by L. J. Hawke
It took some doing, but within ten days, Sanur had bought all of Tania’s debt. They worked together to set up a payment schedule to take money directly out of her paychecks, including the interest. Tania still had plenty of money to do what she wished, including seeing the sights and buying food for the orphanage. Now that she knew about his past, she wondered why he hadn’t thought of hiring one of the orphans. But, then, his first receptionist apparently earned enough to go to college working for him. Maybe he was helping one person at a time. Tania snorted at herself. He was helping many people with his business. Why not hire the best? But he had taken a hell of a chance on her instead. He was still mysterious, but more approachable since Tania knew he’d been screwed over and abandoned as well.
Without the onerous interest hanging over her head, Tania invested in some cheap Chinese tablets for the orphanage, had Wi-Fi installed there, and paid for internet services for three years in advance. She also worked with a restaurant near the orphanage to deliver cooked chicken or fish every evening for all the orphans. The kids grew rounded and happy, spoke much better English, and were able to download coursework and free educational games from the internet.
Tania helped the orphanage with its webpage, and donations began to trickle in. Tania also set up a crowdfunded donation campaign, and donations doubled within a week. Mrs. Amioad was astonished. “I cannot believe you have done so much!”
Tania laughed. “I am an internet marketer. I am so happy I had a useful skill.” She tilted her head. “Their schoolwork is more important, and their English level will go up over time, but maybe I can find a low-cost Internet marketing course for those who are interested.”
Mrs. Amioad laughed. “They will do anything you ask.”
Tania grinned. “Nice change from some of my former students.” Mrs. Amioad laughed; she knew Tania had taught elementary and middle school students in the past. Tania was a blessing; Ms. Amioad knew it with all her being.
Tania was delighted with her new life. She took on a few new clients to pay off her boss more quickly. Tania learned how to put together the spreadsheets that went to the accountant and changed them to track data more easily and get money to the artists more quickly.
Sanur was delighted that this time-gobbling task was taken off of his desk and showed Tania everything she needed to know about running the office in his absence. He made her a signatory on the office accounts, gave her the power to deal with customer service problems, and went away on his first trip for two weeks through Cambodia and Vietnam. Tania was stunned and touched by his faith and trust in her. She resolved to do her best. They had no major problems while Sanur was gone, and Tania was delighted when she saw an immediate increase in sales because of new ads.
Sanur came back two weeks later, contracts in hand and new products in boxes on a handcart. Tania taught Kannika and Achara how to scan and file the documents and worked with new hires, Aat and Chai, on getting all of the new products photographed, onto the website, and into ads. Aat was tall and strong and was filling out due to training from lessons from a Muay Thai master Tania had paid for. Chai was smaller, quicker, and had an extremely quick mind.
Aat and Chai carried the boxes upstairs to the empty second floor and turned on the fans. “Wow!” Chai said. He pulled out a gorgeous set of carved and painted chopsticks, with jeweled wooden carvings of animals hanging from the ends.
“For…,” Aat pointed at his hair.
Tania nodded. “Yes. I’ll have to take the phone while you ask Kannika to put one in her hair.”
Aat grinned. “Good. Now?”
“Tomorrow. We have to warn her to wear her hair up. But points for thinking of new ideas.”
Chai pulled out some pillows in gorgeous brocade. “I know the right chair!” He ran to a gorgeous carved chair, set everything up, and began taking pictures.
Tania tried not to squeak when Sanur began to deliberately make noise on the last two stairs. The man was as silent as a ninja. He peered at the photo studio. “You have done a fine job here.”
“These young men have learned how to make Facebook ads, from shooting to editing to posting.” Aat and Chai grinned and ducked their heads at the praise. “Sanur, I would like to use company money to order some of our smaller products and have them shipped here. If we mix older and new products, we’ll sell both.”
“Excellent idea.” Sanur came all the way up. “This will not do. I must have this enclosed and air-conditioned. It is too hot to work up here.” The place was a loft, looking down on Kannika, answering phones below them. “Candles would melt up here, a pity, because we do sell candlesticks.”
