“Yeah, you’re just talking, Gung. A noise just a couple of decibels above your farting frequency. And I can’t ever tell one from the other.”
“Back to work, Monkey Nose.”
Alf pushed off. Gung suggested that, while he took care of some owner’s business, Calvino wait for him at one of the tables and chairs on the street in front of the bar, where they could hear each other better. Soon, in his new, more ear-friendly location, Calvino could hear the sound of guitars and drums blasting from the stage and through the sliding door. Then Alf’s voice, singing the lyrics to “The Big Show,” drifted through the Bangkok night. After a few songs, Gung joined him again.
“So… I’m looking for Alan Osborne’s son.”
“Rob the missing person,” said Gung. “I knew he was crazy over that girl, so I’m not all that surprised he’s gone MIA. She’s the one who kept at him, telling him to stand up to his dad. When you work a bar for years, you know what you find out about women? They hate weakness in a man. It terrifies them, and finally it disgusts them. Burma is place of strong-willed women. Aung San Suu Kyi under lock and key for fifteen fucking years. Not a lot of men have the balls to do what she did. Mya’s cut from the same sarong. She kept at Rob until he went to his old man for money. I heard he hit the old fucker after he turned him down. But he might have said that just to get Mya off his back.”
“Rob did punch him.”
Gung smiled. He held up his glass, signaling the waitress for a refill.
“I’m a practical guy,” said Calvino. “I’m looking for leads. Save the political analysis for someone who has the interest. ‘The Big Show,’ ‘the Lesson’… I have no idea what those things mean or the time to find out. I want information that will help me find him. Nothing more complicated. Am I making myself clear?”
Gung smiled and shook his head.
“Most people don’t understand,” Gung said. “To find Rob, you’ve got to get inside his head, and that means inside Mya’s head, and understand how they think. What motivated them to run off to Burma. That’s the point. The Lesson for Mya meant one day she opened her eyes and realized that all her life she’d been programmed to obey and not question. Those who ran the show wrote the script, and that was what the Lesson was: stick to the script. Don’t change a fucking thing.”
“And she changed somethi
ng?”
Gung nodded, his lower lip sticking out for a moment.
“She started posting articles on websites that were critical of the regime. She’d write shit in between sets and post it. Next thing, her brother’s arrested.”
“Any idea where in Rangoon I can find her?” asked Calvino. “Maybe she said something about family or friends?”
Gung had the expression of a longshoreman who’d found out that his request for overtime had been turned down.
“Mya said you gotta find the escape hatch, climb out and make a run for it,” Gung said. “Otherwise you stay locked inside the incubator. You get it? Inside a cramped machine that processes the raw material of your life into money for the show runners.”
Alf, palming a joint while the band was on a break, sat down at the table.
“Her brother’s in jail,” said Alf, “because she couldn’t shut up about corruption, and that offended some people in the government. Don’t know how that could ever happen. It’s a huge mystery.”
He took a long hit off his spliff.
“You got that right, Alf. I told her that she was too public and political,” said Gung. “The generals don’t like big mouths making trouble about loot and treasure.”
By the end of the second liter of rum and coke, Gung had laid out Mya’s creed about how the Big Show ran its global operation by selling ideas about progress, commerce and capitalism. She’d blogged using the name La Chatte Noire and given interviews naming names. A blogger whose handle referred to the name of the club where she worked was asking to be exposed. Mya was fearless, dedicated and determined. She fit the profile of a person who doomed their relatives to persecution and suffering, the Black Cat who watched from the riverbank as her kittens were drowned. Calvino had a feeling the brother never knew what had hit him or why when he’d been thrown into prison. An activist sister ran up the odds of a brother finding himself in all kinds of trouble. Boyfriend, brother, friends, family—the list of vulnerabilities that a government might use to target the pain most effectively, until the true believer questioned her faith.
A man doing ordinary things in an ordinary life made do. It rarely occurred to such people that they should revolt and refuse to live like domesticated animals, bred generation after generation, docile suckers competing for meaningless jobs, believing they could somehow slip inside the Big Show. They just wanted money to buy smokes and beer.
Gung had been right about one thing. Getting inside Mya’s head was giving Calvino a better idea of Rob’s behavior.
“Was the band planning a video production?”
Alf laughed. “We have half a dozen videos on YouTube.”
Rob had lied to his old man about the money. It was for Mya and her brother’s problem. The kind of problem that an old hand like Osborne would have dismissed out of hand as the usual scam by a family to milk money.
“Mya asked Rob to help her raise money for her brother,” said Calvino.
It wasn’t a question. Alf and Gung looked at each other and nodded.
“That pretty much nails it,” said Alf.