Read Online Lost in Pattaya by Kishore Modak - Free Book Online

then we
will have little choice in this matter.”
    I took the envelope and reached inside,
looking for the cheque, which I found to be substantial. The rest of the
documents were straight, crafted agreements of severance, simply needing my
signatures ensuring I was bound to the confidentiality of audits I had been
involved in over the years past.
    “Got a pen?” I looked up and asked Georgy.
    I could make out he was surprised, not
expecting me to accept the end so soon.
    When I look back, I too am surprised by the
ease with which I gave up my career, comprehendible only in the background of
larger losses - my family. Only in that light can one understand my urge to
give the remainder up too. I did not want to thrash about, preserving and
grabbing at the remainder of divisible loss. Instead, I craved grace, allowing
my losses to pile, and hopefully remaining stoic through them. In other words,
I was giving up.
    “Don’t do it man. Please, you know it is
the wrong decision,” he was sympathetic. It was I who became adamant, wanting
to throw to the wind what remained. Suddenly an imaginary gale ripped
everything off me, my past and all of my present, leaving me cleansed to write
afresh upon my restored consciousness.
    “It’s OK, maybe it is better this way,” I
had signed the papers with a pen that I found on me, my head throbbing as if a
freight train was thundering through it.
    One stroke of the pen, the deposition of
devices and cards, and I was left loosening knots in the elevator shaft,
plummeting away from a life that I would barely look back upon through the
roller coaster years with Miho and Thuy Binh ahead of me. The future where I
was headed, my past life paled in insipidity, though the loss of Li Ya defined
both my lives; it defined all the crimes that got committed, as you shall see.
    In the train, voices of school kids buzzed
around me with talks of quizzes and grades. I did not sit down since I assumed
all seats were taken; it took me a few months before I settled down, before I
joined the ‘day people’. People who don’t crowd trains at rush hour, they are
of the same average age as the ‘rushed ones’, except they are distributed
awkwardly in years, well away from the median. The old ones carry bags by their
side, walking slowly as they block entire passageways with uncertain strides
and their width of baggage. Kids, they walk abreast, giggling, leaving me to
nudge forward in compliant ‘excuses’ towards the bus stop from where I would be
carried away. At the bus stop, the old folks and the kids catch up and we board
the same buses that I had hurried towards, thinking I was getting ahead. The
day people, they greet and chat-up the bus captain, who rides unhurriedly in
smiles. When I reach my stop, I hurry towards the traffic island, waiting for
lights to change, as the ‘day people’ catch up again, soon waiting alongside.
    I stopped at the tuck shop, exchanged
‘hellos’, and to the keeper’s surprise, bought a bottle of liquor. Surprise,
since I passed up the good stuff, settling for local brew. Singapore is safe
and I bought it with confidence, avoiding his friendly questions, smiling. Back
at my apartment, I lay down in my boxers with a bottle’o whiskey beside me. Cheap
stuff, it still has alcohol.
    Before I got too drunk, after about a half
bottle, I masturbated, my thoughts roaming in the fleeting flesh of desire,
knowing not that I was to get what I most desired, stoned-slow-safe-rhythmic
sex, with a one who moaned in the inner world of her own pleasure, flowing from
hallucinations, attributable to me who thrust deep, making real the world of
fantasy. Such is the world of drugs, measured drugs, allowing one to close eyes
in the pleasure of music or whatever it is that gives us pleasure. It is
alcohol which makes the closing and resting of eyes horrific, keeping the
entire torso turning and twisting till one vomits.
    I hate drugs and alcohol. They don’t.
    Without employment, time