“I’ll make the air-conditioning thing happen.” Tania wiped sweat off her brow.
Sanur waved a hand. “They will charge too much. I know the right company.” He pulled out his cell phone and sent a text.
Aat carefully unwrapped a glass jar and a glass lantern with a round hole cut in the top and put them on a table. “What is this?”
“The jar goes inside the lantern. You can put silk flowers or wooden dowels in there. The wood holds scent and lets the scent out slowly.” Aat looked confused, and Sanur explained in liquid Thai. He found the sticks in the box. Tania assembled the jar, lantern, and sticks and put them on a small, round maroon table inlaid with silver.
“Pretty.” Aat backed up, then held out his hand. Tania handed off her cell phone, and Aat knelt to get the shot.
“Excellent.” Sanur looked at a new text on his phone. “The glass goes in on Thursday.” He looked around. “This is...far beyond my imagining. Thank you.”
“My young gentlemen like to make themselves useful.” Sanur translated Tania’s words, and both boys bowed, hands in prayer position to their chests. Sanur bowed back and walked soundlessly back down the spiral stairs.
Tania looked down the stairs at her boss. She knew he practiced Muay Thai. He was trim, elegant, and had lovely muscles. She grinned, sighed, and went back to work in the brain-melting heat.
It never occurred to her that her work in the gym and all the swimming toned her own muscles, and that Sanur looked at her the way she looked at him, with growing interest.
The glass and air-conditioning went in over the next weekend, making everyone very happy on Monday morning. Photo shoots became much more pleasant.
Their local warehouse was nearly eviscerated when the owner of some newly-built upper-class condos wanted new furnishings. They began selling furnishings to stage high-end condos, an unexpected market segment Tania began to market aggressively. Sales jumped, and the boys came on their own shifts to help keep up with the office, staging, helping Tania with the marketing as she suddenly had a lot of financial work to do, and whatever else needed to be done.
The boys began sleeping on the floor in the loft on the second story because of overcrowding at the orphanage, so Sanur had half of it converted to an actual bedroom with a wall for privacy, bunk beds, a small refrigerator, a microwave, and a rice cooker. The corner with the best light stayed the glassed-in photography studio. The boys had to share the upstairs bathroom with the girls or use the toilet downstairs, and the boys showered at the gym where they went kickboxing. Everyone was happy.
Investments
Several weeks later, Sanur took Tania out to dinner at an Indian restaurant located poolside inside a hotel. They had iced fruit drinks, tandoori chicken wraps, and quiet conversation that, for once, followed the no-business-at-dinner rule. They were both exhausted from a long week, filled with so many orders that they were beginning to have trouble keeping up. They chatted about the heat, the rain, places where they had been, keeping things light. After dinner, they took their drinks poolside and relaxed at a small table, watching hotel patrons swim back and forth.
Finally, Sanur broke his no business at dinner rule. “We need more clients, artists. So, I'm going out on another trip next week. In fact, I'm leaving tomorrow night. Some orphanages have arts programs.” Sanur sipped his tea and smiled over the edge o
f the glass.
“Excellent,” said Tania. “I'm delighted that we're doing well. I'm also very glad we hired the teens. They do the work in shifts, so no one gets exhausted. They're also plunging forward with their online work. They're very bright kids, and it's very likely they can go to an online university based in Australia, the UK, Canada, or the United States. I happen to know a lot about how to get scholarship money. I think I can get them nearly free rides if I can get them to pass high school equivalency exams.”
“Ambitious. Let me know if motherhood gets to be too much.” Sanur grinned.
Tania was so surprised that she slipped back into her country roots. “I ain't no mama. More like an employer, guidance counselor, teacher, mentor, and I keep the boys and the girls apart. Told all of them there's no use getting pregnant when they're this young.”
Sanur threw his head back and laughed. “What do you think being the mother of a teenager actually is? I take it you gave them condoms?”
