Da shakes her head, and Peep stares up at her. She
A schoolchild, she thinks. Kep may be eating. This is the time he disappears to eat; the woman said so.
After three or four minutes of searching the sidewalk for the awful blue shirt, she gets up. The traffic hurtles by, all gleam and glass and chrome and steel. She has not actually crossed a Bangkok street yet, except when many others were crossing, too, but now she is alone. A big
The woman does not look up, not even when Da says, “Hello.”
This close, she can see that the bundle in the woman’s lap is a baby, not much older than Peep. The woman holds it carelessly, as though it were a newspaper or something else that can’t be damaged by letting it roll onto the pavement. The child’s eyes are wide and startled, like the eyes of someone who has just learned that people sometimes hurt each other on purpose.
“Are you all right?” Da asks. She sits back on her heels, village style.
The woman says, “Go away.”
“Kep’s probably eating.”
“Who cares? Go away.” She has not turned her head, not given Da so much as a glance.
“Where’s…um, where’s…” She doesn’t know the name of the missing child.
“Gone. I don’t want to talk about it.” She reaches up and scrubs the palm of her hand fiercely across her cheeks. “Little idiot. He never even learned to button his shirt right.”
“Gone where?” People are pushing past them now as the afternoon rush intensifies, but neither of them pays any attention. Their bowls are on the pavement, forgotten.
“I had to button it every morning. Can you believe that? Seven years old and he couldn’t-” She stops talking abruptly.
“He’s seven? He looks so much younger.”
“They let him starve,” the woman says. “When he was three, his mother knew he was wrong. He didn’t look at things. He didn’t learn. So she fed her other kids, and after a while she pushed him out of the house. He didn’t get enough to eat, so he stayed small.”
“But then how…why did you have him?”
“I took him. Nobody wanted him. He just sat and cried because he was hungry. His mother had three healthy kids and no money; she couldn’t take care of an idiot. I didn’t…I didn’t have any. Children, I mean. When I ran to Bangkok, I brought him with me.”
“I thought they gave him to you.”
“No. I was different.” She passes her sleeve over her face and sniffles. “I told them that people would give more because he was an idiot. I mean, he wasn’t really an idiot, he was…he was just a little…a little, aaahhh, slow. And he was-” She loses her voice for a second and clears her throat. “He was sweet.”
“I don’t understand,” Da says. “He was yours. You mothered him, so he was yours. Where is he? And why do you have this baby?”
“I told you,” the woman says in a tone of pure rage. “I told you not to name yours. They’ll take him. They take all of them. I thought I was safe, because nobody would want him, but I was wrong. I wasn’t making enough money. They said he was too stupid, he was a freak, people didn’t want to see him on the sidewalk. So they took him away from me.”
“Where is he? Why do they take the babies? Where do the babies come from? Can’t you get him back?” The questions are tumbling out, and Da has to pause, get a breath. “Where have they taken him?”
The other woman says, “I don’t know. I’ll never know. Because he’s not…not normal. When they take yours, and they will, they’ll sell him.”
Da feels like she has been punched. “Sell him.”
“Of course, you idiot. What do you think they do with them? Send them to school? Buy them toys on their birthdays? They sell them. They sell them to anyone who wants them, anyone who can afford them. But Tatti-I mean…I mean, the boy-I don’t know what they’ll do with him. No one will see how sweet he is. No one will see that he needs to be loved. They’ll just see an idiot who can’t button his shirt. He’s not worth anything.” She bends forward and begins to weep in earnest, the child on her lap wide-eyed and frightened.
“What can I do to help you?” Da asks, and a heavy hand lands on her shoulder. She looks up to see Kep glowering down at her. His red face proclaims several beers, or possibly whiskey, with his lunch.
“What are you doing here?”
“I…ah, she seemed upset, so-”
“It’s none of your fucking business. You get your ass across that street before I count to ten, or I’ll kick you all the way across it.” He reaches down and grabs Peep, snatching him from her lap and hauling him up by one arm, and Peep starts to scream. Da is up immediately, reaching for Peep, and when Kep is slow to release the boy’s arm, she sinks her nails into the man’s wrist.
He yanks his hand back as she struggles against Peep’s sudden weight. Kep looks in disbelief at the red welts on his skin. “That’s it, you bitch,” he says. “You have no idea what you’re in for. Now get over there.”
With Peep in her arms, she negotiates the traffic, her heart pounding in her throat. She is so shaken she can’t follow what’s happening around her: It’s a series of quick, still, semitransparent pictures as though the world were reflected in a bubble that pops after a moment, and then there’s another bubble inside that, and then that pops, and inside that one…
Then, somehow, she is on the other side of the road. She spreads her blanket and sinks trembling onto it, absently bouncing Peep against her breast to quiet him. To quiet herself. Across the way, the woman holds her bowl up, her arm raised at the awkward angle of someone imploring mercy, her head sharply down. Kep is nowhere in sight.
When she can keep her hands steady, Da takes her bowl and puts it in front of her on the pavement. Upside down.
27
First, get Rose and Miaow out of the line of fire. Somehow. Second, separate Ton temporarily from his muscle, even if it’s only for personal satisfaction. The muscle is vulnerable, even if Ton isn’t. The muscle can be made to bleed. Third, disappear.
Fourth, work out what they really want.
It can’t actually be a book. The timing doesn’t make sense. If they’re worried about Pan suddenly announcing that he’s running for office, what good is a book going to do? It’ll take months to print and distribute, assuming that Rafferty lives long enough to write it.
Whatever it is, they’ll need it faster than that.
He studies the list of names on the yellow sheets, looking for what they have in common beyond their animus toward Pan. All but two, one of whom was Weecherat, are male. All but three are in business, according to the addresses, which are either in care of a company or are suite numbers in business buildings. He tries to pair the names with the faces he saw at Pan’s party and realizes they are all approximately the same age, in their late fifties or early sixties. Once again Weecherat was an exception. They probably chose her because she’d written unflatteringly about Pan, and, of course, when they’d put her name on the list, Rafferty hadn’t yet heard the number of the floor Ton’s office was on. They had no way of knowing he’d try to use that information for insurance.
