Rafferty starts to get up, but the man pushes the table back against him, trapping him partway up, without even glancing at him.
The man says to Rose, "I think you met John." He turns his head a quarter of an inch toward the other man. "Oh, that's right, you didn't. But you talked to him on the phone, remember? Out on the rocks." Finally looking at Rafferty, he says, "Stay down, Hubby,"
Rafferty shoves the table back and pushes himself the rest of the way up. He says, "I always stand when a lady comes to the table."
The man grins and extends a hand as though to shake. "Howard Horner," he says, and there's a blur of movement and a glint of silver, and Rose stabs Horner in the hand. She holds her steak knife close to her chest, ready to use it again.
For Rafferty, time shudders to a stop. He sees Rose, motionless, the knife pointed outward, sees the blood flowing very slowly down Horner's hand, sees Miaow, her mouth half open and both hands on the edge of the table as though she's about to bolt and run.
"Rosie," Horner says, without even pulling his hand back. It's dripping blood onto the tablecloth, but he doesn't give it so much as a glance. The other man has taken a couple of steps forward and then stopped. "This is how you say hi?" Horner asks.
A noise draws his eyes. Miaow is holding her steak knife, too, the serrated cutting edge facing Horner.
"The kid knows more about knives than you do," Horner says. "Slash, don't stab." His uninjured hand streaks out, so fast Rafferty barely sees it move, and Rose gasps and snatches her own hand back, but when the blur is over, Horner is holding Rose's knife. He leans forward, and Miaow's knife comes up. "Remember that," he says to Rose. "From an expert, remember?" He puts the knife back on the table, handle politely extended toward Rose. She makes no move to pick it up.
"I think the ladies would like you to leave," Rafferty says.
"Ladies," Horner says over his shoulder to the one called John. Then he brings his pale gaze back to Rafferty and holds Rafferty's eyes for a full minute without blinking, his expression absolutely flat.
Rafferty says, "I'll bet you giggle before I do."
Horner holds up the bleeding hand, his fingers spread out, the blood running down his wrist. "Pick a finger," he says to Rafferty. "I'll kill you with it."
Suddenly strangled with rage, Rafferty shoves the table back and starts to force his way around it as Horner, looking pleased and sleepy, takes a step back to let Rafferty come at him, but Rose, in a single sweeping gesture, pulls the tablecloth off, and plates, glasses, and silverware crash to the floor.
The restaurant goes silent. Everyone in the place is looking at them. Horner glances around the room, sees the attentive audience, and nods appreciatively at Rose. He bends down, picks up a folded napkin from the floor, and wraps it around the bleeding hand. "We in your neighborhood?" he asks, backing away. "Great, great. See you again sometime. Got a lot to catch up on. We never finished our last conversation."
The restaurant manager and some of the waiters and busboys are on their way over. Horner says, "Bye, Hubby." He looks at Miaow and makes a pistol with his unwrapped hand, points it at her, and drops the thumb that represents the hammer. "Keep your eyes open, cutie." The two men turn and walk toward the front door, Horner in the lead. Watching them go, watching their carriage and the roll of their shoulders, Rafferty thinks, Military.
Miaow is staring after them, wide-eyed, and Rose is apologizing to the manager, but all Rafferty can manage to say is, "Who the fuck was that?"
Rose says, "Someone I thought I'd killed."
Chapter 3
They sit for twenty minutes at the barren, grease-stained table, enduring the stares of the other diners. Rafferty and Miaow have been forced into silence by the intensity of Rose's anger. She's rigid with it. She sits with her back absolutely straight, both hands flat on the table with the fingers spread, the right hand resting on the handle of the knife, her breathing fast and shallow. She doesn't look at either of them. Her eyes are focused on something invisible that's one foot in front of her.
When some internal clock tells her it's time, she waves the waiter over and sends him out to secure them a taxi and then insists that three of the restaurant's male employees follow them onto the sidewalk and surround them as they get into the cab. Once in, she orders the driver to lock the doors, including his own, before she allows him to pull away from the curb. The car feels pressurized to Rafferty, as though the emotion trapped inside it might blow out the windows. When they've gone four or five blocks, Rose orders the driver to pull over fast without signaling, hands him fifty baht, and hurries them all out of the cab. To Rafferty's amazement, she grabs Miaow's hand and drags her into traffic. Rafferty trails helplessly behind his wife and child as they thread their way between speeding cars and trucks and motorbikes and tuk-tuks to the center island, where they clamber over the knee-high barrier that divides the opposing streams of traffic on Silom. Then they dodge suicidally between vehicles, setting off horns all the way, to the far curb, where Rose flags a second cab. All the while she is looking back to see whether anyone is making a U-turn at the divider break. When she's satisfied that no one did, she tells the new driver to make the first turn that's a through street.
"You look behind us," she says to Rafferty.
"Who was he?" Miaow asks, her voice well into its upper register. She sounds eight again. "You thought you killed him?"
"I hoped I had," Rose says. "Anyone back there, Poke?"
"As far as I can tell, no," Rafferty says. "But, you know, headlights are headlights."
"They would have had to cross Silom if they were on foot." Rose says in Thai. Her voice is almost mechanically flat, the words precise and uninflected. "Or make a U-turn if they were in a car. I didn't see anybody cross the street, and I know nobody made a U-turn."
"Well, then," Rafferty says.
The driver says, "Somebody following you?"
Rose, in the front seat, says, "Let's say yes."
"No problem," says the driver. He punches the accelerator, and their backs bump against the seats. After a couple of blocks, he makes a sudden left onto a narrow street where only a pair of run-down restaurants, so chalky with fluorescent light they might be a chain of competing morgues, show any sign of occupancy. No lights follow them. The next right takes them onto an even narrower street, a vista of dark windows and padlocked gates except for a gaggle of hostess bars that signal their presence with pink neon and bored-looking clusters of evening-gowned girls, all curled hair and bare arms, sitting on plastic chairs. The cab turns right again and then makes another left immediately, this time onto a street parallel to Silom that runs behind a row of apartment houses, set above cavernous, sunken concrete garages. The driver peels, tires squealing, down a sloping driveway into one of the garages, takes a spiral ramp up one level, and then exits the garage on the front side of the building, which puts them on Silom again, a good mile or so from the restaurant.
"Nobody back there now," he announces. "Where do you want to go?"
"Soi Pipat," Rose says. Then she says, without turning to face Rafferty and Miaow, "Don't ask me any questions, because I won't answer them. I'll talk when I'm ready."
Rafferty says, "Sure, sure. I had a wonderful time."
Miaow says, "You cut him."
"I said no questions."
"That wasn't a question," Miaow says.
This time Rose's head snaps around. "Then what do you want, Miaow?" she demands. "Do you want me to agree with you? Fine, I agree with you. I cut him. Is there anything else on your mind?"