Flip-flops

You get back to the building unexpectedly and examine her door for portents. No padlock. A pair of unfamiliar flip-flops on the floor. You knock. She opens the door and over her shoulder you notice a figure on the bed. She notices you noticing.

‘Brother me.’ She says

You have asked her several times about her parents. She has told you that they ‘die already’ and that they were kon jon. You try to build a visual picture of them in their moo ban jon with a younger Nok and perhaps some siblings. You have tried to squeeze out more information. Up North somewhere? Chiang Rai area you think. One of those wooden houses with the grass roofs. You imagine smoke from burning charcoal. Dogs. Not the kind whose heads you want to pet. A pig or two rooting around. Nok hauling buckets from the well.

You know there are some brothers somewhere. At least a couple. And cousins. Cousins by the thousand. All male, riding motor bikes. You’ve even met some sister/friends/cousins in the same building. Precise relationships are hard to establish. They come round to make somtam and borrow things. They have lives of course. And names. Lot’s of Nings and Nongs and Nois. There’s little Khwan, who you quite like (she offered you her last chicken’s foot one time). Khwan comes from a large family in a village near Udon Thani. She got bored with planting rice. Caught a bus south. She misses her mother. There’s Dao, Khwan’s cousin, who quit a good job in Bangkok assembling disk drives and moved to Pattaya... for the jet-skiing she said. Nok tells a different version. According to her Dao had left her baby with her mother and gone to Pattaya with a boyfriend who has recently been arrested. Why? For selling ya-ba or stabbing farang, she wasn’t too sure.

And now there’s this person sleeping on the bed. Exuding male hormones. What to do about him? There is nowhere to sit except on the edge of the bed but you don’t want to wake him. Nor to be honest do you want to let him sleep. Not there.

‘Brother you.’ You mumble.

‘Yes. Nong chai. Come today.’

Hmm. No sign of any luggage. And those flip-flops do not suggest a long bus ride. But you never know. You never know. Something moves behind you.

He sits up. Longish tousled hair. Parted in the middle. He grins. Says nothing. You manage to smile but it’s hard to read his eyes. He follows Nok out into the hall and you hear them muttering. None of the words mean anything to you. She comes back in.

‘Brother go stay friend me.’ She says.

He shuffles off down the hall. Good. So why do you feel like a total arsehole suddenly? Have you kicked him out of his sister’s place on his first day in the big city? Will he find a sheet of cardboard to lie on somewhere and a doorway to curl up in?…just him and his flip-flops.

Once Nok showed you a picture of her father. He looked maybe fortyish but old before his time. She never really knew him.

‘Kitung paw.’ She says. She misses him. ‘Kin ya mak.’

Had she loved him you wonder? ‘Was your father a good man Nok?’ you ask.

‘Dee, mai dee. D’chan mai ru. Pen paw Nok.’

Good, bad, I don’t know, he was my father. You can’t stop thinking about the young guy. Should you suggest inviting him back? One night wouldn’t hurt. Would it?

© C. Woww. All rights reserved by the author.

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If you enjoyed this short story of C. Woww's his book 'Losing the Plot' can easily be purchased here at DCO Books online: http://www.dcothai.com/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=106

It can also be found in many local bookshops in Thailand, especially, we have seen, in the many Bookazine Bookshops in Bangkok and Pattaya.