Short Story / COFFEE HOUSE RUN
A Coffee House Run
By
Jonathon Siminoe
Thomas sat patiently wedged in among a tangle of tables squeezed inside the Just Jo Coffee Shop in Bangkok’s Silom district. Only the daintiest of steppers, a virtual ballerina, could maneuver between the high backed iron-rod chairs and the black-iron tables with their imitation marble tops. Crowding the space further were the root like legs and feet of the chatting customers. He despised this place with its 80 baht premium imported coffees, its 100 baht French pastries and the non-stop flood of Euro trash – healthier than though backpackers- wired on caffeine, vegetables, marijuana, and their daddies’ credit card.
Despite the fact that Thomas was only in his early thirties he felt old in this place. In fact the twenties-something generation below him at least the other Westerners, with their nappy hair, tattoos, torn up jeans and body-piercing were a mystery to him. They were not a conundrum he had any desire to solve as he had long since resigned himself to the truth that staying away from other Westerners his age worked best for him. He knew his conservative style put them off from him as well. He kept brown hair cut short and parted neatly on the side and his button up shirt and ever present tie hid not even one tattoo.
He thought most likely that he reminded them of their fathers. Of course his mother and father saw him as the ultimate rebel. “How can you live in a nation other than America?” they asked him repeatedly when he first accepted a job in Bangkok. “Your freedom and your life are safe right here.” Afterward his mother, who emailed him routinely once a week – Sundays, forwarded only articles of disasters and atrocities occurring in the Asian region and then added her thoughts on these matters.
Supatra entered Jo’s looking not at all as if she’d just worked a nine hour shift behind a desk dealing with irate tourists, but rather as fresh as if she’d just enjoyed a long night sleep and a shower. Much to Thomas’s surprise and delight she was alone. She had told him she would be, but for a Thai lady meeting a foreign man alone usually didn’t happen for several dates. They would recruit friends, sisters, co-workers, just about anyone they could find to arrive at a date with proper chaperon. Supatra had brought four people on their first meeting, then three for the next two and now on only their fourth appointment she’d come alone.
“Hello, good afternoon,” she greeted floating through the snarl of chairs as easy as breathing.
“Hello,” Thomas replied. “Let me order you a coffee.”
She turned to the counter before sitting down where an eager young man stood in a long green apron watching her. “Hot Mocha,” she called to him, “small.” The boy nodded and snapped to work.
Her perfume was something floral. Thomas breathed it in and felt his excitement building, but this heightened sense of hope was being joined by another feeling – something in his stomach was not sitting well and just at this most opportune of moments he received the most inopportune tremor of pain.
“How about your work?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, it was okay. I just read documents all day and edited the English mistakes, so my eyes are a little bit tired.”
“Yes,” she hummed, “you look sleepy. You have blue eyes and they show when you are tired more than Thai eyes do.”
The crunching sound of ice being chopped in a blender drowned out all conversation for a few seconds. When the clamor stopped, the room took a collective breath and the banter was rejoined.
“Maybe I’m just old,” Thomas stated. “Tired and old can look about the same.”
She giggled, “Not old, experienced. Anyway Thai girls don’t like young men. They give too many headaches. Young men don’t know how to take care of a woman. They just like to play with all the girls.”
Supatra’s mocha arrived upon the tray of a waitress who looked both unbalanced and clumsy. She precariously sat the cup down followed by – one at a time – a wooden stir-stick, a saucer, a napkin, a pack of sugar, a second pack of sugar and finally a plastic cup of water. With her arduous task completed she pulled her dark lips back in a relieved smile.
“Copkun Ka,” Supatra thanked her in Thai.
Supatra emptied both sugar packs into the brown chocolate drink before stirring it thoroughly. She took a sip and then placed it gently on the saucer. Her nails were polished with a light shade of pink. She had a milky complexion and delicate Chinese features which reminded him of the actresses he’d fallen in love with while watching Hong Kong action movies when he was a kid living with his parents in Connecticut. Despite the noise and the constant movement of customers and workers, he felt as if he were completely alone with her. He saw only her vibrant eyes and heard only her melodic voice, until his concentration was interrupted by the sound of his own stomach roaring and groaning. It had been extremely loud, so loud that had they been in a silent place she certainly would have heard it.
In a tactical error he’d left work early and stopped off at a noodle place in the alley behind his office building. He had anticipated a late dinner as he knew Supatra would not rush their after work coffee and not wanting to be hungry or appear to be rushing her, he’d wolfed down two bowls of noodles so that he could be patient about their dining. He’d eaten street-noodles hundreds of times during his two years of Bangkok life with no incident, but the less than fresh strips of pork and the seemingly tepid soup he’d thought little about at the time should have been a warning.
