“I also have some sunglasses for you” Kazem said in disgust.
“Thanks” Jatupon responded with a surly and begrudging tone of a nearly mute volume.
He controlled his contempt out of an instinct for self- preservation. He wanted to keep himself from being bludgeoned with the sledgehammer of his brother’s fist or beaten with the leather skin of his slaps. Kazem wanted to ask if Kumpee had said anything more about their dinner engagement with the senator as an effort to establish its veracity-a senator they called uncle as a disingenuous ploy to bring them into a greater stratum of wanting and needing, winds of higher and more pleasurable velocity.
The mosquito buzzed around Jatupon’s blackened eyes and then around the opened bottle of glue. With his wings he made a pejorative click the way people use their tongues when they shake their heads. Jatupon was not glad to see him. He did not want the condemnation. At first this glue-begotten ride had been an enjoyable thrill. The newness of a newborn was at that time gleaming out of his orbs. He was like a child in wonder of himself flossing his toes in the grass, having his hair massaged by the winds, and chasing god in the clouds. Now the mosquito was here spoiling the solitary party of one which was steadily waning.
The mosquito greeted him in English. “Hello, little man.” He thought it was Kumpee at first but, to his knowledge, Kumpee didn’t know any language apart from the strident sounds of Thai and was more in favor of using the word “monkey” in place of “little man.” Jatupon looked down at a gigantic insect that was nonetheless smaller than himself. He responded in the same international tongue with a hello. “Where did you learn your English?” asked Jatupon; but no sooner had he done this than he realized how foolish the question was since the mosquito was an extension of himself. For some reason he was both cognizant of the fact that the creature didn’t exist and yet believing in him. It was undeniable that if Buddha was right in claiming that the self was a delusion there was a chance that instead of the mosquito being less real it might be more real than himself. It was true that the mosquito wasn’t afraid of a man but a man was afraid of a mosquito. Wasn’t that, he asked himself, proof that the one who wasn’t afraid was more real?
“Where did you learn your English? “asked the mosquito.
“Music, TV shows, story books from the library, Newsweek in my more ambitious times, cartoons mostly.”
“Well, then, me too” the mosquito said. It paused and then pulled out a cigarette from its gums and lit it without a match by striking it against the metallic hair on one of its legs. “Another day without going to work?”
“Another day.”
“Taking it a bit easy?”