For the Dead (30 page)

Rafferty says, “You sure?” but he’s already got his door open and he’s on the pavement before she can say, “Yes.” He’s running almost weightlessly, buoyed up by an explosion in the center of his chest, something lighter than air and apparently combustible, something that feels surprisingly like hope: He’s
finally
going to get a chance to wring someone’s neck. All the fury and frustration he’s been compressing these past few days is expanding into this
strange bubble that’s lightening him, pushing him forward so he’s gaining on the man rapidly, but the man glances back and sees him, giving Rafferty a brief glimpse of his face. Instantly, the man is stretched out, streamlined as a whippet, taking steps that seem, to Rafferty, far too long for a man of his size.

The face, the
face
. As Rafferty pushes himself faster, he does an automatic short-term-memory ransack and comes up blank. It’s a common enough face, dark-skinned, wide-nostriled, but with small, deep-set eyes and a low forehead that combine to give him an unusual foreshortened, thuggish look that, Rafferty thinks, is probably what made Miaow recognize him. The face’s slightly brutish cast is not something she’d forget.

He’s closed the gap to a couple of car lengths, but Silom is blossoming in front of him, and with one more quick glance back, the man disappears to the left, down the Silom sidewalk.

Rafferty is there a second or two later, just in time to terrify a Chinese senior citizen, one of forty or fifty strung out in a staggered squadron, three abreast. They’re following a young woman in a bright yellow hat who’s holding up an orange flag with Chinese characters on it. The woman he nearly knocked down is patting her chest like she’s got the vapors, and all along the line behind her, there are small rear-end collisions as people are forced into the people in front of them by the people behind them. By the time Rafferty has dog-trotted an apology down the ranks, the man with the low forehead is long gone.

Poke leans against a store window, feeling the energy drain from his body as the Chinese seniors scroll by, probably off to take some cautious snapshots of Patpong. Feeling as bleak as a cinder, he turns and makes his way back to the cross street.

Miaow and Andrew are there on the sidewalk, Andrew’s eyes wide and Miaow’s faintly accusing. “Too many people,” Poke says, fighting for breath. He heads for the car, the kids trotting behind.

“You move
fast
,” Andrew says, and Miaow sniffs.

“Yeah, but he’s gone.” He feels the constriction in his throat
and recognizes it as pure hatred, so he turns away from the kids, opens the SUV’s door and climbs in, saying to Chinh, “Come on, once more around, just to look for a tail.”

Chinh says, “No tail.”

Rafferty chokes back a spasm of rage and gets his breathing under control before he replies. “Well, okay, but we need to get going.” To Miaow, he says, “We have to feed your mother.”

R
AFFERTY
’
S SO BUSY
keeping an eye on the road behind them that he misses a left and gets turned around as they approach First Home. Fixing it requires them to backtrack for eight or ten unencouraging minutes through some of the grimmest streets in the most impoverished area of Klong Toey, the river gleaming darkly below them, glimpsed between slanting plywood shacks roofed with corrugated tin and sheets of plastic. Here and there the shacks have been razed to make way for windowless warehouses to receive the unending flow of goods from the port. There are very few streetlights. Now and then the SUV’s headlights bring out of the darkness the figures of furtive children in outsize T-shirts or a shirtless man.

His face practically pressed to the glass, Andrew says, “Where
are
we?”

Miaow says, “Poor-people world.”

Rafferty’s phone rings, and he punches it up and says, “Hi. Yeah, we’re coming. Got a stop to make first, and then we need to get something to eat.” He listens for a moment, then turns around. “How are you, Andrew?”

Andrew says, “Huh?”

Rafferty says, “He’s fine. He says to tell you
huh
. We’re all together with Chinh at the wheel.”

“My father?” Andrew says.

“Turn right here,” Rafferty says. “This thing that looks like an alley, and go slow because the potholes will take your wheels off.” Into the phone he says, “We’re in Klong Toey. Up there, up there,”
he says to Chinh. “Visiting someone,” he says into the phone, and then he closes it and calls back to Rose, “They’ve got food waiting for us at the embassy.”

Chinh stops the SUV beside a featureless wall across from a low, mottled concrete building. The building has only a few windows, and most of those are cracked or broken and dark. Two of the windows on the ground floor are defined as rectangles of a faint, chalky glow, a chilly, damp-looking light that might be emitted by the phosphorescence of decaying wood.

