a yellow-white coat of paint
——
He decided not to go to the Talat Sao that morning. His carefully-constructed routine had been interrupted, subverted. As he walked back the short distance to his apartment along the Sokpaluang road, he wondered what he should be feeling. Was it freedom that caused such a pulse of sudden, inexplicable fear to pass through him? I should have told her no, he thought, but his mind slid away from the image of the girl that rose in his mind. She had put her hand over his, and her hair had fallen around her face, framing it – no.
What then?
As he approached his building, he saw something out of the corner of his eye and, turning, was just in time to see the back of a man disappearing through the door of the small convenience store. He noticed close-cropped hair, a large neck, tanned, pale-blue shirt, unremarkable black trousers, polished black shoes. ‘Son of a bitch,’ Joe said.
He turned and crossed the road again, almost hitting two girls on a scooter who narrowly missed him and then looked back at him, emitting embarrassed giggles. He waved to indicate he was all right and they sped away, still giggling. He went to the store, navigating his way between crates and spent cartons, and pushed the door open. There was a strong smell inside of drying fish.
‘Sabaidee, mister,’ said the girl behind the front table.
‘Sabaidee,’ he said, returning her nop. She had put her palms together in the customary greeting and so he answered with his own. The girl was watching a small television set showing a Japanese game-show. On the screen, a Japanese man was capering on a stage in a European clown’s costume, while two contestants to either side of him were trying to hit him with long bamboo sticks. The man ducked and jumped, at once comical and strangely graceful, avoiding their aim.
‘What’s this?’ he asked the girl, who had already returned her full attention to the screen. She looked up. ‘Catch That Clown,’ she said. ‘They get one hundred yen each time they manage to hit him.’ She shrugged. ‘They never do, but it’s funny.’
Joe smiled and she returned to her screen. Catch that clown, he thought. He searched through the narrow aisles, but there was no sign of the man with the polished black shoes. ‘Did anyone come through here just now?’ he said. The girl seemed to contemplate the question. ‘Been quiet,’ she said at last, handing down her verdict, and turned up the volume on the television set.
What did that mean? There was a back way into the store, of course, but it led into the family’s own residence. If so, the man must merely be an uncle or cousin or some other relative hanging around, which, when he thought about it, was the most reasonable explanation. He shrugged and picked up a tin of soup and a new packet of cigarettes, paid, and went back outside.
A man was climbing into a stretched black Mercedes parked outside Joe’s building. Joe caught sight of polished black shoes disappearing inside. Then the door was softly closed shut, the tinted windows allowed no gaze inside, the powerful German engine purred to life, and the car pulled out into the road. ‘Wait!’ Joe shouted, and he ran towards the car, which was already speeding away. A scooter went past him, too close, and a boy in a student’s uniform said, ‘Watch where you’re going, asshole!’ as he sped away. Joe cursed. The black car was ahead of him and gaining speed. He ran after it. An elderly lady cycled past him, her bicycle loaded with egg trays. She looked at him sideways with a bemused expression. ‘Stop!’
The car wasn’t stopping. But a window rolled down on the right-side of the back seat, and a hand emerged, holding a shiny object, and Joe stopped, not believing what he saw. It was a gun.
The shots echoed loudly in the street. The old lady swerved, her bicycle wavered, and then she fell, the bicycle skidding away across the hot tarmac, the trays coming loose from the strings that bound them, releasing their load of fresh eggs onto the road, where they rolled and burst, covering the tarmac in a yellow-white coat of paint. At the first sound of a shot, Joe fell facedown onto the road and rolled away towards the pavement. The hand withdrew into the Mercedes. As the window rolled back up a piece of paper caught, perhaps, in the updraft, came floating out of the window. The car sped away and soon disappeared behind the bend.
Joe stood up. He was shaking. He ran to the old woman, but she had not been hurt. He helped her up. She too was shaking. She did not speak to him. She watched the broken eggs on the ground and began to cry, without sound, the tears flowing down her lined face, like water through a web of ancient Roman aqueducts. Joe went to her bike and picked it up. She took it from him without a sound. She would not look at him. Other people had come out to watch. They stood outside the shop-fronts and gazed, pointing and murmuring between themselves. Joe cursed and decided it was time to be gone from there. ‘Here,’ he said, offering the woman some money clumsily. ‘For the eggs.’
She took the money from him without comment, tucking it away in a hidden pocket. When she walked her bike to the side of the road a group of women descended on her, escorting her to the shade and offering her tea. The woman gave them a small, sad smile. No one seemed to pay Joe any attention.
Good.
As he turned to go, a piece of torn paper hit him on the face and he snapped at it, his anger suddenly released, and he crumpled it into a ball with one violent motion.
They had shot at him. Why the hell had they shot at him? He jogged away from there as a bus went past and left yolky tire-marks on the asphalt. When he got to his building he went right in, climbing up to his apartment and locking the door behind him. Then he stood with his back to the door, taking deep breaths. He brought his hand to his face, and realised he was still holding the ball of paper. He smoothed it open and looked at it. A dirty scrap of old newspaper, barely-legible but for the date: eleven September, two thousand and one. He shrugged, crumpled it back into a ball, and went to deposit it in the rubbish-bin. Then he packed up some clothes, threw in the three books, and left the apartment.