instinct or reflexes that, as they crossed the road, zigzagging through
stalled traffic, his feet and ears performed a specific cautionary
duality of quickness in speed and breaks. This allowed him to retreat
from motorcycles without headlights that were swerving around multiple
lanes of cars. Even within Ayutthaya, which was conspicuously absent
of operable traffic lights, he had never had an accident. There was
that time that he had flown off of a motorcycle taxi and over a vendor
who had been wheeling his cart when the motorcycle had run into his
toasted buns glazed in feces-tinted Ovaltine, but that was a different
type of incident altogether.
Across the street culinary workers of the sidewalk poured soup and
scooped rice dishes into plastic bags sealed with rubber bands or put
the plates of food on metallic tables. So many city residents (all of
whom lived in apartments) did not possess kitchens from some law or
another. This, he supposed, was good. It had provided he and his family
with an existence. It did the same for them. One worker who rested on
a red stool enthralled him. Without any specific gestures or words
sent to him, he nonetheless felt her listlessness and knew her anguish.
He knew the 4000 baht that many indigent souls received. It was their
permit to live; and to get this permit to ride in life they had to
harness and ensnare the creative force that had conceived them and were
them, and then allow themselves to be subservient seven days a week in
their robotic roles of reflexes. He saw another one wring out a
washcloth and clean another table. He could imagine her travail just
as he understood the travail of those around him on overpasses: the
emaciated elderly with cups in their hands seemed to cluster on and
under every pedestrian overpass. To be homeless, he thought, would be
more horrific than the moments at one's death: a travail of being
worthless and lost, where dangling blue from a rope inveigled the
imagination that could not fathom a means to get 6000 baht and pull