Mr Noy anew

The procedure is now seamless.

 

Charged up from working out practically to exhaustion, I cycle around the roots of an invasive banyan tree, cross the hectic river road and skid up to a lamppost outside Dairy Queen.

 

I shackle my bike and approach a shaded shopfront.

 

Mr Noy nods knowingly, barely concealing an obvious smirk.

 

I nod to him as I walk past the busy wok he is tending and head directly inside the ramshackle store.

 

He doesn’t immediately abandon his cursory attempt at cooking but follows soon enough.

 

Mr Noy had not been there last time I visited. This is no bar to service as his wizened mother, legs comically bowed, openly served me up from a carrier bag containing several kilos of Thai weed compressed into bricks.

 

When Mrs Noy is at the helm, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

 

I’d already paid her 150,000 kip. She methodically, listlessly, filled a sizeable cellophane bag to the point of overflow. Each time I thought she had finished up, in went the hand and snapped off another piece.

 

Mr Noy had returned midway through the transaction but knew he was out of the game that day. Mum had pipped him to the post.

 

“Three bags?”

 

“No Mr Noy. One bag.” I nodded towards Mrs Noy. “Mrs Noy doing it.”

 

Reversion to a type of pidgin English accompanied with gestures and nodding is the most efficient means of communicating with Mr Noy.

 

“How much,” he presses.

 

I beam.

 

“Already paid her Mr Noy. 150,000.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

I notice for the first time that Mr Noy is a bona fide gimp. The legs inverted to the point of incredulity must be hereditary. As he shuffles around at the back of the shop with quite some difficulty, he’s demonstrably unhappy at his mother’s portion control.

 

(My digital scales later show that I got 41.2 grams, almost double that usually doled out by Mr Noy.)

 

Anyway, today I catch him unaware by handing him three 50,000 kip notes with a smile.

 

More organised this time, all the weed is pre-bagged. He hands me two.

 

I laugh, knowing what’s to come.

 

“Two bags for…” You can see his mind straining… “For two fifty.”

 

“Go on then.”

 

He’s determined to give me the 25 gram packets he sells for 150,000 kip, $18. I figure that taking both, two ounces as near as makes no difference, for $30 and change is the smart move. That price is now established and I will always hand him the quarter million devalued kip for a brace in future.

 

Zip the weed inside my bag and head off to cycle along the Mekong track before dinner.

 

Mr Noy stops me.

 

I must concede that he hadn’t tried to offload heroin or opium on me today but he trumps this with his parting shot:

 

“I have everything. Everything.”

 

It’s clear from the rogue glint in his eye (and the naked fact that he operates with such impunity from a busy shop in the main street of a single party communist state) that Mr Noy has everything.

 

Our paths diverge with the scent of two men who have mutually exploited each other.