Nawin laughed out a spray of saliva but immediately regained self-control the best he could when upside down and having drizzled in public. "Oh my, so sorry, forgive me." For a moment he deliberately sobered his rolling caprice of laughter with the thought of the bleak scenario beyond the bold and refreshing honesty of the Laotian's words. "You've lost your jobs?"
"We have. Business slowed and our use is over. We will drift elsewhere in other temporary experiences. Don't worry about us. Don't worry about me. Why are you going to Laos?"
"For a while," said Nawin evasively. "I guess I should give you back your beer."
"Keep it. If I run out of beer later maybe I can ferment wine from some of the rotting day old rice I was trying to eat earlier and whatever you have stinking up your ass."
Nawin chortled uproariously until the saliva began an internal strangulation. Feeling as if he were choking he coughed for a couple moments. However refreshing this acrimony so unencumbered by Thai-Laotian etiquette was, it was not worth dying for; and so he retreated for a few moments on his bunk until dangling once again with an opened can of beer.
He thought again how this stranger defied the obsequious norm with a refreshing brashness that was like having cold water thrown into his face. But like a fish that was suddenly snagged on a hook, images of himself in poverty, which he did not care to recall, caught him within. His pleasure in the stranger waned as impressions of beings and beings themselves waned. He countenanced a mere smile which altered further into a wry, contorted, and ungainly expression that expressed little beyond the awkward fidgetiness of wanting to withdraw from social interaction. Tightened into the hook of memory, he unwillingly recalled the hysterical deprecatory laughter, guffaws, and jeers on that one mortifying day in gym class when, at the age of eleven, his loose underwear fell through the legs of his shorts. From that point forward he did not oppose his family's will to have him toil along with them as a noodle worker in their restaurant. At that time he preferred serving food to being a viand for those who gormandized oddities. In this mundane world one who suffered from a peculiar bout of misery more dramatic than others (like underwear falling onto the floor of the gymnasium) was cannibalized as an inhuman freakish joke that fed their appetite for joyous contempt. At that age of eleven he just wanted to serve obscurely and enter the world of implausible comic book scenarios shortly before sleep. Back then noodles, comics, and sleep had given to him a varied but unaware extension of himself.
He considered pulling a few thousand baht from his wallet to give to this Laotian. Then it occurred to him that he would need to give the same to all of these marathon contenders, but he did not have that much money in his wallet nor was he so inclined to give what he had to one let alone the countless many. If it were unethical to know the suffering of an acquaintance and be unmoved to assist him, he rationalized, giving special favors to one with no regard to the masses did not seem any more ethical. So, as always, he horded what he had; and indeed he was one of those who had an abundance being a purveyor of turpitude as well as art which together was popular with both wealthy intellectuals and idiots alike. Such a trivial dabbling of philanthropy, he further argued, would more likely than not be money thrown into the whirlwind of drugs, liquor, or other exacerbated vice from which a self-deprecating fool more easily annihilated himself. And if he wanted to believe the false presage that such a nominal act would cause perpetual kindness the way a rock thrown in a creek begets one ripple that begets another it would not matter. He would not be able to successfully delude himself for long; at best he would be engendering a short time of ever diminishing ripples.
"Besides," he thought, "if this guy is so badly off, he should not be riding in an air conditioned car." It was a rather harsh judgment given his knowledge that the poor sometimes treated themselves to a bit of middle class opulence to make themselves connected to the society that they served and to sense that they could thrive rather than merely live. He repeated to himself that he would not pull out a few thousand baht and give it to a stranger who would resent him regardless of what he did or did not do. This was his conclusion in a sleep-deprived head that had too much crammed into it.
He then considered that sleep was a diminishing reduction of memory (a zipped file in a computer) but one where the zipping weathers away the details. He considered that, given enough hours over a period of evenings, sleep could even dilute the memory of Noppawan repeatedly swinging the frying pan against his arm—an arm that was still throbbing and itching in the cast.
Giving a thousand baht would imply having a lot to give and giving nothing would imply snobbishly holding back from giving what little he could, so he handed the man a hundred baht. "I can spare this. Keep it as money for transportation when going back to Vientiane."