‘I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this letter arrives and Asian Wings goes off-line,’ I said.
‘Then all we can do is wait for the next installment,’ said Sissi.
*
We didn’t have to wait long. Next day, I was at my desk correcting my students’ version of the English alphabet when the next letter frisbee’d through the air and landed in front of me.
‘You should go on Thailand’s Got Talent with that,’ I shouted but the postman had already left me with little but a fog of exhaust to remember him by. I did catch a long enough glimpse to notice he was quite personable. A bit too young for me perhaps but postal workers made a living wage and I wouldn’t doubt he’d aspire to an office management position within ten years. Of course, I’d be old enough to be his great aunt by then. I ripped open the envelope. As I’d hoped, it contained the next torn installment of the Asian Wings adventure. I pulled down the shutter in front of my shop, retired to my only comfortable chair, and attempted to turn on the lamp. There was no power again. I sat in the dark for ten minutes waiting patiently for the local power workers to reconnect the cable. We had a lot of down time on our grid. At last, there was light.
I read, “CONGRATULATIONS”, flashed on the screen. The flight attendant was suddenly in a tank top that clung like tissue paper to his pectorals. He looked a little flushed. He wore a paper party hat and held a glass of champagne.
“NOW WE’RE PARTYING,” he bubbled. He asked me my name and told me his; ‘Ricky’.
“Hi Dula,’ he said, “I’m so happy to meet you.” I believed him. There was no “I’m happy to meet you too,” button. He went straight into,
“Why don’t we start by getting your credit card information?”
I thought, “Why not?” and keyed in my details. Why not, indeed? Nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine baht wasn’t going to put me into receivership. A small box appeared at the top right hand corner that said, “YOU HAVE BEEN DEBITED NINE-THOUSAND-NINE-HUNDRED-AND-NINETY-NINE BAHT”. It was all going so well I went off to the kitchen for a glass of wine. It was you, Jimmlin who got me hooked on wine. I’m not blaming you. It’s helped me through a lot of lonely evenings. But when I got back, my screen was filled with the message, “SORRY, MAN. YOUR BOOKING PROCESS HAS TIMED OUT.”
I’d only been to the kitchen. The bottle was already open. It didn’t take me a minute to pour. How could I have timed out? And since when did I become a man? I clicked the back button but there was nothing there. I had to reverse all the way to the “NOW WE’RE PARTYING” page before I could be reunited with Ricky. He asked me my name. How could he have forgotten so soon? But he was happy to meet me and asked me for my credit card details again. Somewhat reluctantly, I complied. A box in the top right corner told me I’d been debited nineteen-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-eight baht.’
And that was the end of torn sheet number two. Apart from a long haul flight to Australia on a student exchange, I hadn’t spent much time on airplanes. Given the speed of our connection down here, I doubt I’d ever have attempted to book a flight on the internet. I was already sharing Dula’s frustration. But my focus was not wholly on the booking. I was more interested in finding out who the writer was. I had her name now, Dula, odd spelling but probably translatable in Thai as ‘October’. And it meant nothing to me. I also learned that I’d converted her to wine. It’s true, I did start drinking early, but not with the homely girls at my school. My apprenticeship had been served behind the boys’ dorm at Prince Royal College. I don’t want to give the impression I was easy. Even then I had a remarkable capacity for alcohol and most of the boys were unconscious long before they could take advantage of me. But I did not remember any concerted effort to train anyone called October in the arts of wine consumption.
I called Sissi, remembering to throw in a few pleasantries before asking for help.
‘You don’t remember her?’ she said.
‘You make it sound like I knew her but had erased her from my memory,’ said I.
‘Yes, that’s basically what not remembering is,’ said Sissi. ‘I have a mental image of legions of your brain cells being washed away on a torrent of Chilean Red. And as you sink beneath the surface, there you are dragging poor Dula down with you. The innocent woman, once satisfied with traditional tipples of Mekhong whisky and lashings of soda, suddenly addicted to expensive foreign grape juice eating up her humble teacher’s salary, leaving her destitute and blotchy.’
