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Fiction Archive
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by Mithran Somasundrum | ns 69
Mana's wife was an auditor. She visited factories all over Thailand, checking they complied with ISO regulations. She audited the hygiene, the suppliers, the traceability. At times Mana thought she was auditing him. They could be sitting in a restaurant or a coffee shop in one of those pauses when the conversation died, and Mana would start looking around at the other diners, wondering about their lives, and then glance back to find Ting quietly watching him. He'd sense ISO-type criteria being ticked off a checklist: appearance, ambition, prospects. It was both complimentary and a little unnerving.
The job suited Ting. Not just mentally, but physically too. She was tall for a Thai: five foot eight plus another two inches from her heels. She'd arrive at factories in Buriram and Korat, power-dressed in something dark with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. A startled manager would lumber out of his office, and, finding himself peering up at her, lose the initiative and with it the belief he could talk her around receipts he didn't have and invoices he couldn't provide.
Her outlook, Mana thought, also fit. Ting was one of those people who believe in a correct way of doing everything. A correct way to dress, to decorate an apartment, to cultivate friends. It was only in bed she became improvisational. Mana felt she needed these moments as ballast, and so tried not to object when her experiments turned painful. She went, for instance, through a period of biting him hard enough to draw blood, which frankly was the most unerotic thing he could think of. On another occasion she slapped his bare behind hard and then glared mischievously, which meant, he assumed, that he was supposed to slap hers. Foreplay with Ting was always a form of sparring, in which one of them had to be initially resisted, force met with force, and then surrendered to. A few days after watching Basic Instinct on DVD, she straddled him on the bed, and reaching under his pillow, self-conscious but determined, drew out a white silk scarf. "Did you buy an ice pick as well?" he asked. Ting pouted, and pushed the hair back from her face. She expected these experiments to be taken seriously.
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ns 69 | Fall/Winter 2007
 Featuring an interview with MH Abrams, reviews of new books by Walter Benn Michaels, John McGowan, and Paul Smith, plus a special section on online criticism.
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