“So how was your work today?” he asked, trying to forget about his stomach by inducing a conversation.
“It nice. I mean, it was nice today. Sorry, I speak Thai all day and then when we meet I get a bit nervous with my English.”
“Your English is very good. You shouldn’t be worried about it, especially around me. I enjoy talking with you.”
“Yes? I am not a bore?”
“No. I find you quiet lovely. It must be all those English conversation classes you have taken. You are very nice to chat with.”
She smiled, his direct flirting making her feel a little bit self-conscious. “Are you hot?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“You have some sweat,” she handed him a napkin while motioned to his brow.
He was sweating, a cold sweat, a panicked sweat. Pain was sliding down from his rumbling stomach to his bowls in a sinking surge of pressure and agony. He shifted in his seat, squeezing his legs together to pinch off a possible release.
He’d forgotten to thank her for the tissue, “Thanks,” he said far too delayed.
“For what?”
Again his body seized in a surge of anguish and this time it made his legs jut out stiffly beneath the table. He was trying to mask this sting, but it was becoming impossible. “Um… For meeting me. I know it can be hard after a long day of work.”
She smiled, “Thanks for inviting me, I enjoy coffee and talking. Can we just sit here and talk a while? I’m in no hurry to go. Maybe after we are tired of talk we could go to eat something. I think coffee makes me hungry. Do you have any restaurant in mind?”
Thomas could not believe his ears, she’d intended this to be a full fledged date, this was no after work coffee-chat ending before the night began as he’d feared it would be, it was a one-on-one unaccompanied rendezvous. Four times before he had tried to design just such a Friday evening, but each night she’d announce, usually just when the conversation was beginning to feel relaxed and natural, that she had to get home early to take care of her elderly father. She was the only child of a retired Chinese merchant’s third wife and so despite the fact that she was only 22-years-old her father was 71 and ailing from a lifetime of cigarettes. Despite being the youngest girl in the family she had inherited the position of caretaker for her elderly father because her three older siblings were all working abroad.
Another sprinkling of perspiration sprung from Thomas’ brow fully beading above his eyes and on the bulb of his nose, he winced with the new surge of cramps. “Christ.”
“What is it? Oh, you didn’t want dinner. I just think you want. Maybe I think too much,” her confusion with his peculiar behavior was making her flustered and thickening her accent. Her genteel face, perhaps for the first time since he had met her, was souring into a frown.
“No, I’d love to take you to dinner. Just a moment, I’ll be right back.” He sprung up, his chair clanging raucously against the feet of the table behind them.
Supatra bit into her bottom lip with her immaculate white teeth. Public embarrassment was never easy for Thai people. Thomas bowed an apology to the woman he’d jostled while nudging past a pretty office boy who was wearing bright red lipstick and a thin black tie beneath his gray suit jacket. “Excuse me,” he apologized responding to the protesting sigh of the Thai pretty boy.
It could all be fixed. He’d explain to Supatra that he had an upset stomach and that, after visiting the toilet, he felt much better. He’d take her to dinner at a Chinese place close to there which had a lovely outdoor patio where they could enjoy the evening. Chinese food was not spicy so his stomach could handle it once he got the evil noodles he’d consumed out of his system.
However, while side stepping the final table on his way to the solace of the toilet he lost control; he could feel the hot racing moisture streaking down the back of his leg.
“Oh God,” he complained between clenched teeth.
The men’s room door was opening to him. A tourist with a Maui Thai tee-shirt with thick sweat stains under each armpit stepped out wringing his hands in an attempt to dry them.
Thomas slipped within and pushed the warped wooden door shut with a thud. He struggled to unfasten his belt, but before he could work it free he could feel the splash of moisture and his pants filling with his own excrement. It felt like a glob of oatmeal fresh off the stove.
Outside sitting at their table, Supatra sat daintily sipping at her mocha and waiting. She was everything he wanted in a girlfriend; quality English, beautiful and tall, self wealth and she seemed to like him too despite all the formal roadblocks she put in his way. He had had two years of nightmarish dates with women who could speak almost no English. Beauty was a wonderful attribute and all of the Thai ladies he met had that, but without communication he quickly became bored and often even more quickly became annoyed with their constant misunderstandings about meeting places or meeting times. There were the other Thai women on Sukhumvit, ones who spoke English – albeit with Thai grammar – who made a living at chasing foreign men in expensive coffee shops, but he had little desire to feed their bank accounts just to have some company. They were not complicated the way Western women had seemed to him when he lived in the US, but they were expensive and the experiences he shared with them seemed hollow and filled him with regret.
