Breathing Water

by Timothy Hallinan

  Rose says, “Do the girls in fifth grade wear makeup?”

  “Rose,” Rafferty says.

  Miaow looks at Rose as though she’s just turned into a Christmas tree. Her eyes are shining. “A little.”

  Rafferty says, “How little?”

  “Like, you know”—Miaow passes the tip of her index finger over her upper lips—“a little lipstick, kind of pale, and maybe some—what do you call it?—some stuff on their eyelashes.”

  “It better be very pale,” Rafferty says.

  “Poke,” Rose says, “it’s not going to surprise anybody that Miaow has lips.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Rose says, “What is the point?”

  “The point,” Rafferty says, knowing he has no chance whatsoever of prevailing in this discussion, “is that I’m proud of Miaow, but I’m not having her going to school looking like the Queen of Patpong.”

  Rose bursts out laughing. “The Queen of—” And she’s laughing again, and then Miaow starts to laugh.

  “Okay, okay,” Rafferty says. “Not the Queen of Patpong. But, you know, too much makeup on a young girl looks…um, tarty.” And at the word “tarty,” Miaow laughs even harder, her arms crossed low over her stomach.

  “Trust me, Poke,” Rose says. “Mia will be beautiful.” The name “Mia” ends Miaow’s laughter as though a door has been shut on it. “Your own mother would like the way she’s going to look.”

  “That’s not actually much of a recommendation,” Rafferty says. Then he says, “Mia?”

  “You mean,” Miaow says to Rose, with a quick detour glance at Rafferty, “you mean I can buy some makeup?”

  “Tomorrow,” Rose says. “I’ll go with you tomorrow.” She slides her eyes to Rafferty, daring him to say anything. “Does that sound okay, Mia?”

  An hour and a half later, Rafferty turns off the tape recorder, and they take the elevator upstairs and go to bed for the second time, more happily than they had the first time.

  “SOMEONE’S UP,” CAPTAIN Teeth—Kai—says. He’s had the phones on so long that he’s stopped feeling them against his ears. “I hear moving around.”

  “So someone’s going to the bathroom.” Ren is stretched out on the couch, facing the cushions on the back, with a throw blanket over him. The air-conditioning in the big house is more than he can take. “Give up for the night. You trying to earn points or what?”

  “Fuck you,” Kai says, without much heat behind it.

  “Anybody flushed yet?” Ren speaks carefully, but his tongue feels as if a nail’s been driven through it, and to Kai it sounds like he’s got rocks in his mouth.

  “No mikes in the bathroom, remember?” Kai says. “She can be a little bitchy, huh?”

  “Who? What do you mean?”

  “This afternoon. When she told him to go in the other room and leave her alone. Kind of bitchy.”

  “It’ll add spice.” Ren plumps up the throw pillow beneath his head. “When she’s tied to the bed. Beauty’s fine, but spice is better. You want it a little hot.”

  Kai shakes his head. “Never happen.”

  “Stop listening to that crap. Nothing’s going on. Just let it record. I’ll fast-forward through it tomorrow. Get some sleep.”

  Kai takes off the phones. “You going to stay here?”

  “I think so. They get up early. The little girl’s up before seven. And that way, when Four-Step comes down from upstairs, he sees me sitting here being vigilant.”

  “Up to you,” Kai says, rising. He stretches.

  Ren pulls the blanket higher so it covers his shoulders. Unfortunately, that exposes his feet. He says, “Do you really think we’re going to have to kill them?”

  “After what happened to the reporter?” Kai says. “Sure.”

  29

  So He Likes Sad Music

  She has no idea what time it is when Kep comes for her. The room has no windows, and she has nothing to help her gauge the passage of time. It could be midnight, it could be three in the morning when she hears the singing.

  The first sound to get her attention is an engine. It can’t be the van; it’s too loud. Probably a motorbike. She hears it approaching, out on the street, and she thinks of the moto driver who brought her here, only two nights ago, kindly waiting to make sure she was in the right place. But the bike doesn’t go past and fade in the distance. It gets louder, and then it drops to an idle, and over it she can hear him singing. He is obviously drunk.

