The Hot Countries (32 page)

“No,” he says. “I'm not married. I just
love
the play. It's so
American
.” He puts just enough emphasis into the words to make her pull her face back half an inch or so, and then she says, “I see my car.”

“Well, ta,” Varney says, “nice chatting with you.”

She holds her umbrella high so she can get through the crowd, and almost simultaneously the next big group of people arrives from the auditorium, clustered together beneath a nearly solid roof of umbrellas. Varney waves at an imaginary companion among them, lowers his own umbrella in front of him, and walks toward the crowd, past the administration building. Then he turns and falls in with them, moving back toward the street, and when he reaches his final blind, he simply steps aside and disappears from sight.

Settling in to wait, he thinks
, Six or seven minutes now
.

The backstage area is crowded with families, and the three of them are intertwined in one tight knot. Rafferty hugs them both so close that Miaow squeaks. He steps back and says, “You were wonderful.” His heart is thumping in his ears.

“Really?” Her face is so flushed she might have a fever. “Was I?”

“Tell her,” he says to Rose.

“I was crying,” Rose says.

Miaow says, “You're a hard cry.”

“I was crying, too,” Rafferty says.

“You,” Miaow says. “You cry at commercials.” She glances past him and says, “Look at Treasure. Isn't she amazing?” The girl stands a few yards away, with Hofstedler and Wallace beside her.

“She looks phenomenal,” Rafferty says, and the knots reclaim his stomach. There doesn't seem to be any way around the next steps, which suddenly loom in front of him like a dark doorway he'd rather not go through. “Thanks to you.”

Miaow says. “Did you
really
cry?”

“Like the world's biggest, ugliest baby.” He feels Rose's gaze on him and consciously lightens the expression on his face. “Tell you what,” he says, manufacturing a smile. “See you in ten or fifteen minutes.”

Miaow surprises him by closing the distance between them and wrapping her arms around his middle, something she never does. She says, “I love you.”

He tries to kiss her on the forehead but misses and gets her hair. He hugs Rose, holding it for a few extra seconds. Stepping away, he turns to Arthit and the guys from the bar, who are standing in a semicircle a few steps off, and says “Pinky, you and Wallace stay here, please, with Rose and Miaow, just in case.” To the others he says, “Let's go.”

Wallace says, “I'm going.”

“Okay, okay. Bob, you stay with them, please.” He follows Wallace, who's already limping toward the stage apron. As they descend the five steps to the auditorium floor, he hears Campeau say, “Hello, Rose.” He's never heard Campeau sound so tremulous. Then the plainclothes cop says loudly, “Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a little situation in front, nothing to worry about, but please let these folks go out alone. Enjoy yourselves here for a few minutes, and then anyone who wants to leave can go. Anyway, it's raining out there.”

He thinks,
They look like bowling pins
.
They're moving in a more or less triangular formation, with Rafferty and Treasure in the lead. She's on his left as he holds her arm—apparently lightly, although she moves like a prisoner, lagging very slightly and being tugged along, looking down at the sidewalk as though she thinks someone might have set up something for her to trip over. The cop is directly behind Rafferty and slightly to his right, scanning the scene in all directions, and a bit farther back on the cop's left are the fat kraut, holding an umbrella so small it looks like a comic prop, and the guy with the crutch—Wallace, his name is. They're moving slowly so that Wallace, who's putting a lot of weight on the crutch, can keep up. Watching them come, Varney draws an imaginary trajectory; in about thirty seconds, when Rafferty and Treasure have just passed him, Treasure will be on his side of the group, just a few feet away, and the old fart with the crutch will be right behind her. He couldn't have choreographed it better.

Should he go for a strike or a spare? He could probably work out the geometry to take them all down at once, except the fat guy, who's probably got too much mass to go off balance, but he decides against it. He wants Treasure to be standing. Once the trap closes, he needs everything to be fast: the distraction, the violence, the confusion, the snatch, the exit. No stooping
awkwardly and trying to lift a squalling, terrified girl. No. Leave Treasure and Rafferty upright, as many as possible of the others down on the pavement, and the gun in his left hand so he'll have the right free to deal with Treasure. She is not going to be pleased to see him.

