My Ride, I Love You

by Patrick Rangsimant

  …………

  19:00

  I get out from an elevator and change my mind about going to the cafeteria, because I can see even from this distance that there’s only one stall left. There won’t be much to choose from for my dinner.

  Or should I turn around and go to 7-Eleven?

  Oh...maybe I can order a delivery.

  But my stomach feels starving. I’ll have to wait for a long time if I order now. And after it arrives, I don’t even know if I will have the time to eat it.

  “Dr. Tawan, oh Dr. Tawan, there you are! I was about to go to your ward.”

  While I debate with myself about the dinner plan, P'Ueai, the diligent nurse of the Outpatient Examination Subdivision, runs towards me. She’s holding a bag with something in it and hands it to me.

  “Someone asked me to give you this.”

  I take the bag. “Who was it?”

  “Your friend. The one who accompanied his uncles today. He dropped by a bit ago and said he wanted to give you this. But he didn’t know where to find you, he only knew this department. So, I promised him I’ll find you. I just realized he drives a Win-motorcycle, right? He wore a Win uniform vest.”

  I open the bag and look inside. It is a pack of Hainanese chicken rice…

  “Yes, P'Ueai. He’s a Win at a side street near my…” I halt, “...my rental condo.” Glad I didn’t blurt out that it’s P'Por’s condo.

  “Looks like food.” She gestures with her chin. “Hurry up and eat it, doc, before it becomes spoiled.”

  “Thank you, P'Ueai.” I bring that bag to the doctors’ break room. This is quite neat, I happen to have been craving some chicken rice. I set the bag on the dining table and pick up my phone to check Facebook.

  There’s a friend request from Mork, and he sent a message as well.

  I tap accept and then open the message.

  “Doc, I especially bought Hainanese chicken rice for you. This vendor makes really delicious rice but they ran out of chicken meat. So I bought every chicken heart they had. Have some rice with chicken hearts today, doc. So you know that I’m hearty and care for my friend.”

  I open the paper wrap. Oh, right, there is just rice and at least ten pieces of chicken hearts.

  I can’t help smiling at the message and the chicken hearts in front of me.

  Okay...I’ll give it a try. It’s quite outlandish but also looks delicious.

  Hainanese ‘hearty’ chicken rice. :)

  Chapter 10: Mork

  Don’t mistake it for my original idea.

  I mean, that Hainanese chicken rice full of hearts.

  I copied someone else’s homework.

  Well, actually, the idea wasn’t from a random someone, but my own uncle. I adapted his idea to create my own version of hearty chicken rice. He told me the story of when he started to realize that he was into Ar. Hainanese chicken rice was how he conveyed his love.

  If I’m going to tell you about it, I’ll have to begin from this morning, after Tawan told me he was going to secure the queue for us.

  …………

  “Mork.” Loong poked me on my shoulder. “Are you...alright? You’re spacing out.”

  I shot him a look from the side of my eyes. “Ah, you, too? Why’d you ask me the same question Ar just did? What’s up?”

  “You’re acting all weird.” He told me.

  “How so?” I wondered what’s wrong with Loong and Ar. They were strangely nagging. Just stop already, I thought, I’m busy worrying about the tiny doctor dude.

  “‘Cuz you’re acting like me...when I started to have feelings for Dej.”

  Loong’s comment made me jump, and I stared at him.

  “What the heck? No! Loong, I’m not into guys.”

  “Easy there, Mork.” He laughed. “I only said you were acting like me when I started liking your Ar. I didn’t say you’re into the doctor.”

  “I know. But those mean the same thing, Loong.” I looked into the direction he disappeared into again. He wasn’t back yet, so I sat down heavily beside my uncles, giving those old men the side-eye while they both stared at me as one.

  “Why are you staring?”

  “Nothinggggg.” Ar laughed while shaking his head.

  “You really are acting like him when he started liking me.”

  “Bah! You’re talking as if you knew what was going on back then. Seriously, were you even aware of it?” Loong refuted, making his partner whip a glare at him.

  “It was so obvious, one must be blind to not notice it!”

  “Eh? If it was so obvious to you, why the heck didn’t you acknowledge it at all?”

  “Hah, I wanted to know what you would do next if I acted clueless.”

  “Bullshit. You didn’t notice anything. It was just pure luck, only because I was sick that day.” Loong argued, poking Ar on the forehead with a finger. “If it weren’t because you had to get the food on your own, you wouldn’t have discovered shit.”

  Ar shrugged. “That was when I became hecking sure about it. I already knew shit earlier. The day when I bought food only served to prove to me that you really liked me.”

  “Wait, wait. Stop! Both of you.” I put my hands up to shush them.

  “Don’t just ramble on and on with things that only you guys can understand. I’m here. I’m sitting right here! I want to know the damn story, too. What happened? What about buying food? Why all the fuss? Loong, tell me. I want to freaking know!”

  That was partly to deflect their attention away from grilling me about the doctor. But I was also really curious about how it went when Loong and Ar started going out. I’ve been living with them for a long time and I’ve known them since I was a kid, but I never asked about this and they never told me.

