“Do you mean you steal it?”
“Not really. He knows I do it. It is kind of like a little game...sort of.”
“Oh, I can pick it from your simple mind so easily. The rule being that after you provide your sexual services to him he allows you to pickpocket from the pants that he drapes on a chair. If he awakens he beats you or disparages your existence in front of the family but if you are quiet you can take most of what he has in his pockets and run away throughout the day.”
“When I’m not working. That is kind of how it has gone. He has always been kind enough to see that I get a vacation every week. He was always telling Mother that I needed to be something other than an illiterate slob and the least they could do was allow me to go to the library once a week. I would usually go there...sometimes a movie or standing at a newsstand reading the comics. That is sort of how it was. Now we aren’t working so I didn’t take very much yesterday. Hey, if you can read my simple little mind so easily, why do you bother to ask things?”
“To amuse myself a little. Did this pickpocket game occur when your parents were alive?”
“Yes, it began when I was eleven. What could I have said to anyone? I was hated. You said so yourself. I wasn’t going to make it worse by humiliating myself that way. They wouldn’t have believed me; and they wouldn’t have wanted to think about something so disgusting. Anyhow, Kazem always had me swear that I’d keep it secret and he is the only one who has really cared about me-as much as people care about others. Maybe not so much.” He became taciturn.
“Quiet!” said the mosquito belatedly. “I hear something.” It paused and looked through the small window of the basement apartment. “Oh, it is your mother driving up now.”
“She doesn’t drive. She doesn’t own a car.”
“She does now.” Jatupon remembered that she always did buy lottery tickets that mendicants sold from wooden attach� cases hung around their chests. “I thought she didn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell of winning” commented the mosquito. “Anyhow, here she is and it is grocery day. You need to help her bring in the bags.”
It was raining but he nonetheless heard the car. He sauntered out of the kitchen of the river cabin as the screen door sprang back behind him.