The door in the floor

Catherine was a waiting at the top of the escalator having already bought the tickets. The theatre was small and cold. She asked for blankets. The attendant came back after the anthem to say they were only available for the honeymoon seats. We watched the opening sepia images of The Hampton’s roll.

‘The reviews made out the film a bit heavy. If you don’t like it, just say, we don’t have to stay’

They were couple in crisis. He was author and philanderer. Their two older children had died tragically in an automobile accident rendering her stone with grief. They had had a consolation daughter.

So many Thai couples in the audience, surprising. Definitely mai sanuk.

A young man came gawkily off the ferry, hired for the summer. He would drive and service the wife. Lead her from mourning. The door in the floor was in their private squash court. In the end she was able to leave and he would open it.

I marveled at such European cadences in an American film

From the Major there were no taxis. Walking, half way home I said pidgin tinged ‘You want eat in my Bangkok’? We sat at the only free table, farthest from the kitchen, in front of the shuttered gold merchant. The tablecloth was holed and red velvety.

‘What did you think ‘?

‘The sex was so boring’ brightly. Remembering.

‘I wouldn’t know’ she said, biting her tongue because these days I had already claimed asylum.

Then: ‘They showed it by mistake’? So she thought it art-house too.

I shouldn’t speak. The only other time I had nearly left her had been ten years before. Our cities themselves were sepia then. We didn’t yet have a son but a chunk of money. I forget why. Or more exactly the money was held up. If it had come before a certain date I would have gone on holiday to Thailand alone and never come back.

Today was a holiday too. Out of middling Sukumvit gloom cars of the newly rich pulled up and pulled out, collecting extended family takeaways. We had ordered only soup and rice. I watched the stainless steel trolley rattle up the pavement. There would be too much ice in the beer glass again.

‘Falang couples cannot survive long in Bangkok. There are too many temptations’.

'You know I don’t want to go back to falang land’ I feinted

When the food came I only  tasted the noodles of Soi 23.

A second beer.

‘What about Kit then?’.....You always said you would do anything for him.

I could only think chaotically of how they didn’t speak when they finally separated. Old snake skins already shriveled disintegrating in the wind. Almost painless. Failing relations, dry like river beds. And then dangerously of Kim Basinger on all fours, gnawing the coverlet. And how, just now, she would be doing the same.

At home we were quiet and alone. Kit was sleeping over somewhere

‘Welcome to the rest of our lives ‘ We always joked

Finally, mercifully at 1:04 the SMS came through.

Requiem for the night

I turned foetally to sleep

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