My growing personal problem started as soon as I saw Anna.
As soon as I’d walked into the bar, she’d come across and looked at me with those big black eyes. Her black hair was in a neatly parted fringe at the front, and it was so long at the back. “Hello,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
I knew she’d recognised me, but the question threw me for a moment.
She was a very perceptive woman. She’d seen the Mathew Robson passport I’d been using last time. “Matt,” I said. “What’s yours?”
“Anna.”
We’d been through this cosy routine before, and I already knew her next question. “Where you come from?” she said and glanced down to where my hand had, without any permission from me, moved to touch hers. I paused to take a mouthful of beer. “London,” I said.
The look on her face changed. “How long you stay? Seem like too long. Where you go? I think you forget me.”
I was, at this point, looking at the top of her bowed head, faintly smelling a perfumed shampoo, so I said to the top of the head. “I missed you.”
Oh yes, no need to tell me. At that moment, my normal composure had completely gone and with it most of my professional dignity.
***
In the hotel, I turned over in the bed to look at what I’d brought back with me. Her long black hair was draped across her face, but hidden inside it was my problem. And just to prove it, I found himself fumbling to part the long strands to see her face. I admit to liking what I saw.Her eyes opened and, for a moment, seemed shocked at the sight of my eyes just inches away. They seemed to soften and turn perhaps a little moist. I, of course, looked away but then found myself looking down at her naked body stretched out beside me. And, as I looked, her hand came up to my rough unshaven face, and a finger ran from beneath my eye to my lips and stayed there. “How long you stay in Bangkok?” she murmured, moving her hips closer and wrapping a leg over mine.
“Maybe a few days,” I said.
She stuck her finger into my mouth, as if to stop me saying any more.
“Ooh. Long time, eh?” It was an Anna joke. She giggled in a sad sort of way, and my own thoughts went back to the night we’d last parted.
I’d even told Colin about it. He’d shaken his head in disbelief. “Christ Almighty, what came over you?”
“I don’t know,” I’d said.
“Where have you been?” she asked, puckering her lips not into a shape designed for kissing, but one that filled me with dread. This was Anna in angry tirade mode. She unfolded herself, sat up, and grabbed my ear lobe. I lay back.
“Too long you go away. I not know where you are. You not write to me. You not phone me. I try to forget but cannot. I try new man, but he no good. I try another one, but he go away and not come back.
Like you, you crazy farang. You marry now? Why not call me? I’m still here. Where you go? Why you come now? You make me sad again. You have other lady now. Sure, you have. So why you come back, and what your name this time? One time, you tell me Mark,
next time Luke, now you say Matt. I think you one big joke. I think better I call you Kun Look-Lap, mean Mr No Name.”
The tirade continued for a long time and all I did was look up at her.
“So,” she said at last, “what you want to say?”
No words came to me. I was lost. I am not good at chit-chat. Business discussions, yes, but not this sort of conversation. The dreadful silence probably lasted seconds, but to me, Mr No Name or whoever I now was, it felt like an hour.
“Oooweee!” she yelled. “Never talk. You are a very stupid man. You want some coffee?” She sprang suddenly from the bed and then, standing naked with her arms folded, began again. I can’t remember her exact words, but they were all about my shortcomings. “I think you have a wife you not tell me about. I think there is a Mrs. No Name you not want to talk about. You didn’t come just see me.
Something else brings you here. You, big shot with big shot business.”
With that, she tugged at the bed sheet, wrapped it around her middle, went to the bathroom, closed the door, and locked it.
It was just like last time. Her hair was longer. The cheap gold chain with the impression of a Buddhist monk still hung around her neck.
Her jeans were of the same slim fit and were hanging at the back of the chair. She still wore small brown sandals. They sat neatly together on the floor by my case. Her underwear had been put carefully underneath her white blouse.
I was, let me be frank, smitten.