The Fourth Watcher (4 page)

 

FROM HIS VANTAGE
point on the sidewalk eight stories down, the fourth watcher is bored.

Lights snap on and off in the windows of the apartment he has been gazing at as the people living there move from room to room. He wishes the child had left the apartment empty during the day so he could have installed the little microphones. That would be much more interesting than this.

Anything
would be more interesting than this.

He turns into the department-store doorway in which he stands, mannequins frozen fashionably in the dark windows, holding their poses as though they hope he'll take notice. He shields the striking match with his body, worried not about the wind but the brief flare of
light, which he knows—from personal experience—lasts long enough for a good shooter to do his work. Normally he wouldn't smoke so much on the job, but this particular assignment is testing the limits of his ability to remain sane. It's his first time in Bangkok, a city that he's been told is the world's largest brothel, and he's never been so bored in his life.

The cigarette, a cheap Korean counterfeit Marlboro he brought into the country with him, burns rewardingly in the back of his throat. It's the burn he's become accustomed to, the burn he looks forward to forty or fifty times a day. When the watcher first arrived in Bangkok, two days earlier, he had bought a pack of real American Marlboros at the airport, lit one eagerly, taken a deep drag, and tossed the pack away. No bite. He likes a cigarette with bite.

So far this evening, he has seen no other watchers, which is something new. The only interesting thing about this job is that the man he's watching seems to be being followed by half the city.

 

COMING OUT OF
the bedroom, Rafferty stops at the sight: the two of them curled together on the couch, snug as puppies. Rose's hair falls over both of them like a lush black shawl, spilling off Miaow's shoulders and over her plump brown knees. Miaow is gazing dreamily down at the three candles burning on the cake, one for each decade of Rose's life. The glow of the candles paints Rose's and Miaow's faces with gold, making them smooth as water-carved stone. Through the sliding glass door beyond them, the lights of Bangkok glitter like bad costume jewelry. A sentence spontaneously assembles itself in Rafferty's mind:
Everything I want is here.

“You both look beautiful,” Rafferty says. His heart is beating so hard it feels like it's taking a hammer to his ribs. Now that the time has come, he is terrified. He slips into his pocket the small box he retrieved from the bureau in his bedroom and comes the rest of the way into the room, trailing a vaporous wake of White Shoulders. Leaning against the cake is a square of white, an envelope with a rose drawn on it in colored pencil, Miaow's medium of choice since she decided that crayons were for babies. Although she showed him half a dozen attempts at the envelope, she has not allowed him to see the card.

“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
HAPPYBIRTHDAY 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 happybirthday, 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.

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.

“It's not that we're not
useful,
” he says. “It's just a different index. Women are flowers, men are root vegetables. You wouldn't make a bouquet of turnips.”

“Sometimes I worry about you,” she says.

“Why's that?” He is halfway to the door.

“No one can really be as much like he seems to be as you are.”

“I'll think that over,” he says. “I'm sure it means something.”

After the darkness of the bedroom, its one small window blocked by the air conditioner, the living room is milky with the light that spills through the glass door to the balcony, Bangkok wattage bouncing off the low clouds. The remainder of the lopsided cake sits on the table. The sight of it makes him smile, despite the electric jitter that's broadcasting random bursts of alternating current through his nervous system.

He pulls a pristine pack of Marlboro Lights from the jumble of clutter in the purse, peels the cellophane strip, and worries one out. As he passes through the open doorway into the bedroom, Rose snaps on the light. He slams his eyes shut against the glare. When he opens them again, he sees Rose, sitting up in bed with the sheet pooled around her hips, looking brown and amused. For the thousandth time, he notices how the light bounces off the polished skin of her shoulders, how the smooth muscles announce themselves in shadows on her flat stomach.

“I don't know,” she says, giving him an appraising glance. “Maybe you
could
dance go-go.” Her eyes drop as he feels himself stir at the sight of her. “Wait, wait,” she says. “This would definitely disqualify you.”

