Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Sudbanthad Pitchaya

Author:Sudbanthad, Pitchaya [Sudbanthad, Pitchaya]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

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☐ ☐ ☐

Nee called him out on another trait of his: he avoided confrontation. She said this after they had waited half an hour for a restaurant table and then lost it to a family who sidestepped him and sat down. They were at one of those places where the food was so revered the staff didn’t care if customers stared each other down and fought over chairs. He had volunteered to guard one table that looked to clear out, telling her and her friends to feel free to go use the washroom or grab a smoke.

“They had kids,” he said.

“They could have come with a whole orphanage, but still,” said Nee. He could see why his mother had picked her.

They were there with half a dozen of her old classmates, and he had failed them. It had been about three months since he’d begun seeing Nee, and he’d earned an invitation to join them on an outing. He had long been curious about the lives of Thais to whom he wasn’t related, and he knew Nee admired her friends, whom she thought had done so much better than she in their professional lives, grateful that they stayed in touch and never treated her differently. She kept careful guard of them, and only when he’d proved himself to be worth their bother was he allowed to circle closer. Theirs was the kind of friendship forged only in the fine weave of Bangkok schools and universities. As infinite as the city appeared, its people moved in the same clusters from birth to death.

To their credit, her friends didn’t make a big deal about the table. After they were finally seated, they clinked foamy glasses of Singha and Kloster with his and kept him in conversations they could have carried on without pausing to ask for his thoughts.

“Nee tells me you’re a photographer,” one of her friends said. “You must have a great eye.”

“It’s the light and equipment, really. I simply press the shutter.”

“You took some great photos of Nee. She showed me,” another one said. He remembered the photos, taken after one of their midday trysts. Nee went out to the balcony and rested her elbows on the railing, taking in the vast city trembling with incessant urgency. From where he lay with his camera, she looked glorious in the harsh afternoon light, which could only break through at the very edge of her shadow, as if she had grown large enough to smother the sun.

“Make room, make room,” a waitress interrupted, earning his eternal gratitude.

When he saw the food being paraded out the kitchen toward them, he wished he’d brought the camera with him, so that pressing the shutter button could calm his nerves. This wasn’t the ornately plated Thai food he was used to in Bangkok’s hotels. Fish came at him, silvery and whole, bathed in plum juice and ginger. Grilled prawns the size of men’s hands oozed with orange roe, and bowls of curry the color of flames formed a volcanic ring around the table.

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