Soft-Boiled Eggs before Work

It stunk when we woke up. The old guys below us were too groovy to bathe, and it was a third-class sleeper in the summer—hot, wet, and now reeking of hippie. It was 4 am when we got off in Chiang Mai, your eyes swollen and ringed, my mouth dry and my hair matted with sweat.

You asked if I’d bothered to find a hostel, and I reminded you that you said that you’d do it before you fell asleep. “Whatever,” you said. “We’ll just ask a tuk-tuk driver.” I told you at least twice that I was running out of money, and you told me at least twice that you were sick of third-class trains and half-star hotels. I told you I was going to have to get a job, and you answered as you always did: “I have plenty of money, don’t worry.”

You looked at me so sweetly, despite your swollen eyes and mosquito-bitten cheeks, that I believed the little pressures pushing us towards argument would stay little, and we’d fend them off with jokes and habitual kindness, and if we had to strain to be polite, it wouldn’t be hard, or last long, or mean much. We moved beach to beach, laid in yawning fields, walked in the mountains, did the things tourists do. And we fought about the things people fight about when they’re traveling. Then, eventually, I did get that teaching job and we moved into the little wooden house over the stream that processed small tensions, eased them out windows and through screens, and every night we pulled down the mosquito net, threaded our limbs, and fell asleep together.

So we fought about the things people fight about. You always made soft-boiled eggs. I left my wet bathing suit in the hammock, and you were right, it did eventually grow mold.