Noodling

At a table. All dark wood, sanded smooth, finish shiny. I would sit. Whiling away a morning. Or afternoon. Or both. In the days before you arrived. Why not? The beer was cold. And plentiful. The noodles were some of the best in the city. The staff accommodating. Quick to learn your preferences. That kind of place.

Open air. Not usually my thing. But no shower of freon-frosted air circulating this space. Blue accordion doors open to the alley. A half dozen fans turning this way, then that. Like some disapproving auntie who still possessed the kindness to move the heavy air about a bit. Most days, it was manageable.

Outside. The open doors. The city passed. Mostly. A select few stepped inside. Many locals. Some misplaced souls. Fair number of guide book sherpas. All kinds. Come one, come many. A rich pastiche. Good word. You always liked it. I liked the words you liked. Especially when they were mine.

So, I would sit. With my table neighbors. (Some of the best kind of neighbors. Common interests, respect of boundaries, reasonable decorum—you could do a lot worse than table neighbors. Yes, you sure could.) Putting in our time. At the little place. Tucked down the alley. Time savored is never time wasted.

We did not know. About the noodle place. Beneath our window, across the way. When we rented the apartment for those weeks. A surprise. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, when evening crept down the alley (a soi to be precise in the language of the land, which would allow me to say, often enough to be either endearing or annoying, "Okay, I get that it's a soi, but then where is the sauce?" You would roll your eyes. Or punch my arm. Or smile at me. Any of the three sat just fine with me. Still would), we would lie on the sagging mattress. On the double bed. With the iron headboard, chipped paint and tired joints. And look down on the shop from our second floor perch. A scene so richly foreign it seemed plucked from some film. Beyond anything in which we would have seen ourselves being cast.

Those were good weeks. The apartment all the more memorable for its cramped dimensions and worn features. A home base. For our explorations. Of the city. And each other. I would write. We both would shoot. Read. Sharing what we thought. Swapping reads so we could chat them through.

You would pull me onto that bed. More explorations. Sessions drenched in sweat. The kind that inspired greater effort. For more sweat. Like a proper workout that begins to drive itself. Drops tumbling from noses or elbows, flinging from hair. Bodies, dark with tan, glistening in the spill of light through the window. Fingers intertwined. Clutching. Squeezing tight at the finish. Each wanting to wring all from the other. Which we did. Generally without fail.

Outside, the soi our soundtrack. Shouts and conversation barked without malice. The language foreign to us but less so the meanings. Echoing the concrete artery before finding escape up and out. The little alley, like the rest of that sprawl of city, came alive at night. In ways the days were not allowed to view.

Many nights, we would go down to the noodle place. After. Our explorations. Freshly showered. We would sit. You with your hair up. Casual. Tidily unkempt. Your face and chest still flushed with color. It seemed likely anyone who looked would have known our last hour. Or two. If memory serves, that only fed our hunger. For the next hour. Or two.

We would talk and laugh. Drink beer. Eat noodles. And massive river prawns. The restaurant's own coconut ice cream. Served with nuts and condensed milk and those little green chewy things we never figured out.

"Nourishment," you looked at me and said. In a quiet moment. Knowing the breadth of meanings would not be lost on me.

That kind of place.