every dust particle that had been trodden on its friend. It did not
like parting and it, in him, hated the idea of Kumpee gone. He felt
jealous that this woman had taken him. He hated her despite her earlier
friendliness to him. He hated her white skin and hated Kumpee for his
ugly dark skin, his abandonment, and his fetid ways. Mostly he hated
his contemptuously tinged use of the nickname, "Jatuporn," showing that
he knew everything about this relationship with Kazem. The apathy in
the pronouncement would have been bearable. The contempt would have at
least shown concern. But that particular mix spelled out that he,
Jatupon, was really the fetid one and he hated the fetid one for it.
Stagnant and morose in feelings and thoughts, he dripped in the
sauna of his own sweat; and, careful not to stumble over his brothers
in the night, he opened the door for more breezes, for a passing
mosquito, for voices, and the dispersing of crowded thoughts. He
recalled untainted and simple memories of Kazem telling Suthep a joke a
customer had relayed to him making all four of them laugh until they
turned red; the shapes and slight variations of the colors of clouds;
and lying on his bed in their parents home hearing the sounds of
locusts somewhere in the swaying tree limbs cradled in the wind's
caresses. He knew that such trivial and yet poetical experiences were
what constituted human happiness.
He stepped outside and then walked a couple of blocks in a still
relatively unfamiliar terrain. To him, the surveyor of the night, the
city spilled out in the oozing newness of black and yellow tubes of
paint. There was a larger road and across the street was a Seven-Eleven
convenience store. He stood there and his eyes followed the traffic
that went directly in front of it. He rummaged through one of his bags
until he found his glue. He inhaled its fumes and popped some
amphetamines he had purchased at the drugstore with Kazem's pocket
money.