Killed at the Whim of a Hat

it was only his thick gold helmet that stopped him being blown off the saddle as he rode. In his hand he had a brown paper envelope.

“Are you Koon Jum?” he asked.

“Jimm.”

“That’s probably it.”

He handed me the envelope and drove off. I hadn’t had the presence of mind to ask him where he was from or why he’d ridden out at such an unholy hour to make his delivery. By the time I’d formulated all my questions he was gone. The envelope did indeed have the words ‘Koon Jum, Lovely Resort’, written in thick felt tip. I put on the pot to boil water, then ripped open the envelope. It contained a simple black and white election flyer. On the front was a photo of a grinning candidate with a large rosette on his shirt. The flyer was very old, the paper almost separating at the crease. If the name hadn’t been written there I would never have recognized the man. It was the decidedly younger and unplasticized face of Tan Sugit beside a large, handwritten, number three. It was the type of thing poll delegates would pass on, hand to hand in villages.

“Here’s twenty baht. This is the number you’ll vote for. We’ll know if you don’t and we’ll be back.”

The only thing that had changed since those days was the cost of a vote. You could get up to five hundred baht for your name on a list these days. I turned over the paper and on the back in scrawled handwriting were the words, “Ask his daughter about the VW.” It was written in some watery ink that had dried brown at the edges. I really wasn’t in the mood for a mystery.

Breakfast was a simple affair. Our guests had given up on us and driven off early to find somewhere else to eat. We couldn’t do that. We were captive. Most families would help themselves as they were coming and going from bed to work: rice porridge, a quick Chinese doughnut, some sort of dried meat, a plastic bag of warm soybean milk for the road. But Mair insisted we all eat breakfast together; sit down at one of our tables and ‘talk’. The policy hadn’t been a great success so far. Most mornings we’d just stoop over our plates and fuel up for the day. But, on this awful Sunday, Arny had an announcement to make.

“I’ve got a girlfriend,” he said, a smile sliming across his face. We all looked at him with our spoons and forks on pause, some full on their way up, some empty on their way down, but all static. For many years we’d hoped to hear such a proclamation. We’d encouraged him. I’d introduced him to girls at school. But by the time he’d reached thirty we’d come to the conclusion there was more likelihood of America getting an African American president than of Arny having a girlfriend. We’d all secretly assumed there was something of Sissi in him that he was trying to suppress. I blamed our absent father for his lack of male hormones. We’d all given up.

Mair dropped her spoon, leaped from her seat and threw her arms around her youngest.

“Oh, child,” she said, “I’m so pleased for you. Well done. Well done.”

I settled for reaching across and squeezing his hand. I was still suspicious. Granddad Jah, looking like death boiled up, stared at him in disbelief.

“Nice one, nong,” I said. “Who’s the unlucky girl?”

Mair returned to her seat with a damp and shiny face.

“Don’t be cruel,” she said. “What’s your young lady’s name, child?”

“Gaew,” he said, still beaming with pride.

“And what does she do?”

“She used to be a bodybuilder. I met her at the weight room at Bang Ga. She still does weights but she doesn’t compete anymore. Who’d have thought it? A little wooden gym in the countryside and I’d find someone like Gaew. I recognized her right away from her photos.”

“What photos, child?” Mair asked.

“In Body Thai.”

“She was in a magazine?”

“Not just in it. She had features regularly. International journals too. She was a celebrity.”

“And she lives in Bang Ga?” I asked. I hadn’t reached the goose-bump stage but I could certainly feel little prickles of foreboding.

“Even celebrities have to be born somewhere,” Arny reminded me. “Her family’s all there. I went to their house. All the awards. All the photos. It was like a museum. Everything I’ve ever dreamed of. She told me all her stories at lunch.”

“So, you’ve eaten with her?” Mair asked.

“Twice now. I took her into Lang Suan yesterday. We talked a lot. When we got back to her house there was nobody there. We almost had sex.”

Granddad dropped his doughnut. Mair laughed out loud.

“Arny,” I said, astonished. “We’re eating here. And you weren’t going to lose your big V until you found the big L, remember?”

“Oh, Jimm, really. This is it,” he said. “The heart freeze and everything. I know it’s right. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

“Oh, child,” Mair said. “You’re a big boy now but there’s really no hurry. Trust me. How long have you known her?”

“Three days.”

“Three days, right. Then if it’s love after three days, it’ll still be love after three months. None of us wants to make commitments on impulse. I’m delighted, really. But passion is an egg. You have to see it grow into a chicken before you decide whether it’s a boiler or a roaster.”

Mair always had a way with idioms.

“What does Gaew think about all this?” I asked.

“She feels really exactly the same. She said as soon as she saw me it was ‘clunk’. That’s how it hit me, too. Clunk. She said she hadn’t felt that way since she met her first husband. She said it was a rare, almost impossible feeling to reproduce but she had it.”

The frame had paused again without us noticing.

“Her first husband?” Mair asked.

“Yeah. He was the one who got her into bodybuilding. He was an icon, too. Dom, Mick’s Gym, Purachart. He won the all-Asian title twice. You remember him. I had his poster on my wall when I was just starting out.”

“You started out when you were fourteen,” I reminded him.

“Yeah. Really” — Arny nodded — “that was a while ago, wasn’t it?”

Ahead of me was a metaphorical field which was peppered with metaphorical landmines. I could have progressed lightly and tiptoed around but I knew we were headed for a messy bang whatever I did.

“Nong?” I asked. “How old’s your girlfriend?”

“Fifty-eight.”

There was no shame or embarrassment in his voice. He’d said it proudly and loudly. It didn’t seem to cross his mind at all what effect such a statement might have on his fifty-seven-year-old mother. Mair hung on to her Titanic smile but couldn’t bring herself to speak. She wiped her mouth with a tissue, stood, and walked unsteadily in the direction of the shop. Arny watched her go with a real smile on his own face.

“Looks like Mair’s as excited about all this as I am,” he said.

The silence that followed was interrupted by the beep of a motorcycle horn. Ed rode past and waved. Sitting behind him was an attractive girl about my age. She smiled at me and put her hand to her heart. Not for the first time that day I didn’t know how to react, and it was barely seven o’clock.

Lieutenant Chompu came by at eight. I’d given him the heads-up about my note. Granddad Jah and I piled into his truck and headed off out of Maprao. Da Endorphine, the slick ballad queen was cooing on the CD player. Of course, I was the girly in the backseat. Chompu read the note and flipped it over to look at the election poster.

“Any idea what year this might have been?” he asked.

“Seventies by the look of his tie and his sideburns,” Granddad said. “Probably the man’s first attempt at conning his way into public office.”

“But why was it delivered to me?” I asked. “Who knows I’m involved in the case?”