Read More Short Fuses (Four Free Short Stories) Page 7

I first met Ricky sitting at bar on Walking Street in Pattaya. He was tall and thin and pretty much bald, hunched over a glass of iced water. He seemed a bit miserable and I’m a cheerful enough chap so I asked him what was wrong. He had one hell of a story – most people move to Thailand because they want to start living but it seems that Ricky had come to die.

  He’d been a butcher in the north of England. He’d owned his own shop and made a decent enough living despite competition from the supermarkets. He was a widower – his wife had died of cancer in her fifties – and had two grown-up sons. When he’d reached sixty Ricky had started having problems with his waterworks and had to get up several times a night to pee. It got so bad that he went to see his GP and the doctor referred him to a specialist and the specialist told Ricky that he had prostate cancer.

  According to Ricky’s specialist there are two sorts of prostate cancer. There’s a slow-growing one that can be treated and managed, and there’s a fast-growing aggressive one that is invariably fatal. Ricky had the second type. They treated Ricky, with drugs and radiation therapy, but the cancer continued to grow and to spread. After six months they told him there was nothing else they could do so they gave him a leaflet for the McMillan charity and sent him home.

  Ricky decided that if he was going to die he’d do it under his own terms. He sold his business and his house, gave most of the money to his sons and flew to Thailand. He booked a suite in the Marriott Hotel in Pattaya and kept a bottle of sleeping tablets in his wash bag. His plan was to enjoy what little time had left and once the pain became unmanageable he’d take the tablets.

  He couldn’t drink alcohol and most food made him feel nauseous but at least Thailand was warm and the people were friendly. There wasn’t much I could say to him, but I did suggest that he should have a Thai massage. A good Thai massage done by a professional can really make you feel better, I told him. Ricky said that he’d try. He left the bar soon afterwards, saying that he felt sick. To be honest, I never thought I’d see him again.

  I was wrong. I bumped into him again about three months later, in the Golden Bar in Bangkok, across the road from Nana Plaza. At first I didn’t recognise him. He had put on weight and his hair was growing back. And he was drinking a beer. He grinned when he saw me and told me he was feeling better than he’d felt for months. And it was all down to Thai massage, he said. Or rather, a massage girl.

  The day after he’d met me in Pattaya he’d done as I suggested and tried a Thai massage. He did indeed feel better and from then on he had the hotel send up a masseuse every day. Ricky had become disenchanted with Pattaya. “The world’s biggest brothel, it was a big mistake moving there,” he told me. He’d moved to Bangkok and checked into the Marriott in Sukhumvit Soi 2. He’d tried to book a massage on his first night but they didn’t have anyone available, so Ricky had gone looking for a massage parlour. And that was when he met Cherry. She worked in a place in Soi 23, not far from Soi Cowboy. She was in her forties, a bit chubby but with a lovely smile, he said. Cherry had great hands, he said, and had been trained as a masseuse at the famous Wat Po.

  He felt so good after the first massage that he went back to see her the next day. And the day after. On the fourth day Cherry asked him if he wanted a ‘special’ massage. He wasn’t sure what she meant but she’d smiled and said that for a thousand baht he could have a happy ending.

  Ricky explained that he was ill and that he thought a happy ending was out of the question, but Cherry said she would try anyway. Providing that he paid a thousand baht, of course. Ricky had laughed and told her that if she could indeed make him come he’d give her ten thousand baht.

  Cherry had Ricky roll onto his back and she poured a good measure of baby oil over his dick and went to work. To Ricky’s surprise he soon found himself growing hard. Cherry was smiling like the proverbial Cheshire Cat and she started caressing his balls.

  Ricky hadn’t felt so aroused in years but he didn’t feel that he was going to come, despite Cherry’s valiant efforts. But Cherry knew what she was doing and she locked eyes with him as she slipped a finger into his backside. Ricky gasped and exploded like a geyser. “It was the best ten thousand baht I’d ever spent,” he said. ‘The thing is when the doctors used to shove their fingers up my back passage I’d scream like a banshee, but when Cherry did it, it was the most erotic thing I’d ever felt. Really, it was just out of this world.’

  Cherry’s happy endings became a regular feature of Ricky’s life. He paid her for a two hour massage each time, with the first ninety minutes taken up with a traditional Thai massage followed by thirty minutes of her special oil massage culminating in her own special version of the prostate exam.

  After a month of seeing Cherry every day, Ricky noticed that his appetite had improved and he had started to put on weight. And to his surprise, his hair began to grow back. He knew that his condition was terminal, but there was no doubt that he was starting to feel better. He made an appointment with a cancer specialist at the Bumrungrad Hospital, one of the best medical facilities in Asia. They gave him a through investigation and confirmed what he already knew – he had prostate cancer. But according to the Bumrungrad doctors, he was in remission. The cancer was there but it hadn’t spread and it wasn’t life-threatening. Ricky was stunned. But the doctors were adamant. The cancer wasn’t killing him. Or at least it was growing so slowly that it would be decades before it put his life at risk.

  “It’s Cherry,” he told me. “I’m sure of it.” And with that he patted me on the back and went back to his hotel. I watched him go, wondering if it could possibly be true, that Cherry had somehow managed to massage away his cancer.

  I met Ricky for the final time in the Golden Bar, a few weeks later. He was halfway through a bottle of Singha Beer and was as happy as Larry. He had just been to the Bumrungrad Hospital and they’d given him the all clear. Not a cancerous cell in his body, they said. Pretty much six months to the day that the National Health Service had given up on him.

  “Bloody morons,” said Ricky. “They said I wouldn’t last six months and now the docs here say I’m as fit as a fiddle.”

  He looked good, there was no question of that. He’d put on a fair bit of weight and his hair seemed thicker and there was a glint in his eye that hadn’t been there the first time I’d met him. I asked him what he planned to do and he grinned, reached into his pocket and took out a small red box. He opened it and proudly showed me the diamond ring inside. “I’m going to ask Cherry to marry me,” he said. “I know she’s not the prettiest but she’s a good sort and she makes me happy.” He put the ring away. “And she’s the one who saved me, I’m sure of that. Her massage, her hands, they healed me. If it wasn’t for her I’d be dead. Soon as I’ve downed this, I’m heading to Soi 23 and going down on one knee. She can stop work and I’ll build us a house up in Korat, where she’s from. Might even start a butcher business. I love this country. ”

  He finished his beer, paid his bill, shook my hand and wandered down the road to get a motorcycle taxi. That was the last time I saw him. From what I heard later he got sideswiped by a truck that ran a red light at Asoke, killed him and the motorcycle taxi driver stone dead. Somewhere along the line someone stole his wallet and the ring. I did go looking for Cherry to tell her what had happened but there are a lot of massage parlours on Soi 23 and I never did find her.