2. #2
I eat and try to get Thalia off my mind.
Then I remember who she’s pushing out and call her back to mind again.
So, she snuck up and swam in my pool while I was away.
Why my house? There are bigger villas with bigger pools between Kamala and here.
The little beach without a name just below me offers quite a climb, especially at night.
Was it just coincidence? I think about what she’ll do today, where she’ll go, who she’ll meet, where she’ll end up after she leaves here.
A gap year. She has a whole year of this ahead of her.
I stare out at the water and think about what I’d say to her if she reappeared in my pool again.
Once I’m done eating, I wash the dishes and go upstairs to the office that overlooks the water.
A narrow room, one long desk under the window, a shelf of paperbacks I’ve read twice each, a standing fan in the corner that I run on the middle setting.
The window faces west, so the light in the morning is clean and indirect, which is perfect.
I’ve got a half-finished cup of green tea from yesterday still sitting on the desk.
I dump it in the bathroom sink and set the empty mug back where it was, a placeholder for the new one I’ll make later.
Now, finally, is the time to put all this prep to good use.
I’ve exercised and eaten and done my good deeds.
Now the universe owes me the clarity and focus of uninterrupted flow, that special fuel I need to write.
Get ready, you green-skinned goblin girls, ‘cause I’m gonna getcha.
I wake my Mac and see I’ve got a reminder.
CLASS WITH MEENA TODAY 9:25.
Oh, shit. My Thai class. I completely forgot she asked to switch days.
It’s 8:51, which means I have barely enough time to drive down to the coffee shop to meet her.
I was doing so good. So disciplined. Looks like work will have to wait.
I’ve got a date—which is purely platonic and just about tutoring—with a cute Thai chick.
I can’t keep my legions of fans waiting too long, but I can’t keep her waiting either.
When I arrive at Chiang Mai Coffee, Meena’s already there, on her phone. She’s got a tall latte in front of her and looks up when I come in, sets the phone face-down and folds her hands in greeting.
“Sawadee ka, Khun Mike.”
She looks radiant, resplendent. This is something I absolutely adore about Thai women.
They wear tight dresses and full makeup for everyday errands, a Tuesday morning coffee the same as a Friday night out.
The dress Meena’s wearing is emerald green with a little white floral pattern on it, cut to just above the knee, and she’s wearing heels to a language lesson at nine in the morning.
Back in the States, women don’t dress like this unless they’re going somewhere.
Here it’s just a weekday and Meena’s showing this much midriff without a second thought.
Maybe it’s the climate or the culture, probably both.
Whatever it is, it’s one of the many small perks of living here.
“Sawadee krap, Kru Meena,” I answer in Thai. “Sorry I’m late.”
She tells me it’s okay and that I can go order a coffee if I want.
I go to the counter and order my third cup of the day—or I guess my fourth, since my French press makes two, and I count the one I had before the run, and the one I had on the beach, and—honestly I’ve lost track.
I return to our usual table in the corner, the one next to the window with the view of the motorbikes parked outside and the spirit house on the low wall across the road with the little garland of jasmine someone puts there fresh every morning.
I’ve been studying Thai for about a year now.
When I first started, it was miraculous if I could understand anything the people around me were saying, let alone make them understand me.
I found Meena on Facebook and she gave me some workbooks to build my vocabulary and sent me links to videos at my level, which was stuff like Peppa Pig dubbed over in Thai.
Even Peppa was too advanced at first. There’s a tonal quality to spoken Thai that the ear has to slowly learn to hear, the way you can’t see a constellation until someone traces it for you, and then you can’t unsee it.
Gradually, I learned. I watched it over and over, not trying to catch each word but just letting it soak in.
After a while, I started understanding better.
Podcasts help, and learning the alphabet, which is this whole other thing I didn’t expect to be good at.
But with Meena’s encouragement I got better.
Now we can sit and have a real conversation that I can actually follow.
Meena tells me a story in Thai about her nieces.
I interrupt a few times to ask questions, but the gist is this: her grandmother was showing them how to plant vegetables in the little patch of garden behind the house.
They asked what the weed growing in the yard was called.
Her grandmother made them go over and look at it, made them guess, but they had no idea.
They watched the weed grow day after day until it started to turn golden brown.
Finally, they plucked it and brought it inside to show her.
“It was rice!” Meena says. “The same food they eat every day!”
