“Go half a block your left,” Daw said. “There’s a truck parked there. She won’t see you from there. When somebody cuts the string, unless it’s a cop, you can follow them.”
“You said you were going to wait with me.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Somebody’s got to get our stuff out before it all gets tossed. They won’t just throw it out the window, they’ll pick over it first, take anything that’s worth any money. You want to give away everything we own?”
“We’re already giving away everything we own,” she said. She looked back. Miaow was sitting on the bench as though she had all the time in the world, looking in the opposite direction. But then she raised her free arm and wiped her face with it.
“Just a few days,” Daw said. “Just don’t screw it up when you follow them.”
Hom said, “I hate you,” but he was already walking away.
He was right; the truck gave her a nice big space where she could keep an eye on the bus stop, at least during the intervals of relatively light traffic. Miaow mostly sat still, her eyes on her lap. People came and went. Some of them, mostly the ones who waited for the bus and had time to notice the child, talked to her, but the conversations were short and no one tried to take her or went for the police. She kept the string out of sight.
After a few hours, the truck driver got in and drove away, and Hom realized she badly needed to go to the bathroom. The stores had opened, and she went into the nearest one, panicking during the first few moments that Miaow was out of her sight. She found the bathroom and relieved herself, taking a few extra seconds to splash enough water on her face to wash away the sweat and the tear tracks. When she was done she hurried back outside to discover that another truck had pulled into the space, and this time she saw the sign that said loading zone.
The next truck came a few hours later, or so it seemed to Hom, and she asked the driver what time it was. It was past noon. The sidewalks were busy now, people with money looking for places to spend it. Most of them were adults, but as the afternoon wore on, there were more and more children, and Hom realized that school must have let out. Some of the children slowed when they saw Miaow, but she ignored them and kept the twine out of sight. Lines for buses formed and re-formed. Some people talked to Miaow as they waited, but most of them either chatted among themselves or craned down the street, looking for the bus. Miaow seemed to have retreated into herself. Much of the time she looked down at her lap.
Two more trucks came and went and the day grew cooler. Hom had gone to the bathroom one more time, and all she could think of was how badly Miaow must have to go. Shadows grew longer and then it was getting dark. At one point, when no one was near Miaow, a big brown dog trotted past the bench, stop, stopped, and turned around to look at her. Tail wagging so hard it almost wobbled, the dog approached her, and Hom cheered up for a second; her village had been full of big, dumb happy dogs who seemed to live only for meals and romps, but Miaow looked panicked. She’d never really been around dogs. The dog spread its front legs and lowered its chest almost to the pavement, dog language for let’s play, but Miaow got up, tugging at the twine around her wrist, and edged around the end of the bench until it was between her and the dog. The dog sat, clearly disappointed, and then trotted off. Miaow sat on the bench again and wiped her eyes with her free hand, and Hom realized that she was crying, too.
That was it. Hom started out from between the trucks, getting an indignant honk from a passing car. When she looked back down the street, she saw that a boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, had stopped to talk to Miaow. From what she could see, he was a nice-looking boy even though his clothes were dirty, and Miaow, who rarely spoke to other children, even at Sonya’s, seemed to be responding to him. After a few minutes he must have asked her a question because she nodded assent, and the boy pulled out a small knife and cut the twine; after a few more words, the two of them set off together, coming toward her but on the other side of the street. She ducked to the far side of the truck until they were well past her and then plunged into traffic, ignoring the horns and the squeal of brakes and dodging between cars to get to their side of the street. Staying a block or so behind them, she followed for almost an hour.