“I did. Aat’s gay. He already has a boyfriend, and his own condoms.”
Sanur raised his eyebrows. “That was fast.”
Tania shrugged her shoulders. “They grow up fast.”
“That they do.” They clinked glasses and relaxed, listening to swimmers laughing in the pool’s swim-up bar. Sanur watched her face, amused at her sudden motherhood. He loved Tania’s agile mind and enormous heart. No doubt, he would find his business changed in some other ingenious way when he got back from his trip. She was...beautiful, inside and out. Not a coiffed, lipsticked beauty, but one with a wild heart. He had not seen her like before.
His responsibilities seemed to increase as his companies grew. It was comforting to have one business running smoothly. It was the nature of his kind to have dependents, those who would live and die based on his actions. He was recreating something that existed long ago, a system of wealth that flowed to artisans through patrons. They were not building palaces, but filling condos across the globe with beautiful things. Few people enjoyed the palaces; it was probably better this way. Pleasure multiplied. Sanur enjoyed that thought, as well as the woman with hair like flame with an agile mind in front of him.
The next day, Kannika chatted away on her headset in rapid Thai, explaining to an artist how many pieces needed to be made for a condo overlooking the beach in Da Nang, Vietnam. Aat answered an incoming call. “Sawasdee, hello, buenos dias. Kaung Import-Export for the Home, Aat speaking. How may I help you?” Despite the light rain falling on the roof, splashing into the pond in the front, Tania heard the first bit of Spanish come through Aat’s headphones.
Tania raised two fingers, signaling that she would be happy to take the call. She turned away from her Facebook advertising page and rubbed her eyes. “Buenos dias. Me llamo Tania. Como estas usted?”
Tania had been learning more advanced Spanish from a local expat from Uruguay, a beautiful woman with long black hair and rapid-fire speech. She could chat long enough to find out what the customer needed. Tania also studied Spanish and Thai online, with the teens helping her with the Thai in exchange for her helping them study English and Spanish. All four of them complained that English was so much harder than Spanish to learn. Tania also had them learning both languages through free YouTube videos. They loved learning through songs and movies.
Their last photo shoot against cardboard walls painted sunny yellow and a bright cobalt blue had garnered a lot of Spanish speakers looking to decorate. Tania took a sizable order, totaling to nearly two thousand American dollars, based on villa pictures that the Spaniard had sent in a link to her.
Senor Padilla sounded very happy when Tania gave him many suggestions to help him decorate his villa. Tania had just hung up the phone when another Spanish-speaking call came through. Tania sighed, realizing that she wouldn't be able to create more Facebook ads until after lunch.
They kept the phones open for lunch by eating in shifts. Tania had a yearning for really good pad thai, so she walked over another block, sat down on a bright red stool, and watched the wizened old woman make the pad thai in a skillet, her arms moving like blurs stirring the dish, adding spices, lime juice, and peanuts at the end. The spices made Tania drool.
The rain had stopped, and the day was hot and muggy. What seemed like a thousand scooters and motorcycles zipped by, with the occasional car. It was far easier and cheaper to drive a motorcycle in Thailand, filling up was only a few dollars a month. People dressed for the heat, in light clothes. The sounds of Thai, English, Tagalog, and German fill the air, with the occasional Vietnamese and Indonesian thrown in. People gesticulated at each other and bought food from street vendors. Backpackers walked by with their red, blue, or black backpacks on their backs, poking at the maps on their cell phones. Digital nomads walked by, computers slung over their shoulders in backpacks and shoulder bags, on their way to Nimman, the section of the city where they liked to congregate and share work spaces and coffee shops.
It was a wild, loud bustle, so different from the hills and hollers where Tania had grown up. She loved every minute on the street, the passers-by fun to watch as she ate.
Tania missed Sanur, his quiet presence at his desk, their lunches and dinners. It was strange; he was her boss, yet he was becoming a friend. He had a presence. A gravity. When he entered a room, everyone paid attention to him. There was a formality to his speech and movements missing in modern society. He was fascinating, and mysterious. He had no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other social media accounts. No personal website. He was a blank.
