"suck-calves" on his wife. He hated their neediness and as the
spankings continued, Kumpee began to oppose these gestures. Such
self-abnegation caused him to become the full brunt of the beatings.

Having been given time alone, Jatupon scraped up his stolen
collection of loose change and ran off hand in hand with his freedom.
Having no responsibilities for the first time in his life apart from
the night sports that usually happened in the mornings, his life was
becoming a purposeless abyss. He personified his freedom and together
they broke beyond small basement windows and imagined portals to real
places. Together, they went to see the life that fulminated within the
streets of the city of Bangkok. Kazem was gone so they did not have to
be there to hear his expletives about the older brother's thievery and
the younger brother's disappearances. The disappearances were ones
Kazem attributed to Suthep chumming up with Kumpee to have a bit of
money to play snookers. For hours and hours they were lost in the
movements of traffic, the brown and Chinese faces, movements of
strangers on the sidewalks, and the swirl of infinite numbers on the
quest for money, happiness, and adventure. He read faces and movements
from his spreading feelers. They too wanted money bestowed onto them to
squander at will in all forms of self-indulgence. They too wanted to
squelch their routines to live their dishonorable lives in the quest of
sensuality. To have resources and freedom to run around loose as a
goose in a department store was something they all yearned for and
seeing these pedestrian shoppers of the sidewalk, with more money than
he, made the boy hunger for better things.
Freedom was becoming old as he continued to walk with her into the
crowds but she rejuvenated lasciviously when his eye spotted someone
not in the shopper's swirl. The cravings so attractive to Jatupon were
missing in those deadened eyes and passing from him he fell into the