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The next day Jack ruefully observed that Malee had adroitly avoided the intercourse half of the offer while taking full advantage of the food. She never even put her bag down when they entered the spacious, comfortable room; heading straight for the bathroom and locking the door behind her.

An hour and several beers later the phone had rung with an invitation from Bill to join him in the bar and he’d barely put the phone down when a showered and changed Malee emerged and said “You take shower now, I go downstair”, on her way to the door.

They had drank beer for a couple of hours while the girls made hungry noises and then adjourned to the restaurant. Both men order steaks with fries and salad while their companions talked for a while to the waitress who brought them a whole fish, deep fried crisp with boiled rice, fried chicken wings and several plates of stir fried vegetables. Jack was pleased to see a surprisingly good wine list and ordered a bottle of Bordeaux to go with the steaks. Bill had a couple of glasses while he drank the rest and accepted Bill’s offer of another bottle, Malee obligingly topping his glass up whenever the level fell below half full. He drank most of the second bottle while Bill assisted the girls with the chicken wings, going back onto beer at the same time.

Kim and Malee sat back from the from the table in satisfaction, “Im”…full, they proclaimed as one; Bill grinned and called for the menu, ordering ice cream sundaes all round while Jack decided a Drambuie liqueur would go well with his.

The replete couples moved on to the night club where the band was warming up, Jack ordering Scotch and soda with beer for Bill and the girls drinking Spy, that truly vile sparkling “wine” much loved by Isaan girls.

The show was as good if not better than Bill had anticipated and he sent several jugs of draught beer over to the band table until the singer came over to thank them and welcome them to her city. She spoke perfect English and mentioned she was thinking of moving her act down to Bangkok if she could find the right venue.

“Somewhere nice” she said, “a big club in a street with lots of action, but no idiots, just older guys with lots of money to spend who want to drink and listen to good music with a better class of bargirl”.

She sighed, “I’ve got some money, but it’s not well paid up here; I need a partner, not only for the money but a business man, someone who can get things done. I can organize the shows but the business side of it?”

She shrugged and laughed depreciatingly, “that’s why I’ve got no money; too many useless boyfriends, too many venues that closed on the second night because someone forgot to advertise”.

Bill looked her in interest, an idea forming in his head…. Daeng running the bar? This girl doing the entertainment? With him running the show it just might work.

By the time the show finished and the staff were making clean up and close motions Jack was considerably the worse for wear. He was talking to Bill and the girls virtually non stop and kept losing his train of thought. Mostly he was trying to tell them how his new book would become the definitive work on the Thai sex industry as well as resurrecting his career.

“You can’t solve a problem unless you understand it” he waffled, “and to understand it, it has to be professionally documented. Journalists like Stephen Leather and John Burdett have sold out for the purpose of titillating the mass market for financial reward. It’s vital that bar girls be treated as a genuine research subject in the same way that anthropologists would study an ethnic group”.

“Well, I’ve put my share of research time in”, said Bill; “I’ve even got photos to prove it. Many years of dedicated work” he said with not inconsiderable satisfaction.

Jack waved this off with a contemptuous gesture; “your talking about exploitation from the customers viewpoint, the way the girls think and react is far more important. Remember when the Russian Mafia tried to organize them in Pattaya? They stuffed up big time, every time they set a bar up one of the girls would have an argument with the manager and pack up and leave taking most of the dancers and waitresses with her. The Russians were going crazy trying to find a girl called Lek or Noi in a city of a hundred thousand women bar workers”.

He refreshed himself with a large swallow of Johnny Walker and soda. “And they couldn’t intimidate them even if they did catch one and make an example of her. It was like they couldn’t comprehend the threat of violence. Why? Is it because they grew up with it as an every day thing? Dad beating Mum, boyfriend or husband beating them? Nightly fights in the village with knives and clubs?”

He looked enviously at Bill who had coaxed Kim onto his lap and was nuzzling the back of her neck.

“What about the type of sex they get in the bar industry as opposed to what they had at home? Does oral sex come as a complete surprise to them? What about the really kinky stuff? Bondage and leather? Christ, it must be like coming to another planet”.

He accepted the full glass Malee brought from the bar for him, “Their whole lives have to be documented; childhood, puberty, the teenage years. What’s going to happen now the minimum age to work in the bars is being raised to twenty? Most of them have two kids by then. Even if they’ve heard of birth control they can’t afford it”.

