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  “You’re saying my legacy is to finish his race?”

  A sparkle shone in Yoshi’s eyes as he sat in silence for almost a minute, a time that seemed like forever to Calvino.

  “A race to find yourself. Just like your great-grandfather before you in 1913, and long before him there was Al-Idrisi in 1154. It’s your turn, Vincent. It’s your time to run through the fireworks and darkness and be free. I am the Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, a Sufi mystic, a Hindu sadhu, and so are you. So is everyone. We come into the world with enlightenment already inside each of us. In every life the journey is nothing more than finding your way to switching on the light. The ego isn’t a flashlight to guide you through the void. Our ego is by its nature a product of the darkness. Let it go, Vincent. Time only appears to slip away. In reality it is always now. The runner? Where is he? How fast is he traveling? Movement at the speed of light appears to us no different from frozen motion. Your great-grandfather passed you this message.”

  Calvino saw a light in this small, fragile man’s eyes. Marley and Yoshi had gone to a great amount of trouble and expense for him. He thought of himself as an ordinary man, as someone no different from the next guy on a barstool. Why would they waste their time on him? He had killed men and done other deeds that no Buddha would have done.

  “Why tell me this, Yoshi? I think you’ve mistaken me for somebody else.”

  Yoshi acknowledged the question with a smile.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to ask that question. If Vincent Calvino can break the cycle of hate, anger and fear, that will change something important. Hate shackles the hater. He will never wish to leave his chains because he doesn’t see them. His lack of freedom defines who he is, and all of his friends hate as much as he does. To hate less draws suspicion. Failing to hate makes you an enemy. That world is passing into history. It will soon be gone.

  “You are a chosen one. If Vincent Calvino can pass beyond the horizon of hate and fear, everyone has that possibility, too. A coastline can’t be truly mapped to the reality. The fjords of Norway are an example. The smaller and deeper you go, at each stage, you find a fractal that contains the whole coastline. Our whole being and nature is expressed in each fractal representation. Do you know how ancient mapmakers expressed their fears?”

  Calvino shook his head.

  “They drew fire-breathing dragons at the edge of the known world. Their flights of imagination and the world of the supernatural was their default.”

  “How would you draw your fear,” asked Calvino, “if you were a mapmaker?”

  A wisp of a smile passed Yoshi’s lips.

  “My fear is about a different kind of dragon at the edge of a new kind of map. A dragon that the members of our species, and in the billions, are daily drawing with every keystroke, search, comment, like and photograph. With these things we construct a map of our reality.

  “Like the slaves who built Angkor Wat, we are the legions hauling the stones from the quarry with no idea of what the final structure will look like. Unlike the slaves at Angkor Wat, we believe we are educating ourselves, communicating our thoughts to friends and others, growing in knowledge. This is our grand illusion. What is the purpose of this artifact we are creating for the future? Our time will be over soon enough. Our historical place will be alongside the slaves of Angkor Wat, whose stones we admire and whose names no longer matter. It will be a map. A temple. A Stonehenge. An Easter Island. A painting.”

  A painting of Elite John 22, thought Calvino, hanging on an investment banker’s wall in New York City.

  SEVENTEEN

  “2 + 2 = 5”—George Orwell, 1984

  “NOoooooooooo. NO!” SHOUTED Fah.

  The barber touched the brim of his Panama hat, his head tilted as he glanced at the ceiling, listening to the plaintive female voice crying out beyond it, half in anger, half in frustration. The customer in the barber’s chair stared at the barber in the mirror.

  Fah’s lament split through the walls and floors of the shophouse. The structure amplified voices, in this case the voice of a woman, mingled in a chorus of male voices. A silenced followed.

  “Someone must have lost a hand at cards,” said the barber, as his scissors resumed the cutting of hair.

  The silence wasn’t to last. The loud thumping of feet moved overhead above the barber’s chair. A door slammed and raised voices, muffled by the building, were impossible to decode.

  “Sounds like a bad loser,” said the customer.

  Oak had ripped up one of Munny’s sketches, and the shredded paper lay scattered across the floor. He stuck his face close to Munny, glaring at him. Fah moved between the two of them.

  “We make joint decisions,” she said. “No one has the right to tear up anyone else’s work.”

  His act of vandalism had erupted out of a cauldron of frustration with a large pinch of envy stirred in. Oak had demanded that his vision should be used as the symbol of their protest, and it was driving him mad that Fah failed to appreciate the brilliance of his work. How could a Cambodian design an image that sprung from the heart of an oppressed Thai? In Oak’s world true Thai art could find expression only through a Thai bloodline.

  “Only a Thai can express this moment,” he had said.

  “Bullshit!” Fah had answered. “And you know it.”

  Oak had lost control at that moment. Having run out of vocabulary and argument, he had grabbed Munny’s drawing and destroyed it, ripping it into smaller and smaller pieces, as if at the end nothing but paper dust would remain.

  Each day, after their classes, the members of the study group made their way separately to the bridge community. They had to be extra careful. Palm’s idea was to give the appearance that their study group had disbanded for the day.

