Private Dancer by Stephen Leather (.pdf

and put on a bikini top. That was funny, because when we went in she was stark
bollock naked, except for a pair of black ankle boots. Must be love, huh?
Joy's two sisters came over to join us. Sunan and Mon. Sunan was a hard-faced girl
in her late twenties, tall with a tight body but cold eyes. She sat next to Nigel and
almost immediately asked him to buy her a drink. I hate it when they do that. I don't
mind offering, but I don't want to be pushed into it, you know?
Mon was different. Actually, she looked a bit like Joy. She was older, she said she
was twenty seven but I think she's probably about thirty. You could tell from the
stretch marks on her stomach that she'd had at least one kid, but she had a beautiful
face and a great figure. She was cuddly, you know. A bit like my ex-wife. She didn't
hit me for a drink but I bought her four colas and we had quite a decent conversation.
Her husband had cleared off not long after her daughter had been born, she said, and
she'd had no choice but to work in the bars. She was saving like mad and as soon as
she had enough money she was going to go back to Si Saket. I felt sorry for her and
when I left I gave her a thousand baht. Pete stayed on. He'd paid Joy's bar fine and
she'd gone off to change. I went along to Fatso’s Bar for a nightcap.
BIG RON
I get to see all sorts in Fatso’s Bar. The works. That's one of the reasons I enjoy
running the bar: all human life is here, and a fair sprinkling of sub-human specimens,
too.
There's the tourists: they come here for a couple of weeks, screw themselves stupid
and then head back to England or Denmark or Germany or wherever they're from and
dream about the wonderful time they had. Most of them reckon it's a sexual paradise,
they can't believe what's on offer here. They sit at the bar with stupid grins on their
faces, get tanked up and then head on down to the Plaza. The ones I feel sorry for are
the ones who fall in love. They meet a girl the first night and they think it's the real
thing. They spend every night with the same one, and by the middle of the holiday
they're hooked. They fall for whatever line the girl gives them - the sick mother, the
younger sister's school uniform, the bank foreclosing on the family farm, the dead
water buffalo, there's a million sob stories and I've heard them all. Sometimes they
bring the girls here, like they're on a date or something. They sit at the bar, all lovey
dovey, holding hands and making eyes at each other. God, it's enough to make me
puke. I've given up saying anything. They don't want to be told, they want to believe
that they're a knight in shining armour and that the girl doesn't want to work in the
bar, that she's only doing it to help out her family. Bollocks. They're hookers and they
know exactly what they're doing. I see the same girls in here week after week with
different farangs.
The mainstay of Fatso’s Bar are the regulars, though. We serve good, solid English
food in the restaurant upstairs or at the bar. Fish and chips. Roast chicken dinners.
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