He remembered that Suthep and Kazem, like curious beasts, had
occasionally looked in on him during that time, a year ago, when his
body had its opiate force (really a mixed drug combination adversely
affected by beer he drank during the Songkran New Year's water fight)
poured from it like water from a colander. How sick he had been. From
Kazem's suggestion, it had been a monk--a former teacher of his
boyhood-- whom he had stayed with while he was stiff and shaking. The
periodic vomiting and shaking had seemed so incessant although it, like
all, was fleeting. It had been too intolerable for his parents and yet
for all the talk of the father getting rid of him completely by shoving
him into a monastery, they had been happy to again gain their worker.
Lost in the myriad dimly lit trails of his own thoughts, he at last
returned and went back to his bed of clothes. He smoothed them out. He
made them even. He thought that he might be reprimanded about leaving
the door open for insects to fly in. It was to his satisfaction but it
probably wouldn't be to theirs and these brothers might easily awaken
from the dogs that could be heard a block away. He got up and shut
both the door and the window. Then, for a few minutes, he listened to
the howling of dogs muffled through the closed door. For a half hour
his positions changed restlessly on the wad of clothes. He thought of
the postcard pictures of temples and palaces; of possibly being a money
collector on the city busses, standing on a step and hanging out of the
continually opened door of a green bus; of--
"What a pathetic existence. You haven't even paid any rent on
this room. Gifts can be taken back, you know. You could be thrown out
at any whim: Kazem's, the girlfriend's, her father who might hate him
enough to kick you out. You have no money or jobs. What will you do?"
"I thought that you weren't coming here."
"Here?"
"To Bangkok."