The club is dark with spotlights above a stage. They sit on stools at a raised table. The bar is crowded with Northern Europeans, tall and blond, mostly overweight like at the Grace. There are also tight groups of Japanese businessmen drinking whiskey at tables close to the stage. The Thai girls are all light and thin as birds. The waitresses are distinguishable from the hookers because their English is less good. The hookers sit between the Japanese businessmen or stand with the Europeans at the bar and sip glasses of sweet cola. The men buy them drink after drink. Occasionally, if the girl is on good terms with the bartender and she looks at him as he pours for her, he will put some whiskey in the drink. Even after they go to a room with a man, they come back to the bar and drink more colas.

At one end of the stage, under hard white light, a Thai woman is reclining on a lawn chair. Mike heard about this in high school. On either side of her, a girl in sequined panties holds one of her ankles. The woman on the chair is naked and Mike looks at her carefully in the lull after Bridget explains the girls’ drinks. Her pussy is shaved and Mike tries to gauge his feelings, create some silent understanding with himself. So what? So this is part of my life. I do not want to fuck this woman. I want to, what, save her?

Mike drinks his beer and watches as the woman on the chair makes a squealing noise and thrusts her hips. The girls seem to be pulling her ankles like levers. A dart flies from the woman’s vagina across the room into a target. Cheers erupt from the Japanese businessmen. The Europeans at the bar guffaw and the hookers between them laugh politely. Bridget sneaks pictures and Paul goes to the bar for another round. Mike looks at Bridget and decides it might be easier to watch this alone.

The woman shoots another dart from her pussy, this one into a balloon on the other side of the stage. Pop. She puts in another dart and pops another balloon. Paul returns with drinks. Mike notices a pumped-up young man with a handlebar mustache leaning against the far end of the stage, sipping a beer. He is wearing a sleeveless shirt. Mike sees the tattoos of a South Pacific tribe wrapped around a thick bicep. He is laughing and looks ridiculous, like those models in Dutch beer ads, thinks Mike.

The woman shoots another dart but her aim is off this time and the dart sticks the handlebar man in the arm. The man bellows and drops his beer. Welcome to the tribe, Mike thinks, and wonders how often this kind of thing happens and whether it’s part of the show for the farangs. Probably not. Holy shit, people are saying, but some are laughing.