  They had worked in their hideaway for many days, locking the door behind them. It was their world. The walls soon filled with graphic protest images. As the number of images proliferated, so did the competition for approval. The matter of money complicated things and created tension. Oak and Palm couldn’t help but notice Fah slipping cash to Munny at the end of each night of work. Did she think they were stupid and couldn’t see what she was doing?

  The cascade of Munny’s talent and the money stuffed into his pocket, along with the maddening absence of ego on Munny’s part, acted as an incitement for Oak. But no amount of baiting worked on Munny. Oak’s best verbal punches landed on Munny as on a soft pillow. He felt no sting, no pain. He didn’t even feel anything when Oak tore up the drawing. It made no difference to him whether they used it or not. Show the tattoo or don’t show it: it had always been the same for Munny.

  After an hour Oak had finished a stencil of a laughing water buffalo, with a speech balloon above its head that said “Joke.”

  “Joke?” asked Fah. “This isn’t a joke. It’s not funny.”

  “You don’t get it,” said Oak. “The joke is on them.”

  “Who?”

  “The army.”

  Fah rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, the coup is ... is what? Something that makes us laugh?”

  Palm and Munny stared at them like a tennis match audience, their heads following the action from one side to the other, waiting for one of them to put the ball into the net. They fought over what worked in “making” protest art. Oak argued that graphics inside a small room couldn’t be relied on. The graphics had to be field-tested. Fah argued it was too soon to start spray-painting them on walls and buildings. They first needed an arsenal of high-grade graphics, and then they would hit all at once. They’d only get one or maybe two chances once they went into the street. She shouted at Oak that he was being reckless. Didn’t he know the military had eyes and ears watching everywhere?

  Palm found a compromise.

  “Let’s wait until curfew is lifted. Less hassle.”

  Fah went silent. Oak blinked. It made obvious sense.

  “What do you think?” Fah asked Munny.

  “Who cares what the fuck he thinks?”
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  “I care,” she said.

  “Whatever you decide,” Munny said.

  No one Munny had tattooed had ever asked him what he thought about showing the tat to a mother, a wife, a friend, a boss or anyone else. The subject never came up.

  Palm’s compromise was a godsend, a face-saving formula, and the three of them agreed to wait until the curfew was called off before hitting the street with the stencils and spray paint. Rumors were circulating that the curfew would end soon. Fah checked online for the latest rumors about it.

  “In two days, if there is no conflict,” she said, reading from her iPhone screen. Looking up, she added, “If we started before then, they’d never end the curfew. And we’d be in some military camp.”

  Oak glared at her, thinking she was blaming him.

  “But we won’t fall into the trap,” she said.

  “It’s our chance,” said Palm.

  A sense of excitement pulsed through the room. Even Munny allowed himself to show what might have passed as happiness, thinking about how his artwork would look on the walls of the city. After they went back to work, Oak eased off Munny and, in return, Munny credited Oak with a stroke of genius—the group’s trademark graphic would be a water buffalo with a Guy Fawkes mask strapped on its ass. It hadn’t really been Oak’s idea, but that didn’t stop him from accepting the credit. Munny wasn’t such a bad guy after all, Oak thought.

  “How are we going to choose?” asked Fah, her laptop screen displaying a half dozen of the best of Munny’s graphic illustrations.

  The others looked over her shoulder. Each of them had a favorite except for Munny, who remained neutral. He allowed their group to trade and bargain amongst themselves. They looked up from the screen at the walls where each of the short-listed graphics dried. Each day after Munny finished cutting the stencil, the others taped it to a vacant space on one of the walls, shook the spray paint, the castanet-like sound from the can echoing around the room, and stood back to let the paint dry. They’d painted white over a couple of graphics that they’d rejected so they could start over with a fresh graphic on a clean surface. Munny’s skill was making it difficult to choose. Precisely because of that difficulty, the problem facing them came down to who should choose in the absence of a unanimous vote, and how many would be chosen. None of the questions could be ignored. Oak picked out five of his own graphics from a neat pile of photos stacked on his side of the table.

  “We can go out on the first night with these,” he said.

  He flipped through the images as Fah, Palm and Munny looked on.

  “We’ve scouted three locations,” said Fah. “They’re on a soi off Thonglor, an abandoned building on Soi 101 and a wall near Sathorn Bridge. You can see it from the river.”

  “That means three graphics. Shit, that’s nothing. All this work for three?” asked Oak. “And putting them up in places where no one will see them? Fucking waste of time.”

  “It’s too dangerous to spray-paint outside. We’ll have a crowd around us in minutes,” said Fah. “Police and military checkpoints are up everywhere.”

  Palm cleared his throat and looked at Fah and then at Oak, as if he’d been holding something back.

  “We go outside. But we won’t spray-paint the artwork.”

  Fah stared at Palm, jaw dropping as if he were crazy.

  “What did you say?”

  “Spraying-painting is so analog. It’s the old generation. Banksy risked getting caught on the street with stencils and spray paint. He’s done. Guilty.”

  They looked at him.

  “Okay, genius,” said Oak, “if we don’t paint them, then what? Put them on T-shirts?”

  “I mean we don’t use stencils or spray paint.”

  “You’re not making sense,” said Oak, shooting a knowing glance at Fah.