‘This from a woman who puts Bacardi and Coke on her cornflakes?’ I said.
‘It was a brief period of experimentation,’ she said, ‘and I was young and reckless. What do you want? Tell me before your phone shrivels up from lack of payment.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘we have enough information to triangulate. We have her name, the name of the school clerk, the fact she’s reaching retirement age…and that she and I had some shared drinking experience. We can-.’
‘I would have to call that quadrangulating,’ she said.
I could not disagree.
*
‘There was no “NO! WAIT!” button.’
The third installment had arrived with the afternoon post the next day. I did notice the postman wasn’t in such a hurry to rush off this time. He had his visor up and what might have been described as a smile somewhere amid that knotty stubble. The day that unshaved became fashionable had been a sad day for women of my generation. Before then we could tell if our suitors were keen to make an impression because they’d take the trouble to shave off their grimy beards. But I digress. I waved him off and sat on my front step to read the third part of the Asian Wings saga.
‘I scoured the busy webpage for an escape but there was no way out. Ricky was still there surrounded by icons. He didn’t appear to be as intimidated by them as I was. He still had a cheeky smile on his full lips that made me think he was feeling a little guilty for charging me double. He was probably saying, “Well, you did go to the fridge.” And, let’s face it, nineteen-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-eight baht wouldn’t even get you a domestic cappuccino machine. And we were talking Paris. So I chalked it down to my mistake and started to tackle the icons.
I began with LUGGAGE. Ricky was lifting a suitcase that looked heavy but was probably empty. I had three options; 30 to 40 kgs, 20 to 30 kgs and 10 to 20 kgs. I didn’t envisage needing many clothes in France; a waterproof raincoat, a non-iron frock, something chic and two wooly sweaters at the most, so I clicked 10 to 20kgs and twelve-hundred baht was immediately added to my grand total. I was starting to feel a little foolish. My credit card had sprung a leak. I’d already quaffed my wine and didn’t dare leave the room for another. I was trapped and dry. Ricky stared at me. Time-out seconds ticked away.
It was astounding. This was even more addictive than The West Wing that Mair and I had binged on in box form. If I hadn’t been sitting on the floor I would have been on the edge of my seat. What would Ricky do next? How much would this trip eventually cost? Why was she sending me her story in installments? I was even more desperate to find out who this hapless would-be traveler was and of my connection to her. I topped up my cell phone at the 7-Eleven and called Sissi.
‘We don’t have to rush this,’ I said, ‘I’ve put a hundred baht on my phone.’
‘Really? That much?’ she said. ‘I’ll have to warn Paris Hilton my sister’s about to take over her tiara of irrational spending. And why are you speaking Thai?’
‘I’m tired,’ I said, ‘and English is hard work, Sis. I live in the countryside. It’s slipping away. When we had the shop in Chiang Mai we’d be chatting with foreign customers all the time. The only chance I get to use it now is with you, and you’re up there in civilization, surrounded by international culture. I can’t compete.’
But I knew my ex-beauty queen sister only dared venture outside after dark and disguised as a man. There’s nothing sadder than a former transsexual icon. I use that line often but it’s not really true. A middle-a
ged divorced overweight girl with unmet aspirations can pig out on sadness. I read Sissi part-three of the Asian Wings series. She was enjoying it as much as me but had nothing to contribute to our investigation. She hadn’t found any teachers or students at my old school, past or present named Dula. Nor were there any with Du or La as a nickname. There had been one school receptionist called Nune but she’d moved on to some university five years earlier. In fact, a scour of the entire on-line Chiang Mai high-school database had produced no correlations for our quadrangulation. We’d come to a pothole we couldn’t get out of. I told her to keep crunching the gears and I phoned Laurie, my old co-conspirator in Chiang Mai. Laurie was making a tidy living freelancing for all the tabloids in Australia. Thailand had no end of smut and Aussie tourists provided an endless production line of scandal. Laurie owed me several favours and was pleased to help. I told him about my little mystery and he agreed to use his charm at the San Sai post office. All three of my letters had been posted there at the same time each day. Perhaps Laurie could corner Dula and cut to the chase. (I’d always wanted to say that).
