He too wanted to stop thinking and he wished that his thoughts
could be intruded with conversation. "I just mean that I'm nobody
important. I paint a little. I'm going to Montreal for that reason."
The taxi driver was reticent. "Do you have many hours left driving
today?" Nawin asked him. Still there was no answer. He threw the
cigarette out of the opened window. "Do you want a stick of gum," he
asked the girl.
"I have a tick tack in my mouth now but I'll take your gum and save
it for later. You might not offer it again." She giggled and he
smiled at her with the tightness of his closed lips. She had lost her
animal, and there she was as his seductress. He kissed her and
returned the headphones over his ears. The savory taste of her mouth
was in him.


Chapter 2

The acceleration that took them out of Huamark and through
other adjacent sections of the city eventually led them to her area.
He did not remember the name of it: Bangkae, Bangplad, Bang-something.
He paid little attention to what his mistress said. Her voice often
seemed the strident spluttering of burning fuel in an engine that
couldn't produce motion. King Ramkhamhaeng was a bygone entity. As
soon as his model picked up some of her things that she had forgotten
to bring with her the previous day and they had some breakfast, then
Thailand would be a thing of the past too. For how long he didn't
know. He was married but it was one signature on many sheets of paper.
The significance of spilled ink could not be read unless, like many
superstitious Thais, he were to seek a fortuneteller-mendicant sitting
on a sheet or straw mat on a sidewalk or in a park.