“Not at the Queen's Corner,” he says, crossing the room self-consciously and slipping under the sheets. “Last time I was in there, half the girls weren't.”

“Weren't what?” she says, taking the cigarette.

“Weren't girls.”

She lights the cigarette, draws deeply, and regards it with comfortable satisfaction. “Did you think they were pretty?”

“Who?” He breathes in the smoke she exhales, seeking to soothe his nerves, wanting one himself.

“The ladyboys.” Thai transvestites have an enthusiastic following among the international cognoscenti and have become a standard attraction in many of the go-go bars.

“No. They always look like…I don't know, plastic fruit or something. They don't seem to have real faces, or even a real age. They look like they might come in jars.”

“Pay them enough and I'm sure they'll come in a jar for you.”

“Rose,” he says. His heart is beating irregularly.

“Uh-oh,” Rose says. She studies his face. “What's happening?”

“I didn't give you your present.” He reaches out and takes the cigarette from her and inhales it hard enough to blow a hole in his back. He is immediately sweepingly, reelingly dizzy. “Jesus,” he says. “I can't believe I used to do that on purpose.”

Rose is bent slightly toward him, watching him closely. She takes the cigarette and looks down at it. “Most people don't try to smoke the whole thing at once.”

“So—” Rafferty says, and stops. The silence widens around them like a ripple in the center of a pond.

“Poor baby,” Rose says, keeping her eyes on the cigarette as she mashes it in the ashtray. “All those words in your head, and they're not there when you need them.”

“It's almost four
A.M.
,” Rafferty says, in full retreat. “Coffee. Coffee is the answer.” He grabs the bubble-gum pink robe Miaow made him buy at the weekend market at Chatuchak. Between the color and the cheerful, slightly fey yellow dragon embroidered on the back, it always makes him feel like Bruce Lee's gay stand-in. “Coming?”

She grimaces. “You mean, get up?”

“I know it's drastic.”

“Wait,” she says, and reaches down to a small zippered bag on the floor. Her hand comes up with a tube of lipstick and a loose Kleenex, and she applies the lipstick quickly and blots it, all in one swift, professional movement. “Ready for anything,” she says. She tosses the sheets aside and rises, almost six feet of flawless naked woman. As always, she looks to Rafferty like some ambitious new stage of evolution, an inspired draft of Woman 3.0, a human Car of the Future. She turns her back to pick up the towel she invariably wraps around her, and Rafferty tears his eyes from the long shadowy gully of her spine and the tablespoon-size dimples above her buttocks, and grabs the box on the table. He drops it into his pocket on the way out of the room. Bumping against his hip, it feels as big as a watermelon.

The fluorescent lights reveal a kitchen that looks like it was used for grenade practice. Flour dusts the counters. Virtually every bowl, utensil, and platter Rafferty owns has ambled out of the cupboard, coated itself with something sticky, and assumed its least flattering angle. He pulls a bag of coffee beans from the freezer and drops a couple of fistfuls into the grinder, clearing a space on the counter with his pink silk forearm.

“One cake?” Rose says behind him. “All this for one cake?”

“But what a cake.” The whir of the grinder fills the room. Silently counting to twelve, Rafferty reaches up into the cabinet with his free hand and takes down a box of coffee filters. He drops the box to the counter and uncaps the coffee grinder. “Perfect,” he says, studying the grind. He opens the box of filters and pulls out a nest of tightly clustered paper cones. As always, the edges are stuck together. He ruffles them ineffectually with his thumb, trying without much hope to separate a single filter from the clump.

“You were going to say something,” Rose says, her eyes on his hands. The lowered lids make it hard for him to read her expression. The towel is brilliantly white against the dusk of her skin.

“Yes.” He manages to pry free a little clot of four filters, a minor triumph. He lets his hands drop to hide the palsy that seems to have seized control of them. “I was.”

“And you had a present for me.” She tilts her head to one side, watching his fingers fumble with the filters.

“After coffee,” he says, crimping the paper edges to loosen them. They are almost karmically inseparable.

