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decreaseHe was helping unload the trolley onto the wide black belt but fussing slightly because there was no triangular blue plastic to partition our stuff.
I watched the city’s daily newspaper buck and crumple under the weight of his fanciful drinks.
The customers before us were an elderly lady accompanied by her son too or they looked that much alike. She moving uncertainly, slow with an air of incipient dementia and he hurried, not altogether kindly.
The palms of the check out girl were light brown with fine spidery lines of experience, and nails cut square. As the groceries tumbled toward me she didn’t ask whether I needed help to pack.
He has held up well I thought. First there was Ae. She had re-taught him the alphabet with a Confucian stiffness before going off to start a restaurant in Tunbridge Wells. Then Vam puppyishly unreliable with an edge of ambition who worked in an office in Lancing . We had finally had to get rid of her. And now Jang.
He had spoken so fluently when we lived in Phra Kanong. His days unravelling like a a ball of wool harassed by a kitten. Goo tutored him three times a week and down in the harsh symmetry of the concrete compound he had practised ancient games with his friends who lived dotted throughout the condo.
We have softened it as best we can by sending him to a snotty Buddhist private school but there is always the enveloping meaness of a childhood in falangland, rendered starker by recollection and contrast.
My wife too of an adulthood, though she doesn’t know it.
Suddenly he is prodding me from reverie. Time to go. I hand over plastic of entitlement.
'You have Tesco club card?'
‘No have’ I say unconsciously.
He looks at me; 'She is Thai!'
To her he wais.
‘Phut Thai dai?' Hesitant levity plays across her beautiful sombre face.
‘Nit noy’ he says simply, now muscular and half jumping with memory’s pride.
Her gaze palpable as we leave the store.
© Icarus. All rights reserved by the author.
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