a man reading a newspaper,
standing up
——
When he slept, he no longer dreamed, if he ever had. Sleep was a blankness, an empty space. When he woke each morning, the bed remained undisturbed as if no-one had slept there. He rolled over and went to the window, staring out at the busy road outside. A young girl was cycling past, holding a parasol above her head, the road rolling below her. A brown mongrel dog chased a goat. Already coals were being lit, meat prepared on top of miniature grills, the smoke of burning fat rising in the air. Scooters went roaring past. Students in white shirts and pressed black trousers congregated around a drinks stand. There was a man outside reading a newspaper standing up.
Joe shuffled to his small kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. Fleetingly, he thought about Alfred.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ he had said, and the old man had shrugged, and said, ‘Are you happy here?’
Joe had said, ‘What do you mean?’ and Alfred had smiled, and said, ‘I guess that too is an answer.’
The books were piled up on the low bamboo table. He poured hot water into a mug and spooned coffee and sugar into it, stirring, and carried the drink over to the table with him. He stared at the paperbacks. Assignment: Africa. Sinai Bombings. World Trade Centre. What the hell was a world trade centre?
You would not find the answer here, Alfred had told him. Joe sighed and sipped his coffee, knowing Alfred was right, had only articulated what Joe himself already knew. Paris, he thought, but the thought tasted sour.
He took out the black credit card and stared at it again. Expense is not an issue, the girl had said. But Joe knew that wasn’t right. There were always expenses, and they always mattered. Life was owed, always waiting, always afraid of the tread of the debt-collector – he shook his head and sipped from the coffee. Morbid, he thought. He carried the coffee to the window and stood there, looking out. An old man rolling a cigarette in the shade of a papaya tree across the road. Two kids racing each other on bicycles, floating past. A man reading a newspaper, standing up. He looked at him for a long moment. He couldn’t see the man’s face. The man’s shoes were black and polished. He finished the coffee, carried it to the sink, and left it there. When he went downstairs and opened the door to the outside, the man with the newspaper was no longer there. Joe crossed the road, walking the short distance to the call box by the temple. He put a couple of coins in and dialled.
‘TransContinental Airways, how may I help you?’
‘I’d like a ticket to Paris.’
‘When would you like to leave?’
He didn’t need to think it over. ‘Next available flight.’
‘Just a moment, sir.’
He could hear her shuffling paper, searching through the time tables on her desk, matching the next flight with the passenger manifesto, checking seat availability –
‘Sir?’
‘Yes?’
He dropped another coin in the slot. It was hot in the call box, and he pushed the door open with his foot and held it.
‘The next flight is at thirteen hundred hours today, going via Bangkok.’
‘That sounds fine,’ he said. A group of orange-robed monks walked past and disappeared through the arched gate of the temple. An old brown woman was roasting bananas outside the gate, smoking a long-stemmed pipe as she turned the blackened bananas over and over. ‘You can pay through our offices on Lan Xang road,’ the woman said, ‘we accept cash, cheques or –’
‘I’d like to pay with a credit card.’
There was a small silence. A fly buzzed into the call box and Joe tried to get it, but his palm connected only with air and he lost his hold on the door. The fly buzzed as if laughing at him.
‘Of course, sir.’
The sir was a little more pronounced this time, he thought. He pulled out the black credit card. Here goes, he thought. He read out the mystical string of digits to the woman over the phone, and gave her his name. He thought they might need something else, but that seemed to satisfy her. ‘Just a moment, sir.’
He waited, trying to trap the fly, but it moved too much. He pushed the door open again and wiped his face with his shirt, staining it. The sun poured in through the glass, almost blinding him, and for a moment he could not see beyond its confines, and his world was reduced to this one rectangular box – ‘Sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘Please pick your ticket up at the airport. Check-in is one hour before the flight, and you would need to change planes in Bangkok.’
‘Thank you,’ Joe said, a little dazed, and the voice on the other end said, ‘Pleasure, sir. Have a good flight.’
‘Thank you,’ he said again, and then replaced the receiver on its holding arm. He stared at the card again, seeing nothing, then put it back in his pocket and stepped outside.
a yellow-white coat of paint
——
He decided not to go to the Talat Sao that morning. His carefully-constructed routine had been interrupted, subverted. As he walked back the short distance to his apartment along the Sokpaluang road, he wondered what he should be feeling. Was it freedom that caused such a pulse of sudden, inexplicable fear to pass through him? I should have told her no, he thought, but his mind slid away from the image of the girl that rose in his mind. She had put her hand over his, and her hair had fallen around her face, framing it – no.
What then?
As he approached his building, he saw something out of the corner of his eye and, turning, was just in time to see the back of a man disappearing through the door of the small convenience store. He noticed close-cropped hair, a large neck, tanned, pale-blue shirt, unremarkable black trousers, polished black shoes. ‘Son of a bitch,’ Joe said.
He turned and crossed the road again, almost hitting two girls on a scooter who narrowly missed him and then looked back at him, emitting embarrassed giggles. He waved to indicate he was all right and they sped away, still giggling. He went to the store, navigating his way between crates and spent cartons, and pushed the door open. There was a strong smell inside of drying fish.
‘Sabaidee, mister,’ said the girl behind the front table.
‘Sabaidee,’ he said, returning her nop. She had put her palms together in the customary greeting and so he answered with his own. The girl was watching a small television set showing a Japanese game-show. On the screen, a Japanese man was capering on a stage in a European clown’s costume, while two contestants to either side of him were trying to hit him with long bamboo sticks. The man ducked and jumped, at once comical and strangely graceful, avoiding their aim.
‘What’s this?’ he asked the girl, who had already returned her full attention to the screen. She looked up. ‘Catch That Clown,’ she said. ‘They get one hundred yen each time they manage to hit him.’ She shrugged. ‘They never do, but it’s funny.’
Joe smiled and she returned to her screen. Catch that clown, he thought. He searched through the narrow aisles, but there was no sign of the man with the polished black shoes. ‘Did anyone come through here just now?’ he said. The girl seemed to contemplate the question. ‘Been quiet,’ she said at last, handing down her verdict, and turned up the volume on the television set.
What did that mean? There was a back way into the store, of course, but it led into the family’s own residence. If so, the man must merely be an uncle or cousin or some other relative hanging around, which, when he thought about it, was the most reasonable explanation. He shrugged and picked up a tin of soup and a new packet of cigarettes, paid, and went back outside.
A man was climbing into a stretched black Mercedes parked outside Joe’s building. Joe caught sight of polished black shoes disappearing inside. Then the door was softly closed shut, the tinted windows allowed no gaze inside, the powerful German engine purred to life, and the car pulled out into the road. ‘Wait!’ Joe shouted, and he ran towards the car, which was already speeding away. A scooter went past him, too close, and a boy in a student’s uniform said, ‘Watch where you’re going, asshole!’ as he sped away. Joe cursed. The black car was ahead of him and gaining speed. He ran after it. An elderly lady cycled past him, her bicycle loaded with egg trays. She looked at him sideways with a bemused expression. ‘Stop!’