"Did you make the call?"
"No. I'm an artist, so people always give me their numbers hoping I'll pay them to model. I guess that's what it's about. I don't know. Anyhow, thanks again." It was close enough to the truth without the tedium of details for one who was a stranger to him and needed no more than a stranger's cordial trifle.
"No problem," said the driver. "You looked sick when I saw you there squatting on the ground."
"Train sickness I guess. Sickness of everything generally" offered Nawin with a feigned chuckle.
Near the sculpture garden was a 7-11 and he bought some coffee, milk, and a box of corn flakes, sat down amidst purposeful and less temporary form, and ate the cereal from the box as he had when he was five years old in America. To be here in so much empty space among stone carvings and to be the only one around appealed to him. If nothing else having been abused gave him this: the desire to pour color on paper and entertain himself alone, self-contained, in any empty space he could find. However, this solitary behavior was only pleasant for a few hours and then self-containment seemed particularly vacuous and the blessing a curse. He read a book on Etruscan art for a few hours before his already aching buttocks began to hurt from the position on the ground. He got up, swallowed some pain killers for his arm with no assistance but his saliva, and waited for a bus to take him back to Nongkhai. A kiosk selling soft drinks, Buddha statuettes, and cotton candy was already open. In front of it at one table was a typical jasmine rosary salesman who also sold balloons, some of which he blew up and shaped into replicas of Hindu and Buddha emblems, and others he inflated with helium.
"How many helium balloons would it take to float a lightweight piece of metal into a different county or country for that matter?"
"I don't understand you. Do you want some balloons?"
"Yes. I would think six should suffice."
Nawin bought them, removed the stifling wedding ring from his hand, tied it with the six strings, and released the gestalt of colored rubber, metal, and diamonds into the airy realms of the unfettered and the lost.
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