bodily waste; long-haired Nute, who taught PE at the middle school but was a foot shorter than most of the students; Grit, the good-for-nothing elder brother of Meng, our local private detective and plastic awning installer; Kow, the squid-boat captain who was devoid of front teeth and smelled of fishballs; and Daeng, the dog killer, whom she wouldn't have touched with a three-meter coconut hook. It was a depressing line-up. All I could hope was that Mair had imported someone eligible from another district, but I'd seen no strange vehicles parked round about.
If all else failed, I'd give Mair a sip of wine, stand back, and wait for the blab gates to open. I have a remarkable tolerance for alcohol, but she can't drink to save her life. She spews out embarrassing stories that would make a hooker blush. Nothing is taboo to Mair with a drink in her. Nothing, of course, apart from the whereabouts of our missing father, who fled the scene when I was a toddler, Arny was still in nappies, and Sissi was only five and still a boy. On the subject of absent fathers, Mair had taken a vow of silence that withstood the test of booze.
We were eating our rice porridge-me, Mair, Arny, and Grandad-at one of our resort tables squashed inside the kitchen. We had the shutters closed. The wind from the northeast had obviously had a bad night and was spitting mad. The coconut trees were bent like parentheses, their fronds pointing desperately to Malaysia and more temperate climes. Every now and then, a coconut would break free from the bunch and head off at a forty-five- degree angle to smash a window or fracture a water pipe. The beach was clogged with bamboo roots torn from the streams in the flash floods. They were tangled with discarded nylon nets and garnished with polystyrene. Everything smelled of effluent and old engine oil. Perhaps you can see why I love this place so.
The mother-daughter matching set from room three poked their heads in the kitchen door. Their hairstyles had been vandalized by the wind. They were not carrying suitcases.
'Good morning,' said the mother. 'I was wondering whether there might be a chance of a bite to-'
'Oh, my word,' said Mair. 'Come in and shut that door.
Of course we have food for you. Father, give them your seat.
Grandad Jah didn't budge…He was having his breakfast. Arny grabbed two folding chairs from against the wall and placed them at the table for the guests.
'Sorry about the ambience,' I said, quite unnecessarily. I'd become a serial apologizer since we moved south.
'No. Not at all. This is very cozy,' lied the mother.
I looked at her. Even her casual summer wear was designer. She probably had a kitchen twice this size back home just for her maids to eat in.
'Where are you from?' I asked, dishing up the rice porridge.
'Oh, we move around a lot,' she said.
It was a 'mind-your-own-frigging-business' answer. I'd heard a lot in my career. But she delivered the line with grace and a nice smile. The daughter hadn't yet spoken. She cast nervous glances in the direction of Arny, who sat with his shirt off. We were used to it, but he could be a little overwhelming to outsiders. He was built like a stack of tractor tires. He gushed testosterone. Yet despite his physique and his movie-star good looks-both of which make me think I must have been adopted-he was apparently unaware of the effect he had on others. Some feared him the way you'd be nervous of a killer whale heading down your driveway. Some, both men and women, desired his body, caring not whether he had a mind or a personality. Some felt that animal urge to challenge him. The daughter didn't know what to make of him at all. She was a mid-twenties jaw-dropper, and I'd wager she had saliva trails following her wherever she went. She was used to seduction and had come to expect it. So when naked-torso hunk said 'Good morning' and returned to his breakfast without even a cursory glance at her breasts, she was plainly dumfounded.
There was no other woman for Arny. He had met his true love, Gaew, right here in Maprao. She too was a weightlifter. She too had toured the body glamour circuit and won prizes. She too had fallen into that same pit of passion that had claimed my brother. She had taken both his heart and, so we believed at the time, his virginity, in the space of a week. There was only one buckle in this wheel of passion and that was her age. Arny was thirty-two. His 'fiancee,' Gaew, was fifty-eight. She was the same age as our mother. She and Mair had idolized the same rock singers in high school and learned Hula-Hoop at approximately the same time. In fact, they were becoming good friends. We all liked her. But that just made her relationship with Arny…weird. Icky even. She'd won her first award when Arny was still learning to use the potty. So, that's why Arny didn't notice there was a babe in the kitchen.
The guests tucked into their food with gusto. If they had problems with eating with commoners, they didn't show it. I was heating up the gooey orange tea and planning another subterfuge for extracting conversation.
'Sorry about your room,' I said.
'The room's wonderful,' said the mother.
'Really?'
I couldn't think of one thing that was wonderful about cabin three apart from the fact that it wasn't cabin two. Cabin two had a mouse tap-dance studio in the ceiling.
'We appreciate the simplicity here,' she said. 'One can get too dependent on luxury items in the city. I'm a firm believer that one needs to stop and experience frugality once in a while.'
And here she'd landed slap in the capital of frugality. What luck.
'We were expecting you to be back on the road at first light,' I told her.
'We had planned to but it's so lovely here I think we might stay a day or two.'
That's when I knew she was lying. Lovely? You'd have to be blind drunk or just plain blind to see anything lovely in Maprao in the monsoon season…especially at the Not So Lovely Resort. These two were up to something. I was planning to creep around the block and sneak up on them from the rear with my next question, but Grandad Jah went at them full throttle.
'You got no registration plates on your car,' he told them. 'That's illegal.'
The guests looked at each other and giggled nervously.
'We were coming over the bridge in Lang Suan, the one on the highway,' said the mother mechanically. 'The road there is riddled with potholes. And of course we hit one of them and the license plate at the front just dropped off. So we st-'
'How did you know?' asked Grandad.
'Know what, uncle?'
'How did you know the plate dropped off. You got an A/C car, so you didn't hear it. It's under the bumper, so you didn't see it. And it's flat, so you sure as hell didn't feel it. So…?'
I could see a desperation in the woman's eyes as she searched for another lie. Her daughter came to the rescue.
'The car behind us beeped,' she said. 'We stopped and the driver told us we'd lost our registration plate back on the road. We retrieved it and took it to the garage at the main intersection, and they said the housing unit was rusted almost completely away. Same with the one at the back. So the owner is welding us new…new housing units to…to attach the plates.'
She didn't look at us, just sighed and ran her spoon around the inside of her bowl. I glared at Grandad, but I could tell he was already satisfied these two were up to no good. We both knew a two-year-old Honda wasn't going to rust away to nothing. We both knew that the only way anyone would beep you on Highway 41 would be to pull you over and mug you at gunpoint. And why not take a hotel room in town? Why drive all the way to the coast without plates? But an interrogation would only frighten these two away, and like Grandad, I wanted them to stick around. I wanted the chance to use my investigative skills. I only have a small nose, barely a squirrel snout. But it can sniff. Oh yes can it sniff. And my nose sensed a story. A big one.
I'm not sure what it was Mair sensed, but she said, 'You'll have to excuse my father. He's a little senile.' Grandad's eyebrows almost took off. 'Sometimes he thinks he's a detective. Like on the television. He can be impolite at times.'
'Yeah. Right,' said Grandad. He stood and took his bowl to the sink. 'Can I wear my SWAT jacket today?'
'Maybe later,' said Mair.
Arny watched Grandad push against the door with all his might and thrust himself into the wind. My brother had no idea what was going on. Sometimes the world was too subtle for him.