It was fully dark when the boy turned down a narrow, downward-sloping soi that led to a “number hotel,” one of many that specialized in accommodating people who were having discreet affairs; the garage was at street level, and the moment the customers pulled in, an attendant lowered a black curtain behind their car to conceal their license plate and to allow the couple to proceed unseen up the stairs to the second floor, where the rooms were. This one had evidently gone out of business because the rooms were all dark, but the big garage doors were standing wide open, one of them off its hinges. The light from a few flashlights and a small fire in a can revealed five or six other kids there, mostly older than Miaow, who gathered around her and the boy. One of them, a girl, immediately gave her half a mango. Concealed by the darkness, Hom watched the children sit in a circle as Miaow ate. They looked at her curiously but not antagonistically, obviously asking her questions. At one point, the boy pulled something from his pocket that was almost certainly the twine he’d cut from Miaow’s wrist, and this produced some knowing nods and chatter. A few minutes later there was a burst of laughter loud enough to reach Hom’s ears, and she told herself that she had heard Miaow’s laugh among them.
When she left to go wherever she was going—as it turned out, to a park bench to sleep—Hom felt almost happy. They were just kids, a gang of kids, and the boy who set Miaow free seemed to be in charge. Instead of fearing him, the other kids seemed to like him. She could find the place easily. Payday was Saturday, and it would be more than she’d ever made at the restaurant. In the meantime, starting the next day, she could sleep on a table at the massage parlor, and Sunday she could pay for the room and then go retrieve Miaow. All she had to do was to work for a few days, stay away from anyplace Daw might be, and get paid. Then she could retrieve her daughter and move with her into the room she’d reserved. She could find someone new to take care of Miaow while she worked; it was almost time for her to start going to school, anyway. They would have a new life, a life together. She would stop the pills. The two of them would love each other again. It would be much easier, she was certain, to get Miaow back from a bunch of kids than from adults who might want to keep her or even report Hom for abandoning her. This was the best possible situation. Walking away, she was almost content with her plan.
But when she went back on Sunday, rent and meal money in hand, the doors to the garage were closed and repaired, and equipped with shiny new brass locks. The kids were gone.
Part Three
THE UNRAVELING
29
Boss of Him
What she wants, it turns out, is one hundred thousand baht.
Rafferty actually laughs when he finally pries the answer out of her. They’ve left the ice cream shop and are wandering along Silom, heading away from Patpong and the apartment. Silom is, as always, bumper-to-bumper, and the sky train, which seems to be working this week, rackets by from time to time, some thirty feet above the street, looking to Rafferty like a captive spacecraft that’s been let out for its nightly run. It’s dragging its noise past them when she names the sum, and he has to ask her to repeat it, and then he stops walking and laughs.
She says, “What funny?”
“If I had a hundred thousand baht,” he says, “do you think I’d be wearing these shoes?”
She glances down at a pair of running shoes whose running days are a faded memory. There’s a hole over his right big toe, and one of the laces, which broke at some point in the distant past, has been tied back together in a way that leaves a long loose end over which he occasionally trips.
“Some farang crazy,” she says. “Have rich, look poor.”
“Well, I’m not crazy, just broke. Not broke li
ke you were, but I have no idea why you think I can find one hundred thousand baht.”
She says, “He told—” and does everything but slap her hand over her mouth. She lets the syllables degenerate into a mumble and backs away from him, coming so close to the edge of the curb that he makes a grab, wrapping his arm around her waist to keep her from pitching backward into the traffic. He’s off balance, too, and for a moment it feels to him that they might both go over, but then she’s pushing and he’s pulling, and after an unpleasantly elastic moment, they’re standing upright, facing each other, and she’s laughing.
But it ends as quickly as it begins, and her face assumes its usual aspect, withdrawn and unfocused, more interested in the sidewalk than anything else, her mouth tight, lips pressed together so hard they almost disappear.
“Who said?” Poke asks. He backs away to give her a little space, half fearing that she’ll go off the edge of the curb again. He’s kicking himself for leaving the ice cream parlor, but the place had suddenly filled up, and he didn’t want to talk about money with people sitting four feet away and listening for all they were worth. She’s still looking at the pavement, so he puts a hand down, in the center of her field of vision, and wiggles his fingers. He says, “You don’t want to talk about the money?”
After a moment so long he thinks she might not have heard him, she says, “You not have.”
