Poke says, "I know why Noi married you."
"Really?" Arthit says. He stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray, so hard that sparks fly. "I wish I did."
It seems silly at this point not to go home, now that the only things worth protecting have already been taken. So when Arthit heads for the station to line up his two cops, Poke goes back to the apartment.
The place feels immensely empty. When he first rented it, almost three years ago, it seemed like the perfect size for a man on his own. He filled it completely. He had a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and an office. He rattled happily from one room to another, doing his work, making his mess, and cleaning it up. He ate at the kitchen counter and drank his morning coffee on the balcony overlooking the Chinese cemetery his landlady had proudly pointed out as the source of the building's dubiously good feng shui. Never once had it felt too big for him.
Now it seems enormous.
There's nothing in it anymore that is his alone. His office is Miaow's room. The bedroom is the secret space he shares with Rose. The living room, the kitchen, all the objects in them-they belong to his family. The pencils have Rose's tooth marks on them. Miaow's sneakers have left ghost marks on the carpet. The surface of the sliding glass door has reflected all of them.
Living on that barren acreage in Lancaster, enveloped in his father's silences, Rafferty grew used to being alone. His mother was affectionate one moment and distant the next. Frank's attention was thousands of miles away. The solitary child who lived in the space between these adults developed into a solitary man. In many ways he had enjoyed it. Being alone gave him freedom. He did what he wanted, when he wanted. After he discovered Asia, he went where he wanted. A passport and an airline ticket were the only traveling companions he needed. Raf- ferty persuaded himself gradually that he had chosen to be alone, that this was the life he had created for himself, a life he filled completely. Now, standing in the center of his empty living room, he asks himself whether he could survive being alone again.
He has things to do to prepare for the next day-one thing at a time, as the world keeps reminding him-but first he goes down the hall into Miaow's room. The cardboard smiley face she drew to mean "Come right in" is hanging on the doorknob, its companion, the frowny face temporarily banished to one of her drawers.
Except for the mussed bed, abandoned in the middle of the night, her room is, as always, immaculate. Her shoes are in a regimentally straight line. There are still times when Miaow sits in the center of the floor, carefully lining up her shoes so she can scatter them and line them up again. For most of her life, she went barefoot.
Drawings in colored pencil are taped to the walls, along with a few older ones in crayon. Here and there he sees a version of the cheerful house below a blue sky and a fat primary-yellow sun that children everywhere draw, but most of the pictures are of the three of them: Rose, preternaturally tall and slender; Rafferty in an ugly T-shirt; and between them-always between them-Miaow, her skin darker than theirs, the part in her hair drawn with a ruler. The wall above the dresser is filled with pictures, but lower and to the left Rafferty spots a brand-new one. He leans down to take a closer look. It shows a lopsided birthday cake, candles gleaming, with three people barely visible in the darkness behind it. In the center of the cake, written in the inevitable pink, is the number 9.
Rafferty lets out more air than he knew he had in him. The cake. It feels to Rafferty, at that moment, like they had baked that cake and lit those candles months ago. But they had celebrated Rose's birthday on Friday night, and this is Sunday night. It had been only forty-eight hours.
"I'll bring you back," he says to the room. "Both of you. I promise."
He closes the door behind him gently and goes into the living room to call Peachy.
32
In the Bag
Peachy and Rafferty are watching from a stall four doors away when the two uniformed cops and Elson, looking sharp and mordantly businesslike in his black suit, enter the building at 8:10 on Monday morning. Peachy is perspiring as anxiously as someone waiting for a firing squad, and Poke carries a wrinkled brown supermarket shopping bag. When she sees Elson, Peachy takes a step back, and Rafferty grabs the sleeve of her blouse to make sure she won't keep going.
She has already been upstairs once, at 6:15, to open the more daunting of the two locks, so they wait only three minutes-enough, Raf- ferty is sure, for the cops to pop the easy lock-and then he more or less hauls her through the street door and up the stairs. Rafferty stands to one side and puts an encouraging hand in the small of her back. When Peachy tries to slip her key into the lock, the door swings open.
Men's startled voices, Peachy expressing surprise. Rafferty counts to ten and gives the door a shove.
Peachy is up against the wall to the left of the door. One of the cops has the top filing drawer open, and the other is going through the papers on Peachy's desk. Elson stands beside the cop at the desk, one hand extended to Peachy, palm out, meaning Stay there. The door hinge squeals as Rafferty pushes in, and all of them look up.
"What the hell are you doing?" Rafferty says, bringing the paper bag protectively in front of him. And then he watches their eyes.
Elson glances down at the bag and opens his suit coat. Rafferty can practically see the word "weapon" form in his mind. One of the two cops-the one at the filing cabinet-looks at Rafferty and goes back to work. The cop sitting behind Peachy's desk sees the bag, and his jaw drops. His hand starts to go for the middle drawer and stops.
His nameplate, pinned on the left side of his chest, says petchara.
"We're conducting a legal search, under authority of the Bangkok police," Elson says. "Stand over there, next to your friend, and stay there. Where's Miss, um…?"
"She's up north," Rafferty says, going to stand next to Peachy. "The buffalo is in the hospital."
"Excuse me?"
"The family buffalo," Rafferty explains. "Fallen arches, very painful. It's something of a crisis for a farming family. She's gone up to offer moral support."
"Moral?" Elson asks.
"That's twice," Rafferty says. "One more remark like that and I'll break your glasses in half and show you how to use them as a suppository."
"It's too bad for the rest of us," Elson says, "that someone once told you that you were amusing." His voice is level, but there are pinched little white lines on either side of his nose. "Get back to it," he says to the cops, and they return to work, although Officer Petchara has to tear his eyes from the paper bag first.
"Why are you here, Mr. Rafferty?" Elson asks. "I didn't think you were in the domestics business."
"Sloppy research," Rafferty says. "I own twenty percent of the company."
Elson smiles. His front teeth are uneven and pushed in slightly, a characteristic Rafferty has always associated with thumb suckers. "Your name's not on the license."
"Gee," Rafferty says, "am I in trouble?"
"You're willing to admit you're part owner?"
"I just did."
"In writing," Elson says.
"Sure," Rafferty says. "Though I doubt anyone will ever read it."
"What's in the bag?"
"My supplies." Rafferty starts to open it. Elson puts his hand inside his coat, and Petchara looks like he will slide off Peachy's chair.
"Very slowly," Elson says. His hand comes out with an automatic in it. "Open it very slowly, and don't put your hand inside. Tilt it and show it to me."
"I'm afraid you're going to feel a little silly," Rafferty says. "Of course, you're probably used to that." He holds the bag wide open and tips it toward Elson. It contains what looks like the back half of a rooster.