Vulture Peak: A Royal Thai Detective Novel (5) by John Burdett

Author:John Burdett [Burdett, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9780307596581
Google: TPTL4KQZfLsC
Amazon: B004G8P73C
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Published: 2012-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

Part 2

18

When things go wrong between us, Chanya and I try to mend our relationship by going out to eat. We’re both too shy to yell at each other in public, and we love food and wine, so there’s nothing for it except to make polite intelligent conversation on all topics save the ones raging in our hearts. If we’re still mad at each other after the cheese course, we tend to settle scores in the cab on the way home.

Tonight we’re eating at a brand-new Italian place that’s just opened on a soi off mid-Sukhumvit, impelled not so much by rage as by sadness that we seem to be drifting apart in separate rudderless boats. Chanya orders a Caesar salad, I order mozzarella with tomatoes drizzled in extra-special extra-virgin olive oil from some olive grove in southeastern Sicily; the bottle sports an explanatory tag with a coat of arms to prove it. For the main course we both order fegato alla veneziana, because it’s almost impossible to get in the tropics. Chanya tells me to order the wine, in deference to the oenologique education I received from my mother’s richest client, Monsieur Truffaut. But that was more than twenty years ago, and all the finest vintages have changed. Since we’re eating on Vikorn’s tab via his black Amex, I figure the simplest selection procedure is to choose the third most expensive Barolo, my thinking being that the two most expensive wines on any list are always irresponsibly overpriced by reason of glamour and cachet, but the cost of the third is probably fair value for an excellent wine. When the sommelier has me taste it, I’m fortified in my strategy and gaze at Chanya with triumph.

“It’s good,” I tell her.

“I can see that from the smug look on your face,” Chanya says.

It becomes clear to both of us that the ensuing awkward silence can be relieved only by gossip, and the subject of that gossip is going to be the same as everyone else’s.

“One of my women’s groups has access to news stories the police try to suppress,” she tells me as she sips the wine. “Apparently he brutally raped an army wife.”

“He hurt her? So far he hasn’t been violent. That story about the maichi almost rehabilitated him.”

“I know. We were so proud of her, all the women at Uni sent her congratulatory e-mails. Such dignity, courage, compassion—a great example of womanhood at its best. I had an argument with a feminist who moaned that the maichi was a product of a medieval paternalistic exploitative system and she’d only prevailed against the predatory male by neutering herself. I was so mad I nearly punched her.”

I sip the wine—actually, it’s more a glug than a sip. “I agree. I felt sick in my heart after I heard the story. It made me realize how I’d strayed from the Buddhist path. Even my thought processes seem to have become superficial. I find myself fixating on things that don’t matter, like a farang.

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