There's almost no one around—fewer people, actually, than he'd hoped. As Varney had figured he might, Rafferty spent some time inside with his daughter while the crowd outside thinned. Varney's irritation returns like a hand squeezing his throat; it would actually be easier for him if there were more people close by, more confusion, more potential collateral damage to slow the reactions and to give them second thoughts. He takes one more look at the approaching party. Maybe twenty, twenty-five seconds. He says into his cell phone, open and waiting, “Right now.”

Arthit says, “Anand
has passed Kiet to one of the plainclothes, who's hauling him off. Anand is just around the corner to the right. I'm telling him to move in but stay out of sight behind the classroom building.”

“If he can see us, he needs to duck back,” Rafferty says. “If anyone's coming by road, it's got to be from the left. It's a one-way street, and he definitely won't come up
this
way,” he says, nodding at the street that forms the vertical stroke of the
T
. “He'd be visible for more than a block.”

They follow the sidewalk leading between the administration building and the classroom block, and all the free-floating doubts and fears Rafferty's been batting down one by one gather in his gut and accrete, as though by the pull of gravity, into one massive, planetary black certainty: this is wrong, this is stupid. Someone is going to die.

The thought strikes him with almost physical force as they come between the buildings and into the open, and he pushes his way through the feeling, turning his head to scan the low bushes in front of the administration building, and at that moment there's a flare of light, a grinding of gears, and a squeal of tires, and he snaps his head around to stare into the glare of a pair of high-beam headlights as a small car jumps the curb, fishtails, and heads straight for them.

He's dragging Treasure backward, fast, hearing the others scrambling to retreat behind him as the car closes in on them, and then something slams against his back and he stumbles forward, grabbing frantically to keep the girl's arm in his grasp, and Wallace pitches face-first onto the pavement with a crack and a shout as his cast hits the concrete, and Arthit grunts and drops to his knees. Hofstedler, knocked off balance, stumbles past Rafferty, barely keeping his feet. And there's Varney, stepping around Treasure with a gun in his hand, pointed straight at her, and Treasure presses both hands to her face and emits a high, shrill, unvarying tone, as unwavering as the shriek of a teakettle, and takes a panicky step back, away from Varney, away from Poke as he instinctively reaches out and snags her elbow.

“Stay down there, cop,” Varney says to Arthit. “If I can't have her, I'll shoot her.” Behind Arthit the door to the car opens from inside and remains open, waiting for Varney.

The gun barrel flicks to Rafferty, and Varney says, “You've got exactly one second to let go of her.” Rafferty takes his hand off Treasure's arm and the shrill noise scales up a tone or two. With the gun pointed at Poke, Varney snatches at Treasure's sleeve, but she yanks it away, and he swears something that's mainly a snarl and grabs her by the hair.

And takes a quick stagger step backward when there's no resistance, and he looks down at the hair in his hand, staring at it, unable for a half second or so add it all up, and then the shrilling sound ceases, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Treasure's hands come down from her face, and he brings his head up to find himself looking at a delicate Thai ladyboy wearing layers of pale powder. The ladyboy winks at him and gives him an air kiss, and Varney emits a furious howl and punches her in the face, driving her back two steps. Far beyond the constraint of logic, he brings the gun up and points it at her but hears a hoarse bellow behind him, and when he turns to face it, a shouting, enraged Leon Hofstedler barrels into him. Hofstedler's three hundred pounds knock Varney back, one step and then two, and Varney manages to bring his gun around and fire it one time, and Leon grunts from someplace very deep, but then Varney's feet tangle in something that's been thrust between them—the injured man's crutch—and they go down, both of them, toppling over, Varney backward and Leon forward. They land heavily about four feet from the fallen Wallace, Hofstedler smothering Varney with his bulk.

