The application fee for Siam's Golden Voice Stage was three thousand baht. Another two thousand five hundred for the demo studio. Another nine thousand for Mom's room, which had been overdue for two months. Mook sat counting the money in the shoebox three times before Auntie Phai told her to pack all of her mother's stage outfits into a suitcase and bring them along.
"P'Daeng recommended this shop. It's in the alley behind Worachak." Auntie Phai led the way, her high heels striking the pavement in a steady rhythm. "The owner buys every kind of antique. Those old luk krung costumes are worth more than you think. Don't sell them cheap yet, you bitch. I'll do the negotiating myself."
The shop stood at the very end of the alley. There was no sign and no light out front. The accordion metal door hung half-open. Inside, it was always one shade darker than outside, no matter where you stood. Wooden cabinets lined the walls all the way to the ceiling. Inside them were pocket watches, rings, lanterns, cameras, hairpins, and a leather belt with a buckle set with a deep red stone, almost black.
The shopkeeper sat behind the counter in an old brown shirt, both sleeves rolled up to exactly the same height.
Mook stopped in the middle of the shop.
"My mother's funeral," she said. "You came."
"I go to every funeral I need to attend," he replied, his voice as flat as someone reading a receipt. "I'm truly sorry. Daoruang had one of the best voices I've ever heard. And I've been listening for a very long time."
Auntie Phai immediately hoisted the suitcase onto the counter. She pulled out the sequined outfits one by one, describing their merits as if she were selling beachfront property: this one had been worn on Channel 7 in '88, this one had been tailored at an old-established dressmaker's shop, and back then it had cost the equivalent of two baht of gold. The shopkeeper listened to the end, nodded slowly, and offered them a lump sum.
Auntie Phai went silent for two seconds, a new record.
"You bitch," she muttered. "That's more than I was going to bargain for."
"I don't haggle," he said. "I price things according to what they're truly worth."
He counted out the money and set it on the counter, but he didn't release his hand from the stack of bills.
"But there's one other item I haven't priced yet," he said, placing a small velvet box beside the money. "Your mother left it with me before you were born. Whenever its owner stops using it, it comes back to me. Then I have to find the next person."
Inside the box was a pair of pearl earrings. The pearls were round and gray with a pink tinge. Their silver posts were tarnished nearly black.
Mook knew without comparing them that they fit perfectly into the two hollows in the vine-carved wooden box lying in her bag.
"Did my mother die because of these?" she asked.
"Your mother died of heart failure. That's what the doctor wrote," the shopkeeper replied. "I haven't lied to you about a single thing. But I haven't told you everything, either. I can only tell you what you'll get—and what you'll have to pay."
"Then what will I get?"
"When you put them on, you'll hear the last words of the dead," he said. "But only the words of someone who died where you're standing. Whatever they left unsaid at that moment, you'll hear that entire sentence."
Auntie Phai burst out laughing, calling him a flea-market fortune-teller, then told Mook to take the money and leave right now.
Mook picked up the earrings and put them on.
The shop fell silent for one heartbeat.
Then all the voices came at once.
"Did you turn off the stove?" a man's voice said from the left corner of the shop, where a glass display case filled with watches now stood. His tone was perfectly ordinary, as if he were asking about dinner.
"Don't go yet. Don't," a woman's voice came from the stairs leading upstairs.
"It's hot," a child said. "It's hot now, Mom."
"Straighten the tablecloth a little." "Thirty-seven baht." "It's okay, sweetheart. It's okay." "Hey, mister. Hey." The voices overlapped, rising from the floor, the walls, and the alley outside. Short, ordinary sentences. No farewells. No dying words. Not one of them knew they were speaking the last words of their lives.
Mook stood rigid in the middle of the shop, pressing both hands over her ears until they hurt. The voices weren't coming through her ears. They were rising from inside her.
Auntie Phai grabbed her shoulders and shook her. Her mouth moved, but her voice arrived half a second later than usual, like someone shouting from the other side of thick glass.
Mook took off the earrings. Everything stopped at once, leaving only the fan and the sound of her own breathing.
"My mother isn't here," she said to the shopkeeper, her voice strange even to herself.
"Your mother didn't die in my shop," he replied. "If you want to hear what she left unsaid, you have to stand where she fell. Exactly on that spot. Not beside it."
The stage at that theater wasn't open to the public. It wasn't available for rent, and relatives weren't allowed up to lay flowers. Once a year, it opened for one group only: the people who passed the selection and went up to stand in the center on Siam's Golden Voice Stage.
Mook turned to look at Auntie Phai. She stood with her arms crossed in the doorway, paler than when they had walked in.
"You bitch," Auntie Phai said softly. It was the first time she'd ever said it softly. "Don't take those there, Mook."
Mook put the earrings back in the box, then slipped the box into her bag.
"What about the price?" she asked the shopkeeper.
"I'm not charging you now." He smiled. "I always collect later. Everything has a price. You pay when it's most expensive for you."
That night, Mook signed the application at the dining table. The band-name field already contained Mookdao Ngern. She filled in her own name in the blank above it, writing more slowly than usual, because it was the first time in her life she'd written her own name and felt that it wasn't the name of somebody's child.
On the table beside the application, the vine-carved wooden box was tightly shut. It was no longer empty.