Bangkok Haunts

shelf.
    Yammy’s is not waiting, though. It started out as a liter but has lost half its contents. As I sit down at the dark-stained wooden table, which perfectly matches the dark-stained wooden decor, Yammy beckons to one of the waitresses, who comes to pour some of the sake into a stone jar for heating. A few minutes later it comes back warm, and she pours a couple of shots into the tiny mugs. Yammy is halfway through his bento box, gloomily picking at yellow tofu with his wooden chopsticks.
    “I don’t think I can go on any longer, Sonchai,” he says in that soft California accent. “This is it, I resign.”
    “Okay,” I say, taking a slug of the sake. “I’ll speak to the boss.”
    I cannot tell yet if this is the correct strategy. Maybe he’s too far down the line with his depression to be tricked out of it? He gives me a sly glance. “The third movie in the series is only one-half shot. You’ll have to find someone to take it over.”
    “Right.”
    Peering over his chopsticks: “You don’t care? The whole contract is at risk.”
    “I realize that, Yammy, but you’re an artist—you’re temperamental. If the working environment is not right for you, you cannot work. Vikorn will have to understand that.”
    “He won’t snuff me?”
    “He might. But we already know you have no fear of death. After all, you were on death row for a while, and we practically had to beg you to leave jail.”
    He manages a smirk and drops the pretense. “Look, I’ll finish this one and do the other ten, but after that—”
    “Yammy, forget it. If you want to be difficult, Vikorn will dump you anyway. Maybe he’ll kill you, or maybe he’ll send you back to jail. Maybe you really do have that kind of integrity, but so what? The movies are going to get made, Yammy, if not by you then by someone else. I’m only afraid Vikorn will want me to take over the production.”
    He hadn’t thought of that. He lays down his chopsticks to stare at me. “You? You don’t know scat about making a movie.”
    “I agree. Just think how awful they’ll be if I make them. How is an amateur like me going to get a penis to slide into a vagina? It must take decades of practice.”
    He maintains radio silence for about ten minutes—at least, that’s what it feels like. Finally, forcing me to stare back into those bottomless pits of morosity: “You have to babysit me, don’t you? That’s your job. So, we’re going to get drunk.” He tosses back some sake and nods at me to do the same. I’m still nursing guilt and mourning Nok and cannot think of a better thing to do. I’m not sure how many times we knock back the rice wine, but the sake bottle with Yammy’s name on it in elegant Japanese calligraphy is empty by the time we leave. Outside it is early evening. On the street, with the Skytrain rattling overhead and the static traffic chugging out airborne poison down below, the cooked-food stalls of the day, with their hundred varieties of sweet snacks, have been replaced by more serious stalls serving noodles and other dishes suitable for hungry commuters on their way home. Generally speaking, though, the landscape is more fluid than I remember. Yammy is in worse shape and can hardly stand. He claws at my left arm, which he is using to support himself. “You think it’s so easy to slide a penis into a vagina, when neither bit belongs to you? It’s not as easy as you think. You know who are the biggest prima donnas in the porn industry? The studs, my friend, the studs. One harsh word, and they droop.”
    “But you have Jock?”
    He grunts. “If not for him, I really would resign.”
     
    That night Chanya surprises me. We are in bed together with my hand on the Lump, and I have just finished telling her how Nok died. I was expecting another fear reaction, followed by a demand that I listen to Vikorn and forget Nok. Chanya, though, is quiet for a long time. Finally she says, “Do what you have to do, Sonchai.”
    “But what about you and the child?”
    “We’ll have to take our chances. Too many people in Thailand are in denial. Keeping quiet in the Thai way doesn’t work anymore. Maybe one day a rich man will decide to rape and kill me, then pay off the police. Change has to start somewhere.”
    “That’s not the way you talked last time Tanakan’s name came up.”
    “I know. Now another woman is dead. Perhaps our Buddhism has made ordinary Thais too humble.”
    “And the others too arrogant,” I