  An Isaan song. It surprises her. She would have figured him for Bangkok pop, some stupid jangly song about love and pretty girls. Instead it’s an Isaan song about losing a child to the city, a daughter who has gone away.

  So he likes sad music. So…tough.

  She’s spent her time in the room getting to know it by touch, and she is familiar with every square inch of it. It had been used for storage by the builders. Probably all three downstairs rooms were; probably that’s why they have doors with locks on them.

  What was stored in this room was lumber, mostly scraps. Her heart had leapt when she found the wood, and she had passed her fingers over every surface in the room, hoping for a hammer, a screwdriver. A knife. But there was only wood. Not even any with nails in it.

  The first thing she has to do when she hears the singing is to get Peep out of the way. He had fallen asleep in her lap, so she gets up slowly and edges four or five steps to the right, where there is a large wooden box, which she turned upside down to create a flat, raised surface. After turning it over, she had pushed it against the wall to make it more secure. She has already folded her blanket and put it there, and now she lays Peep in the center of the blanket and feels for the big pieces of wood.

  Outside, Kep cuts the engine and sings louder. His voice is true, the notes solid. The child who went to the city does not send letters. Da’s mother sang this song sometimes.

  The wood is right where she put it, leaning against one end of the box. Each piece is about a meter long and as thick as a man’s arm. She takes the four pieces she already selected and builds a square perimeter of wood around Peep. There’s no way to anchor them to the top of the box, but she thinks the wood will at least prevent him from rolling over the edge.

  She hears boots on the steps that lead up to the building’s door.

  The hinges of the door to the room are on her right and the door opens in, so it will swing to the right. There is no light in the hall, and the moon, as far as Da can remember, is just a sliver. It will be dark, unless he has brought a light with him.

  No way to know about that. No advantage to worrying about it.

  The piece of two-by-four, about a meter long, is propped against the wall to the left of the door. It’s heavier and rougher than she remembers, and her fingers are too short to wrap around it securely, but she’s invented a grip that works by interlocking her little fingers.

  Scuffing in the hallway, like sand between teeth. In the last line of the song, the child comes home so changed that her own mother doesn’t recognize her. Kep slows it down and packs it with heartache. He sings very well.

  Da steps to the left, stopping near the wall, her eyes on the bottom of the door, looking for a spill of light, anything to tell her whether he’s carrying a flashlight. If he is, he’ll see her. But he’ll also have only one hand free. She brings the two-by-four up over her right shoulder and waits.

  Key in the lock.

  Nothing.

  Then the door opens fast, banging against the wall, and Da swings the piece of wood with an effort that begins at her ankles. But it sails through space, hitting nothing, until it cracks against the frame of the door, having passed straight through the place where Kep’s head should have been, and the force of the impact flips the piece of wood out of her hands, and then the flashlight comes on and blinds her.

  “Awwwww,” Kep says. “You waited up for me.” He kicks the piece of wood aside. “Don’t pick it up,” he says, “or I’ll take it away and beat your teeth in wi
th it.” He pans the room with the light, fast sweeps to right and left, and then brings it back to her face. “Where’s the little monster?” He leans to his right until his shoulder hits the doorframe, almost missing it. He’s drunker, Da thinks, than he knows.

  “Asleep,” she says, backing away. There is a pile of wood behind her.

  “Good. No interruptions.” He points the light at the concrete floor for a moment. “Not too comfy, huh? Where’s your blanket?”

  “Under Peep.” The heel of her shoe has touched the edge of the woodpile.

  “Well, up to you. He can have it or you can. You’re going to be on the bottom. You want to get your back dirty?”

  “I’m not getting my back dirty.”

  “Yeah? You wash the floor or something?”

  “If you touch me,” she says, “I’ll mark you for life.”

  “I don’t think so. Look here.” He shines the light down at himself. His left hand flashes silver, and the flash turns into a long, curved knife.