“I haven’t got a hundred thousand, no, but I’ve got some.”
She says, “No good.”
“So what you’re telling me is that it’s a hundred thousand or nothing, is that it?” She shakes her head but says nothing, and he says, in Thai, “I actually do want to help you.”
“One hundred.”
“Haven’t got it. Who wanted it?”
She shrugs like someone who’s given up. “Sour man.”
He repeats it in English to make sure he heard it correctly. “The Sour Man? Who is the Sour Man?”
“Man,” she says.
“I got that far. Is he the kid who was in Superman’s gang, the one who told you he’d seen her?”
“No,” she says. “Boss of him.” She chews her lower lip and looks over his shoulder, as though she’s hoping for rescue from the conversation.
“And this boss, this Sour Man, wants you to ask me for a hundred thousand baht.”
She shakes her head, but he’s pretty sure that it means she won’t discuss him.
“Are you afraid of him?”
A group of Japanese men has come down the street, red-faced and laughing—probably after an evening in the bars of Thaniya Plaza—bobbing their heads politely at people who catch their eye. One of them sees Hom and slows to stare at her, and the one behind him bumps into his back. Behind him, a young Thai man extends his left hand in an unusual position and starts to brush the Japanese man’s shoulder with his own as he passes, but Hom yells, loudly enough to take Rafferty a step back, “Thief!” Instantly, every Thai within sight is looking in their direction and the pickpocket is hurrying past his intended victim. The Japanese proceed on their way, undisturbed.
“Well,” Rafferty says in Thai. “You’ve got an eye.”
“No good,” Hom says. She makes finger-scissors with her right hand and mimes slipping them into something while, with her other hand, she bumps Rafferty’s shoulder. “See?” she says. “You feel”—she bumps his shoulder again—“this, but not this.” She mimes closing the fingers on something and lifting it straight up. “Later, you, ohmigod, I lose wallet. Boy no good.”
“Do you know him?”
“I see. I see many many.”
“So, the Sour Man.”
She says, “No.”
“Okay, fine.”
She’s started to move away from him, so casually that she might have forgotten he was there. “Wait,” he says. “You do want money, don’t you?” He knows it’s futile, he knows it won’t really help her, she’ll either lose it or it will be stolen, probably by the Sour Man, whoever that is, but she is Miaow’s mother. He’s got to do something.
She stops, but she doesn’t turn back. He has to follow her and step in front of her again. “I can give you twenty thousand baht.”
“Cannot,” she says, “no good,” and she turns away again. He puts a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. “Okay, thirty.” He’s speaking Thai. “But that’s it, for now, anyway. We don’t have much money right now, and the”—he’d been going to say baby, but it seems enormously inappropriate, so he says, “expenses are high, the rent is due . . .”
At the word rent, she nods.
“I have money coming in a few months. That’s how writers get paid, mostly: twice a year. I’ll probably never be able to give you a hundred thousand, but I can give you some from time to time.” Her eyes are fixed on his chest, as though eye contact might break the spell. “I want to help you. Just not all at once. You take the money I’ll give you tonight, and then go away. When I can give you more, in a few months, I’ll call you, and—”
She’s shaking her head. “Cannot. Cannot call. Not my phone. Phone of friend.”
“Okay,” he says, and he fishes around in his hip pocket until he comes up with his wallet. Her eyes go to it, and, knowing it will be a disappointment, he works out one of his business cards. “My phone number,” he says in Thai. “If you need to talk to me.”
She looks up at him as though he’s suddenly begun to speak an improvised language of his own. Then she reaches out and takes the front of his shirt between her thumb and index finger and, with a quick look behind her, pushes him back until his shoulders are touching the dark window of what seemed, as he craned for a glimpse of it, to be a shoe store. When he can go no farther, she says, “Talk to you?”
