Louis returned to school after summer one time with a camera, given to him by a woman he played doubles with at some tennis tournament for guests of the resort where he stayed with his family on the Malaysian island of Penang. We would have been twelve, maybe thirteen. Doubtful fourteen. It was a thin flat silver contraption, the camera, if I remember rightly, with a disc that held the photos. The woman, whose name I forget, gave Louis the camera after a particularly hard fought three set win over a husband and wife team from Victoria, British Columbia. The woman's own husband wasn't much in for tennis, so Ellis, the event's organizer, suggested she pair up with Louis, who had, by this time, displayed a proficiency for the game far beyond his tender years. Eventually they bowed out in the semi finals, losing to seventeen year old twin girls from Macau. Afterwards, discussing the loss alone in the shade of a frangipani tree, she put her hand down his pants. And two days later she was gone, back to wherever it was she came from. But she left behind a parting gift, or at least a bag containing things that she didn't want to pack, and the camera.
The bag contained the following:
a half full bottle of scotch,
a tin of neutral shoe polish,
a shiny magazine advocating on its cover the benefits of wrinkle free skin,
a small box of paperclips,
a miniature model of the Arc de Triomphe made out of matchsticks,
a pack of playing cards,
a blue silk handkerchief,
a small plastic Chinese junk,
a blue plastic comb,
a sachet of curry paste.
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