Bangkok Days and Siamese Nights 3: Thai Gothic

The Little Rat was little, a miniature of a man, like one of those child-sized meals on a fast food menu. Not quite a dwarf, she was yet smaller than a jockey, like an underfed 13 year old, with an old witch's head. In fact NN said that The Rat probably became stunted at 13, the year she had To Sir With Love with her English teacher at Raffles, "The trauma of having sex at that tender age, although, of course it's debatable if The Rat was ever tender, at any age, with that British pedophile, surely froze her in this stunted form. And you know, they have been together since - and that means The Rat has only ever slept with that one old man all her life. Perhaps that's what makes her so bitter. That, and the fact that she has to wear kiddy couture to a ripe old age when it's no longer cute."
The Rat was having her first trial seperation from Sir Pedo, and was staying at P's vast gothic house on Sathorn Road (Bangkok was like some rambling halfway house for runaway Singaporeans, a convenient escape), "I've been staying there these last three months and I'm fairly ready to tear all my hair out," said Ratty Rat. "It's such a weird set up my dears." She said that scores of young men would come and go at every hour of the day, P's friends, hangers-on and friends of friends of friends. Anyone could have stolen P's diamond Cartier watch. The Rat counted down the suspects:

There were the Chinese twins from Kanchanaburi, pale and Chinese-speaking (sounding Malaysian) but ever so sly and skinny, and would be bouncing a basketball around P's parched gardens of an evening, sweat slicking their smooth shirtless bodies. There was the silent, dark, Tii, fiddling, in the shade of the wooden verandah, with his new mobile phone that was so new he hardly knew how to operate it. He came to deliver a bag of ganja one night, fell asleep on the sofa, and never left. Rach, the brand PR, who was so pale and beautiful he looked just like a living doll. Everyone was totally besotted by Rach, a sort of hi-so prince... But he wouldn't have stolen the watch. The drugs maybe, but not the diamond Cartier watch.