  Da reaches behind her, her fingertips brushing pieces of wood, just odd pieces, nothing with any weight to it. She says, “Are you ready to kill me?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. I won’t have to kill you.” He brings the knife up and wiggles it from side to side. “You know that web between your thumb and your first finger? You got any idea how much it hurts when that gets cut? I mean cut deep? You’re going to be very surprised. And then you’ll do anything I say not to get the other one cut.”

  There’s nothing behind her that she can use. She brings both hands forward, arched into claws. Then she registers surprise, looks past him, over his shoulder.

  Kep laughs. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Right. And I turn around and look behind me, like I haven’t seen ten million stupid movies. Like I haven’t—”

  Da sees a blur of dark motion and hears something that sounds like a coconut hitting the ground from a high tree, and Kep’s knees turn to water and he pitches forward flat on his face, the flashlight spinning on the floor, lighting the room, the boy from the street, the room, the boy from the street.

  30

  You Couldn’t Comb It with a Tractor

  I have a stomachache,” Miaow says.

  It is 6:45 A.M., and she is fully dressed: jeans with an acute crease, which she irons in herself because she’s never satisfied with the way the laundry does it, and a bright red T-shirt featuring the Japanese teenage girl samurai Azumi. Her bunny slippers are on her feet, but her shoes are lined up beside the front door like well-trained pets. Rafferty sits at the kitchen counter, grimly waiting for the coffee to drip, and if someone challenged him to describe his own clothes without looking down, he’d fail completely.

  “Sorry to hear it.” His pre-coffee voice is, as always, a croak. “Do you feel well enough to go to school?”

  “I don’t think so. I really hurt.” She goes to the counter and takes the can of Coke he’s pulled out for her and pops the tab.

  Rafferty says, “Alka-Seltzer? Good idea,” and watches her down about half of it and then lower the can. She burps discreetly. Breakfast.

  The door to the bedroom opens, and Rose, who is rarely at her best before noon, feels her way into the living room. She regards the two of them without conspicuous goodwill and squints defensively at the red of Miaow’s T-shirt. She is leaning against the wall, so loose-limbed she looks as though she plans to go back to sleep standing there, but she is dressed to leave the apartment, in a pair of white shorts and one of Rafferty’s freshly laundered shirts. Her hair has been slicked back with damp hands, but it’s still a gloriously anarchic tangle.

  “Miaow’s not feeling good,” Rafferty says, getting up. At the sink he runs hot water into a cup that already holds two heaping tablespoons of Nescafé and stirs it quietly, trying not to make a clinking noise with the spoon.

  “Me neither,” Rose says furrily. “My stomach hurts.” She watches Rafferty cross the living room with the cup in his hand. When he gives it to her, she does something with the corners of her mouth that she probably thinks is a smile.

  “I’m feeling okay,” Rafferty says on his way back to the kitchen. He pours just-dripped coffee into his cup. “Did you two eat anything last night that I didn’t?”

  “The spring rolls,” Miaow says.

  The bottom half of Rose’s face is hidden by her cup, but she lowers it long enough to say, “Right.”

  Rafferty swallows the day’s first coffee. An invisible film between him and the rest of the world begins to dissolve. “That’s probably it. You both look a little punk.” He knocks back half of the cup and picks up the pot with his other hand. Miaow goes to the door, kicking off the bunny slippers, drops to her knees, and pulls on her sneakers. Rafferty continues, “They probably sat too long, maybe under heat lamps. Maybe you guys should both go to bed for a while, see how you feel in a few hours.”

  “All right,” Miaow says, opening the front door.

  “Don’t make a lot of noise, okay?” Rose says. She sounds sleepy and irritable, and it’s not an act. “I want to sleep.”

  “I’ll work on my notes for the book. That’ll be quiet.” He drinks again and heads for the front door, which Miaow is holding wide. “You two go to bed. Get some rest. You won’t even know I’m here. I promise.”

  Rose precedes him through the door, cup in hand, and Miaow closes it quietly behind him as he punches the button for the elevator. Two minutes later, down on the fourth floor, Rafferty inserts a new cassette and pushes “record” again.