“Is that my present? In your pocket?”

He meets her eyes and feels his face grow hot. “Yes.”

She purses her lips. “Not very big.”

“Well, it's…no, it's not very big.” His fingers feel like frozen hams, and the filters are resolutely glued together. His mind is suddenly a large and disordered room with words piled randomly in the corners like children's toys. “I mean, it's not—but you said that already—and it…it's…”

“Let me.” Rose crosses the room, all business, and takes the filters from his hand. She slips a nail under the edge and separates the bundle into two. Then she places the top two filters, still stuck together, between her lips and closes her mouth. When her lips part, the filters
come apart neatly, one stuck to each lip, and she removes them and extends them to Rafferty. Each of them has a dark red lip print on its edge. “The answer is yes,” she says.

He has the filters in his hands before he hears her. “It is?” is all he can think to say. He stands there, a coffee filter dangling from each hand, the box with the ring in it exerting a supergravitational weight against his right hip. “It really is?” He has to push the words around the soft, formless obstruction in his throat.

“I know what I said when you asked me before,” Rose says, and now her eyes are on his. “I remember every word I said. I've remembered it a thousand times. I've walked to work, I've shopped for dinner, I've cleaned apartments, I've cooked
food
remembering what I said, trying to find the place where I should have said something that wasn't about me, about my family, my life, my problems, me, me, me. I was terrible to you. If I'd just stopped talking for one minute, if I'd just stopped being frightened that I'd eventually get hurt, I would have said yes.”

“Ahh, Rose,” Rafferty says.

“I told you we were a million miles apart.”

“We were.”

“The only way you could be a million miles from me,” Rose says, “would be if I were a million miles from my own heart.” Her eyes go to the filters in his hands. “Just show it to me. Put those things down and show it to me.”

“Right. Show it to you.” He sets the lipsticked filters on the counter, watching his hands from a distance, as through a thick pane of glass. Feels the cool cloth of the robe against the back of his hand as he reaches into his pocket, feels the plush of the box under his fingertips, but all he sees is Rose, although he doesn't even know when he looked over at her, and then his hand comes into the bottom of the picture with the box in it, and she holds his eyes with her own as her long, dark fingers take the box and close around it.

“It's going to be beautiful,” she says without looking down.

“It has to be,” he says. “It's for you.”

She puts her other hand over the box, cupping it between her palms. “Everybody wanted to marry you,” she says. “Every girl in the bar. They looked at you and they saw a house and a passport and money for life. And so did I.”

“Most of my competition was a hundred pounds overweight.”

“Stop it. Just once, let someone say something nice about you.”

“Sorry. Thanks.” He can barely hear his own voice.

“But those girls didn't love you,” Rose says. “I didn't love you either. I didn't even
want
to love you. I didn't want to tell myself I loved you if what I really loved was the house and the passport. I stopped working because of you, did you know that? I told myself I stopped for me, but I didn't. And after I stopped, I talked myself out of you a hundred times. Sometimes my heart hides from me. It took
everything,
Poke. It took a long time, it took months of being with you, it took Miaow, even, seeing the way you are with Miaow, but I love you.”

“And I love you,” he says helplessly. The words hang in the air with a kind of phantom shimmer, a tossed handful of glitter. Rose looks at him in a way that makes him feel like a developing Polaroid: Out of the infinite potential of nothing comes a specific human face, with all its weaknesses and limitations. When she has his face in focus, or committed to memory, or transformed into what she wanted to see, or whatever she was doing, she looks down at the box and opens it.

The ring has three stones—a topaz, a sapphire, and a ruby, none of them very large. “The sapphire is your birthstone,” Rafferty says. “The ruby is mine.” It sounds puerile and silly as he says it. “The topaz was my guess at Miaow. Now we can change it, make it a ruby and two sapphires.”

“The family,” Rose says. “In a ring.” She tilts the stones toward him. “Miaow between you and me.”

“I guess,” Rafferty says, wondering why he never saw that.