Cockroaches(2)
The damn traffic! It had come to a standstill again, and she told the driver she would get out, even though it meant crossing six lanes of cars to reach the motel on the far side of the road. The air wrapped itself around her like a hot, wet towel as she left the taxi. She searched for a gap, holding her hand in front of her mouth, aware that it made no difference, that there was no other air to breathe in Bangkok, but at least she was spared the smell.
She slipped between vehicles, had to sidestep a pickup with the flatbed full of boys whistling, and she almost had her heel straps taken off by a kamikaze Toyota. Then she was across.
Wang Lee looked up as she entered the deserted reception area.
“Quiet evening?” she said.
He nodded his displeasure. There had been a few of them over the last year.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes,” she lied. He meant well, but she was not in the mood for the watery noodles he boiled up in the back room.
“You’ll have to wait,” he said. “The farang wanted to have a sleep first. He’ll ring when he’s ready.”
She groaned. “You know I have to be back in the bar before midnight, Lee.”
He looked at his watch. “Give him an hour.”
She shrugged and sat down. If it had been a year ago he would probably have thrown her out for speaking like that, but now he needed all the income he could get. Of course, she could go, but then the long journey would have been wasted. Also, she owed Lee a favor; she had worked for worse pimps.
* * *
After stubbing out the third cigarette she rinsed her mouth with Lee’s bitter Chinese tea and rose for a final check of her makeup in the mirror over the counter.
“I’ll go and wake him,” she said.
“Mm. Have you got the skates?”
She lifted her bag.
Her heels crunched on the gravel of the empty drive between the low motel rooms. Room 120 was right at the back, she couldn’t see a car outside, but there was a light in the window. So perhaps he had woken up. A little breeze lifted her short skirt, but failed to cool her. She longed for a monsoon, for rain. Just as after a few weeks of flooding, muddy streets and mildew on her washing she would long for the dry, windless months.
She tapped the door lightly with her knuckles and put on her bashful smile with the question “What’s your name?” already on her lips. No one answered. She tapped again and looked at her watch. She could probably haggle a few hundred baht off the price of the dress, even if it was Robinson’s. She turned the door handle and discovered to her surprise that the door was unlocked.
He was lying prone on the bed, and her first impression was that he was asleep. Then she saw the glint of the knife’s blue glass handle sticking out of the loud yellow jacket. It’s hard to say which of all the thoughts racing through her brain appeared first, but one of them was definitely that the trip to Banglamphu had been wasted anyway. Then she finally gained control of her vocal cords. The scream, however, was drowned out by a resounding blast on a lorry’s horn as it avoided an inattentive tuk-tuk on Sukhumvit Road.
2
Wednesday, January 8
“National Theater,” a sleepy, nasal voice announced over the speakers before the tram doors flipped open and Dagfinn Torhus stepped out into the cold, damp darkness. The air stung his freshly shaved cheeks, and in the glow from Oslo’s frugal neon lighting he could see frozen breath streaming from his mouth.
It was early January, and he knew it would be better later in the winter when the fjord was frozen over and the air became drier. He started to walk up Drammensveien toward the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A couple of solitary taxis passed him; otherwise the streets were as good as deserted. The Gjensidig clock shone red against the black winter sky above the building opposite, informing him it was only six.
Outside the door he took out his entrance card. “Post: Director” it said above a photo of a ten-years-younger Dagfinn Torhus staring into the camera, chin jutting, gaze determined, from behind steel-rimmed glasses. He swiped the card, tapped in the code and pushed open the heavy glass door in Victoria Terrasse.
Not all doors had opened as easily since he came here as a twenty-five-year-old almost thirty years ago. At the Diplomatic School, the Foreign Office institute for aspiring officials, he had not exactly melted into his surroundings with his broad Østerdal accent and rural ways, as one of the posh Bærum boys in his year’s intake had pointed out. The other aspirants had been students of politics, economics and law with parents who were academics, politicians or themselves members of the FO aristocracy to which they were seeking admission. He was a farmer’s son with qualifications from the Agricultural High School in Ås. Not that it bothered him much, but he knew that real friends were important for his career. As Dagfinn was trying to learn the social codes, he compensated by grafting even harder. Whatever the differences, they all shared the fact that they had only vague notions of where they wanted to go in life and the knowledge that only one direction counted: up.