I was standing at my dusty street front at mail delivery time the next day with my souvenir Muang Thai Insurance Company umbrella over my head. I was devastated on two fronts when the postman sped past. He didn’t even offer me a scrubby smile. I might as well have been a bush. And, to make matters worse, it was Saturday and there would be no delivery the next day. How dare Dula leave me in such a weekend limbo? I endured the Saturday evening market, tolerated the Sunday Temple merit making, suffered the worst day for TV and was back at the roadside on Monday with my umbrella at a coquettish angle. This was what life before email had been like.
The grizzly postman pretended to drive past, looked over his shoulder, then did a wide U-turn that kicked up gravel. He held up an envelope, identical to the past three, asked me my name, even though that was not one of his duties, and took so long to read the name and address that I was certain he had limited English skills.
‘I don’t see “…and Mr.” on this envelope,’ he said.
I was rather fond of bad pick-up lines because it suggested the user was still a novice. Our postman had a deep voice and he hadn’t exactly landscaped but had made an effort to manicure the lawn on his chin. He was cute and had a scent of the unmarried about him.
‘You want to do something sometime?’ I asked.
I knew he was about to ask and I had to hurry him into the date because I was anxious to read my next letter.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Well then give me my letter and go on your way,’ I said.
‘No, I mean…where would you like to go?’
‘Lay Isan at the monument,’ I said. ‘Lunch tomorrow.’
‘All right,’ he said.
I admired his enthusiasm but I was in a hurry to get rid of him.
‘My letter?’ I said.
‘Oh, right,’ he said, handing it over.
I gave him one of my smiles and he gave me one of his and we parted with some moderate excitement shared. I took my letter into the shop house and sat in my favourite chair. I ripped open the envelope and read,
‘I went to the SEATING icon. Standing was not one of the options. Ricky, in shorts, was stretched out on a First Class recliner. He had long muscular legs. My choices were, ‘COMFORT’, ‘EMERGENCY EXIT’ or ‘ECONOMY’. Economy seemed too obvious a selection. I clicked Emergency Exit because I hoped they might give me a discount for being singlehandedly prepared to save the lives of all those on board by kicking open a door. I didn’t even learn how much cheaper ‘economy’ would have been because three thousand baht was already added to my ticket cost. It was joined by three-thousand baht for the least expensive meal, five thousand for airport tax, six-thousand-three-hundred for customs duty and two-thousand for the privilege of using the Asian Wings check in counter. I needed a drink.
I ran as fast as I could into the kitchen, grabbed the nearest bottle of cabernet sauvignon and a corkscrew, hightailed back to the office as fast as my legs would carry me, and…’
And what?
I hated her. Really. That was it for another installment. I read it to Sissi who, despite having the entire internet at her finger tips, was unable to lighten my burden with information.
‘It’s not my fault,’ she said. ‘Researching you doesn’t take long. You’re not even on Wikipedia. It appears you grew up in a pre-web era. You have what I would call an anti-social network. Nobody writes about you or to you. I think it’s time to go to a source on the life of Jimm that surpasses the net.’
Right! I knew exactly what she meant. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I rode my bicycle over to Captain Kow’s coconut plantation where my mother sat gutting mackerel on the front stoop. The dogs barked at me as if they’d never seen me before. Ingrates. I can’t allow myself to get distracted here explaining Mair’s relationship with the animal kingdom or the captain, who may have fathered the three of us. I’ll just pretend everything was normal there.
‘Sissi,’ said Mair, looking up from her fish.
(Not to mention that dementia was hot on her heels.)
‘I’m Jimm, Mair,’ I said.
‘I know, darling,’ said Mair. ‘How’s Chiang Mai?’
I tried to sit beside her but the macaque wouldn’t give up her seat. So I sat on the balcony railing instead.
‘Fine, probably,’ I said. ‘Mair, do you recall anyone from school by the name of Dula?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Teachers?’
‘No.’
