Saint Jack Read Free

got tattooed, and to be one of the gang so did you. It did not happen this way with me, but that is the only version strangers know of a tattooing.
    Mr. Leigh was just pushing through the glass doors as I came back from the toilet smoothing my sleeves. I said hello and tried to take his suitcase. He wouldn’t let go; he seemed offended that I should try to help. I knew the feeling. He was abrupt and wheezing and his movements tried to be quick. It is usually this way with people who have just left a plane: they are overexcited in a foreign place, their rhythm is different—they are attempting a new rhythm—and they are not sure what is going to happen next. The sentence they have been practicing on the plane, a greeting, a quip, they know to be inappropriate as soon as they say it. Leigh said, “So they didn’t send the mayor.” Then, “You don’t look Chinese to me.”
    I suggested a beer in the lounge.
    â€œWhat time are they expecting me?” he asked. He had just arrived and already he was worried about Hing. I knew this man: he didn’t want to lose his job or his dignity; but it is impossible to keep both.
    â€œThey weren’t too sure what time your plane was coming in,” I said. We both knew who “they” were. He put down his suitcase.
    One reason I remember the first conversation I had with Mr. Leigh (or William, as he insisted I call him, but I found this more formal than Mister; he didn’t reply to “Bill”) is that I had the same conversation with every
ang moh
I met in Singapore. We were in the lounge having a beer, sharing a large Anchor; every few minutes the loud-speakers became noisy with adenoidal announcements of arrivals and departures in three languages. Leigh was still keyed up and he sat forward in his chair, taking quick gulps of beer and then staring into his glass.
    I asked about the flight and the weather in—William being English, I attempted some slang—“Honkers.” This made him look up from his glass and squint straight at me, so I gave up. And was it a direct flight? No, he said, it landed for fueling at Bangkok.
    â€œNow
that’s
a well-named place!” I said and grinned. I can’t remember whether it got a rise out of him. I asked if he had a meal on the plane.
    â€œYes,” he said, “perfectly hideous.”
    â€œWell, that food is always so damned hideous,” I said, trying to sound more disgusted than him. The word stuck to my tongue. I wasn’t telling the truth. I thought airplane food was very good, always the correct color and each course in its own little covered trough on the tray, the knives and forks wrapped up and all the rest of the utensils in clean envelopes and in fitted slots and compartments. I had to agree the food was hideous. He was a guest, and I had plans for him.
    The next thing I said to him was what I said to everyone who came through. I said it slowly, with suggestive emphasis on the right syllables: “If there’s anything you want in Singapore, anything at all”—I smiled here—“just let me know and I’ll see what I can fix up.”
    He replied, as most strangers did—but he was not smiling—“I’m sure you don’t mean
anything.
”
    â€œAnything.” I took a drink of my beer to show I wasn’t going to qualify the promise.
    He mopped his face. “I was wondering—”
    And I knew what he was wondering. The choice wasn’t large, but people didn’t realize that. A tout could follow a tourist on the sidewalk and in the space of a minute offer everything that tourist could conceivably want. The touts who didn’t know English handed over a crudely printed three-by-five card to the man with a curious idle face. The card had half a dozen choices on it: blue movies, girls, boys, exhibition, massage, ganja—a menu which covered the whole appetite of longing. No new longings