t see her slide alongside, seated in one feline movement, dressed in black mufti, hands like birds on the table. I gazed fascinated at the heavy baht adorning her wrists. She wriggled making a little effort to cover them with either hand.

‘Lady no good. Now I stay bar have problem’ she mimed gold being stolen. Then following my stare:

‘You buy me. Jam dai mai’?

Her changes were an open mine. Learning to write English. Moving in upstairs. Drunk nearly every night. Make up clumsily applied. Her face looked slightly feverish too in the textured dark. How had it come to this?

The end came swiftly. She slipped back across the road without saying goodbye. Never would.

‘Can I remember’? I though rhetorically.

Clubbed by memory

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