“Damn it,” he protested to heaven, “Why today?”
He rummaged for paper towels finding only a trash can full of used ones and an empty cardboard roll in the dispenser. The toilet paper rack had been torn off months ago, so now he truly was without options.
He removed his shoes, which had been lightly sprinkled with reeking brown specks. The floor of the toilet was damp and his socks were immediately saturated.
Determined to find a way out of his mess, he went to work rolling off his trousers. He turned his head away in an effort to breath in something other than his own stench and finally he worked the pants meticulously over his feet and stood bottomless in the lavatory. Both his legs were smeared brown and the reek was sickening even though it was his own. He quickly began running the water in the tiny sink, but it was a push facet which would only remain on for a few milliseconds, so as he attempted to salvage some partially dry towels from the trash bin he kept slapping the facet to keep the water flowing.
Adding to the complications of his efforts was the fact that the coffee shop was kept very cool by two massive air-conditioning units, but the toilet was completely devoid of fan or air-conditioning. The searing Thai heat was alive in this room and undeterred. He was drenched in sweat from his armpits to his ankles. His perspiration was so intense that the salty beads were running into his eyes and causing everything to blur.
The sink idea was failing; there just wasn’t enough water to wet his slacks completely. He rinsed and scrubbed at them, but the kaki color was blotched with brown — unmistakably shit.
He looked at his reflection in the hazy metal mirror with scratches marring its surface. He was an absolute mess; his clothing saturated with either sweat, tap water or worse, his hair gel had been washed away and his hair was disheveled in random clumps which accented his receding hairline about his temples.
He shook down the pants and stepped back within the damp legs, out of habit he began tucking in his shirt and then chuckling at himself for being such a slave to routine, decided to leave his shirttails out in an effort to hide most of his midsection.
There was a knock at the door. Then a “Sorry,” and then silence. Someone was waiting to use the toilet. He was out of time.
When Thomas had been a boy in high school he had never enjoyed athletics all that much. His father, wanting him to experience the great American love of sports had nagged him to do go out for one of the sports until — desperate to calm the man who held the purse strings of his allowance and prove he was worthy of a raise — he had signed up for the track team. He had had no real skill in the sport, but the track coach was competing with baseball for the school’s athletes and so he needed every participant he could get.
The coach made him a 2-mile runner. He had never won, even in races where there were only three or four other competitors he couldn’t win, but his father was happy that he never quit. He never failed to cross the finish line, albeit usually long after the others, and that had been enough to appease his father’s angst that he hadn’t given his son an all-American upbringing.
At the time he’d always complained that running the 2-mile would never help him in life because he’d always wanted to be a writer or publisher, but now reaching for the door handle of the Just Jo Coffee Shop’s restroom – his body rank and smeared with the most embarrassing substance known to man – he realized his high school teachers had been correct in arguing that you never knew what would be important to learn and so it was best to learn all you could while you were young. He knew enough to that sometimes there is honor in hasty retreat.
He jerked the door in, the hulking body of a German tourist loomed in the doorway. Thomas lunged out elbowing the European and squeezing by him. His steps, despite having to maneuver around the obstacles, were long and determined. He moved quickly, never wanting to make eye contact with Supatra because doing that would demand an explanation and he had none. Still, as he reached the front door and while dodging around a gray haired man in a business suit, he did look back to see Supatra sitting peering at him with not a whisper of shock in her expression. Her face was as calm as if she was observing a butterfly floating about on the breeze while she walked in the park.
He knew she would not run after him. He knew she would sit for a while and enjoy her coffee and then, when she was certain people had forgotten she had been sitting with the crazy man who ran out of the coffee shop; she would rise, wipe the corners of her mouth with her napkin and stride out as proud as a Siam princess.
Once he cleared the main doors Thomas hit full stride upon the uneven pavement of the busy sidewalk. It felt good to run, despite the heat, despite the shocked expressions of Thai workers and foreign tourists who were trying desperately to get out of his way. The audacity of his actions were being spurred along by the uncanny circumstances he found himself in, but still it was making him feel strangely powerful – above criticism or good form and way beyond any set of expectations or norms. He should have been embarrassed as he ran along smeared with his own human waste, but he had found in that Sukhamvit toilet a truth that comforted him. He had lost not only the girl he’d been pursuing for weeks, but every fiber of his dignity and pride, but still he had put on his horrifically malodorous trousers and ran.
He thought perhaps his father would be proud.
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Hello SIM, how you doing?
I really hate this multiple-versioned function. Having the most recent onboard is a lot more helpful—any chance of doing that? Too bad, the comments can’t be rerouted, somehow, to the current version, as I realize that’s probably, more why people leave everything in place.