  “You’ve seen us together for a very long time, why the heck are you asking now? Weirdo!”

  Loong furrowed his brows at me as if annoyed, but I knew he was just embarrassed by the thought of telling me the story.

  “Come on, Loong. I wanna know. Tell me.”

  I kept begging him to humor me.

  “Meh, he sucks at telling a story. It’s gonna be useless.” Ar denounced. “Your Loong will just beat around the bush and then get distracted and derail the whole thing. I’ll tell you instead.”

  “But you like to blow it out of proportion!” Loong retorted, and earned himself a fist smack on a shoulder. Judging from the impact sound, that wasn’t a light one. “I never! I hecking tell everything like how it happened.”

  “Bahh! Quit teasing each other and just tell me already, Ar.”

  These old men kept arguing and I got impatient. I had to shush them, otherwise it would become evening before I started hearing the story.

  “When we relocated to Bangkok, he had a girlfriend, and I had one as well.”

  Ar resumed talking. I knew about this part, and I knew Loong’s ex girlfriend, too.

  He told me she was a Chinese woman who came from Lampang and settled up in Bangkok. Currently, she owned a business on Worachak road. He said after breaking up, they had never talked again until she got married. He went to congratulate her, and they became friends once again.

  I met her a few times. She seemed to be a kind old lady.

  She must have been a beautiful Chinese girl in her younger days.

  “And your ex was a woman?” I asked.

  He nodded. “You’ve met his ex, right?”

  I replied with a nod. “Yes. But I’ve never heard you talk about your ex.”

  He slowly bowed his head, and then looked into the distance. “When we first arrived in Bangkok, he and I got our jobs at different places. Cheep was an electrician at the Electricity Authority. I was hired by an electrical wiring and repair shop, wasn’t exactly my field but better than no job.”

  At that, Loong added, “Back then, we both had a girlfriend, were grownups, and had been ordained, so we each planned to marry soon. We concentrated solely on saving money, and tried to spend as little as we could. So w
e shared a rental room and shared food. We also steamed our own rice, to make it even cheaper.

  “Until…” Loong suddenly stopped. Ar looked at him and then me, before taking over and completing the sentence. “The woman’s family didn’t accept him.”

  “Huh…? What do you mean?”

  “Her family is from the north. In the old days, northern people disliked southern people. Her parents told her that they think southern guys were insincere, and heartbreakers. Besides, Cheep was only an Electricity Authority’s employee. His salary wasn’t much, and had no house. They were afraid their daughter would have a tough life.”

  Ah, right, typical problem. One of my friends from vocational college didn’t get to marry and had to break up with his girlfriend for this very same reason. The girlfriend’s parents thought they would have a tough life, as the guy didn’t have career stability. I thought about myself, a hired motorcycle driver which was probably even worse. No one would give me a blessing to marry their daughter, I guess.

  “Quite understandable.” I nodded. “But I’m confused why they disliked southern people. Is that even a thing? Northern people disliking southern people, I mean.”

  “Because the story of Sao Kruea Fah[42] was famous at that time, maybe. I dunno.” Ar replied half jokingly.

  “He was heartbroken and kept working overtime everyday. He asked for more duty shifts and hardly ever came back to our rental room. He drowned himself in work to soothe his broken heart. But at least it was better than drowning in alcohol.” He gestured at Loong with his head.

  Loong responded with a chuckle. “Alcoholic drinks cost money, no? Earning wasn’t easy. And it’s not like back home in the south where we could get drunk damn fast with palm wine, which is cheap, too. The metropolis has only expensive bottled alcohol, I’d rather save my money.”

  “Wait, this is all about Loong. But what of Ar’s story?”

  I recalled that they were supposed to tell me about how they fell in love. But after a while, I was still hearing about my uncle only.

  “Well, if you weren’t interrupting, I was going to tell you.” Ar batted me on the head, swaying my face despite the gentle impact. “After Cheep had his heart broken for two months, I found out my girlfriend was cheating on me.” Then he abruptly stopped, seeming to have realized something, and looked at me with an apologetical expression.

  Right there, it was like a punch to my gut...

  He didn’t mean to pick at my old wounds. The story was just incidentally similar, yet I couldn’t help feeling attacked. It was half because it hit too close to home, while the other half was because of his facial expression and how he suddenly halted. It’s like he thought that I was still hurting from what happened.

  “Bahhh, don’t worry, Ar Dej. Keep going. I’m okay.”

  I nodded for him to continue because I wanted to know more.

  “There wasn’t much about it. When I found out about her cheating, I turned to Cheep for advice.”

  “And what’s next? He comforted you and you felt touched and you guys fell in love? Just like that?”

  Curiosity made me blurt the speculation out loud.

  “Will you listen or are you gonna keep asking shit, Mork?”

  Whoa, he snapped at me. I put my hands up in surrender.

  “Haha, alrighty, Ar. No more asking. Please continue. I wanna know.”

  “He told me to forgive her and go back to her.”