Andrew says, “What kind of place is this?
Who
are we visiting?”

Rose, who’s getting ready to climb out, says, “Miaow? Why don’t you tell him?”

Rafferty, his door already open, angles the rearview mirror around to see Miaow leaning against the window, her eyes squeezed shut. As he gets out, he hears her say to Andrew, “Come with me.”

W
ITH
P
OKE IN
the lead, holding Rose’s hand, they climb two crumbling concrete steps and pass through a wide-open double door into a big, airless room. A few stubby, cobwebbed fluorescent tubes flicker from the ceiling, surrounded by pairs of sockets designed to house others. About thirty cots stagger in random-looking rows across the concrete floor. Most of them are bare, but seven or eight have blankets folded on them and cardboard boxes shoved beneath them to serve as lockers. Three boys huddle on one cot, their heads bent over some kind of game on a cell phone. The boy holding the phone has four fresh, deep gouges, painted with Mercurochrome, running from his left eye to his jawline. Two other boys, possibly ten or twelve years old, lie on cots by themselves, three cots apart at a safe distance from the other boys, bringing their heads up to get a look at the newcomers.

The boys who are alone are filthy. Their skin is mottled with sweat and dirt, their hair and clothes oily and ragged. Both of them stare, and Rafferty thinks it’s probably Rose who’s drawn their attention, but when he looks more closely, he sees it’s Miaow and Andrew. One of the filthy boys ostentatiously rolls over, turning his back to them, and makes a noise like a fart. Andrew swallows so loudly Rafferty can hear him. The boys hovering over the cell phone game glance quickly at Miaow and Andrew, and
gather themselves into a tighter knot. Their eyes are sullen, resentful, and perhaps, Rafferty thinks, ashamed.

One of them clears his throat noisily and spits on the floor. Then the three turn back to their game. Only the second dirty boy, the youngest boy in the room, continues to look at them, and his eyes have a peculiar intensity, as though he believes one of these clean, well-dressed children will suddenly be revealed as his long-lost brother or sister.

Miaow chooses him and says, “Hi.”

He says, “Hi.” His voice has an odd foghorn quality, as though it doesn’t get much use.

The boy with the gouged cheek says, “The zoo is over on Rama Five.”

Miaow takes a deep, deep breath and says, perhaps a bit too loudly, “I know where the zoo is. I used to eat out of the trashcans there. Before Boo found me.”

The boys all study her. Even the filthy one, who’d turned his back on them, sits up and stares at her. But the most intense gaze in the room is Andrew’s. His arms hang so loosely, his jaw is so slack, that it looks to Rafferty like his body is empty and about to fold to the floor.

Rose says to Poke, “Let’s leave them alone,” and leads him, still holding his hand, across the room and through the gap in the partitions that forms the door to Boo’s office.

T
HE SPACE IS
as jammed with furniture as Rafferty’s father’s old garage, back in Lancaster, California. In addition to Boo’s desk and his three chairs and the big whiteboard, three cots and three folding metal chairs like the ones in the makeshift hospital room have shouldered their way in. Two of Boo’s chairs have been shoved against the partition on the right like wallflowers at a dance. Color pictures from magazines, mostly of teenage girls with enviable clothes, are taped to the walls. The place smells richly of garlic.

Sitting at the chair behind Boo’s desk, with a heaping, apparently untouched, plastic plate of noodles in front of her, is Treasure. She’s wearing a man’s wrinkled, pale-blue shirt that looks enormous on her narrow shoulders. It’s buttoned to the top, but it hangs loosely enough to bare her collarbones, still prominent after weeks of starvation. Her dark tangle of hair has been pulled back and secured, on top and off-center, by a bright red plastic clip in the shape of a heart, obviously a loan or a gift. Dok sits on the desk’s nearest corner, next to the broken electric fan. He has a fork in his hand, heaped with noodles. Both of them turn quickly when Rafferty comes in, but the moment Rose follows him through the door, he might as well be invisible. Their eyes float to her and stay there.

“Hello, Treasure,” Rafferty says.

She looks at him for a tenth of a second and then she lowers her head and her eyes drop to the plate in front of her, and then skitter over it before they slide back up to Rose’s face and stay there.

Rose says, “So you’re Treasure. He told me you were pretty,” she says, coming the rest of the way into the room, “but you’re not. You’re beautiful. Your mother must be exquisite.”

