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Saturday!’ now did I?”
    â€œJust this once, Anek. I promise I won’t bother you.”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œPlease?”
    â€œâ€˜Please’ nothing, little brother. Sit at home and watch a soap with Ma or something.”
    â€œBut why, Anek? Why can’t I go with you?”
    â€œBecause I’m going where grown men go, that’s why. Because last I checked, last time I saw you naked, you were far from being grown.”
    â€œI promise I won’t bother you, Anek. I’ll just sit in a corner or something. Really. I promise. I’ll stay out of your way. Just don’t leave me here with Ma tonight.”
    * * *
    When we were young, our mother would put on her perfume every evening before Pa came home. She would smell like jasmine, fresh-picked off a tree. Pa, he would smell of the cologne he dabbed on after he got out of the shower. Although I would never smell the ocean until we went out to Pak Nam to scatter his ashes, I knew that my father smelled like the sea. I just knew it. Anek and I would sit between them, watching some soap opera on TV, and I would inhale their scents, the scents of my parents, and imagine millions of tiny white flowers floating on the surface of a wide and green and bottomless ocean.
    But those scents are lost to me now, and I’ve often wondered if, in my belated sorrow, with all my tardy regrets, I’ve imagined them all these years.
    Anek finally gave in and took me. We rode out to Minburi District along the new speedway, the engine squealing beneath us. We were going so fast that my face felt stretched impossibly tight. I wanted to tell Anek to slow down but I remembered that I had promised to stay out of his way.
    We were wearing our best clothes again that night, the same old outfits: Anek in his blue jeans and white polo shirt, me in my khakis and red button-down. When we walked out of the house Ma glanced up from the TV with a look that said
What are you all dressed up for?
and Anek told her he was taking me out to the new ice-skating rink, he heard it was all therage. I even said, “Imagine that, Ma. Ice-skating in Bangkok,” but she just nodded, her lips a straight thin line, and went back to watching television.
    â€œâ€˜Imagine that, Ma’ …,” Anek teased when we walked out.
    â€œEat shit, Anek.”
    â€œWhoa there. Be careful, little one. Don’t make me change my mind.”
    When we arrived at the place, it was not what I had imagined at all. I expected mirror balls and multicolored lights and loud American music and hundreds of people dancing inside—like places I’d seen in the district west of our neighborhood, places all the farangs frequented at night. It didn’t look like that. It was only a shophouse, like the thousands of tiny two-story shophouses all over the city—short and common, square and concrete, in need of a new paint job. A pink neon sign blinked in the tinted window, CAFé LOVELY , it said in English. I could hear the soft, muffled sounds of upcountry music reaching across the street.
    â€œThis is it?”
    â€œI can take you home,” Anek said. “That’s not a problem.”
    The place smelled of mothballs. There was an old jukebox in the corner. A couple of girls in miniskirts and tank tops and heavy makeup danced and swayed with two balding, middle-aged local men. The men looked awkward with those girls in their arms, feet moving out of time, their large hands gripping the girls’ slender waists. In a dark corner, more girlswere seated at a table, laughing. They sounded like a flock of excited birds. I’d never seen so many girls in my life.
    Three of Anek’s friends were already at a table.
    â€œWhat’s with the baby-sitting?” one of them asked, grinning.
    â€œSorry,” Anek said sheepishly as we sat down. “Couldn’t bear to leave him home with my crazy ma.”
    â€œYou hungry,