  Wait, what… That wasn’t how I had guessed. Shouldn’t it go like, Loong told him to break up? “And what did you do? You listened to him?”

  He laughed at my question. “If I had gone back to her, how can we be partners now? Silly you. I followed his advice, but only half of it. I forgave her. Only forgave, though, didn’t go back.”

  “Eh…? How? What do you mean forgave but didn’t go back?”

  I asked in earnest. I honestly couldn’t understand.

  “For humans, when someone angers you, feeling guilty depends on the person’s heart, and saying sorry depends on their mouth as well. But forgiving them depends on your own heart. You won’t be able to put down the anger if you don’t forgive first. Anger is hot like a flame. It’s torturing. You’ve been a monk, surely you understand this?”

  He faced me and asked. I nodded.

  “Right, to escape the flame, you have to stop the anger. And to stop anger, you have to forgive. So, I forgave her, but I didn’t return. I broke up with her and held no grudge. Whatever I had given to her before were all hers, I didn’t take them back. I started a new life. Forgiving is a balm that soothes our own hearts.”

  “So we were both single. And the money we saved up for marriage no longer had a purpose.”

  Loong took over the storytelling.

  “That’s why we decided we should invest it on something that could earn money. We rented a shophouse and opened a motorcycle repair shop, thinking it would have better customer flows than an electrical shop. After that, we kept working together and supporting each other, kind of having empathy.”

  I noticed he omitted the “falling in love” part. But I understood it, not from his words or the story, though. I understood from his tone of voice and his facial expression. When he reached this point of the story, those changed from the beginning.

  “Back then, we had just started the business and had no employees. Everything was hectic. After closing each evening, there was accounting stuff to deal with. I had no skills in that, so Dej took care of the numbers, accounting, and motorcycle parts, while I did the housework like sweeping and cleaning, laundry, and buying food for dinner.”

  “Heck, this is the best part of the whole thing. The dinner.”

  Ar wiggled a brow. “I love Hainanese chicken rice, you know that, right?”

  I nodded as a reply.

  “Yeah, your Loong bought Hainanese chicken rice for me every evening. But when I unwrapped it, there would be the rice, chicken meat, and a piece of chicken heart. Everyday. I asked him why there was a heart, and he evasively said it was a complimentary from the vendor.”

  “And you believed him?” I asked.

  “I half believed and half doubted,” was his answer.

  “Then, there was the day when he came down with the flu. He was bed-ridden. So eventually we had to temporarily close the shop and I took him to a doctor and brought him back to rest at home. In the evening, I went out to buy food in his place. And yea, I went to the usual Hainanese chicken rice vendor and discovered that uncle Hong, the owner of the stall, never gave us a free chicken heart.”

  “Ehh…”

  “He only kept chicken meat and livers. The rest of the entrails were sold to a chicken noodles stall two streets away. And in truth, Cheep bought the chicken rice and rode his bike all the way there to buy one chicken heart and put it on my rice everyday.” He said and elbowed Loong on one side of the ribs.

  His target laughed and avoided any eye contact.

  “Well, Hainanese chicken rice with a heart, so maybe you would realize my heart was with you.”

  Ar turned to talk to me.

  “Right, yea, that’s how I figured he also liked me.”

  “Why’d you just say ‘also’?” I asked.

  “Because actually, by that time I secretly liked him already.”

  There was a warmth in his voice when Ar answered. I could feel it, just like I had felt it earlier from Loong’s voice and facial expression earlier. I think it is the feeling of love. Love that’s not spelled out visibly as L-O-V-E or be heard as a word. It was a tangible sense of love.

  “It’s strange.” Ar continued. “I never thought I would fall for a guy. Cheep thought the same, too. When I started realizing that I liked him, I was still attracted to women. Kind of like it suddenly dawned on me that oh shit, I fell for him. I guess.”

  “And ever since, he and I have been living together as partners.”

  Loong concluded.

  “I have no idea when I fell for him, either. Before I knew it, I sta
rted riding my bike to buy the damn chicken heart for his Hainanese chicken rice. It sounds sappy, but we won’t realize when we start falling in love, but we will realize it after we’ve already fallen.”

  “What’s important is…” Uncle reached a hand to squeeze my shoulder. “Whether the person you love is a possible target.”

  “Hey, Mork.”

  The doctor’s voice made me jump. I kept a straight face and turned to smile and wave at him. He gave me the first two queue number cards that he had trickly secured. Then, he asked us to go to the cafeteria together. I nodded and obediently followed, but in my head, uncle’s voice still echoed around. “What’s important is…whether the person you love is a possible target.”

  That’s right…

  Did I fall in love?

  And is it possible?

  …………

  I thought about that again in the late evening when I left the hospital for the second time, after dropping off the Hainanese chicken rice for Tawan. At first I didn’t mean to find chicken hearts to put on the rice. Hey, it’s true, believe me. I thought I was going to buy him some noodles with roast red pork[43] but when I passed a Hainanese chicken rice stall, I couldn’t resist.