The Fear Artist

But she’s taken such good care of him. And she’s so vulnerable. He closes his eyes and draws a calming breath, then takes the first difficult step.

“Pim,” he says.

The doorbell rings.

“Yes?” she calls. There’s water running; she hasn’t heard the doorbell.

“Is the coffee ready?” he asks, grasping the opportunity to dodge. “Someone’s at the door.”

She bustles through the door, drying her hands, chubby and frizzy-haired, with an adult face that’s just beginning to shape itself out of the child’s. “I’ll get it,” she says.

“No, no.” He waves her back toward the kitchen. “You can’t do everything. I can still walk.”

“Coffee,” she says. Her eyes go to the flowers and then up to his, but he’s turning to avoid her gaze, heading for the door.

As he goes, he checks the heavy steel watch on its too-loose band-8:45. Early for anyone he knows to come ringing the bell.

And it isn’t anyone he knows.

The woman who stands with no umbrella beneath the sheltering overhang of the roof is in her late thirties or early forties. She’s fit, but not in that grim, zero-carb, no-pain-no-gain way Arthit sees a lot of these days, in the minor wives of rich men, in the secretaries and receptionists who want to become the minor wives of rich men. She’s … she’s sleek. It’s easy to see her emerging from the sea, with a little ornamental glisten going on, and climbing up onto a rock to let the sun dry her. Water, he thinks, a bit wildly, would bead on her skin. And in fact it has, on the side of her neck.

A movement of her hands stops the avalanche of impressions, and Arthit feels his face heat up. There’s a glint in her own eyes that suggests she has some idea where his mind was. Arthit forces a smile through his blush and waits for her to say something.

She tilts her head to one side, very slightly, and gives a tiny shrug. Then she looks down at her black alligator purse, and Arthit takes advantage of the moment to look again at her long, slender neck. There’s a smooth little layer of fat just beneath the skin, softening the contours of her throat. A faint crease runs the base of her neck, between the short crop of black hair and the collar of her blouse, as though the skin had been folded once, very carefully. The crease is so shallow he doubts he could feel it even with the most sensitive part of the tip of his finger.

Neither of them has spoken a word.

Arthit clears his throat to say something, but as he does so, she takes a business card out of the purse and presents it to him politely, both hands extended. Now there’s a shadow of regret in her face, somehow formal.

DR. ANCHALI “ANNA” CHAIBANCHA, it says, PROJECT SUPERVISOR, WITTAYALAI SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF.

She’s looking at him expectantly, and two shoes drop simultaneously: He knows why she hasn’t spoken, and he knows who she is.

“Anna,” he says, and there’s a sudden tangle of emotions that threatens to clamp his throat shut. “I’m sorry,” he continues, aware of her eyes on his lips. “I didn’t recognize you.”

She holds her right hand up, vertically, making a small side-to-side gesture, erasing the mistake. Then she startles him by reaching down and grasping his wrist, looking directly into his eyes.

“I’m better,” he says, understanding. “Every day is a little easier.”

Anna pulls in the corners of her lips a bit.

He shakes his head and abandons the lie. “No, it’s not. Every day feels just exactly like the day before. But I’m not as bad as I was, so every day must be somewhat better, even if I’m not conscious of it. Please,” he says, suddenly seeing the rain, suddenly remembering his manners. “Won’t you come in?” And he turns, her fingers still around his wrist, and sees Pim standing in the hallway, her hands dangling forgotten at her sides. In one is a saucer, and hanging from the other, her finger looped through the handle, is one of Noi’s everyday coffee cups. All the spirit has fled from her face.

“Pim,” he says, hearing a ghastly heartiness in his voice, “this is Anna-Dr. Chaibancha, a friend of my … my wife’s. I haven’t seen her since … since the cremation.”

They’re at the dining-room table, the breakfast plates still empty, the bowl of Pim’s bright flowers between them. Coffee cools in their cups, strong, with a dark brown fragrance.

Pim has learned to make it exactly as he likes it.

Arthit looks at the fine porcelain cups, which he hasn’t seen since Noi died, and then at Anna, and he gives Pim credit. She can spot a lady when she sees one.

“It wasn’t good for me to live alone,” Arthit says, although nothing Anna has done seems to be a request for an explanation. She watches his lips in a way that’s somehow both personal and not. “A farang friend of mine forced himself in here one day and found me drunk at ten in the morning, and the next thing I knew, Pim was here.” He’s suddenly certain that Pim is listening on the other side of the door. “She’s been wonderful,” he says.

Anna has a thin gold ballpoint and a pad bound in pale blue leather. She writes and turns it toward him. It says, She’s in love with you.

“That’s possible,” he says, a bit stiffly. He tilts his head toward the door. “It’s something I’m thinking about.”

Poor man, Anna writes. She shakes her head, but there’s a hint of humor in it, too. Watching him across the table, she must be seeing a tired-looking man in his middle forties with a heavy, downturned mouth, permanently flared nostrils, slightly receding hair, and the eyes of an orphaned five-year-old. He’s not very well shaved, and his shirt is badly ironed. He needs a haircut. She reaches over to pat his hand, but he speaks before she can do it.

“This is the kind of thing,” he says, “that I could use some help with.” He picks up the coffee and drinks it in self-defense.

She gives him a smile that lifts his heart in a way it hasn’t been lifted in some time and sips her own coffee.

“You’re … ahhh, teaching,” he says. Her silence hovers between them, seeming to need to be filled. “How long have you been …?” He abandons the question. “It’s very nice to see you. Noi and I were such hermits,” he says, not wanting to bring up the illness that had kept her home. “We let a lot of old friends slip away. She talked about you, though.”

It was true. Noi and Anna had been children together, back in what Arthit always thought of as Noi’s golden childhood, spent in the lap of the family that had been extremely displeased at her marriage so far below her social status-to a lowly policeman, the son of another policeman. Anna has the same gloss to her, a kind of natural polish buffed by privilege that rough wear hasn’t scratched.

She’s writing now, and he watches with pleasure. She’s left-handed, her fingers long and cream-colored, with varnished, untinted nails. The pen appears weightless in her hand, and Arthit enjoys the play of delicate muscles beneath smooth skin.

She tears off the page and slides it over to him, then goes back to writing.

I’ve wanted to come for months, it says. But I didn’t want to intrude. And I was afraid a little, too. You were so devastated at the temple. I didn’t know how you’d be and whether I could do anything …

The next piece of paper skims the table.

… no matter how you were. And I felt terrible about it, because I knew that Noi would have wanted me to make sure you were all right. But I’m a coward.

She’s stopped writing and is watching him read. When he’s finished, Arthit says, “But you’ve come now, and-”

Anna is shaking her head, denying herself any credit. She reaches down and brings up the purse again.

When her hand comes back into view, it’s holding a four-by-five photograph, in color. She places the very tips of her fingers on its edge, as though she’s hesitant to touch it, and pushes it across the table. There’s something apologetic in the way she pulls her hands back.

A big man lying in the rain on an oddly colored sidewalk, his torso in the lap of another man, who’s clearly calling for help.