Within a month and a little bit of persistency against refusals, the metropolitan authorities scheduled him for an interview as a money taker on a city bus. He was scheduled with a score of others despite his age. He might not have gotten any job at all let alone a better one than what he was applying for had English not rescued him. They needed someone knowledgeable of English in the information booth in an air-conditioned cubicle at a skytrain station. He would not be wearing the grungy blue suits of the money takers but white ones that looked like a captain. The thought of it filled him with pride. They gave him an advance so that he could buy this clothing, rent out a cheap room, and not fast when it came to purchasing his lunches. They didn't give him a day off but outside of making change for the customers that needed to be done quickly, the work was easy. It just required a familiarity with major landmarks around each of the stops and that he be able to direct foreigners where they needed to go. National holidays (when he got them) were spent in the vicarious borrowing of a personal life from a movie at a theatre. He didn't really know his coworkers. Since it was his first job, and a new one at that, he kept quiet and focused on his work. He looked gauche and foolish and he worked around them trying not to get into much contact. They gossiped about others whom he didn't know (perhaps himself as well) and repeatedly asked how he knew English so well. Their tones always became more caustic in addressing him; and when it came to justifying his knowledge of English he would always vary his answers fictitiously so as not to feel that he was buried in a rubble of monotony. His introverted awkwardness was at variance with their complacent self-assured movements, and he withdrew into a world of shadows surreal as being sucked up into random scenes of a silent picture show. He was friendless and alone. Outside of Noppawan, he couldn't even imagine anyone who really cared about him a little; but he did not have time to go to his post office box and he feared that she was lost to him forever. A solitary person usually needed to invent a commiserating individual out there even if that person did not really care; but he did not know anyone with whom to fool himself and he saw that despite the Noppawan Doctrine against pettiness, he was securing a petty life for himself like everyone else and the exhilaration from his independence was waning. As Vanont slipped 40 baht through the hole of the window, Jatupon changed it, attempting to keep his eyes steady in a marginally sunken poise of professionalism without any special recognition of the customer wanting the change. The old man smiled at him warmly. "Where have you been, my boy?" he asked.