Bill shrugged, he was getting tired of listening to Jack and wanted to get Kim into bed. He could feel her hard young body against his and he was in little mood for academic discussion. “The real desperate ones end up in the Thai brothels and Karaoke bars long before that,” he said.

“I’ve seen some real honeys when I’ve gone to the good places as guests of Thai business associates… some well under sixteen, and they’re the lucky ones. Others just come down to the cities and work the streets, no protection that the bar gives them, no STD testing.”

He drained the beer left in his bottle and stood up patting Kim’s buttocks. “Come on sweetie, been saving something for you all night”.

He turned back to Jack, “We’ll get a reasonably early start eh? Straight after breakfast so we’ll be on the road by nine, which will put us in Udon Thani before twelve… touch wood” he said touching Kim’s head affectionately.

“Bye, bye children, play nicely now” and he headed to the door to the patent relief of the hovering manager who looked hopefully at Jack and Malee.

Malee stood up and beckoned to Jack being careful not to touch him; “We go now Jack, people want to close”.

The Englishman stood up and staggered slightly, “bloody hell, I’m pissed” he said in surprise, he goggled at Malee owlishly, “I want to talk to you tonight, you’re going to tell me every minute of your life from the day you were born to the time you first walked through the door at Mata Hari”.

She giggled at him “so many talk Jack, I never know the man who like so many talk”.

Malee took the key off a fumbling myopic Jack and opened the room door. He stumbled through it and collapsed into one of the lounge chairs.

“Don’t bother about making another dash to the bathroom, your virtues safe tonight unless you want to go to some effort and I can see that you don’t” he said in the self pitying tone drunks use a lot.

“Get me another drink and siddown…. lay on the bed if you like there’s no chance of me getting there unless I crawl”.

Malee obliged with a Scotch miniature and some ice in a glass, taking a Spy for herself. Her attitude to alcohol had changed since starting in the bar, at home it had been very much a men’s thing with some of the older women taking a beer with ice at parties. But she had been expected to drink and had obliged, finding it relaxed her when talking to customers and made her laugh and giggle at their jokes, which she seldom understood.

“What made you come to the bars Malee? I know your families probably broke but there are other alternatives. You come across as fairly smart, you had a bit of English when you started and it’s improved quite a lot in a very short time. Practice makes perfect eh?”

Jack took his notepad off the coffee table and fumbled for a pen. He wrote “reasons and motivations” in an unsteady hand on a blank page.

“Why didn’t you just go into Udon and get a job waitressing in one of the tourist places? They make money off tips? Not as good as hooking but at least you get to choose who you sleep with. There has to be other options, super markets, shopping malls…. I know a guy who’s wife was a tour guide, she was making a thousand baht a day on commissions and tips”.

Malee knew she would have to talk eventually and hoped that if Jack stopped to listen he would doze off.

“My education no good for shop work Jack, must finish school, many place want college as well. Girl want to work other job, must know some one… have uncle with business. Job only for family. Sure, can work rice and soya but only short time work, now so many machine, before twenty people work now one machine do all”.

She looked hopefully at the doodling journalist “I don’t want to work bar, never even think about but Mama San come to see me, tell me about money. My Dad don’t want me to go, he understand I must sleep with customer but Mum say “Go”, she know how bad we need money”

You’ve never heard the word money pronounced until you hear it said by someone who has never had any, thought Jack, the truly poor. An English kid asks his old man for ten quid to go to the pictures and it’s as much as some of these people see in a week if they’re lucky. The constant struggle just to survive, a cheap bush knife or spade breaking is a catastrophe, fifty baht to replace it and no work can be done until it’s renewed. He had seen the tiny footpath work shops in the cities and villages; people repairing tools and kitchen stuff, that would be thrown away anywhere else, for a few baht . Maintenance is barely kept up, replacement a disaster.

In some ways Thailand was luckier than other countries. Starvation was rare here, there was always some food and everybody shared. Was it being Buddhist or was everyone related?

Malee continued, “I like to meet nice man Jack, someone young like me, with good job. I like to go back to school and get good job too, then children us don’t have to worry money”. Again the plaintive longing in the word money, almost the way an alcoholic would say “Cold beer”.

She sighed, “sometime I thinking I will be lucky, other time I looking Daeng and Nok, more than ten year bar, still no man, no money. They waste so many money, cell phone must have, drug must have, good clothes must have. They forget family have nothing… I ask Daeng if her father still alive, she say she don’t know!”

She contemplated this horror in silence for a few moments.

“ Jack, I think you good heart, if you want boom boom come to the bed”.

A gurgling drunken snore was her only answer.