The Rain Check

At three in the afternoon, Luke is standing outside a minimart in Patong wearing a plastic raincoat that has already failed.

Water runs down the inside of one sleeve. His trainers make a soft squeezing sound when he shifts his weight. In one hand he holds two takeaway coffees, neither of which is improving.

This was supposed to be their beach day.

He has spent a week asking Dao what she likes to do when she is not working. She has given him practical answers: sleep, wash clothes, see her sister. He has interpreted these as evidence that nobody has ever shown her a properly good time.

So he arranges lunch by the water, followed by a drive somewhere quieter. He imagines her finally relaxing. He also imagines a photograph, although he would not describe that as the main purpose.

By noon, the rain has become a solid object.

Dao messages that she is staying home. Luke offers to come over. She tells him her room is a mess. He says he doesn't care, with the confidence of someone who expects the mess to involve a few clothes on a chair.

The room is above a row of shops. A towel is wedged against the bottom of the balcony door. Work shoes dry beside a fan. A bucket beneath a damp patch in the ceiling produces a steady, irritating drip.

Dao opens the door in a faded T-shirt. No makeup. Hair twisted into a knot that looks like it was negotiated in bed.

She takes the coffees and immediately puts one in the fridge.

Luke has seen her under bar lights all week. Here, she looks tired enough to be thirty instead of the age he has privately assigned her. He finds this more intimate than expected, and slightly inconvenient to the afternoon he planned.

They sit on the floor because laundry occupies the only chair. Dao unfolds a bag of rice and asks whether he wants an egg.

He says he can order something better.

She looks at the food. Then at him.

“This is what I want.”

He orders an extra portion and stops trying to rescue lunch.

For a while, they eat and watch her nephew send increasingly pointless voice messages. Dao translates the good ones. Luke laughs, then discovers she has only translated the parts where the child is insulting her.

The bucket needs emptying. He gets up to do it, steps in the water by the balcony and leaves a wet footprint across the room. Dao hands him a cloth without looking away from her phone.

It is the first task she has given him that does not make him feel impressive.

Later, the rain weakens. He suggests they could still go somewhere.

She is asleep against a cushion before he finishes.

Luke sits quietly. His good shirt hangs from the fan. The second coffee is still in the fridge. The afternoon contains nothing he could post without making it look worse than it was.

When Dao wakes, she asks if he is bored.

He looks at the bucket, which is nearly full again.

“No.”

She points toward it.

“Good. Your turn.”