  DA WAKES ON a village farmer’s schedule, maybe six in the morning, and finds herself on her back, looking up at a rough wooden ceiling. After a moment shaped like a vague question, she rolls over to see where she is.

  The room is dim, with interruptions of brilliance. Sunlight shoulders its way through the cracks between the planks that make up the walls. When she withdraws her focus from the vertical strips of glare, the gloom resolves itself into backs, seven or eight of them, between her and the nearest wall. Peep is asleep beside her, nestled up against a child Da has never seen before.

  She smells children, none too clean, but not filthy either. Just the slightly salty pungency of child’s sweat. She could be back in the village.

  Suppressing a grunt of effort, she sits up and looks around. The room is full of sleeping children, literally wall to wall. The floor beneath Da’s hand is packed earth. It takes her a few seconds to assemble the pieces in her memory. The sad song, the light in Kep’s hand, the silvery fire of the knife, the blur of motion behind him, the sound of the stone hitting his head. The stone that turned out to be in the toe of a sock. And the boy standing in the doorway when Kep went down.

  She had quickly picked up the flashlight and snapped it off. She was certain that the sound of the motorcycle and Kep’s singing had awakened the others in the building, and the light seemed dangerous. The boy had nodded acknowledgment and then made a cradling motion with his arms: the baby. By the time Da had Peep hugged to her chest and the blanket folded over one shoulder, the boy had pulled the ring of keys from Kep’s pocket. He rolled the man farther into the room so the door could swing shut without hitting him. Then he motioned Da into the hallway, closed the door, and locked it. She had followed him outside into the night. Without even looking back at her, he climbed onto a motorcycle that had to be Kep’s and started it with one of the keys on the ring. He waited until she climbed on. As he pulled the bike away from the building with her hanging on behind, she looked back to see the pale shapes of faces at the windows.

  Then there had been miles of Bangkok unrolling on either side of her and sliding by, bright lights and tall buildings, all of it looking alike to Da. The noise of the bike, the wind filling her eyes with tears. The boy, whiplash-lean in front of her, Peep cradled to her chest. Now and then a last-minute zigzag between cars, making her gasp as the boy laughed. Then the streets had gotten narrower and darker, and they began to slope slightly downhill, and soon there was the river, broad and black and
spangled with reflected light.

  He had parked the bike and climbed off, then brought his arm way, way back to sling the keys in a long, high arc that ended with a splash in the water twenty or thirty yards distant. The two of them had walked from there, a kilometer or more, along the edge of a road that paralleled the river, both of them looking down the mud-slick bank, seeing the occasional rough wooden structure in the spaces between the buildings that are increasingly fencing in the River of Kings. Above one of the shacks, the boy had turned to her and taken Peep from her arms and tucked him into one elbow with a practiced gesture, then grabbed her hand with his own and led her down the path. A rusted latch, the creak of a wooden door, and then twenty, maybe twenty-five sleeping children. Here and there, half-open eyes shone at them, and she heard the soft sound of breathing.

  He had not spoken a word to her the entire time. He led her, stepping over the sleeping forms, to a corner far from the door. He indicated the open space and whispered, “Sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  She had whispered, “They can’t find—”

  “No,” he had said. “Nobody knows we’re here.”

  She had dropped off almost before she was finished making certain that Peep was comfortable.

  THE DOOR TO the shed opens, just a few inches, and the room brightens. He looks in, his eyes going straight to her. When he sees her sitting up, he puts a silencing finger to his lips and motions her to come out. Being careful not to jostle the children on either side of her and Peep, she gathers the baby to her and stands, stiff from a night on the ground, and threads her way between the sprawled children to the door. Here and there, kids roll over and mutter, but they quickly lapse back into sleep. Peep throws out an arm but doesn’t open his eyes.

  “They stay up late,” the boy says after he closes the door. “They need to sleep when they can. If you have to go to the bathroom, there’s a hut around the side. I’ll wait for you.”