Bangkok Haunts

extraction comes out in the area of the genitals. Your face is white, but your dick is more tan than pink.”
    I don’t want him to see me swallow hard, but he does. I try to turn a shudder into a shrug. “I’m afraid I have not expressed myself with sufficient clarity for a legally trained mind such as yours,” I mumble, struggling. “What I’m talking about is shareholder satisfaction.” I pause and put a finger to my temple. “Yes, I can easily imagine that you might not have seen the product. I can easily believe that. Intuitively, I guess your story might go like this. Let me see, how might one start? Perhaps with that wonderful Australian expression
keeps his brains in his dick
?” Smith’s eyes have narrowed. “A vulgar phrase disguising a male phenomenon much researched but little understood. How will it be explained in the future when we are all androgenous again, this strange tendency of certain kinds of men, professional men in particular—one is almost inclined to say especially lawyers, doctors, accountants, and dentists, a disease of the overwrought professional class, plus politicians and senior bankers, of course—a tendency, shall we say, to divide themselves in half. How could it be otherwise, when you have great urban testosteronic warriors like yourself pretending to be interested in serving others when what they’re really after is rape and pillage? Yes, one can understand why the extracurricular activities of such men might be a little, shall we say, contradictory.” I look at him. “I can believe you never saw the video, Mr. Smith. You are not a voyeur.”
    I let a couple of beats pass. He is way too suave to break the silence. I continue: “You may even possess the kind of finesse that would prevent you from watching such a product. Perhaps, like me, you would find it almost unbearable to look at. Yes, I’m ready to credit you with that.”
    He jerks his head:
So?
    “So if I were to construct a theory of your involvement in this—let’s call it a copyright issue, shall we? You know how we Thais love euphemism—this copyright matter, then, the theory would go something like this. A man, a lawyer, very well connected to the Thai—and indeed an international—financial elite, is, forgive me, exactly one of those alpha male types whose massive sexual appetite is sublimated into socially useful activities only during working hours. I’ll call my example Smith, if you don’t mind. Smith, then, as we have seen, is quite hopelessly in love with a young woman who appears, by all accounts, to possess the charms of a Circe, a sorceress. Smith, for all his martial and commercial prowess, finds himself in a difficult psychological trap. This girl has studied other alpha male specimens whom she probably finds indistinguishable from him. She knows what animal lurks behind the business suit and also how to manipulate it. Smith, at first, is simply amused; he has been down this road before. But the girl is far more adept than he realized. She isn’t acting out some chapter from
Thai Whores’ Guide to
Farang. Oh no, this girl really does understand. Best of all, she can convince him that she’s very much that way herself: fast-lane passionate, let’s call it. A World Class Triple-A Fucker in other words, someone who really does know how to prolong the ecstasy. She also looks like every
farang
’s idea of the perfect Oriental lover. Her skin is as soft as chamois, her face is demonically beautiful, her body is simply perfect, her voice is soft, yielding, with an exotic accent in English which she speaks with surprising sophistication. After each assignation you tell yourself you must stop seeing her or she will ruin you, but you are haunted by the quality of her flesh, her merciless sangfroid—” I stop, pause at his desk, lean on it to go eyeball to eyeball, and do my best female impersonation:
“Tom, you’re just amazing. I don’t think I can stand the thought of you with another woman. I just can’t.”
    I think the words are more of a hard-to-identify echo than a sentence written in his heart. I stand back. “Did you know her husband—sorry,
ex
-husband—was standing in the closet making a film star out of you? Of course not. I think you did not make his acquaintance until much later. Not until all administrative chores had fallen to you to deal with, as consigliere to the
jao paw,
or should I say legal adviser to the board?”
    He parts his lips but says nothing. Now