Someone, somewhere is presuming we are around for every version being placed. And it makes me feel like I SHOULD read each version, but hey, only so many hours in the day. laugh
I read the first version, but will comment here, in the third. Sorry.
I love the interaction in this piece. It’s a lovely, humourous story. Definitely a keeper. And here, are corrections..in your inbox, okay? Enough wasted cash.
Thank you, SIM
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I couldn’t think of anything more horrendous! Your story definitely leaves an impression and we’re on the edge of our seats, as readers, biting our nails and wondering how he’ll get out of this. However, to make this stronger, I would consider taking out some of the beginning references to backpackers, etc. Since none appear later in the story, I don’t see it as necessary. Because then we ask: why did he choose to meet her here and not someplace that he likes? The backpackers should have their own story.
The story here is well told; I found no confusion of any import. The characters are well-drawn—I especially like the main character’s backstory. I have a suggestion here, though. The arc of the story would work better if you found a way to bring the running allusions in earlier in the story. If you set up the expectation of Thomas’ running earlier, it’s realization would be funnier, in my opinion. There is also a POV issue. The narrator seems to be intimately familiar with Thomas’ thoughts, but not Supatra’s, except in the instance where his flirting makes her self-conscious. This intrusion into her thoughts is never repeated—her thoughts are only displayed as they appear to Thomas. You could easily say that his flirting makes her appear self-concious. Another review mistakenly wants you to exchange the their/there cognates. Wrong and unnecessary, although I would hyphenate after work to alleviate confusion. I also found the piece more laughable than some other reviewers, although that may be more telling about me than the story. Another good piece. Thanks for the read.
“He thought most likely that he reminded…” He thought IT…
This writing is well done, although the english is a bit formal. It doesn’t read as comfortably as “Smoke” did.
The story itself I feel is more sad than amusing although that maybe American sensibilities rather than Thai.
This is a nice a story. Your humor was well done. You were able to incorparate it without over doing it.
I think there is a lot of humor in every embarrassing situation, but you have such an ear for description, this story became less about laughing at a shared foible and more about being disgusted at human fragility. Your account of his accident is too dead on, I think, to laugh. This is the person sharing the humilating anecdote that instead of showing the joke of the girl-almost-had or finally getting a reason to show off his running prowess, he hammers you with fecal minutiae. He laughs at his retelling, but everyone else in the room shuffles uncomfortably, hoping his story will end soon.
Not saying there aren’t parts I didn’t enjoy. Your description of the woman and the process of getting to know her prove your understanding of the area. I just think humor like this walks a fine line and I wonder – can’t believe I’m saying this – if it might work better if you “Disney” up the shit scene?
healthier than though = healthier than THOU.
I loved the description of Eurotrash!
I loved the description of Thomas, a clean-cut button up kind of guy. It reminds me of me even though I am American.
Afterward his mother, who emailed him routinely once a week – Sundays, forwarded only articles of disasters and atrocities occurring in the Asian region and then added her thoughts on these matters.
I liked this, but I really would have liked for you to maybe give us an idea of what his mother would have said, something like, “That nice young man was only trying to help those villagers and they killed him. They killed that young man!” I hope you know what I’m getting at.
Supatra entered Jo’s looking not at all as if she’d just worked a nine hour shift…
I didn’t like the description of how she looked clean and fresh. Maybe a more interesting description, like she looked like crisp linen, or something like that.
as he knew Supatra would not rush their after work coffee.
their should be ‘there’.
The searing Thai heat was alive in this room and undeterred
I thought this line was a little clumsy. Perhaps just reword it to: the searing Thai heat was alive and undeterred in this small space.
This could give the allusion of a cramped space, maybe giving a feeling claustrophobia.
He knew enough to that sometimes there is honor in hasty retreat.
to should be ‘too’.
I didn’t think this was funny, but I did think it was well written.
I wondered though, why would Supatra not go after him? Is this something about the Thai culture? I would like for that to be explained. Also why didn’t he just tell the truth? Is that a part of the Thai culture also?
I liked this, but like I said, I didn’t find it funny. Maybe I would have if there was a little more info.
I can see the humor, but it isn’t very strong. Rare grammatical issues, and very nice overall. Good work.
“his short side parted dark hair sprinkled with gray, collared shirt and solid – never multicolored tie” This sentence may need a few commas or to be reworded, it was very confusing for me as I read through the story.
“I just read documents and edited there English” Should be their instead of there.
“quickly became board and often even” Board should be bored.
This actually made me smile…very funny! The only problem I found were grammatical errors, or run-on sentences that needed commas. I would recommend reading back through it. But besides those, it was a good read!!
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