At the word
mother
, Treasure ducks her head lower, and her hand accidentally knocks the plate sideways. Dok catches the plate without spilling a noodle, as though he’s done it all his life. He says to Rose, “Who are you?”

“I’m Rose. I’m Poke’s wife. You’re Dok, right?”

Dok grabs his lower lip between his teeth and then nods.

“Where’s—” Rose makes a puzzled show of scratching her head. “Where’s—”

“Chalee,” Dok says. “She’s getting more food.”

Rose lifts her chin toward the plate and says, “Is that good?”

Dok nods, but Rose’s eyes are on Treasure. “Do you like it, Treasure?”

Treasure closes her mouth tightly, and shrugs.

“Can I have a bite?” Rose says, “I’ve been hungry for hours.”

Dok says, “She needs to eat,” but Treasure silences him with a glance, and he says, “but Chalee is bringing more, so, uh …”

“Let’s make a deal,” Rose says. “Treasure can take a bite and then you take one, and then I’ll get one. Is that all right, Treasure?”

Treasure yields up another tiny shrug, but Dok blows out a little puff of air, like someone who’s just heard the answer to a puzzle he’s been trying to solve for days.

“You first, Treasure,” Rose says. She pulls one of the metal chairs around and straddles it, right in front of the desk. “Get her that piece of shrimp, too,” she says, and Treasure keeps her eyes fixed on Rose as Dok swirls the fork around in the dish. Then Dok brings the fork up and Treasure opens her mouth without taking her gaze off Rose, and when Dok pulls the fork out, it’s empty.

Rose gives Treasure a smile so wide the girl sits back a few inches, Rose says, “Dok’s turn.” Dok eats a minuscule amount and holds out a groaning forkful to Rose.

Rose says, “You have no idea how hungry I am.” To Treasure, she says, “This is really yours. Is it okay if I eat it?”

Treasure’s mouth opens, but then she closes it and nods. Rose cleans the fork, turns it around to lick the back, and gives it to Dok. Looks up at Rafferty, surprised. “It’s
good
,” she says.

“Boo’s not going to give them slop,” Rafferty says, and Chalee comes into the room, balancing a plate in each hand. She stops in the doorway, not even glancing at Poke, just staring at the group at Boo’s desk.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“I’m Rose, and you’re Chalee, and you’re just in time, because Treasure and I are really hungry.”

Chalee, still holding the plates, glances at Poke, and says, “Are those two kids in the other room yours?”

Rafferty says. “Sort of.”

Chalee says to Poke, “You came back.”

“That’s what I do. I come back.”

“Who’s Rose?”

“My wife.”

Chalee looks again at Rose, and the left corner of her mouth travels toward her ear in an expression of pure doubt. She looks back to Poke and shrugs.

“I know,” Poke says. “I don’t understand it either.”

“Look,” Chalee says. She watches with something like amazement as Treasure accepts a second mouthful, and whispers, “This is the most she’s eaten,
ever
.”

“Maybe she’s getting better.”

Chalee says, “Maybe, maybe not,” and threads through the maze of furniture to put the other two plates on Boo’s desk.

Rose says, “I’m eating
everything
.”

Chalee says to Rose, “Are you really married to him?”

Rose says, “Amazing, isn’t it?” and Treasure actually smiles, just long enough for Poke to doubt that he actually saw it, and then Rose is saying to Dok, “Treasure’s turn,” and Rafferty hears Miaow’s voice, raised and tremulous, from the other room. He turns to see Boo standing in the opening, staring slack-jawed at the sight of Treasure eating.

Rafferty doesn’t hear Miaow say anything more, so he waves for Boo’s attention. “We need to talk.”

Boo says, “You have no idea.”

F
OLLOWING
B
OO BACK
out into the big room, Rafferty sees Miaow sitting on the cot with the three boys who’d been playing with the phone, which she’s now holding. The two filthy boys have changed cots to get closer to the group; now they’re just one vacant row away.

Andrew is nowhere in sight.

Miaow gives him too-bright eyes and a smile that looks like a muscle exercise, and Rafferty looks again for Andrew. He raises his
eyebrows in a question, but Miaow looks away and Rafferty can almost hear the metal door clang down between them. One of the boys on the cot says something and the other boys laugh. Miaow just stares at the cell phone screen. Boo taps Rafferty on the shoulder and goes out and down the steps.