I tell her most American kids don’t know much about farming either. I couldn’t have told her it was rice. Before I came to Thailand, I had no idea what a rice plant looked like outside of a bowl.
Having finished with her story, it’s time for me to tell one. That’s how it works with us. Well, you can already guess what story I want to tell her. And I have just enough vocabulary to do it.
I stumble searching for words. I know “girl” and “swimming pool” and “travel,” so I’m able to get the basic details across. I don’t know the word for “topless,” but I figure I can leave that part out. Meena is fascinated by the story, but I get the sense she doesn’t quite believe me.
“You never saw her before, really?” she asks. “Not your old girlfriend, right?”
Not at all, I tell her with a laugh. I never saw her before in my life. I just looked out the window and there she was. A Thai woman would never do something like that, Meena insists. Foreigners, though. They’re unpredictable.
Is that good or bad? She says she’s not sure. Living in Phuket is like living in a different country. There are foreigners everywhere. I tease her, saying she must like it at least a little or she wouldn’t be here.
“Correct, Khun Michael!” she says.
Then she leans close like she’s telling me a secret. She doesn’t like Thai men.
“Really?”
They’re all lazy and they drink too much, she says. It seems a little unfair. They can’t all be like that.
“Okay, maybe not all of them,” she says, slipping accidentally into English. “But a lot.”
She tells me that she decided she wasn’t going to stay in the Northeast of Thailand forever. When she grew up, she was going to move away and find a foreign guy.
“What happened?” I ask.
She puts a finger to her lip and gives this little embarrassed smile.
“Look but don’t find,” she says, which is the Thai way of saying it. “Oh, do you know this phrase?”
She says it in Thai for me and I try to follow the sounds she makes.
“Sod mai sod,” I say.
“Yes, but you need to say it with the right tone, or you change the meaning.”
“What does it mean?” I ask.
“When you pronounce correctly, the meaning is single but not fresh.”
I laugh.
“Really,” she says. “That’s me. Single but not fresh anymore. Long time already.”
“You must be holding out for the right man,” I say.
“Holding out?” she repeats. “What is that?”
“Oh,” I say. “Waiting.”
She nods, a small and maybe a sad smile on her lips. She picks up her latte and wraps both hands around it even though it’s already too warm in here for that.
“Yes, always.”
I don’t want to read too much into it, but I kinda can’t help but wonder if she might be flirting with me just a little.
I have a hard time believing that a woman as beautiful and smart as Meena can’t find a man if she wants one.
Finding a good man, now that’s harder. But then, good women don’t grow on trees either.
Even when you think you’ve found one—and then you find out that she has a girlfriend and actually wants you to join the two of them, and you’re happy for a while, happier than you ever thought you could be—there’s always heartbreak somewhere down the line.
That’s why I don’t push things with Meena, even as I sense she might be interested in me.
Or at least, guys from countries like mine.
She talks to foreigners every day, and some of them have to be men.
So she has plenty of options if she wants.
Besides, I don’t want things to ever get awkward between us.
Having studied together for more than six months, I think of her as a friend and not just a tutor. Maybe my only real Thai friend.
We talk a little more and then she checks her phone and realizes we’ve already been here for an hour and a half. She apologizes but she needs to get going. She has another student after lunch and she has errands to do before then.
I ask about her errands but she tells me that it’s “reung suan dua,” which means private.
“Fair enough,” I say. “Thank you very much, Kru Meena.”
“Ka,” she answers, which means yes in every situation and is a polite way of responding.
She’s already gathering her things, dropping her phone into her bag, capping her pen, sliding the workbook across to me.
She stands and gives a small wai, hands pressed together at her chest, and I return it badly, as I always do.
I haven’t even bothered to sip my coffee.
So after Meena says goodbye I sit and finish it, watching the traffic on the road outside, a steady stream of motorbikes and the occasional pickup truck with workers standing in the bed.
The coffee shop has a BGM playlist running—something low and vaguely jazzy, the kind of background music designed to make you order another drink.
The couple at the table behind me have been here longer than I have and show no signs of leaving.
Finally, I don’t have any excuses anymore.
I have to get back to writing. I pay for my coffee and step outside, taking my shades from out of the dip in my collar and putting them on.
The heat hits like a wall. Even at this hour it’s already hot.
I walk toward my bike but I don’t even make it that far before she stops me.
“Hey!” my latest distraction calls out to me. “Any chance I could grab another lift?”