A Tiger in Eden by Chris Flynn Read Free Book Online

islands you can get to from there, though what’s the point. It would just be more of the same aul hole and Chang probably.
    It struck me then as I was pumping away that I was bored as fuck of all this. What a thing to go through your head at a moment like that, sure I never thought I’d see the day but I couldn’t deny I was restless with just wandering around the Thailand. I didn’t likethinking about it but I knew I was a bit lost, I could hardly concentrate on what I was doing. I was carrying the aul Troubles with me and it was only a matter of time before I had to sort myself out, one way or the other.
    Sure it wasn’t really a moment for reflection though, not when there’s a Dutch honey squirming away underneath ye gasping and clawing at the sand. She starts giving it the aul yes yes yes ja ja ja and saying something else in the Dutch too ohhh dat ongelooflijk, you didn’t have to be an interpreter to work out she was getting her jollies and it done the job for me too, I just threw my head back and let it go.
    There I was my aul knob pulsing away, Katelijn making these little satisfied yelps and who should I spot standing off to one side watching us but Eva. Sure I’d forgot all about her. Her head was cocked to one side like she was studying some strange animals in a nature documentary or something.
    Nice sunglasses, she says to me, stepping out of her bikini bottoms.

5
    It’s easy to forget the Thais are Buddhists, most of them are anyway, sure I nearly died when the barman tells me what year it was. Here’s me thinking it was 1996 but nah, he goes, it’s 2539 in our calendar. I didn’t know what the fuck he was on about at first but then he says to me, he says the Thailand is 543 years ahead of you.
    How’s that, I goes, are youse in the future or something, sure where’s all your jetpacks and that? I couldn’t make no sense of it, sure I just assumed the whole world had the same system. It blew me away, so it did.
    When the Thai New Year came up this wee lad helped me and whoever else was staying in the huts to make these wee boat things out of sticks and mud. At midnight you lit a candle and stuck it in your boat, they were only about the size of your hand. Then you had to write downon tiny bits of paper all the things that were bothering you during the past year and that you wanted rid of out of your life. You burned them over the candle and threw the ashes into your boat and went down to the ocean and sent it out into the waves.
    It was fucking magic so it was, there were hundreds of wee boats with candles in them drifting out on the water all along the beach where people were doing it. I suppose there was millions of them all around the country. I’d never seen the like of it and it’s a fucking brilliant idea too, getting rid of all your aul problems even if it was just ceremonial or whatever.
    I was dead pleased with my boat but when I put it in the water it only went out about five feet or something and then a wave comes in and swamps it. The cunt floated right back to my feet. I looked around and everyone else’s was heading out to sea and I thought fuck me, that’s just my luck so it is, saddled with the same aul fucking problems for another year.
    I was getting restless anyway and I was thinking of taking the bull by the horns and fucking off somewhere else for a while even though my options were limited, so they were. After New Year I borrowed one of the aul mopeds and scooted up to the port where they had a couple of shops and a phone line. Sure I needed some more flunkies anyway, just in case mind. I gave Big Jim back home a call just to check in sort of thing and let him know I’d be moving on, he couldn’t really talk, I think he had someone in the office with him and hadto watch what he was saying but he gives me a number to write down.
    You ‘member Olly, he goes, sure he’s down your way youse two should meet up or something.
    The Frenchman who ran all that gear across to