Varney is kicking and shoving to get Hofstedler off him as Poke leans down and tries to heave Hofstedler away, out of Arthit's line of fire as Arthit circles, shouting, trying to find a shot. Pulling at Hofstedler, Rafferty is vaguely aware of the car door slamming behind him, screeching tires as it accelerates away, and then Varney's gun goes off again, the sound muffled by Hofstedler's body, and Rafferty hears Wallace, stretched full length on the pavement, say, “Got him, Ernie,” and sees Wallace use his good hand to point an old, rusty revolver at the side of Varney's head from little more than arm's length and put two bullets dead center into the man's left ear.

Wallace lets go of the gun as though it's red-hot and says, “Leon.
Leon?
”

34

We Open Now

It's almost three
thirty, and the sign hanging from the string of green lights says
closed
.

Standing there with his back to the street and the day yawning open and stale and empty behind him, potentially free of human encounters, Rafferty allows himself a brief flash of hope: maybe he can just go home and get back into bed, maybe he won't have to see any of them. Won't have to say anything to anyone. He can't imagine what he can say. He's spent most of the past four days in bed, alone in the apartment while Miaow and Rose, at his insistence, remain in the hotel. The one time Rose visited, she tried to talk to him for a few minutes and then said, “It isn't really about you, you know,” and left.

He hasn't been answering his phone. He disconnected when Arthit was explaining that the cops had decided there was no profit, either financial or prestigious, in investigating what really happened and quite a lot in claiming credit for catching and killing a man who'd murdered at least two expats, the Australian Arthur Varney and the Frenchman Étienne Bressac.

If Toots hadn't called repeatedly for almost an hour beginning at nine this morning, a ring every minute or so, he wouldn't have spoken to her, and when he did, he told her he wasn't going to come. Her response had been silence, stretching out for several minutes as they both held the line. When he heard her begin to weep, he said he'd be there.

But the sign says that the bar is closed. He can go away again and maybe stop somewhere for a drink. A dozen drinks.

When he pushes at the door, however, it opens a few inches. He steps back onto the sidewalk and lets it swing shut, breathes deeply several times, and then shakes his head from side to side to loosen the iron rod in his neck. It seems to take him forever to open the door the rest of the way.

The door closes behind him as his eyes adjust to the dimness. The overhead lights are off.

The first person he sees, the person closest to him, is Toots. She's sitting in front of the bar with Hofstedler's special stool tilted on two legs so the seat rests in her lap. She's got the back facing up so she can work on it. He smells the metal polish she's been rubbing onto the nameplate that says
leon hofstedler
.
She looks up at him just long enough to see who he is and returns to her task, which is working a Q-tip into the incised letters, getting out the last clots of polish. As Rafferty nears, he sees her finish the
f
and move the Q-tip to the bottom of the
s
.

Beyond Toots he sees Campeau, the Growing Younger Man, Pinky Holland, and the guy with the hair. Except for Campeau, who's in his usual chair, the others are seated at random, each separated from the others by an empty stool or two on either side. Pinky, who usually sits in a booth, is at the bar, occupying the stool Wallace usually claims. No one says anything

Toots says, “What you want, you get.” She sniffles. “Today everything free. Leon say.”

“No thanks,” Rafferty says. “I don't—”

“Yes you do,” Toots says, almost a snap. “Leon want.”

“
Leon
wants?” Rafferty asks. He goes behind the bar, gets a glass, feeling their eyes on him, and uses the fountain nozzle to fill it with club soda.

“I tell you after,” Toots says, digging away with the Q-tip. “Tell you everything after.”

He's never been on this side of the bar before. It's cramped, with barely enough room to move sideways, and oddly isolating, with the wide wall of wood between himself and everyone else. Toots has been standing back here for something like forty years. He decides he likes the distance the bar gives him from the others, so he tosses the soda and pours himself a beer. The silence in the room presses against his ears.

“Since Toots is busy,” he says, mainly to get past opening the conversation, “does anyone need anything? That okay, Toots?”

“Okay,” Toots says, swiveling her barstool so the light coming through the window falls directly on Leon's newly bright nameplate. She makes tiny swabbing gestures with the Q-tip. Rafferty sees that a shining red ribbon, about two inches wide, has been stretched tightly from one armrest of Leon's stool to the other, making it impossible for anyone to sit in it.

