"All of my money is gone."
"You are my friend. I am concerned for you and I am keeping your wallet so that you don't lose it. Also we have to pay these guys to take us to the farm. No more busses going that way this late." Then to the owner who was now attempting to refill the glass from a whiskey bottle he said, "No, enough. Nothing more for him." The gecko, sitting on his shoulder, imparted a long melodramatic look of consternation and worried skepticism which also seemed staged. The reptile was stirring the puddle of his eyes, watching the ripples and it continued to do this until they were outside and the truck was turned on. Bored, it too needed to make more from the rock of the planet.
One of these drunk companions deliberately skidding the vehicle on dirt roads to provoke reactions within the clouds of dust; wet patches where the pickup labored more than once to get itself out of a rut; then, after this long journey of front seat revelry, back seat asphyxiation, the arrival at a shack stilted like a cabin; and inside an extended family eating som tam, mangos, and sticky rice on a barren floor. Was it merely this he had unwittingly yearned for all this time—a gift of a surprised and welcoming smile from her whom he had met once before on the train? Through all the expended energy of his own version of spirituality and standard decadence it was just this expression that he had wanted all along—an expression which could make and remake a diminutive man. Alacritous, she served to him his share placed on a banana leaf that was on a bamboo placemat. The rest of the family was nice enough. Why wouldn't they be with a rich man of humble sensitivities there to be exploited, a man who was spinning out of his mind while the food was making him sick. Boi put him on a scattered blanket inside a dark bedroom. There he heard the continual barking of dogs through the window. Here in this cockroach infested room, to think of something not so painful, not so dreadful, he imagined the women cooking insect curry and roasted frog and the males smoking in the main room. The barking of dogs was mordant to his thumping head, and it took a half hour before he was asleep—the cascading of sleep only interrupted when the pallid sister poured him tea, squeezing a lemon exclusively into his glass, serving unto him while he was lying there.
"You don't have to do that," he said.
"I want to," she said as she tilted a glass toward him.
"You've come here to see us and now you are sick because of us."
"Not so sick. And certainly not because of you. It's my own foolishness in drinking."
"I think this will help. Mother's remedy."
"Thank you. I shouldn't be taking someone's room. Whose is it?"
"It's mine. It does not matter."