“Old. Retirement age. “
“Hmm... it is strange that they should be immigrating to Canada at an old age like that.” She ignored him. “Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know Nawin. Roll your dice.”
She knew that the only force really binding her on that chair at the kitchen table was herself. She was uncomfortable with his tenderness because it shackled her at his side but out of courtesy to him she tolerated the situation with only a few major grimaces. This quality time together had occurred for her sake but she minimized its effects where she could. She cynically told herself that these games were his pathetic way of finding relief from his solitary ways. She felt sorry for him and this sympathy ameliorated the loathing she was beginning to feel for the introverted bore. Looking back on what she knew of him, she assessed that this wooer of whores had always stayed in safe circles. In Thai parties that they had attended following his exhibits he had never been much of a mingler and had relied on her to be his public relations gadabout. Here in Canada he wasn’t a celebrity. For him there were just classes and an occasional sale of a painting. She had no role with him here. She was a bed partner and a grocery shopper. Even when fulfilling the wifely forgery of grocery shopping, she was curtailed by financial considerations. If she didn’t buy generic food of inferior taste he reprimanded her for overspending.
Porn asked if Park Place and Boardwalk were real properties and he told her that they might be. It was a question that she had also posed two days earlier but Nawin responded to it with the same cheerfulness as if there had been sense in asking it a second time. She asked if he thought they were well known New York City properties and he told her that was quite possible. She glanced at their quality time together through the slow perennial movements of the second hand. These movements of the long second hand were so wobbly as if 60 seconds were like climbing over a mountain range. She would not only glance up at the kitchen clock but also the window as if expecting the snow to be melted and birds singing in her window. She had wanted his attention and now that she had it she realized that this was just aspirin dulling the headache. There was a bigger problem. Being poor and lacking choices had caused her rabid craving for more of everything just as something long ago down deep in him was probably responsible for his artistic brooding. The past was always sucking one into its whirlpool.
He rolled the dice and moved his token. “Oh, Old Kent Road-I want that.”
“Why do you want worthless properties like that?”
“I don’t think either of those two properties are worthless.” He smiled as radiantly as a child pleased to have one of his best friends participating in one of his favorite games. He closed his lips in a tight thoughtful smile. “You know what I’ve been thinking about?”
“No.” She didn’t really care.
“When you met Piggy for the first time.”