Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

and then he pushed all their plates and glasses onto the floor, and spit on them. And then he bought everything they owned, two or three of everything, and covered them with gold just to make them uglier. And he takes the most beautiful women in the country, the ones they all want, and drags them behind him like a parade.”

“What’s the point?”

Rose shakes her head. “To prove that someone like him can have everything they have, everything that makes them special, and then shit on it. That someone can get rich without pretending to be one of them or trying to hide where he came from. The richer he gets, the cruder he gets. It scares them. They think he does it on purpose, just to build his personal power base.”

Power: the word Arthit had used. “Does what? Act like a pig?”

She turns the cup in the saucer, just doing something while she thinks. “That’s one side of it. But then he also gives money away like old newspaper. He sets up what he calls ‘banks’ up north. But they’re not really banks. Real banks lend money at interest and take away houses and things. His banks make small loans, maybe three or four hundred dollars, to poor people who have an idea for a business. If the business works, they pay back a little more than they borrowed. If the business fails, they don’t owe him anything. There are weaving villages now, woodcarving villages, silver-jewelry villages. There are men who own three or four trucks that they rent to farmers whenever they’re needed.”

“Why does that upset anyone?”

She dips her index finger into her cup and flicks coffee at him. “You’re supposed to understand this country. You wrote a book about it, remember?”

“I’ve never claimed to understand it. That’s why I married you.”

She pushes the coffee aside. “It upsets people because poor people are supposed to stay poor. They’re not supposed to have papers that say they own their land. They’re not supposed to have money in the bank so they can stockpile their harvests until the prices go up. They’re not supposed to do anything except live and die, and get fucked over in between. Grow the rice and sell it for nothing. Clear the land so some godfather can kick them off it and build ugly, expensive houses. Go where they’re told and stay where they’re put. Present themselves for sacrifice on a regular basis so the rich can stay fat.”

“And Pan is rocking the boat?”

“Sure. Rich people steal from the poor and pretend they’re giving. And here he is: He was poor, he still behaves like a peasant, and he’s really giving. He’s built two hospitals in Isaan, not big hospitals but good ones, and he pays doctors to work there, to take care of people who have never seen a doctor in their lives.” She stands and goes to the sink. He looks at the day heating up through the window, hearing the clink of her spoon against the jar of instant coffee and then the flow of water as the tap goes on. “Do you remember a girl from the bar, short and a little fat, always laughing, named Jah?”

Rafferty searches his memory. “Sort of. Maybe.”

“You have to remember her. There was that girl, the ugly, awful one, who was dancing when you first came into the bar. She wore glasses, and you can’t tell me you’ve forgotten that.”

Rafferty feels his face go hot.

“So you thought she was a college student or something, and you gave her-”

Rafferty tries to wave the rest of the story away. “I remember.”

“-you gave her five hundred baht. Because you were a sap. And the next night when you came in, everybody was wearing glasses.”

“Oh,” Rafferty says, the light dawning in the east. “Jah.”

“Right. She was the one whose glasses were so strong she walked off the edge of the stage and landed on that foreign woman. Anyway, Jah tested positive.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Rose is right, Jah had always been laughing.

“She’s okay.” She comes back and takes her seat again. “She got into a place here in Bangkok with about a hundred and fifty women in it. I know five or six of them. They get the drugs without having to pay for them, they have a place to sleep, they get three meals. They’re not out on the street, dying, or curled up in some shack up north, with the whole village pointing at them. Pan pays for it all.”

Rafferty says, “Last night he was calling the women on Patpong whores.”

“They are,” Rose says.

“Well, yeah, I mean, sure, literally.” This is not his most comfortable subject. “But he used the word-I don’t know-contemptuously.”

“That’s who he is. He uses the worst words he can think of. And then he goes and sets up a place like the one Jah is in.”

“I’m ready,” Miaow says, coming into the room in her school uniform. Her hair has been meticulously reparted and slicked down, and the skin on her cheeks literally shines. She is, Rafferty thinks, the cleanest child on the face of the earth.

“Let’s go, then,” he says, standing up.

“Why are you taking me?” Miaow demands. “I get there by myself every day.”

“Why not?” Rafferty says. “I’m awake, it’s time, and you’re my daughter. You said so yourself.”

Miaow slips into the straps of her backpack. “He’s weird today,” she says to Rose.

Rose says, “He’s weird every day.”

For the first five minutes of the taxi ride, Miaow gives him the brooding silence that seems to be her new default mode.

When she finally talks, he gets the topic he wants least. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“Why would something be wrong?”

“I saw you when you were talking on the phone. You got all tight and squinched.”

“Squinched?”

“That’s English,” she says. “I think.”

“I suppose it’s closer to English than it is to anything else.”

“Anyway, you looked like that.”

Rafferty gazes longingly out the window, which is too small for him to escape through. In retrospect, being alone with Miaow right now is not a tremendous idea. For some obscure reason, possibly because she knows he loves her with all his heart, she thinks she can ask him about anything. And, of course, she’s right.

He opts for selective honesty. “You know that book they mentioned in the newspaper?”

She blows out, her upper teeth against her lower lip to create a very long and slightly irritated “Ffffffffffff” sound. “I remember. It was only half an hour ago.”

“Well, that was someone who told me not to write it.”

Miaow says, “Or what?”

He should have known better. “What do you mean, ‘or what’?”

She crosses her arms high on her chest. “People don’t tell you not to do something without saying ‘or what.’ You know that.”

“You’ve been watching too many movies.”

“No. He said ‘or something,’ and then you got all squinched.”

The cab, at long last, makes the right into the street that leads to the street that leads to the street that Miaow’s school is on. Rafferty exhales heavily and says, “Jesus, this is a long ride.”

Miaow’s not giving him an inch. “That’s because you can’t think of anything to say.”

“Why have you been so grumpy lately?” Rafferty asks.

“Don’t change the subject. They said ‘or something.’”

“All right, you’re absolutely correct. They said if I wrote the book, they’d attack me with garden tools, chop me up, and make me into sandwiches.”

“I’m not five,” Miaow says. “Why would anyone make a sandwich with garden tools?”

“They’re farmers,” Rafferty improvises. “That’s all they have.”

“Why don’t they just back the buffalo over you?”

“Then they wouldn’t have the sandwiches.”

The remark gets the silence it deserves, and Miaow allows it to stretch out. Then she puts a small brown