Free Bangkok Knights by Collin Piprell

them. No, you just cough up a little bit of money, and that’s all; then
you can sit back and collect all the good gosh-darned karma and never change a
diaper or nothing. It’s not like it’s going to bust you, Dexworth. You spend
more’n that on friggin’ beer, in a good month.”
    Dexy spoke, and you suddenly got a vision of what it
would’ve been like if two Moseses had come down from the mountain. “Taxes?
You’re talkin’ to me about taxes! I pay more taxes on whiskey and beer
in a month than your average Thai pays in income taxes in a goddammed year.
Don’t talk to me about taxes. You know how much tax there is on a bottle of
beer in this country?”
    “Friggin’ right — they should build a monument to you,
Dexy. Build friggin’ public monuments to the lot of us, the amount of tax we’re
paying, the booze we take care of.” Leary didn’t usually wax sarcastic, but
this was one of those times, probably.
    Dexy didn’t notice, though. Caught up, no doubt, in a fit
of altruistic fervor, he ordered a round for the house, thereby adding
significantly to both the government coffers and the general welfare, according
to his latest insight.
    “And all the money you give your girls, Dexy — I guess
that’s another principled attempt to redistribute the wealth, right? Out of the
goodness of your heart and all?” Now Eddie was trying his hand at sarcasm,
though maybe a shade heavy-handedly.
    Leary took up the line of attack anyway: “Friggin’ right.
The amount of money you lay out only on women in your month off you could put
three kids through university, here in Thailand.”
    “Listen here,” Dexy demanded. “You can’t take care of ‘em
all, can you? It’s just like all the beggars everywhere. It don’t do no good to
give ‘em anything. And it’s the same with these slum kids you’re talking about.
You start giving them money, you’re just encouraging them, yuh know what I
mean? They’ll just keep makingmore ‘n’ more little kids and leaving them on doorsteps,
and they won’ t give a hoot because they’ 11 know people like you’ s going to
take care of them, so no problem, right? Next thing you know, the place is
crawling with these poor trash folk, they don’t know how to look after
themselves, can’t do a lick of work, only make more babies.
    “Same thing back Stateside, these days. Now my man
Reagan’s leaving, God knows what’s going to happen, you get some liberal
do-gooder in there.
    “Don’t get me wrong,” Dexy hastened to assure the
assembly. “Leary here is a working man just like you and me, got his head
screwed on straight. But he’s hooked up with this lady — none finer, don’t get
me wrong — but Nancy’s basically a do-gooder, like a lot of these broads.
You’re not careful, you’re trying to keep them sweet, they’ll have you doing
all sorts of damn-fool things.
    “Now don’t get me wrong, Leary — you know I got every
respect for you, but that’ s the way I feel. It’s what happens when you listen
to these broads. Ladies.”
    Dexy had special license to speak to Leary this way, I
guess. And who knows? Maybe Leary didn’t think what Dexy had said was utter
crap, though of course it was.
    All you’ d have had to do was ask Eddie; he was back
probing at the tooth, figuratively speaking, picking at the wound, clearly
wanting to say something himself and at the same time not wanting to say it.
Once again, however, prudence lost out.
    “What about you, Dexy? Did your folks leave you on a
doorstep? I’ll bet they did; at least if they had any sense they did. And I’ll
bet they never looked back.”
    A couple of the guys laughed, and then they stopped. You
could see something was wrong. Dexy wasn’t laughing — here he’d just been
sorely insulted, and he wasn’t laughing. Nor was he coming back with twice as
good as he’d received. Leary hadn’ t laughed either, in fact, his face was
mostly registering grim concern.
    Dexy had gone entirely