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face matters


MrX

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Annually, on October 15, Min has to pay the mortgage on their house. This year 10000 short. She worried about it. Had never asked me for money. Surely, it would poison our friendship but the need for a roof won out.

 

About Christmas time She, Ben and Lu came back from a trip up country, dutiful attendees at their mother?s wake, which in fact was premature. Ben and Lu, her 2 year old daughter, live in Hong Kong. The three of them came to my house about 6 o?clock purposively.

 

I had never met Lu before

 

?Lets go to Somkids new suki place? where 71 meets Suk, said Min, the sponsors glint in her eye. I knew Ben had money, her husband is a jeweler in the ex-colonial ex protectorate, felt my scruples wobble.

 

Lu scooted around our condo, a sprite devil. She didn?t recognise ?no? blithely. Kit did his best as big brother but by now he is absolutely separated from her age. She emptied each bin of toys, tore off strips of paper to make strips of paper. Kit sagely withdrew and Ben was sweet about it all. I remembered the harsh tinkle of her laugh when she was a still a teenager, with its memorable energy, defying her fate.

 

Catherine was too tired from her day at the office; Kit was to bed. We diners left, strolling my Soi through choking pepper smoke to cut along the alley which crosses the market. There was a light sense of a ceremony. We managed the uncompromising thoroughfare somehow and queued, bantering calm. Lu?s show attracting spectators and I stranger to someone else?s child garnering adulation.

 

Tonight, I understood was one of the straight long unyielding lines of Thai gratitude, their stab at forever. How they can wait to thank you and money is still love for many, though falang might struggle to grasp that.

 

Ben?s handbag looked so expensive when she placed it discreetly on the economic table. She is really no longer pure Thai and this place was working class fun, 79 baht for all you could eat. Crockery and ingredients set out on raised tables for gastronomic mass. Min kindly helped me negotiate the rituals as she does less nonchalantly visiting more formal places of worship.

 

Though Ben?s English is excellent it was to Min throughout I talked, of urgent things. Her young sister stayed quiet, intuitive, employing Lu?s antics as easy alibi.

 

Then without warning they were tired, withdrawing, hurrying to the roadside, to take a taxi to the Rex and Ben?s early flight further east the next morning.

 

 

Thanks had been done and they would not be referred to again.

 

I walked home

 

Life is art here

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