"More or less. You speak it well."
"Ho, no," she says. "Only little bit." It sounds like "leeten bit." "Where you come from?"
"U.S.A."
She raises an index finger as though she is going to lecture him, but the message is mathematical. She says, "U.S.A. numbah one."
"No," Rafferty says. "Thailand is number one."
"Hah." Her grin is enormously white. He has passed the national test. "Caffee lon now." She disappears behind the counter, only the top of her head visible. She is no taller than Miaow.
Miaow, he thinks. Miaow is Rafferty's family now. Rose is Rafferty's family now. It has taken him years to assemble a home, and now he has one. I'm really hasip-hasip now, he thinks. I have a Thai family. With his mother's Filipina blood evident in the high bones of his face and his straight black hair, he has often been mistaken for half Thai, although he's only one-quarter Asian. Still, he thinks, he's genetically entitled to his yellow heart.
The coffee, when it is slapped down in front of him, is thick enough to whip. He lifts the heavy china mug and stares at the rain.
"Think too much," Happy Together says, standing beside him. "Think too much, no good."
"Thinking about good things," Rafferty says. "I've got a little girl at home just like you."
"Thai girl?" Happy Together gives the operatic rain a disdainful glance. She's used to it.
"One hundred percent," Rafferty says. Happy Together glances at his face, looks again. "You, what? Hasip- hasip? " "Part Filipino." "I know where Pipinenes are," she says, pointing more or less east. "Over there." It comes out "Oweh dah." "My daughter's smart, too." She thinks for a second, pushing her lower lip out. "Some farang no have baby, right?" "Right." He has been asked this question before. Most Thais cannot imagine an adult choosing not to have children. "Why? Why not have baby? No have baby, not happy." "I don't know. But you're right. Babies are necessary." Happy Together fills her cheeks with air as she checks the dictionary in her head and then squints at him. "You say what?" "Necessary," Rafferty repeats, following it with the Thai word. "Word too big," she says decisively. "Not for you. You're smart." She goes up on tiptoes. "You know twelve times twelve?" "One hundred thirty-eight." "Ho." She punches him on the leg, hard enough to raise a lump. "You joking me." "See how smart you are? And look, you've already got your own shop." She balls her fist to punch him again and thinks better of it. Maybe her hand hurts. "My mama make shop. But I make caffee. Good, na?" "Excellent." Rafferty brings the cup to his lips and watches as someone comes into sight through the window, shrouded in rain. A woman, her clothes pasted to her slender form. She does not keep her head down against the downpour but shields her eyes with a hand, obviously looking for something or someone. He watches idly for a moment, wondering why she hasn't ducked inside to wait out the storm, and then, with a start, realizes who she is. He pushes back his stool. "How many baht?" he asks Happy Together. "Twenty. Caffee no good?" The girl has passed from sight. So he was right; she had reversed direction, then turned around and followed him again. "It's excellent," he says. "But I just saw someone I know." He gives Happy Together a bright blue fifty-baht note and hurries out into the rain.
The moment he sets foot on the street, a sheet of lightning flattens everything, turning the raindrops ice-white and freezing them in midfall. The boom that follows feels like his own skull crumpling. He starts walking, as fast as he can without breaking into a run, waiting for the girl's form to solidify through the gray curtain in front of him.
He had meant to tell Prettyman to call off the trackers. He decided over his morning coffee to drop the book idea as too risky for someone with a wife and child, kicking off the first day of his new life with a firm resolve that made him feel briefly adult, despite a twinge of resentment; the book's topic had interested him. But now things were different. He had responsibilities. He'd write magazine articles. He'd review books-that sounded safe. Maybe he'd do advertising copy.
The prospect had all the allure of a glass of warm milk, but his wife and daughter would be happier. He and Rose would economize; they'd pay Miaow's tuition, and then worry about everything else. He'd left the apartment with every intention of abandoning the project. Then he had been distracted, thinking about the conversation about Elson, and he'd forgotten to tell Prettyman he was quitting.
Or perhaps, he acknowledges, he likes the excitement. Or maybe he doesn't want to let go of the advance money.
But now he can clear it up.
He passes a drugstore, a restaurant, a small hotel, a hair salon full of women anxiously lining the window, staring at the rain that will ruin their new hairdos, barely paid for. Cars splash by in the street, throwing up sheets of water three feet high. The light increases by several f-stops, and he realizes the rain is lifting. He can see half a block ahead now.
The girl is nowhere in sight.
He breaks into a run, his feet slapping through the water. Then some giant hand turns off the faucet and the rain stops, as suddenly as it began. The boulevard yawns in front of him, gleaming wet, its sidewalk almost deserted.
She must have turned into a side street. He looks back, certain he didn't pass one, and sees nothing. Half a block ahead, though, a tuk- tuk fords a temporary lake across the boulevard and vanishes to the right, obviously heading down a soi. Without breaking stride, Rafferty chases it and enters the soi.
And sees her, walking briskly, almost a block away. She turns, checking behind her, and spots him. At the same moment, she sees the tuk- tuk and raises a hand to flag it. The tuk-tuk swerves suicidally to the curb, its driver having obviously seen her face, and she climbs in. As it pulls away, she looks back at Rafferty again. Then, with that same quarter smile, she lifts her hand and waves good-bye.
13
My Sweetness Is Classified magazine article.
His notebook is pocket-size, awkward for anything but brief reminders, but he scribbles in it anyway, sitting at the outdoor table until the rain drives him inside. "Spytown," he titles it, ten thousand, maybe fifteen thousand words about the oddly matched collection of spies who, like Prettyman, drifted to Bangkok when the world no longer looked like it was heading for a shooting war. He'd met a few of them. His second conversation with Prettyman had taken place in a bar so discreet it didn't even have a sign. Rafferty had needed half an hour, trekking up and down the soi on foot, to find it, and when he went inside, it was full of spies.
Well, retired spies, or so they said. Now older and fatter, they looked like traveling salesmen whose territories had shrunk out from under them. There was something unanchored about them, something about the way their eyes checked the room without settling on anything, the way they looked at every face twice, and then twice again, that was unnerving. They seemed always to be reassuring themselves that they had an exit, from the room, from the conversation. Rafferty had heard it said that the only people who were at home everywhere were kings and prostitutes. These men were on the other end of the scale. They weren't at home anywhere.
All of them were men. They congregated in the booths in groups that assembled and broke up constantly, rehashing operations from twenty years ago, operations on which they'd been on opposing sides. It quickly became apparent that half the men in the bar would have killed the other half on sight in 1985.
Nineteen eighty-five: the year his father had returned to China.
Prettyman had been different in the bar. Rafferty is trying to capture the difference in words when he notices that the rain has stopped again, and he grabs his coffee and his notebook and moves back outside. Arthit will be able to see him better out there, and the air-conditioning on his wet clothing has given him a chill.