"The cake is perfect," Rose says. "I'll remember it my whole life. Look, you can hardly tell it was broken."
"Shall we sing?" Rafferty asks, sitting on the floor, on the other side of the table so he can see them both. His mouth is dry. "You can start, Miaow."
Miaow sits up and crosses her hands in her lap. It makes her look like a miniature lawyer. "Not yet. I have to tell you something first." Then she stops, her eyes on a spot on the table. After a moment she begins to move her lips as though trying out the words she will say. Finally she says, "Ohhhhhhh." She kicks one heel against the couch. "I don't know."
"Don't know what?" Rose leans toward her.
"Don't know if you'll…" Miaow's eyes go to Rafferty with an unfamiliar urgency. "Promise you won't get mad."
"Me?" Rafferty asks. "When was the last time I got mad at you?"
"Just a few minutes ago," she says, "but you always forget." And to Rose, "Maybe you… maybe you'll be mad."
Rose touches the tip of Miaow's microscopic nose. "Why would we get mad at you?"
Miaow turns her head away from Rose's finger. This time her heel strikes the couch harder, and a puff of dust halos the candle. "I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have…"
Rose glances at Rafferty, who raises his shoulders a tenth of an inch and lets them drop. "Shouldn't have what?" Rose asks.
"Ohhh…" and suddenly Miaow is blinking fast, a sure sign she's on the verge of tears. "It's… it's dumb. I mean, stupid."
"You're never stupid, Miaow."
She reaches across the table and snatches the card she made. "Yes I am. I'm stupid. Why would you want-"
"Whatever it is," Rose says, "if you want it, I do, too."
Miaow looks at her hard enough to see through her. "You promise?"
"I promise. From here." Rose touches her heart. "To here." She touches Miaow's. "Tell us."
"I can't," Miaow says. Then she kicks the couch again, jams her eyes closed, and shoves the card at Rose. "Go ahead," she says.
Rose holds the card to the candlelight. "What a beautiful envelope. Did you draw this?"
"Uh-huh." Miaow's voice is barely audible.
"Here goes." Rose slips a nail beneath the flap and opens it. Miaow hears it and grabs her lower lip between her teeth, eyes still closed. Rose removes the card, looks down at it, and her eyes dart to Rafferty's with an amazed appeal Rafferty has never seen in them before. Miaow has opened her eyes and is watching her with all her being, chewing her lower lip.
"Oh," Rose says. It's her turn to blink. "Oh, Miaow."
"Is it-" Miaow fidgets with her entire body. "I mean, are you, are you-"
"No, no, never." She leans down and kisses Miaow on the forehead. "I'm honored."
"You are?" Miaow's arms are still knotted, as if she is cold.
"It makes me very happy," Rose says. She looks down at the card again and then across at Rafferty. "Poke," she says, and then she swallows. "Say happybirthday to Miaow."
"To Miaow?"
Rose turns the card toward him. It depicts a very tall woman with long hair holding hands with a very short girl whose hair is severely parted in the middle. They are surrounded by colored candles, a wreath of flame. Underneath the picture, in English, are the words HAPPY- BIRTHDAY TO US. "Let me read the inside," Rose says. "It says-" Her eyes come back to Rafferty's, and she exhales and starts again. "It says, 'Dear Rose. I don't know my happybirthday. Can I have yours? Because we love each other. Sincerely, Miaow.'"
"It's dumb," Miaow says, close to tears.
"It's beautiful," Rose says. "It's the best present I could have." She puts both arms around Miaow, and Miaow pushes her head fiercely against Rose's chest.
"Hey," Rafferty says, "Let me have some of that." He moves to the couch and wraps his arms around both of them, with Rose in the middle.
"We don't have a present for Miaow," Rafferty says.
"My happybirthday is my present," Miaow says into Rose's shirt.
"We have to do better than that," Rafferty says. He leans across Rose and smooths Miaow's hair. He knows she hates it, but he can't help himself. "Is there something you want?"
"I have everything," she says. A year ago she had been living on the sidewalk.
"There must be something."
"Wait a minute." Miaow sits forward. "Can I be nine?" Her eyes travel from Rafferty to Rose and back again. "If this is my happybirth- day, I should be-"
"Okay," Rafferty says. "You're nine."
"Oh," Rose says, sitting bolt upright. "We have something else." She reaches down and grabs her purse and then roots around in it. When her hand comes out, it has the Totoro T-shirt in it. "And look," she says, bringing up the other one. "One for each of us. We can dress the same on our happybirthday."
Miaow looks from one shirt to the other, and stuns Rafferty by bursting into a wail. Then she grabs the T-shirt and runs from the room. "Help me," Rose says urgently, fumbling with the top button on her shirt. "You start from the bottom."
In less than a minute, the white shirt has been shoved behind the couch and Rose is wearing her Totoro shirt. Miaow comes back into the room wearing hers, scrubbing at her eyes with her forearm. "We're twins," Rose says. "We have the same birthday, so we're twins." Miaow climbs back up on the couch and leans on Rose's shoulder, two furry forest animals in their nest.
"Happybirthday to all of us," Rose says. "It's everybody's happybirthday." She kisses Miaow on the forehead and turns to kiss Rafferty on the neck. Then, very softly, she licks his ear.
7
Women Are the Only People Who Look Good Naked
W here are you going?" Rose's smooth thigh lands atop his, warm as fresh bread. "Just turning on the light."
"I can find what I want in the dark," Rose says in Thai. Her hand wanders down over the sensitive skin of his stomach, heading for the chakra he has come to think of as his own personal theme park, Fun World. She grabs hold. "It's not like it moves around."
"That's not what you said a few minutes ago. You seemed pretty happy with the way it moved around."
"Thai women learn early," she says with an affectionate squeeze, "to seem happy."
He stretches his right arm as far as it will go, and his fingers knock against a small box and just brush the base of the lamp on the bedside table. Rose raises her hand far enough to sink claws lightly into his stomach, and he gives up and relaxes into the pillow. "I am happy," he says, surprising himself. He can't remember ever having said that before. Rose bumps him with her hip and adds emphasis with a little fingernail action around the navel. "I'd be happier with a cigarette." "So? We're in Bangkok, not Los Angeles. People are allowed to smoke in Bangkok." "They're in the living room," she says. Then she says, "I think I should stop smoking in front of Miaow." "If Miaow's in the room at the moment," Rafferty says, "smoking is the least of our worries." "Listen to yourself. After all those years on the street, do you think there's anything Miaow doesn't know about sex?" "She's probably theoretically familiar with the grunt mechanics," Rafferty says. "But the secrets of unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged, the mystical tantric sexual techniques of the masters-I doubt she knows much about those." "Was that what you just did? I should have paid attention." Rose runs the tip of her tongue over his shoulder. "The 'grunt mechanics'? Do I grunt?" "Like a sumo wrestler." "You're just being sweet." He can hear the smile in her voice. "We're not getting much done, are we?" he asks. Rose turns her head so her lips brush his chest when she talks, and the hairs on the back of his neck snap to attention. "Aren't we?" "Well, I was going to turn on the light. Then you wanted a cigarette. Instead we're just lying here." "Actually, I was waiting for you to get up and bring it to me. It's my happybirthday, isn't it?" "It was. Must be three or four in the morning by now." "Already?" She stretches. "I guess I did have fun." He jams his eyes shut tight, makes a widemouthed goblin's face in the dark to relieve the tension building in his chest, and lets his features return to normal. "I have something for you," he says, flipping back the covers and getting up. "Besides the cigarette? Turn on the light, I want to look at you." "Not a chance. Women are the only people who look good naked." "Some of us actually do like men," Rose says.