The Greatest Lie Part 17

"You are being too paranoid. They're really very nice here." Nancee took a third pass at the afternoon snack of tea and pastries.

"I'd go easy on those powdered sugar things. You have no idea how fattening western food is. I pointed to a middle-aged Swiss nurse in the observation area. "Look at that overstuffed Swiss sausage: that butt could be yours if you have one of those a day for a month."

Nancee patted my cheek. "Don't be such a grouch. You're just worried about meeting your father, aren't you?" I nodded, and squeezed my eyelids tight. She hugged me gently, and murmured "You know it's inevitable that he will come. Just adapt. Misery with parents is part of life." Nancee wai-ed and bowed to the small Buddha that she'd put on her bedside table.

She knew better than most the vicissitudes of fate. Her own parents had driven her from her village to Chiang Mai when her own ladyboy side had emerged. She had survived, and prospered as a somsee, or sex worker, for almost ten years. Then, her whoring path had crossed my own, just as I conceived my grandest plan, collecting the sexual history of katoey whores of Thailand. She had returned to school, and had become my trusted associate in my study. Through my miscalculation, the study had turned us into fugitives from Thai injustice. But her karma was good: we escaped a deadly fate, first as captives of either the corrupt Thai police, then as prisoners of the villainous Wa army. Now, Nancee was a heroine to the Swiss doctors who were to treat us.

We only needed to confirm that we were unscathed by our exposure to the deadly SARS virus by enduring a ten-day quarantine here. Then, Nancee could live the Thai whore's dream to be a Thai sex princess to a wealthy European trannie lover.

"After I marry Dr. Jacques, I will get a Swiss passport as a woman. Then I will return to Thailand and demand that my family address me with Be-chun instead of Pom."

"Dr. Jacques may marry you, and he would be a lucky man if he did. But in Western society a girl has to learn to fend for herself." But my words of caution could not dim the smile of blissful contentment that had graced Nancee's face.