Suthep and Jatupon became aware that their masculine images of
themselves were dependent on being a builder of the house, and so they
quickly secured two sagging corners so that they would not be badgered
for feminine subservience.
That night, under the net, Jatupon considered the mosquito
stealth: that it waited for the concluding restless mumbling of his two
eldest brothers who were rehashing where they would go long-term and
what they would do. The mosquito waited; and the minute that they fell
asleep its wings cut through the black air and time with the buzz of a
monotonous chant. The mosquito carried a wicker fan called a "balabot"
that monks used to hide their faces as they gave the air their morbid
and sonorous drones. He heard the mosquito shuffling around the room
under the net. There were times, throughout the night, that he
questioned if some less supernatural version of a mosquito had bitten
him and had given him dengue fever which might have brought on these
hallucinations, or if he was experiencing withdrawal from not having
used drugs or sniffed glue for a while. It did not occur to him that a
third possibility might have been the variety of chemical substances
already in his body mixed with the new amphetamines that he had popped
into his mouth an hour earlier while in the bathroom of Kumpee's
friend. It was a well-known fact that metropolitan bus drivers in
every city popped amphetamines; and so to him it had been vitamins
fortifying him against depression and lethargy.

As he walked with his brothers and the "Chinawoman" through the
heat and smoke of the sidewalk restaurants, he remembered having been
very hot the previous night and how he had felt so miserably trapped
under the mosquito net like a fish in the web and snare of its net. He
was sick but it did not last for very long. According to his memory
this strange entity as large as himself shuffled under the net from one