“I’m going to give you money tonight,” he says. “Twenty—no, thirty—thousand. I know you want, or someone wants, more, but you’re not going to get it. Without Miaow, my life would be—well, I’d be a lot less happy. So I owe you, I want to help you.” She seems to be looking through the window behind him, so he says, “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” she says, her eyes still on the dark window or, he thinks, perhaps scanning the reflection of the street behind her.
“I’m giving you this card so that, if you need to talk to me, if that man takes it all or gives you trouble, you can call. I don’t want you to follow Miaow or come to the apartment again. If you ring the doorbell again, I’ll have to call the police. Do you understand?”
She’s still looking at the window, but she nods.
“Just so we’re clear . . . will you please look at me for a minute?” When she does, he says, “I’m giving you thirty thousand now, tonight. That should be enough for you to get a place to stay, get some time off the street. If you need a little more, and I mean a little, you can call me. In about three months, I’ll get some more money, and if you call I’ll probably be able to give you some. But you stay away from Miaow. I’ll talk to her, and if she ever wants to meet you, I’ll let you know when you call. I will talk to her. Okay?”
She nods, looking at his chest.
“But you have to do one thing for me. You have to tell me how you found us. The house, I mean, I know how you knew we’d been on Silom, but how did you find the house?”
She’s chewing on her lower lip so hard he expects it to bleed, but she says, “Sour Man.”
“The Sour Man—what? Told you where we live and that we had Miaow, and—”
“No.” She looks over his head and blinks several times so hard he thinks she might have something in her eye, and then she says, in Thai this time, “No. Some days ago, maybe a week or maybe two, he showed me a picture of you and said he would pay me one hundred baht every day I followed you until I found your house. He showed me the bar where you took Miaow. So I tried to follow you, but sometimes I forgot or you didn’t come, but he gave me money every day and told me to keep t
rying. And he hurt me.”
“Hurt you.”
“My ear,” she said. “Never mind, it doesn’t hurt now.”
“Why didn’t he follow me himself?”
“I don’t know. If I asked questions, he hurt me.”
“Then, then—wait a minute. Then you didn’t know we had Miaow?”
“No, I knew Miaow was with a man who came to Patpong sometimes, but I didn’t know it was you.”
He steps back without being aware he’s doing it and then, for lack of anything better, goes to stand beside her. Both of them are leaning against the window, looking at the sidewalk. It feels almost companionable to him. “So, when she opened that door . . .”
“I didn’t want to knock on your door. I wanted to go home. I was standing out where the cars go in and out, under your building, and he told me about . . . on the phone, he told me. And he told me one, umm, one hundred—” She holds up her left hand, and among the scribbles he can make out the number. “And it was Miaow,” she says.
“So,” he says, partly to hear it out loud, “the money’s for him. I mean, you’re not actually asking us for—”
“No. For him.”
“He figures I’m rich enough to pay you a hundred thousand baht because you’re Miaow’s mother. Because why? Because I’d be afraid you’d try to take her? Because—” He breaks off and then nods. “Yeah, whatever is going on in your life, you’re her mother and I’m a foreigner.” He sees her looking down at his left foot and realizes he’s tapping it, fast, on the pavement. “So,” he says, “if you had thirty thousand baht could you go someplace he couldn’t find you?”
It takes her a few seconds, but then she says, “Yes.”
“Then fuck him,” Rafferty says. “Let’s go get your money.”
It’s almost midnight when he opens the apartment door and eases it closed. The living room and the kitchen are empty and dark, but there’s a strip of light beneath Miaow’s door. He looks at it for a minute or three, trying to figure out how he can frame what’s just happened, and then he gives up and decides he’ll sleep on it, assuming the couch will allow it, and that’s when he sees there’s also light beneath the door to the room Rose currently shares with, ummm, Frank. Not wanting to wake the baby or alert Miaow that he’s home—he’s nowhere near ready for that conversation—he knocks in a feathery fashion on the door to the bedroom. It opens almost immediately, and Rose, smelling of the lemon soap she favors, wraps her arms around him. To his total surprise, he begins to cry. It’s silent, but it’s weeping.
Street Music Page 27