She rushed back to work and stayed busy. People love free things, and they included small free items in each packet such as chopsticks or tiny statuettes. Coordinating items from all over the world was much easier than it would have been in the past because Sanur had set up drop-shipping warehouses in Prague, Panama City, and Buenos Aires. They kept their bestselling items there, greatly decreasing shipping times.
They were so busy that Tania literally could not hear herself think for the rest of the day. She went back to the same street vendor for dinner, watched the young people close out the office and go laughing in a knot to find food before settling down in a coffee shop with homework.
Despite her exhaustion, Tania knew she needed to let off some steam. She went home, changed into her tankini, lifted some weights, worked out on the elliptical machine, and headed for the pool. Tania swam until she couldn't lift her arms, went upstairs, showered, and dressed for a night out.
She found herself in a little club called Dancing Breeze, ordered a lime slush, then danced to calypso music. Tania stayed on the edge of the crowd, as most of them were paired off. Some of them were dancing rather dirty. Tania smiled with amusement. She realized that sex was something that could not be ignored, and at some point she’d have to get back into dating. Maybe her mysterious boss? She shook her head, startled at the thought. But right now the heat, music, and sweaty bodies was enough, just for tonight.
Tania ended up dancing with a group of young women that were getting slowly sloshed, an Argentinian, a German, a Kazakh, two Russians, and a Brit. She got the story from them in between sets. They had met on a tour van and have become fast friends on a wild tour of Southeast Asia. Tania took in their stories. Most of them were just out of college or in the middle of their last year. Two were digitally employed, living and working in Southeast Asia to save money.
Tania knew there were so many digital nomads living in Thailand that part of the economy was devoted to the shared workspaces, coffee shops, and low-rent housing that they enjoyed. Some were successful, some weren't. Tania admired their driving ambition, but most of them weren't savvy enough to truly make a go of it. Tania knew from experience that hard work didn't necessarily make a dent in the real world.
But this was not the night for rough-and-tumble musings. This was the night for dancing, lime slushies, laughter, and the occasional sloe-eyed gaze from across the room. It was either that or insanity. Tania chose dancing over losing her mind. She pretended
her boss, with his smile and urbane manners, would stop and dance with her at any minute. He was hot, and she was very much alive, in paradise.
Tania didn't get out of bed until nearly noon the next day, which was strange for her. Late nights just weren't her thing, not anymore. She wondered if her grandmother had rubbed off on her, waking up at the crack of dawn, rooster or no rooster. Her grandmother didn't raise them; they were actually nearby. So were fat sheep that became slim after shearing again in the spring, the lambs dancing in the spring sunlight, free to move without their winter coats. The endless acres of cows, chewing their cud under trees, the trees bending with the wind across the fields.
Tania had come a long way and she knew it, but she still looked back in her mind, primarily with her stomach. What she wanted was sage sausage in the morning, orange chicken for lunch, and hot biscuits with honey and a good ham steak for dinner. She didn't miss America, not really. She did miss the horses running across the field, foals running with their mothers, spindly legs stretching out for the first time. And, of course, the food.
Tania stretched, laughing, when she remembered selling candy for a school trip in a late April snowstorm, making people feel so sorry for her in her bedraggled state that she came in third in the entire school in candy sales. She laughed at herself, realizing she had actually been an entrepreneur from an early age.
You've come a long way baby, she thought to herself. Rise and shine. She got up, rolled out a yoga mat, and began her stretches. She followed with meditation, a short ten-minute app that cleared her head for the day. She desperately needed it, considering how busy her life was. And because of all her strange thoughts about her hot boss.
After breakfast, Tania went to a temple and did some meditation. She lit a stick of incense, letting the smoke rise to the sky. She put her sandals back on and walked around some more. She went back home to change out of her sweaty T-shirt and shorts and dressed in light blue shorts and a dark blue top with a feather emblazoned across the top and all the way around the side in red and gold.
