Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

Air was charming. More than that. I bought her a vodka and we played two games of draughts. I said I was hot; she fanned me with a magazine. I put a ciggie in my mouth; she lit it for me and fetched me an ashtray. She contrived to make these small things look like the most fun she’d had all year. I made it very plain I wasn’t looking for a girl. She said she didn’t mind. ‘Farang no like me,’ she said.

I said I didn’t believe her, and she laughed prettily at my immense wit. There was a pool table at the back of the bar, so we played a couple of frames; but she was expert, and skinned me both times. Mick by now was happily ensconced with one dazzlingly beautiful Thai woman I hadn’t noticed earlier. The others had drifted away, beaten by this spectacular competition. I asked Mick if he was ready for another beer. So entranced was he by this beauty queen that he peered at me as if through opaque glass.

‘Sure. Haul in a vodka and tonic for Mae-Lin here.’

He introduced us. Mae-Lin, fragrant and graceful with lovely, delicate cheekbones gently shook my hand. I felt a little kick inside me as her fingers brushed mine. I could see why Mick was spellbound. She was bewitching. I couldn’t imagine why a woman like that would have to resort to prostitution.

‘Mick told me ’bout you just now.’

‘He did?’

‘Oh yes. He say you good man.’

She was flirting with me. Her flashing eyes were completely unambiguous. I wondered if she was inviting me to compete with my friend for her. Shockingly beautiful as she was, I wasn’t prepared to do that. I made some throw-away remark, and turned to challenge Air to one last game of draughts.

Halfway through the draughts Mick asked me if I wanted to take Air to a nightclub called Blue Valentine. Mae-Lin wanted to go there. Air shrugged when I said no, that I was ready for my bed.

‘She’s not on the game, you know,’ Mick whispered in my ear.

‘You don’t have to explain to me. Enjoy yourself.’

‘Seriously. She told me. She knows one or two of the girls here and was on her way to this club where she’s a DJ. Well, you know me. She made it clear she wasn’t a prostitute, like. Why don’t you come along?’

It was true, he did have something seriously in common with Mae Lin. Mick had an old set of decks, a tangle of lights and a vast collection of seven-inch vinyl discs. He did weddings and funerals … no, not funerals, but family parties and the like. I guess this made him a DJ too, though I couldn’t see why he needed to justify it to me. Anyway, I wasn’t up for it. ‘Honestly Mick, I’m whacked.’

He unbuckled his moneybelt, fished out a few small denomination notes, and thrust the belt into my chest. ‘You’re on duty, Daniel.’

‘Fair enough.’ No, he wasn’t so stupid after all. ‘Off you go. Enjoy yourself. I’ll pay up here.’

Mick wanted to splash his boots out the back before leaving, and Mae-Lin and I chatted while she waited. Red and blue neon light skidded off her lustrous jet-black hair. She was perfect. Her exquisitely manicured hands fluttered like white birds as she adjusted the high collar of her blouse. It was an entirely unconscious movement, as if she was trying to hide something. It drew my attention to her throat, and that’s when I saw a tiny scar, almost obscured by cosmetics. I looked at Mae-Lin again. She was rather taller than the average Thai woman. Then I looked at her hands.

My God, I thought. That is good. That is very, very good.

I was dumbfounded.

Mick came out of the toilets, rubbing his hands together, chipper, larky, ready to leave, and I thought I’d better find a way to tell him. Then I thought, no, if you don’t know, after everything that’s been said and done, then that’s your look-out. As they left the bar and climbed into a tuk-tuk, I saw them squeezing up close together.

It was something in the pearly air. It was in the hallucinatory vapours that comprise the atmosphere of Chiang Mai. When you see two people falling in love you don’t intervene. You don’t try to break a moment of grace, not for anything.

I turned and saw Air looking at me. Oh yes, she’d seen me clock it. Mae-Lin was her friend. She clasped her hands together in a gesture of supplication which said, say nothing. It was unnecessary.

‘But I need one more beer before I go,’ I said.

‘I get it for you,’ Air said sweetly. ‘You good man.’

At the hotel, I passed Phil’s room. Light was bleeding under the door, so I knew he was still up. I thought about tapping on the door to let him know I was back, but I didn’t bother. I thought of him sitting upright on his hard chair. I don’t know what it was about the bloke but I couldn’t even imagine him going to bed. I pictured him standing upright in a corner of the room all night, hands held stiffly at his sides.

A few hours later I heard Mick’s key hit the lock from outside as he let himself into our room. He flicked on a side light, but I made out I was asleep. He blundered about, crashing into furniture, huffing and puffing in the bathroom, making such a commotion he was obviously trying to wake me. I pretended to sleep on.

At last he threw himself into bed and switched off the light. I heard him sighing and moaning in the dark, and his bedsprings complaining as he tossed and turned. At last I heard him sit up. ‘Danny!’ he hissed. ‘Danny!’

I twitched slightly in my feigned slumber, popping my lips at the air the way sleeping drunks do, pretending to snooze on.

‘Danny! I want to talk!’

I