Mair may have muddled our names from time to time but she had a vast mental gallery of memories of our childhoods. If she said there’d been no Dula in my school I had to believe her. She poured me some ice tea from her jug and we chatted for a while. I was about to get back on my bicycle when she matter-of-factly mentioned,
‘The only Dula I’ve ever met was the Indian woman from our condo.’
“Our” condo wasn’t exactly ours. It was the eight-storey building that towered over our little shop behind Chiang Mai University. Most of the residents were foreigners. Many were retired. Some worked for the university. They’d stop by the shop on their way home and pick up odds and ends from us. We didn’t sell anything really useful but neither do the 7-Elevens. I had a vague recollection of a middle-aged woman in a shiny sari that smelled of spice. I was young. About seven or eight. I doubted I taught her how to drink back then.
‘Remind me,’ I said.
‘Intelligent woman,’ said Mair. ‘A bit overweight. She was married to a Thai philosophy lecturer. She spoke fluent Thai. Had Thai citizenship. We thought she’d go back to India after the incident but she decided to stick around. They let her stay on at the university for a while. I suppose it would have been embarrassing to fire her, considering.’
‘Considering what? What incident?’
‘Her husband murdered a couple of people.’
‘What? How come I didn’t know about that?’
‘You were barely out of nappies,’ said Mair. ‘I didn’t want you afraid to go out on the streets at night.’
Especially in my nappies.
‘Yet you’d have us all sit around the TV watching American murder mysteries on VHS.’
‘That’s entirely different,’ said Mair. ‘Hollywood isn’t real.’
Then she went off into a sort of trance.
‘Did I ever tell you I had a romantic assignation with Kirk Douglas?’ she said.
‘Mair! Focus! The philosopher?’
‘It was in the papers,’ she said, landing gently back on our planet. ‘The investigation took forever. The police could find no motive. It seems he just killed the two victims at random. One was a manager at the Farmers’ Bank, the other was some sort of realtor. Both male. There were no witnesses. They found no physical evidence. His confession was the only thing to tie him to the killings. Messy it was. Lots of slashing and blood spurting. When they asked him why he’d done it he sa
id “We do not judge the people we love.” I liked that. I wrote it on a napkin and stuck it on the fridge door. Then I found out he’d stolen it from Sartre so I took it down again. The French are always so arrogant about love.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘They still shot murderers back then. Dula was devastated. She moved out of their condominium and into the house they’d been saving up for. I seem to recall she went to teach somewhere else.’
‘How do you know?’
‘She stopped by the shop from time to time. She’d ask about you. She was delighted when you became a journalist.’
‘Is there any way I might have been responsible for converting her to wine?’
Mair prized open the macaque’s lips and examined her teeth as if they weren’t lethal.
‘Oh, my, yes,’ she said. ‘Wine wasn’t so common back then. You were studying at Uni and you signed up as a rep for some Singaporean wine importer. Remember that?’
‘I remember drinking most of the profits.’
‘We had a lovely display cabinet in the shop. Dula came by one day and I told her it was all your idea so she bought half a dozen bottles. She didn’t come back after that.’
‘It wasn’t very good wine,’ I recalled.
*
I called Laurie to tell him he should be looking out for an Indian woman rather than a Thai, then I chatted with Sissi for a while. I didn’t bother to mention my date with the postman. She didn’t have a very high opinion of the men in my life. I still carried a torch for Ed the grass cutter but he was currently dating Nurse Da. Oh, the romantic intrigues of rural living. The date itself the following day wasn’t so bad. He was still in uniform and his Honda Dream motorcycle was loaded up with parcels and parked in front of the restaurant. Close up, I realized if he didn’t have the beard I’d have been picked up for cradle snatching. But he was polite and surprisingly knowledgeable about the world. We had a small beer each with our lunch and it seemed to go to his head. He said something about me being the woman he’d been looking for all his short life and he reached inside his jacket. I was afraid his hand might emerge with a ring in a small red felt-covered box but, instead, he handed me a letter. That was a shame because I was suddenly more interested in the letter than the confession. I hurried him off to his rounds and stayed behind to read the next installment.
Number Four Page 2