Persistent gym caller

‘Does your power keep going off? My neighbour Farang C asked in a text message.

‘No...but then we get our power bill, and pay it,’ I replied.

Farang C and I rent places next to each other in the same condo building. He says the owner of his place gets his utility bills, pays them on his behalf, then asks him for a refund later.

However, she's overseas at the moment, so the job has fallen to her boyfriend. He rarely shows his face at farang C's place.

Farang C would rather get the bills and pay them himself. That way he can make sure they are actually paid, and that his utilities won’t get cut off. ‘I haven’t seen a power or water bill in months,’ he grumbled, as he checked his mail slot next to the lift.

He’s not sure if the owner has been paying the bills, as he won’t send them by mail, or bring them around for his inspection.

One day, he could wake up and find his utilities have been cut off because the owner forgot to pay.

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Boyfriend Maiyuu likes to keep our home phone unplugged. I like to keep the jack inserted.

We both fear bad news, it seems, but I can’t see the point in delaying it. What if my family were to need me suddenly?

For the benefit of my Thai boyfriend, I put these things in stark terms.

‘My father is getting old. I have to keep the phone plugged in, in case he dies and my mother needs to call,’ I tell him.

He is unconvinced. Whenever he wants to use the phone, usually to order food from a nearby restaurant, he plugs it in.

As soon as his transaction is finished, he pulls out the plug again.

Maiyuu does it so quickly, and with such deftness of hand, that he thinks I haven’t noticed.

But my trained ear has become good at distinguishing the sound of the handset hitting the cradle (‘thud’) and the ‘click’ of him yanking out the cord at the back.

I just know he’s done it, and I am seldom wrong.

While he was out yesterday, I plugged in the phone, just in case someone wanted to make contact.

A few hours passed, and the thing rang.

‘Hello?’

A Thai answered.

Relief. Dad’s day will come, but this was not it.

‘Gabble, gabble...’

The right side of my brain can’t have been working. When I held the phone to my ear, I couldn’t understand what he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Yes? I thought I may as well sound final about it. He sounded like a salesman, so I harried him off my phone.

I regretted my assertiveness when I heard his parting words.

‘...service charge.’

God, what had I just agreed? Wild thoughts filled my head.

Thai: ‘Oh, this is the power man. Your bill is unpaid. We want to cut off your power. Is that okay?’

Farang: ‘Yes.’

Maiyuu was out most of the day. When I saw him again late last night, I told him about the mysterious caller who wanted his service charge.

‘That will be the gym. I have an outstanding bill of two to three months, going back since I last visited the place more than a year ago,’ said Maiyuu matter-of–factly.

He was cooking. Reluctant as I am to interrupt the master while he is at work, I pressed on.

‘How much is that?’

‘About 4,000-5,000 baht,’ he said.

No wonder they are keen to get it back, I thought. How could Maiyuu leave such a large bill outstanding for so long?

‘I have told them many times that they should deduct the bill from the deposit I left with them when I took out my membership, but they refuse,’ said Maiyuu.

‘They say I have to go in there myself, but if I do that they will try to persuade me to join for another year.’

‘How much was the deposit?’ I asked. Maiyuu used the Thai word for ‘insurance’, but I am sure it amounts to the same thing.

‘The same amount, within a few baht,’ he replied.

Shortly after we moved in to our new place, someone started calling our home number regularly. Maiyuu would mutter a few words, and quickly hang up. Then he would unplug the phone.

Now I know who it was – the same pesky caller from the gym, trying to get Maiyuu to pay his bill and renew his membership.

‘I don’t know how they found our new number, but they have been calling for months, and won’t stop,’ Maiyuu grumbled.

This is one Thai muddle I shall have to let him sort out himself.

Maiyuu stopped visiting the gym more than a year ago - and with fees as steep as those, I am pleased he did. Now I know why he likes to keep the phone unplugged.

If I was Maiyuu, I would still want to visit the gym and clear up the problem. But then I am a tidy farang. Thais don't always think like us.

'Tell them some handsome farang has offered to take you overseas, so you won’t need to renew your membership,’ I suggested.

‘They won’t believe me,’ he said.