...and time seemed reassuringly cognate. With the memory of that light, white American, Kimberly Debecrois--or something French--pulling away from his gr... ...ully that he began to believe it himself. On canvas, distorting the French-American into an Asian half-breed and a lady of the night, he brought to hi... ...erything merely seemed. In his last conscious moment as he faced the tidal wave that he hoped would claim him fully into sleep--instead of those small... ...e that he hoped would claim him fully into sleep--instead of those smaller waves whose prehensile inundations formed such an ineffective grasp--he won... ...d uncomely Laotian, should seem sensual to him now. No, he thought, with a new idea repudiating the old, the only peculiarity was that as a casualty o... ... minute of temporary derangement that was quite natural in life, a game of musical chairs in which the chairs also moved. He further averred that a mo... ...mirrors could do. Still, while moving out of the toilet and pondering this new justification for male promiscuity within the corridor between the two ... ... all Thai holidays. For it was on such days that happy or speciously happy groups burgeoned rife on sidewalks as a type of rank urban wildflower; and ... ...e steps of shopping malls where the roots of these blooming and ambulatory groups more fully tangled his steps like seaweed washed on crowded shores. ...

... suffering a midlife crisis, he abandons supercilious makings of wealth for a train trip ride to Laos where he repudiates and ventures onto something new...