“It can’t happen but if you read it you can let the poem slip over you. That’s better really because that way you don’t slip away at all but just put on some modern armor. It is like feeling invincible—like slipping on a soldier’s uniform and strapping on a new gun.”
“I like that idea. That is beautiful. What’s the book about?”
“How a prince born as a hawk changed into a man through love and atonement. I’ve read it before. Here.” He gave her the book although he hadn’t completed the poem itself but only the preface.
“You won’t read it again?”
“No.” He lied. He wanted her to like him. He wanted to give her something so that she would remember him.
“Did you know that my father owns three factories and is a high official in the government?”
“How would I know that? I just met you.” He felt that it was strange that someone so dark should have parents who were entrepreneurs and high government officials. He also felt that it was strange that she should think that he would know her so deeply. Still, their conversation seemed to him so uniquely intimate like long established friends. “Here’s a pen and the book. I want you to write your name and address on the front cover.”
“Okay.” He took her pen and wrote it there. She took back the book.
“Jatupon Biadklang. No email address?” she asked. He didn’t understand much about such things. He just said “No” and shrugged it off as if it lacked importance. In his heart, however, he wanted to ask her questions about this technological age.
Then the girl said goodbye and went away. He did not understand this needy feeling suddenly brewing within him that yearned for the presence of another to stitch his open wounds. He wanted her to come back to him and he waited there on that bench for an additional hour with that one thought dominant in his mind and a foolish expectation that she would come back to converse with him further even though neither of them really knew the other. Still, when he eventually left, he felt hope in something within his disappointment that she hadn’t returned. He wasn’t quite sure what the nature of this hopefulness was. Like lightning flashing once to which the unaccustomed eye blinks twice it pierced darkness and restored faith in forces beyond mortal knowledge. Like the refracting rays of the sun coruscating at 5:00 onto the Chao Phrya River in round wild and random organisms of light before motor-gondolas and barges, so he felt that something brief but beautiful had happened to him and that the residue of it would always stay with him.