One-Door Convenience Store
Bangkok, 2020
Golden sunlight illuminates the fog trapped behind a glass slab. Jom finds herself in front of the 24-hour convenience store again. Her uniformed frame reflects faintly onto the automatic pane, then swoops out of sight in a blink. There is no promise of escape.
The beast‘s metal and glass jaws are agape, swallowing Jom’s self-esteem. The convenience store’s bleak air: a tired simulacrum of status. Inside the 3x3 box, the air conditioner has been cranked up to 20°C to combat the April heat.
Ting-nong!
“Sawasdee ka, welcome!” The duet bleeds out, muffled from behind her co-workers’ face masks. It’s a reflex triggered by the piercing monophony of the door. The workers are too busy, shoving items into plastic bags to recognize Jom as one of their own.
Jom stoops clumsily at the gate, letting a middle-aged lady point a thermometer gun at her forehead before coasting in for her shift. The lady was hired yesterday, an urgent recruit in the government’s mandatory response to the viral fear, the New Normal.
The airborne behemoth has already devoured most of the city. But the convenience store workers’ empty stomachs won’t let them miss a day of work. The rainstorm has deluged the grassroots; everyone's taking a crash course on swimming or learning how to breathe underwater—Jom is keeping her airways afloat the only way she knows how.
There is a 10 p.m. curfew, which means nothing but daytimes. Stores become crowded with diurnal stockpilers. During the 9-to-5 shift, Jom and her co-workers are a goddess trinity behind the countertop; they conjure up gourmet dishes, utility billing, a squeaky clean store, and smiles, even behind masks. Before the thermometer lady is sacked soon enough, they have to master her expert fever tracking tricks as well.
At one point, the room is cleared. The shelves are left patch-stocked, as if a hurricane has just passed. Jom looks at the clock above her and realizes there’s still more than half of her daily tasks to finish before her shift ends. The countertop goddesses diverge: one tends to her smartphone affair away from the store’s CCTV, while the other keeps busy with the restocking. Jom ensures the register is virus-free.
“Two quacks on the foggy and two wipes: left and right.” Jom hums behind her mask. When she moves on to the pane near the register, she wipes away the fog, letting in a golden gleam as if parting clouds. Jom closes her eyes, bathing in sunlight.
Kanchanaburi, 2019
The choo, chug, squeal of the shabby train startled the station. The pickup crowd had been waiting since early morning—the 5:30 a.m. train from Bangkok was supposed to arrive at Kanchanaburi two hours ago. It was now nearly half past 10. Jom grabbed her bags, squeezed through the swell of baggage and headed past the train’s narrow exit. Nan, her patient girlfriend, stood waiting, a backpack strapped on her shoulders. They had met in college in Bangkok. Nan was a few years older, and she had decided to help out her family’s business after graduating. Any uneasy residue that might have lingered between the couple was swept away by their grins and laughter. They both wore navy blue T-shirts and stretchy denim pants, attire perfect for their mission. Jom hauled her bags to Nan’s trusty two-wheeler, and they headed toward Erawan Falls. Jom had suggested a three-day camping trip to “purge the dissertation distress”—after her mother’s savings first dried up, Jom had to spend four grave years of work-studying. It was time for her to reconnect with mother nature and her girlfriend‘s hometown.
“Did you ever figure out what happened?” Nan peered at Jom as they drove.
“Some part fell out,” Jom said. “It wasn’t a crucial part or anything. They just had to replace it once the train stopped at a station, and it took them around 30 minutes. They do this all the time, apparently.”
Nan frowned. “Weird. They should’ve just replaced the whole train. That thing is old.”
“It’s easier this way,” Jom shrugged.
Once they arrived, they unpacked a small picnic and set a bamboo mat upon the damp earth. Jom followed Nan into the falls, the crystal-clear water blanketing their chests. Soft ripples took turns to kiss their skin. They closed their eyes, stretched their necks, and welcomed the breath of nature. As they sat across each other, everything around them faded.
“We’re sitting like a mafia duo,” Jom smiled.
“What?”
“The way we sit. It’s like we own the world or something”.
Nan smirked. “With that degree in business management, you’re going to own everything soon enough.”
Jom burst out laughing, then moved closer to Nan.
“I’m so glad it’s all over,” Jom sighed. “One day, I’ll get to write lovely resumes like everybody else. It’ll be like a liberation.”
“What do you mean?” Nan asked.
“Using years of hard work to set me free from this fucking hellhole store.” Jom looked up to the bright sky, eyes brimming with hope.
“This past year was rough,” Nan said. “But 2020 is going to be yours, I just know it.” She looked at Jom, a gentle smile on her face. Their shoulders soon coalesced. Water flowed through them, marrying their hearts into a boulder.
During the last night of their trip, the crisp air tickled their flushed skin. Nan called Jom out of their tent. Empty Emerald Chang bottles glistened in the lamplight underneath the waning moon. Nan swirled a twig around the small stream. Beside her, Jom sat on damp grass, knees clutched to her chest. She plucked petals from a marigold flower and dropped them into the water.
“Do you think they’ll ever combine and make a flower again?” Jom asked.
“Yes,” Nan said. “When the water stops flowing. That’s where they’ll meet.”
Jom caressed a colorless stem in her palm. She shivered. The tiny stream was unforgiving: everything in it coasted along in its ebb and flow. Everything out of it flaked off a piece of itself little by little, diving into the stream without a beginning or an end. Maybe these pieces were hoping to reassemble too, somehow, someday.
Ting-nong!
“Sawasdee ka, welcome!” Jom’s voice blurts out.
Image still from the film Chungking Express, dir. Wong Kar-Wai