When I turned to look one of the big floor-to-ceiling windows had been broken. It was obviously not safety glass as it was completely gone with only empty air left in the window frame. Ladyboy XL lay on his back among pieces of broken glass. His upper body was inside the living room while his feet were out on the balcony. In his fall he had pulled out the electric cord to the television.
Chalerm laughed hysterically.
The shy good girl was staring at the ladyboy as if in shock. The twins were staring at me with fearful faces, as if they expected me to go berserk and beat up everyone. Maybe that was what their father used to do when someone broke a window.
The XL ladyboy lay still with his eyes closed. None of the Thais did anything.
I tried to pull the ladyboy out of the broken glass but he was too heavy and there were many dangerous pieces of glass on the floor. I grabbed pillows from the sofa and put under him.
The ladyboy opened his eyes partly.
- Get a water bottle, I told Chalerm. Make him drink.
In truth I didn’t know what to do but giving them water is always good, I thought.
I removed the worst of the broken glass from around the ladyboy and placed more pillows around him so he would not cut himself if he moved. Chalerm force-fed him water.
After ten minutes the ladyboy was slowly returning to his senses, enough to help when Chalerm and I pulled him back into the room using the pillows as a sleigh. The good girl came to wipe the ladyboy’s face and to pick small glass bits from his skin. He was bleeding from a cut on his arm and from smaller cuts in his face. None of the cuts were deep.
The twins were still sitting there petrified as if they expected me to get a gun and shoot them all.
- Never mind, I said. It was just an accident.
Just how dim is this ladyboy, I thought. Didn’t he see the large windows and the glass doors? Did he think it was open space from the living room to the balcony? Had he tried to walk right through it?
Half an hour later the ladyboy was strong enough to get up from the floor. The girls took him to the guest bedroom and put him to bed. I told them to keep giving him water. I had Chalerm ask the XL one what had happened and translate back to me. In a bizarre way, the explanation made sense.
I sat down to call my friend on the phone. I took the phone to the office room. The living room was too hot. With a window missing the air condition had become pointless.
- One is a handful, two is trouble and five is inviting disaster, said Farang D.
- Bless your optimism.
- I expected something to happen but the speed surprised me, said Farang D.
- It took him ten minutes from arriving till he had wrecked the place, I said.
- No reason to complain. You were lucky.
- Lucky?
- If he had cut himself seriously you would have to pay his hospital bill too.
- Hell no. He could pay for it himself.
- They don’t have any money, do they?
- Come to think of it, no they don’t.
- So you were lucky.
- Whatever.
- Why did the ladyboy break the glass? He didn’t see it?
- According to himself he did see it. But he fainted.
- Fainted?
- Yes. Blacked out. Collapsed and fell.
- What made him faint?
- Probably his diet. Chalerm says the ladyboy had not been eating or drinking today.
- Not drinking anything? Very hot today.
- Exactly. He must have been dehydrated. It was a lucky guess when I had Chalerm give him water.
- And why did he do something as spectacularly foolish as not drinking any water all day in 35 Celsius?
- Nobody told them water isn’t fattening.
- Nobody told them about the dangers of dehydration either?
- Or they were not listening. The nice thing about a diet without eating or drinking is that after 24 hours you can step on the scale and you are two or three kilos lighter. In a tropical climate this works well.
- If you survive.
- The XL ladyboy can then start over-eating again since he has proved how easy it is to lose weight. Brilliant, isn’t it?
- Have to give them points for inventive thinking.
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