Bangkok Days and Siamese Nights 2: Without A Backward Glance

Lady NN put down her drained iced latte at last, and in a characteristic change of gear, and said with a soft sigh:
"But of course I've forgiven Bloody Mary. I pity her really, always wearing her heart on her sleeve like that. Fancy falling for a wild thing like Billy. She always had the worst taste in men.
"Of course Bloody Mary didn't really meet Billy at the fruit stall, though I'm sure Billy was selling oranges on Pradiphat at some point in his long and winding career; God knows he's done quite a lot of things - but never for long. After our little misadventure at Aqua, I sat Bloody Mary down at Cafe Harmonique over a bottle of Moet, and I said 'Spit it out, Bloody Mary'. And you know, she fairly howled (you know, Bloody Mary's never good with drinks and bawls like an abandoned baby when in her cups)".
This is Bloody Mary's Story:
"It was the weeks before Christmas, and we had sex, and then we said goodbye as usual about 5am, because Billy said he had to go and open the fruit stall. And I was seized with this freakish howling panic that I would never see Billy again once he walked down that apartment corridor and took the lift, and once I saw his shape walk onto Sala Daeng out the gate. We kissed and said goodbye again. I got back back into bed, as usual. The door thudded shut. I remember I was still rubbing the bump on my head where, when Billy had entered me so hard, I banged against the wooden headboard, and all the books fell off the table.
Billy had left without a backward glance.
I leapt out of bed, ran to the door and opened it but the beige foyer was heartlessly empty and dark, the lift doors implacably shut. Billy was gone so quickly. It was so hard to reconcile with his physical sensation, still so vivid on my skin, and his smell was still on my face. I kept thinking 'I'll never see him again.' I cried when I was packing my bags that day, and of course, I left my silk Costume Homme pants behind and my adapter, and all sorts of stuff but I didn't care. It's just that my jacket is now missing its pants, and I really liked that suit. As the car winded away from the apartment, I kept turning back, unreasonably expecting to see Billy still walking down that road where we've had so many dinners at the cafe; All I saw was Pui, the security guard with the horrible squint and a parchment face, saluting.
Billy said he would be going to the movies tonight. Maybe.
When I'm back home with Eric Tan, good old bad old Eric Tan in our own marital bed of 10 years, Billy would be watching a movie. Who with?
The bump on my brow was hardening into a pain not unlike a headache. I kept touching it gingerly all through the flight home, wondering if it was going to bruise or not. I'll just tell Eric I bumped into a door, not that dear old Eric was likely to notice. Billy had kept saying 'sorry, sorry' as he continued to nail me and I kept thinking, "I'll never see you again. And when we say goodbye, you'll walk down that foyer and down the lift and out of my life."
I could call, but what's the point?
Billy had said that he had to go back to his family farm for Christmas and the New Year. There was no way I could follow him there. He laughed out loud at the idea.
I still can't bear to look at the picture Billy had given me of him laughing slyly into the camera one hand on his hip, the swimming shorts wet and clinging. I've hidden it in the office at work. Who had taken that picture? What pool was that? Was that a hard-on?
The bump on my brow unknotted and softened away during the weeks counting down to the new year, when I was so busy that I hadn't even noticed that it had turned yellow, and then was gone. One day I reached up to touch it, and I couldn't even remember where exactly it had been. Billy's bump was gone.
But where was Billy? He hadn't called.
And then on Christmas Eve, just as I was tidying up the place and Eric and all of Eric's friends had gone off to dance in Taboo, clearing up the marital ashtrays, and lining the marital bin with a fresh marital bin liner, I got an SMS: A Merry Xmas messsage, one of those blinking trees made up of dots, dashes, semi-colons and parantheses, but still recognisably a blinking Christmas tree.
From Billy.
And then, I sat down by the empty champagne bottles on the marital doorstep and broke down. Maybe NN is right; It could have been the drinks.

"And that, truly, was the last that Bloody Mary ever saw of her lover boy Billy. That poor heartbroken bitch has trawled Pradiphat up and down, and the fruit stall, if it was ever there, was no longer," said NN finally. "Bawl your eyes out young lady, I said, but don't inflict Aqua on any of your other friends; You might find that they are not as forgiving as me."

I was meeting The Rat for dinner back at my hotel, "that chintz hell Orientelle", as NN put it. (Each queen, obviously, had their own preferred modes de abode when they visited Bangkok: Their choices spoke volumes about their fussiness/ perversity and self regard: Some liked the clean lined modernity and a business center vibe; Some liked to stay with friends and don't mind watering plants and old towels; Some liked serviced apartments for the chance to play house; Some liked the cheap but cheerful - the YWCA. For my convalescence, I wanted the cosy civility of The Oriental. After the weeks in the wilderness, I needed good old fashioned luxury and unquestioning service.) NN was kindly ushering me back into her private tank in the jasmine-fragrant dusk of the quiet soi when I had a brainwave: "Lady NN, if you have nothing going on for dinner except tucking your 6 foot 2 human pet to bed and giving him a nutritious bottle, why don't you come and eat with The Rat, or at least have a drink or two?"
I didn't want to face the Rat alone.