  “You haven’t let me explain. This is something new. No one else has it. But we have it. It projects images, and others can project them too, wherever and whenever we want. All we need is this.”

  He held up his cell phone.

  “Here’s how it works.”

  He pointed his phone at the wall. Munny’s water buffalo with a Guy Fawkes mask on its ass appeared on the wall.

  Palm watched them stare at the image on the wall. He was enjoying the moment of glory. It would have been hard to wipe the thin smile from his face.

  “Palm, you are a fucking genius,” said Oak.

  Palm smiled and continued: “We decide where we want to project the image. We go to Google Maps and search for a location. Say, we decide to show it at six p.m. at the Asoke BTS station. We do it as a flash show. Hit and run. The graphics are mobile. We move, the image moves too. The cops come, we stick the phone back in our pocket and walk away.”

  “This is so cool, Palm,” said Oak shaking his head.

  “Let me finish.”

  Fah reached out and touched Palm’s arm.

  “Where did you get this app?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No one else has it. Why do you have it?”

  “Someone wants to help us.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Oak sighed.

  “It doesn’t matter, Fah. Palm’s right. No one is asking for money or credit. It’s ours to use. Why wouldn’t we use it?”

  Fah, seeing she was outvoted, shifted her approach.

  “Why use it at Asoke BTS station?”

  “It doesn’t have to be there. We can project the image anywhere we choose. And you know the best part?”

  “Tell us,” said Fah.

  “We won’t be alone. Others will help us. We’ll send a message to our Line contact list. We’ll tell them to go to such and such a place at a certain time. We choose the time and place. All they have to do is use an app we give them to ‘open’ our message. They point their phones at a wall and a drop of water appears, they click on the drop and boom, what do you know? There’s the water buffalo and cop on the side of a building.”

  “Palm, Oak’s right, you’re a genius,” said Fah.

  “Thanks, but I didn’t invent it. Someone loaded the app in my cloud and texted me to check it out.”

  “So who sent it?” asked Fah.

  Palm shrugged.

  “Anonymous. Don’t know, don’t care. It’s ours to do with as we wish. Listen, I’ve figured out how to crowdsource the image in a group message. That way we can send it to hundreds, thousands of people who go to a hundred locations and project it. Or they simultaneously open their phones and, without projecting it, just show the image to those passing. Either way, bam, we have our message out. There are too many people, too many locations for the police or military to round up everyone. Think of hundreds of commuters at a BTS station showing the image, projecting it against a wall, shining it on ceilings, floors or the sky.

  “Amazing,” said Fah.

  “People will notice.”

  “I don’t know,” said Oak, having second thoughts. “Maybe we’d better stick with spray-painting walls, Palm. It’s what Banksy does. He’s the man to follow.”

  “Sorry, but Banksy’s no different from the average cave painter in one way. He paints a single wall at a time. We need to get these images on a thousand walls. And we don’t want to get caught,” said Palm. “With this app we’ll leave no trace. They can’t catch us.”

  Both of the men looked at Fah, waiting for her to say something.

  “What do you think, Munny? Real wall? Digital wall?”

  Munny had been doodling on a piece of paper and not paying much attention as they debated. Pushing aside his sketch, he scratched his cheek with the end of the pencil and looked at his fingernails.

  “You can be a street artist or you can be in the movies,” said Palm. “You tell me who reaches more people.”

  “Oak, this is a miracle,” Fah said. “This is our generation’s way to get the message out. Palm’s right. We break with the past because we want freedom. I like the plan.”

>   She turned to Palm.

  “Are you sure no else has used this app to protest against the Juunta?”

  Palm smiled.

  “We’ll be the first. We can add a voice or music, too. Try that with spray paint and a stencil.”

  “Music, yes!” said Fah, clapping her hands and dancing like a schoolgirl.

  “Why would someone hack your cloud account and leave the app?” said Oak.

  Palm blushed but loved the attention.

  “I’ve thought about that too,” said Palm. “I don’t know. At first it troubled me.”

  “And now?” asked Oak.

  “I say we use it. What do we have to lose?”

  “What if it’s a setup?” said Oak. “We could go to prison. If someone wanted to trap us, this would be a good way.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Palm. “There are a hundred better ways. No, this doesn’t feel like a trap. It’s a gift.”

  “Dropped in our laps from the sky,” said Fah.

  Fah reached forward to connect a knuckle bump with Oak.

  “You have some music to go with your graphics?” she asked.

  “I might have a couple of tunes, yeah.”

  Oak paused, turned to his left, reached over and slapped Palm on the back.

  “And you, why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

  “I only just found it.”

  “When?”

  “When you two were fighting, I was surfing. I downloaded it from my cloud. I got a text message, read it, opened the app. Thank you, whoever you are, guardian angel.”

  Fah checked her Dropbox and found the same app.

  “I’ve got it too.”

  Oak opened his cloud account.

  “Same here.”

  They shared their cell phone screens.

  “I’ve searched for information about the app online,” said Palm. “I figured someone must be making a fortune selling it.”

  “What did you find?” asked Fah.

  “Nothing,” said Palm.

  He shrugged, pursed his lips.