ARTHUR

Today I talked to Arthur.

I'm sitting on a cement wall at the intersection of Melrose and Cahuenga Boulevard. I took a picture of a yellow building and now I'm waiting for it to develop. The day is sunny with a fresh breeze. Over the traffic noise I hear a faint singing. I look around and see the back of a man on the other side of the cement wall. He is crouching behind a pole in the parking lot. I try not to stare at him. A spicy smell of incense floats in the air. All of a sudden the man turns around and smiles at me awkwardly. He is a handsome Asian man but he seems uncomfortable. He stands up and leaves. That is intriguing. I hesitate to follow him and finally decide to do so. I walk across the small parking lot and enter the Angel spa.

The delicate music creates a contrast with the traffic outside. A middle-aged Thai woman welcomes me and asks me which massage I want. I ask her if I could speak to the man who works here. She leaves and comes back with him. His name is Arthur and he recognizes me right away. We sit down on black leather armchairs. I ask him about the chanting he did. Arthur starts to explain in a minimal English. “I put food and incense on a plate every day before work. I’m a Buddhist”, he says. He is forty-three years old and arrived from Thailand one month ago. He is originally from Chiang-Mai, a city in the North. His birth name is Arnont but in America he goes by Arthur. The middle-aged woman – Nana – listens to our conversation. She approves with a fixed smile. I ask Arthur if he is the owner of the place. “No, I work here as a masseur. Before that I spent twelve years in Japan working in a Thai restaurant and in a video rentals shop”, he says.

The door suddenly opens. A young woman in strict clothes and high heels bursts into the shop. “I’m sorry, could I use your restrooms?” she asks. Arthur goes with her to show her the way. Nana gives me a bigger smile. I point at her multicolored nails and ask her where she gets them done. “By myself”, she giggles, and she shows me her feet – multicolored too. At the wall I notice an aquarium. The sand is royal blue and the plastic plants are flashy pink. I spontaneously feel so grateful that I am not a fish.

Arthur is back and we resume our conversation. “The ritual is an offering to thank the land – America. You give food to the land and the land gives food back to you”, he explains. “I put Jasmine rice, fried chicken, incense, rice noodles and sweet water on a plate. The water is sweetened so that everything that will enter my life will be sweet too. It makes the problems disappear. The rice and the chicken symbolize wealth and success. The noodles symbolize a long life because they are very long”.

Arthur’s dream is to earn enough money in America to buy a house in Chiang-Mai. Then he will open his own import-export business. “When you’ll come to my country, I will be your guide”, he adds. I utter a clumsy “Kop Khun kha” – for thank you. It is the only word I remember from my vacation in Thailand three years ago. Arthur and Nana smile. She bows slightly. Then Arthur grabs my hand and shakes it vigorously. “You’ll be back for a massage soon, ok?”