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Da had loved Max but had no illusions about him. When he had came back expecting to live with her after a brief earlier affair, which she considered at the time that she had never been properly compensated for, he had handed over a wad of US dollars telling her to get an apartment, furnish it with fridge and TV and get herself a motorbike. A motorbike, all her friends had motorbikes but her family had come first, enough for a new Honda Dream, 110ccs and shining red. She hadn’t bought a new one although there was sufficient money, carefully checking the second hand models, knowing that one a year old, it must be repossessed of course, would have run any problems out of it’s system. With that single stroke he had won her heart.

Amazingly she found that Max was easy to live with, easygoing, clean and above all totally accepting of her culture and religion. She found out early that his funds were limited and suspected he would move on when he became wealthier. Still, while it lasted, it was better than working the Samlo Pub. She hated Putt who had propositioned her then cut her wages for every shortage in the till when she had laughed at him. Max was easily pleased, sexually he was lazy and uncomplicated. Sure he never took his eye off the other girls but had never made a move on them either. That slut Tip had tried her best but he had never bothered. He had been smart enough to realise that she would have known about it before his cock was dry.
The only problem had been Rick, slim and athletic he brought American tour groups to South East Asia four times a year and always summoned her to spend two weeks with him at the end of the tour. Once he had given her a thousand US and often two hundred dollars would turn up in her bank account. This was money she could not, would never be able to, afford to lose. Da knew that she was beautiful, more than that she was vibrant with personality to burn.

Men, particularly Farangs, loved being seen in public with her, seeing other men’s envious looks. She knew her body wasn’t so hot any more, Per had seen to that. Married at fourteen, giving birth at fifteen; her husband, thirty years older and furiously jealous- with good reason, she had fucked half the village boys when he started beating her, then one day bashing him back, unnaturally strong she had broken his nose and blackened his eyes, telling him he wasn’t Per’s father. The laughing stock of the village he had moved to Thailand in humiliation and the family had brought Da down to Paul at the Samlo Pub.

Max had often joked about giving her a good hiding and one day she had wrapped her arms around him and lifted him off the ground. At that time he had been ninety six kilos, exactly twice her weight. A fly in the ointment had been Paul’s wife Dang, the Thai girl, who always wanted Da to go with her to the expensive hotels to fuck rich travellers. She had given that up but Dang had harped on about it constantly, unable to understand why she would give up the money for Max. To complicated, too close to home.

Their life had been better than good, Max had soon tired of the disco scene, happy to have a few beers around town and talk bullshit to the tourists. She took him to Lao weddings and birthday parties and it was if he had been born to it. Never superior, only returning a wai if it was offered, shaking hands gently without the bone crushing grip detested by Asian men- most of whom could have taken out a Farang twice their size, and dancing with the old ladies in the traditional circle. He ate and drank everything offered, even dipping into the tray of duck’s blood with chilli, coriander and peanuts offered after a bar-see, the traditional Lao religious ceremony held in the home on special occasions, one night. The ex-monk doing the ceremony, deeply impressed, had thanked Max for coming in a formal speech and made jokes about the quality of Lao pussy. Even she didn’t know how much he understood, but he always looked as though he followed every word and laughed in the right places.

Cum, the public servant’s, weekend parties- only for his cronies and their mia noi, young girlfriends, that she had taken him to. Max would need all the government friends he could get if he was to live in Laos. Cum had no wife but two girlfriends and brought them on alternative weekends. Max used to get their names mixed up causing great hilarity amongst the other Lao men. The men drank Johnny Walker Black label, served by Cum’s girlfriend in a single glass around the table. The first time they had believed a Farang would think that one glass amongst six was easy drinking so he would continue to drink beer between rounds and would fall by the wayside quickly. Max had taken to the Chinese tea on the table, drinking cup after cup between whiskeys until only he and Cum were left drinking. Cum had embraced Max and kissed him, the only Farang he ever wanted for a friend he said.

Later, after food, a man had arrived with opium. Max had watched fascinated while he had scraped shavings into whiskey in a porcelain lid, dissolving it into a black tar, then to Max’s disgust he painted it on a cigarette. Declining the offer of the drug he had later said to her that he had been disappointed when a large water pipe wasn’t produced. She had asked him if he wanted to try it that way but he said no, he already had enough bad habits.

So here he was, back in Lao; she had been in Nong Kai with her mother and her new baby, Frank’s baby, when she got the news. Frank the American bar owner in Pattaya who hadn’t been able to keep his hands off his own staff while she was pregnant. Totally stupid, a hundred thousand girls in town and he had humiliated her on their door step. One night she had broken a beer bottle over his head and taken the baby and got the bus back to Lao. He was lucky it hadn’t been a knife to his cock. She knew that he would follow her eventually but now Max was an added complication. The crux of the matter was that she loved Max, had wept for a week when he had told her, by email of course, that it was time they both moved on.

