Mr. W said earlier over tom yum soup and yellow curry, “I’d like to go back to Thailand and see it again, now that I’m older, instead of just as a young kid out there…”
“…whoring?” I finished the sentence for him.
“Yeah.”

Instantly Mr. W and I were in Thailand, walking down a crowded village street in a marketplace type area. Out of nowhere, an older woman (and by older I mean Mr. W’s age) grabs his arm, staring wide-eyed into his face. “It’s you! You have returned!” she says breathlessly. He looks down at her, confused. “It’s me,” she says, and clucks some name in Thai.
“Oh! Hiiii!” Mr. W says with a tone in his voice that makes my heart catch in my throat. He breaks through the reverie and pushes me forward slightly. “This is my girlfriend,” he introduces.
The woman notices me for the first time and almost as an afterthought, drops her hand where it was still clutching Mr. W’s elbow. She nods at me, not meeting me in the eyes. “I go to market — I have to buy –” she points in a general direction, and without finishing her sentence, she trails off.
Mr. W stares after her, then tells me, “I’ll be right back,” and jogs to her. I watch, standing alone and scared on the streets of Thailand, as he exchanges some words with her quickly and then returns to me.
Later on in the hotel, he would be distant, seemingly lost in thought often. And when I call him on it, he’d say, “I’m sorry, remember the girl I told you I’d met in Thailand, and we became friends?”
“You mean the bar prostitute you used to hook up with?!” I’d spat.
His face would darken in anger as he defends her. “I told you, we were also friends and we would talk. Anyway, she’s in some kind of trouble or hardship or something, we didn’t really get into it. I’ll find out more –”
“You mean you’re going to meet up with her?!” I’d say, clutching the front of my own shirt as if to keep my heart from bursting out of my chest and splintering right there on the hotel room floor.

“I’d like to actually go see how the people live, and see the museums and the culture,” Mr. W was saying, spooning up another mouthful of lemongrass soup. I gasped internally, putting my fork down. If only he knew what was playing in my head with the simple line he’d thrown out there.