Rafferty says again, “Anyone?” No one answers. He looks down at the bar's stained surface for a moment, fighting the impulse to flee, to yank the door open and run into the street, but instead he looks at his watch, clears his throat, and says, “Am I early or is she late?”

After a few seconds, the guy with the hair says, “What we can say with certainty at this point is that you're early. She may also be late, but we can't know that yet, can we?” He slides his glass over the bar. “I'd like a refill. Rum and Coke?”

“Sure.” Grateful to be doing something, Rafferty splashes some Coke into the glass and turns to locate the rum.

Toots says, “On left,” and he picks up the bottle.

“Mekong for me,” Pinky says behind him, and he hears a glass being slid across the bar. “This time the bottle with the Jack Daniel's label.”

Campeau says to Pinky, “Live it up.”

Rafferty says, “Anything for you, Bob? Toots?” And the door opens, ringing the bell.

All their heads turn in unison. Lutanh and Betty come in, Betty puffy-eyed and tragic-looking in black from head to toe, in a cocktail dress that looks like it was designed in the 1960s. Lutanh wears a loose-fitting white one-piece sheath with a high Chinese neck. Her left eye is swollen closed, the color of a Bloody Mary, and her nose is swathed in white padding, held in place by crisscrossed adhesive tape, startlingly white against the skin on her cheeks. Campeau looks at Lutanh twice and then lets his head droop.

Lutanh and Betty go to Toots and look over her shoulder at what she's doing. The sight of the bandages brings the silence back into the room for eight or ten seconds. Then Campeau says, “Beer Sing.” He adds, “Please.”

“Scotch for big
katoey
,” Toots says, her hand wrapped in the sleeve of her shirt so she can buff the metal. “For little one, Orangina. Leon buy for her.” She stops, swallows, and continues. “Keep in small refrigerator down there.”

Rafferty barely hears it. He can't take his eyes off Lutanh's damaged face. Then the translation of what Toots said presents itself to him, and he gives an abrupt nod and says, “Sure.” He pours the rum into the Coke and hands it to the guy with the hair. Taking refuge in being busy, he fills a glass with ersatz Jack and pops the top from a Singha, then gives the Singha to Pinky and the Jack to Campeau. The two of them glance at each other and then drink without complaint. Idle for a moment, Rafferty finds himself looking at Lutanh again and on the verge of breaking into tears.

Feeling his gaze, Lutanh says, “No problem. I want small nose, right? Want to make small, and now have.” She smiles brightly. “Doctor, he fix bambam on my nose and make nose small, same time. Now very good, very small. Before, Leon say he pay for doctor—” She breaks off, blinking. She brushes her cheeks with an open palm, sniffles, and, without thinking, wipes her nose with the back of her hand, and says,
“Yiiiiiiiiiiii,”
in a very high voice, and Betty puts an arm around her shoulders and Toots covers the nameplate with her hand and says to Lutanh, “Don't drip.”

The bell rings as the door opens. Miaow comes in, looking everywhere at once, as though she's entered the garden of the beasts, before her eyes settle on Lutanh. Behind Miaow is Rose.

“Look, everybody,” Lutanh says, wincing as she touches the padding covering her nose in a very gingerly fashion, “my acting teacher.”

“Isn't she beautiful?” Miaow says to Rose, who is regarding Rafferty with the air of someone working toward a diagnosis. “Even with all this stuff on her nose.” She puts her fingertips beneath Lutanh's chin and turns her face slightly. “I want to see. Wow, look at that eye. Poke always says to put raw steak on one of those.”

“I vegetarian,” Lutanh says. “It go away. Tomorrow I look okay. Tomorrow I very okay.”

The door behind Miaow opens, and she and Rose and Lutanh step aside to make room for Arthit.

Miaow nods hello at Arthit and says, “Poke,” glances around the room and changes it to, “Dad. Lutanh wants to take an acting class. We talked about it when I was teaching her to move
 . . .
you know, like Treasure.”

“I very want,” Lutanh says. “Want to play Little Mermaid.”

Betty says to Poke, “
Scotch
,
please? Orangina?”