She thought about Jane, her new daughter, life would be as hard for her as it had been for Da as a child if she never had a Farang father or uncle to take care of her. Jane would never be beautiful like Per, or even be pretty, having her father’s heavy Irish features that had not mixed well with her Asian blood. She thought about Max’s baby, if it had been Max’s- doubt had made her abort it, so many abortions, sometimes unable to afford the pill, sometimes forgetting to take it and sometimes it just hadn’t worked. Terminations were so easy, just an evil black pill and a couple of days pain and illness.

Damn Max for a fool for not taking her sister Noi; sure Noi was plain and plump but what did that matter in a wife. Farang men were so stupid; he could have been her brother and built Noi a home on the Mekong that he was always looking at. A home that Da could have come back to when it all got too hard in Bangkok or Pattaya. Noi would have waited on him hand and foot, and saved five hundred out of every thousand kip he gave her, she cared nothing for clothes, jewellery or cell phones. Max could have come and gone as he pleased, fucked every whore in Thailand then come back to Noi who would have given him a home and children without recriminations.

Max asked Da how she had been, scrutinising her carefully. She had lost a lot of the child like innocence that had attracted him to her in the first place, on her twenty first birthday he had taken photos of her in a plain white dress, remarking to Dang that she almost looked virginal causing that most un-virginal lady to laugh that hard she had to sit down.

He had kept those photos for years, sticking them on the wall of the rooming house where he had lived in Brisbane while waiting for his divorce settlement to come through. He remembered the shared bathroom and kitchen and the other residents, alcoholics, a few junkies, all wary of Max who barely spoke to them, once shoving a man half his age down the stairs without a moments hesitation after being threatened. Following him down stairs he had stamped on the guys dislocated kneecap causing him to pass out with the pain. The old Max would have talked to him, given him a few bucks, settled things peacefully but now he had things to do, places to go. No time for that bullshit. The next day he suggested to the guys on his floor that they all kept the kitchen clean and they had done it with out argument. When his money came through they had come out onto the footpath and shook his hand and stood and watched the taxi drive off until it was out of sight.

Da ordered food, the standard river front fare- fried pork, fried rice and sliced cucumber; he would have preferred the barbequed chicken on bamboo sticks and sticky rice from the evening street stalls on Khounboulom Road but that could wait for another night. He let Da talk, she told him about Jane and Frank and he agreed that Frank was a dickhead but she should give him another chance. Maybe she should talk him into moving to Nong Kai, there was only one decent bar there and more and more Farangs were moving up that way as they married Isaan bargirls. Max had no illusions about marrying a bar girl, it could be done if it was handled properly. When he started with Da he would give her weekly housekeeping, she would be broke in two days, then he gave her money to run the house when she asked for it. If it was for the family she had to tell him; he knew that there was no way out of giving them money but he kept it to a minimum. Noh’s husband, the head of the family was an OK guy, he looked hard for work and every year took his family to Thailand when friends got a building contract. Max had thought about setting up a woodworking shop in Vientiane, giving jobs to the family. He could train them, he had basic skills there, but every stick of timber in Laos was controlled and sold by the Army; Eric the Icelander had told him that, he had a contract to set up sawmills in the north but had fucked it up with booze and bad temper. If things were done slowly in Thailand the Lao made them look like greased lightening and losing your temper with them was nothing short of financial suicide.

However his immediate problem was getting the drug stash into a southerly direction, if the Lao police got wind of it, or worse the Army, the consequences would be catastrophic. He had decided to go over land to Siem Reap playing the tourist taking his bargirl to see the sights. Da would be the first choice there. He had to be careful, if she suspected the E she would run a mile, he would ask her to come then offer money if she was reluctant. He had to think of an excuse for not flying, he suspected that the airport scanners were drug sensitive and didn’t want to find out the hard way. If he could stick to trains and busses and get down into Malaysia, the next step to Indonesia was easy. What ever happened was better than going back to Australia and living his final years out in a fucking doss house.

