Dream spell breaks (5, final)

Reprise: Teenage Dream left, and Lek, far right

Finally, more than four weeks later, I biked down Dream's soi on my way home. Since our bizarre conversation that night, I had chosen to avoid them by taking the long way back via the main road skirting their soi.

Dream was setting up a drinks table to welcome friends to another gathering. The ever-present Lek, sitting nearby, called me over. I dutifully stopped for a chat, and she immediately called out: "Dream, Mali's here!"

If the script played out correctly, he would come over and greet me before returning to his friends, and I would sit down with Lek and shout her a beer.

Lek was making explicit the link between her opening the door to Dream's renewed friendship, and my need to pay for her booze habit by way of thanks.

"I need a drink. Shout me a beer," she said.

Once happy to shell out for alcohol or even help the regulars there with various expenses (including Dream's tuition costs, unbeknown to him), I recoiled inwardly as I contemplated helping such a hard-boiled user.

Not content with the misery our first manufactured coupling caused, when she paired us as "father and son", more than eight years later she was trying to reboot it, in "estranged friends reunite" mode, again to her cynical advantage. 

Dream was party to this arrangement on both occasions, though first time round, I suspect, he was too young to understand. And where was his mother? As ever, a mute witness.

"No thanks, I am heading home," I said.

With that I peddled off and left her, before she or Dream could say another word.

She wore a sickly, disbelieving smile as this old bird perhaps realised that I am no longer in thrall to her cynical manipulations, or bewitched by the Dream spell.

He failed to deliver on his sales pitch, despite his marketing smarts, as she was left with nothing but her empty plastic drinking cup.

Lek was indeed a good friend to me in reuniting Dream and me for our first heart-to-heart. Our conversation showed me that I was foolish to spend so much time worrying about the friendship which could have been, and which in the heat of the moment, many years ago, I had destroyed. 

He's just a lad; an unusual one, granted, but no one I need to know.

He's also happy to be used by this old boozer Lek, even if it means conning this farang. I wonder what hold she has over him. 

Regardless, to the extent he really did want to be friends, he left his run too late. While I am relieved we were finally able to bury the hatchet, and grateful he gave me the chance to talk, I lack the energy to get to know him or his friends again.

Dream gave me a steely-eyed look as I arrived as he, too, perhaps realised that the game was over. I have not been back.

Rock on!