"Of course," said Boi. "There is little sleep for a man bunked under another man...especially when under a man like you and with socks stinking like that, like an elephant's breath...not that the socks were the entire problem. Those were finally taken away in the morning when I couldn't bear it anymore. They didn't bother me after that. It was..." He stopped.
"It was what?" asked Nawin with a relieved chuckle, grateful for flippant conversation to interpose his silent ponderings. The idea that a Thai and a Laotian could not engage in conversation without an elephant trudging through it almost tickled him to tears.
"I don't know," he smirked knowingly. "I am used to sleeping in the mornings so after they came and removed those contaminated articles of yours I could have fallen back to sleep. For a while I attempted to wave away the remaining cloud of stink so that I could do just that. I rested quietly enough after a time. It wasn't as if I was asphyxiating from those smells any longer. The cloud was still there... extant as they say... but I could have slept were it not for this weird feeling that somebody was looking at me--looking at my body. Have you ever felt that way?"
"No, I don't think so. Not really. I mean with my wife. Maybe at times she watched me when I was sleeping. I wouldn't know."
"You wouldn't know?" he mocked. "And these models that you say that you paint, would you know it if one of them watched you while you slept?"
"And get butt naked with them, I guess, if you paint them as nudes. Who wouldn't, or at least who wouldn't attempt it unless he was 100 percent gay?"
"Of course I am intimate with my models. That goes hand in hand."
"Do you ever watch them as they are sleeping?"
"I guess, maybe once or twice. Well, now that I think about it, I've painted a few in restless positions while asleep. This is an odd question to be asking me."
"Why? We are friends, aren't we? A friend can be one of hours and not years, and it is still a friendship, isn't it?"
"I suppose so," he said. It was the same question that Nawin had postulated silently in his own head and he felt even more inclined to call him a friend for this affinity to his own private ponderings.
"If it were me I would not get any sleep at all. I'd be staring at them continually. I think it is the same for you if you are a painter of naked beauties; but then maybe they are more cute and handsome than they are beautiful."