They walked across the road to the river bank, a few bamboo bars had sprung up again when the promised development hadn’t realised. Da knew he would want to drink and look at the river and listen to her talk. She made a couple of efforts to draw him out but he shook his head, too many fuck ups, too many bars and too many women he said. She said she had to go and got on the motorbike looking at him for a long time then swinging across the road, hair flying. Max drank a little longer, looking at the river, then paid the bill and walked back to the hotel. He never even asked for the key, just walked past the desk to the stairs, they knew her of old, and would have
handed it over with out question. He knocked on the door and after a minute she answered, wet and wrapped in a towel. Not the first time he had dragged her out of the shower, they used to joke about it. He stripped and joined her in the shower and she soaped him down and washed his hair while he sat on the toilet seat. Then she squatted as he washed hers, taking his cock into her mouth as he did so. Towelling himself off he went out and lay on the bed, wondering if this was the same room where he had watched the hijacked planes crashing into the twin towers while Da showered after work. Unbelieving he had thought it was a Thai movie until the scene was repeated over and over again. Da had come out and looked when he had pointed at the screen. “America no good” she said, the three or four years of Communist sponsored education she had received coming to the fore.

Now she came out of the shower and climbed on top of him, “Boom Pooie” she said, Lao for fat. He didn’t care and he kissed her face and rubbed her back until tears ran down her cheeks and he licked them off. He ran his tongue down her body , sucking the engorge nipples, never leaving her back alone with his hands, she had liked to pretend she could handle him sexually but he still knew the right strings to pull. Raising his head, knowing she would be disappointed, he traced his tongue around the lobe of her tiny ear. Galvanised she thrust against him, eyes staring, clutching at his cock, trying to force him into her. Turning away he licked the other ear delicately until she wrapped her arms around him and thrashed against him. Gently he lowered his face and put his tongue where she had originally wanted it sucking gently on the small bud of her clitoris. If it was going to be a long night he had better get the first couple of rounds in on points.

The sun was well up by the time Max got back to the river. Sitting at the same table he had breakfasted at for such a long time he ordered eggs and French bread. Stipulating Lipton’s tea, a cup of Lao tea contained half a tin of condensed milk, several table spoons of sugar and still came to the table blood red. He remembered when he would arrive at this table with sweat running off him like water, he would walk the full length of the river front road and back, then sitting down and drinking a bottle of cold water while tea and breakfast came.

While he was contemplating the past he realised that he was under scrutiny and looked up. Pale tan slacks, light blue shirt with brown loafers and, God help him, white socks. Why didn’t they just get Australian Embassy tattooed on their forehead. “I presume you’re Max Bryant” said the vision splendid. Max looked at him in silence. Slightly disconcerted the man said, “we know who you are, and it’s our duty to inform you of the danger your in.” Max continued with the implacable look, practised over the years with various women determined to break through the barrier. Growing more annoyed the official saw Max hold out his hand palm up. Fumbling he produced a card which Max scrutinised for minutes then asked him to stop blocking his view of the river. As Max carefully copied his name into a dog eared note book, David Mortimer- where the fuck did they find these people, the now visibly annoyed pride of the Australian diplomatic corps sat down and lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. The Thai police, in the person of Police Colonel Duangvichit had informed the Australian Government Embassy in Bangkok that Max Bryant, Australian citizen, had left the country illegally in the possession of a large amount of illegal narcotics. Max’s government was reluctant to go to the Lao police after the Bali Nine debacle but felt that Max should return to Thailand and give himself up. The government would do their utmost to have him transferred to an Australian Prison after he had pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.

Max finally spoke again, letting the contempt leak into his voice. If that was all they could do after all the pairs of pale tan slacks and light blue shirts that Max’s taxes had paid for over the years they could stick their help up their arse. The matter between him and Duangvichit was personal and not legal and if he returned to Thailand he would certainly be charged with possession whether he had any drugs or not. Should he be arrested in Laos, carefully omitting that it would not be for the first time, regardless of the circumstances his lawyer would cause the Embassy the greatest public embarrassment possible. So pick the bones out of that and fuck off.
Mortimer got up furious, well used to Australians coming to his office with their cap in their hand begging for visas for their Lao girlfriend; he had enjoyed telling them that sexual intercourse between a Lao citizen and a foreigner was illegal and they had better get home on the first plane for their own safety. Max was a totally new experience to him; failing to offer the respect he warranted and spurning the generously offered advice.

He would make sure that his report would recommend that this overweight creature with the feral eyes got the full treatment in the unlikely event he should ever step off a plane in Australia again. Striding off, he thought that if this was the type of Australian coming to Laos he had better recommend that the Embassy Club raise their annual dues by another thousand dollars.

Max paid up and headed back to the hotel, Da was still asleep, only hair showing above the thin blanket, so he took a quick shower and slipped, still damp, into the bed. Coming erect almost immediately, certain woman had that effect on him while others needed to work on it, he began to stroke her hair and pushed it aside to kiss the back of her neck. She made a sleepy noise of appreciation and pushed her splendid buttocks into his groin, allowing him to slip between her legs into her pussy. Just like old times he thought.

 

© Julian. All rights reserved by the author.