“Acting is a good idea,” Rafferty says dutifully, bending down to open the refrigerator.

“She was fucking great,” Campeau says. His eyes go automatically to the tip jar, and then he closes them. When he opens them again, he looks at Miaow and Rose and says, “Sorry.”

“With Dr. Srisai,” Miaow says. “I told her about Dr. Srisai, and—”

“If he can take her,” Rafferty says, popping the cap from the big orange bottle.

“He said he can,” Miaow announces with the air of someone who's sneaked a peek behind Door Number Two.

“In afternoon,” Lutanh says, her hands clasped together imploringly, making her look like someone who's about to sing. “Before I go bar.”

Mid-pour, Rafferty sees where this is going. “Dr. Srisai is
 . . .
ummm, kind of expensive.”

“I know,” Miaow says, “but we were hoping—”

“I'll pay for it,” Arthit says. “That's the least I can do.” Lutanh lets out a small, delighted squeal as the door opens again and Anna slips in, leading Treasure by the hand. Treasure is wearing
the clothes Anna bought her the night they went shopping, and the
sight of the clothes seems to roll everything that's happened since he last saw them into a giant ball of solid regret, and for a moment Rafferty thinks he will simply break down in front of everyone. Treasure looks at all the men in the room and sidles closer to Anna.

Arthit says to Anna and Treasure, “We're going to send Lutanh to acting school.” He ignores the puzzlement on Anna's face and says, “Is my watch right? Is she late?”

“She's late,” the Growing Younger Man says. He's looking a bit shamefaced, probably because he hadn't shown up on the night everything changed forever.

Picking up the bottle of Betty's scotch and clearing his throat to get rid of the lump in it, Rafferty says, “According to my watch, she should be here at any minute. Miaow, you want a Coke?”

“You work here now?” Miaow says.

Betty says to Poke, “Your wife? Your daughter?” Poke nods and pours the scotch, and Betty, shaking her head, says, “No. No ladyboy.”

“I don't know about that,” Rose says. To Lutanh she says, “You really
are
pretty.”

“She try with him already,” Betty says.

“Everybody tries with Poke,” Rose says, studying Poke again. “I don't know why he comes home at night.”

Rafferty dredges up a smile and says, “I get hungry. Do you want something?” Rose shakes her head.

Arthit shoos Anna and Treasure toward the booth Pinky usually sits in, and they settle. Treasure says to Miaow in a half whisper, “
What
are you going to drink?”

“Coke.”

“Then can I have a Coke, too?”

Arthit says, “What do you want, Anna?” and Anna says she'd like one of the orange things Lutanh is drinking, and Arthit says, “Beer for me, I don't care what kind.”

Campeau says, “He can't handle all this by himself,” and gets up. On his way to the bar, he swaps drinks with Pinky and then slides in behind the counter, next to Rafferty. “Tight back here,” he says. He grabs a glass and hits the Coca-Cola spigot.

“It is,” Rafferty says, more pleased than he'd ever thought he'd be to have Campeau's company. He hears Miaow and Lutanh talking, two very different voices in the same approximate register, and when he turns around with Anna's Orangina, he sees Campeau offering him a Coke. Taking the drink, he says, “What a team,” and as he totes the drinks over, Miaow and Lutanh beat him to the booth, both of them talking to Treasure. Seated, Treasure tilts her head up to them, reserved but listening. Rafferty gives the drink to her, and Anna turns back to the bar to get Miaow's Coke and Arthit's beer, and Lutanh says something that has both Miaow and Treasure laughing, and then he hears Anna laugh, too.

He hasn't heard Anna laugh very often.

Rose snags his arm as he passes and tilts her head inquisitively. He shrugs in equivocation: he has no idea how he actually feels.

The door opens yet again, and Wallace comes in, his cast patched with some kind of composition the color of cooked salmon. He looks at his watch and says, “Where is she?”

“She late,” Toots says with finality. She gets up and straightens Leon's stool, the red ribbon in place, the brass shining. “She say she come three thirty, but maybe not come. She very angry everything, always angry too much. Maybe she not come.”