The Fear Artist

Rose off the market, as Campeau puts it, although Rose says she never met him.

“You could,” Rafferty says. “But you wouldn’t get out alive. Anyway, the birds have flown.”

Campeau returns to his depressive survey of the bar’s battered surface, every square millimeter of which he could probably draw blindfolded.

Hofstedler, who’s been a regular for so long that his name is engraved on a brass plate on the back of his stool, swivels to face Poke. “Would it be rude to ask-”

“Yes, it would,” Rafferty says. “Hi, Toots.”

The bartender, a cheery, ageless Thai woman whose real name has been lost since before clocks began to run, gives him a smile bright enough to make him blink. “Beer Singha,” she says with the certainty of someone who pulls out a plum every time she puts in her thumb. “Big one.”

“Zo,” Hofstedler says as Poke climbs onto the only empty stool at the bar. He tilts his stool back so he can swivel into position again without knocking the bar over with his belly. “Ze lovely Rose and ze little one, her name will come to me, zey haff gone”-he puts his fingertips to his temples and closes his eyes-“up north,” he says in a tone of profound mystery. “Yes?”

“You’re amazing, Leon.” Rafferty takes the bottle, served without a glass, as he used to order it all those years ago, and makes the sign of the cross over Toots. “May your children have children,” he says.

“Have already,” Toots says. “Many, many.”

“Why, you’re a child yourself,” Rafferty says.

“She’s taken,” Campeau says sourly. He’s as gaunt as Hofstedler is fat, the kind of thin that announces he’s never tasted anything he liked.

Toots wiggles her eyebrows. “Not every night.”

“I don’t know what you’ve got,” Campeau says to Rafferty, “but I wish you’d lose it.”

“Miaow,” Hofstedler says triumphantly. His conversational principle is that no discussion actually exists unless he’s a part of it, which makes it impossible for him to interrupt anyone. “I am right, yes?”

“Flown north,” Rafferty says, “as you so cannily deduced. So what’s the news?”

“King’s Group bars,” Campeau says immediately. He lifts a hand and lets it land flat on the bar with a thwack. “Raised the bar fine. Six hundred baht, can you believe it. Just to get the girl out the door. I remember when all night long didn’t-”

“Two dollars,” Hofstedler says. “Toots?” Toots bends down beneath the bar and comes up with a big brandy snifter half full of loose one-dollar bills. “Zis is a new rule,” Hofstedler continues for Poke’s benefit. “Two dollars every time somebody says ‘I remember when.’ ”

Campeau drops a thousand-baht bill into the snifter and makes change, very decidedly in his favor.

“And the principle is?” Rafferty says.

“To keep us from haffing ze same conversation we’ve been haffing zince Nixon was president-”

“That crook,” says the Growing Younger Man, sitting in his usual spot at the far end of the bar. He looks up at everyone, his eyebrows yanked higher than Lucille Ball’s by his most recent face lift. “Just saying,” he adds apologetically.

“But why?” Rafferty asks. “It was a perfectly good conversation. I had it many times.”

“They want six hundred baht,” Campeau repeats in a tone sharp enough to etch glass. “And me on a fixed income.”

“That’s awful,” Rafferty says, putting a little extra on it.

“Easy for you to say,” Campeau snarls, “considering what you’ve got at home.”

Rafferty smiles. “Careful, Bob.”

“Toots,” Hofstedler says soothingly, “top Bob up, would you? Put it on my tab.”

“So.” Rafferty is already tiring of his night out. “What does anybody hear about the Red Shirts? Or riots in general?”

Toots gets very busy polishing beer mugs.

“Red Shirts are mostly lying low, since the new prime minister was elected, hoping she’s the miracle that will solve everything,” the Growing Younger Man says. “I was with a girl three or four days ago, says her village has a couple of Red Shirt biggies in it, organizers, and they’re just staying in the house. Playing cards, she says. Nobody wants to put the new prime minister on the spot. Not yet anyway.”

“Girl from where?” Campeau asks, drawn from his sulk by the only topic that interests him.

“Rainbow 2, over at Nana.”

“You’re shitting me. That place is ruined, all those Japanese guys, paying two thousand, three thousand-”

“Where’s the village?” Rafferty asks, mostly to shut Campeau up.

“Isaan.” The Growing Younger Man tears the top off a small packet and empties a fine green powder into his glass. He clinks his ring against it, and Toots puts down a very well-polished mug and hurries to take the glass. “Practically in Laos,” he says, his eyes on Toots as though he’s on the lookout for knockout drops. He raises a hand to tell them all that he’ll be back after the commercial and leans forward to watch her pour two fingers of bourbon into his glass and top it off with steaming water from a heat pump. She wraps a napkin around it and carries it to him. It’s a green that Rafferty doesn’t really want to look at, the color of spring gone wrong. “Probably was in Laos fifty years ago,” the Growing Younger Man continues, studying the glass. “Uttaradit, up where that bird’s-beak piece of Laos pokes into Thai territory.”

“I know where it is. Heard about anything, any demonstrations in Bangkok?”

“You will not,” Hofstedler says. “Never. If two hundred people were rioting upstairs in ze King’s Castle right now-across ze street-we would never hear of it. There would be zecret people, people without uniforms, everywhere. Every tourist with a camera would haff to give it up. Now we haff ze zecret cops.”

“It’s not the Red Shirts anymore,” the Growing Younger Man says. “These days when there’s a crowd of people throwing things, it’s either Buddhists from down south screaming for people to control the Muslims or it’s Muslims screaming that they’re the victims of prejudice. Either side, they come up to Bangkok and shout for attention. Get a bunch of people tramping the streets now, that’s probably what it’s going to be about.”

Rafferty says, “Really.”

“And it’s not all Thais either. There’s a lot of outside players.” The Growing Younger Man stirs the drink, studying it for something, perhaps a chemical reaction. “Every country that’s ever had a bomb go off. And then there’s all the international business interests. Multinationals, American, German, even Chinese. Lot of big money depends on Thai people turning up for work and their factories not getting blown up or burned down. So no, not just the Red Shirts anymore.”

“Do you know what he is drinking?” Hofstedler says, leaning in confidentially.

Rafferty wants the Growing Younger Man to keep talking, but there’s no sidestepping Leon. “I’m not sure I want to.”

“Tell him.” Hofstedler doesn’t call the Growing Younger Man by name because he can’t remember it. Neither can Rafferty; he’s just the Growing Younger Man, the plastic surgeons’ retirement plan, twenty-five years of trying to look young for bar girls who don’t care about anything except the weight of his wallet.

“It’s nothing, just a drink.” The Growing Younger Man looks as embarrassed as Botox will let him look. He fingers his newest set of hair plugs, wistful little tufts of aspiration.

“Nein, nein,” Hofstedler says. “Tell him.”

“It’s an invention of mine. I call it a Hot Whiskey Boom-Boom.”

“What’s in it?”

He spreads his fingers and ticks them off as he goes. “Whiskey, hot water, Lipo-C-that’s a liquid vitamin C with very small molecules, plus human growth hormone and spirulina.”

“Spirulina,” Campeau says. “Pond scum. Yum, yum.”

“The Aztecs ate it. All the time.” The Growing Younger Man slaps his bicep. “Aztec guys were up for it day and night.”

Campeau looks over at him. “Yeah?”

“It’s like natural Viagra,” the Growing Younger Man says. He sips his drink and produces a minor grimace. “Better, because it doesn’t affect your blood pressure. Have you read all the warnings on a package of