The Fear Artist

everyday clothes, but something about them announces they’re a matched set. “Tell you what,” Rafferty says. “I’m not happy with my hotel. Why don’t you drive me past two or three more, cheap but not too cheap. You don’t need to slow down-I can tell at first glance.” His imitation-leather bag and his changes of clothes are in the hotel room, and so, he realizes with a sinking sensation, is the theatrical makeup he uses to darken his skin every day. And his passport.

“Which way?” the driver asks.

“I don’t care, as long as we pass some hotels.”

“Turn right, then,” the driver says. “Make you happy again.”

They’re waiting outside, he thinks. And they’re at two hotels at least.

“On the right,” the driver announces, “the Happy Palace.”

The Happy Palace is badly named, if appearances aren’t seriously deceiving. And this time the men are on opposite curbs, facing in different directions.

He also sees a dark, unmarked car parked a few spaces from the hotel.

Okay, three hotels, and probably more. They’re covering multiple hotels. They know he’s in Khao San but not where. And they’re undoubtedly carrying photos and showing them in the hotels, so at least the desk guy at his current hotel hasn’t identified him.

Yet. There are a lot of cheap hotels down here.

The pictures were bad, Arthit had said.

How did they learn he was in Khao San?

Another hotel, no one outside this time. Inside, talking to the desk clerk? Or perhaps they don’t have enough men to cover all the hotels from outside, so they’re taking them in stages.

If it’s the latter, maybe he can …

“Go to the Regent, please.” It’s the hotel he stayed in last night and to which he had expected to return that evening.

“Anywhere you say.”

“And please throw out that cigarette and start a new one. That one looks awful.”

“Smells good, though.” But the driver lowers the window and tosses the wet cigarette.

The block the Regent is on looks empty. “Drive past,” Rafferty says, “and make the right.”

“Sure. You speak Thai very well.”

“Not really, but thank you.” There’s no one on the sidewalk on either side of the hotel. No parked car. The driver makes the right, and Rafferty says, “Let me out here.”

When they’ve come to a stop, the driver says, “One hundred twenty.”

“Fine.” Rafferty hands him two hundreds and then shows him a five-hundred. “Drive around the block nice and slow, three-no, four-times. If you don’t see me, stop here and wait for five minutes. I’ll have you take me somewhere else, and I’ll give you this as a tip. Okay?”

“Like a movie,” the driver says. “No problem.”

As he rounds the corner toward the hotel, Rafferty feels as if every pore on his body has opened. He can feel the faintest stirring of the air, he can hear the ticking of the rain on pavement and the legs of his trousers brushing each other. He keeps his head motionless, but his eyes scan the block. If they’re here, Shen’s men, they’re out of sight and keeping still. The fact that they’re not here now-if they’re really not here- doesn’t mean they won’t be here soon.

All this anxiety for a couple of tubes of greasepaint and a useless passport. No, he corrects himself, it’s to keep them from seeing the greasepaint. It’s the color of his skin that keeps people’s eyes moving, keeps them from looking twice. He’ll lose that advantage if they get his bag.

And he might still need his passport.

But his body is arguing with him. His feet feel like they’re encased in cement, and he seems to be walking into a wind. When he gets to the four steps leading up to the Regent’s tattered lobby, he can’t force himself to climb them. He keeps walking, all the way to the end of the block, and then turns the corner and collapses against the side of the nearest building.

He’s breathing as though he’s run a couple hundred yards, and his heart pounds in his ears like a drum at the bottom of a swimming pool. He wipes his face, and his hand comes away wet and brown with makeup. A car turns in to the street a block away, tires hissing on the pavement, and Rafferty pushes himself off the building and goes back the way he came, turning onto the street the Regent is on. He’s a quarter of the way along when a sweep of headlight announces that the car has made the same turn, right behind him.

He thinks, despairingly, Rose. Miaow. The muscles at the base of his spine contract.

He slows, staggering a little bit ostentatiously, and wraps an arm around a lamppost, just a drunk whose world is turning too quickly, and lets his head droop in the pre-puke pose. The car hums past, not slowing in front of the hotel, glowing straight away into the wet night, going someplace where people probably aren’t frightened, and Rafferty says to himself, That’s it. That’s the sign I needed, and he climbs the steps to the Regent Hotel. He pushes on the door, gets a squeal of protest that could wake the dead, and pulls instead. Pasting a smile onto his face, he goes in.

Anna’s weight against his shoulder has already become familiar. Arthit is already comfortable with the brush of her thick, short-cut hair on his cheek. He could recognize her perfume in a crowd.

How in the world did he get here so quickly?

This is the fourth night in a row he’s left work and driven to the school where she teaches. All the way across Bangkok tonight, he’d imagined the way her face lights up when she sees him, as though she secretly hadn’t expected him to come.

She leans forward a couple of inches, turns down the car’s air conditioner-which she thinks is a waste of money-then nestles against him again. She traces a question mark in the air: Is that all right? He says, “Yes,” knowing now that she can interpret the vibrations.

She brushes his cheek with her fingertips and then draws a question mark on that, too. “Yes,” he says again, and she laughs low in her throat.

He laughs, too. There’s a quick contraction of guilt-Noi-but it passes. Noi wouldn’t want him to mourn forever.

The first night, she’d chosen the restaurant, a white-tablecloth, Vivaldi-Muzak Italian place on Sukhumvit, the kind of place Noi loved but that always made Arthit feel awkward, as though he were moments away from dropping the four-pound fork onto the wooden floor and drawing the eye of everyone in the place, all of whom would wonder, What’s he doing in here?

In fact, the staff of the restaurant had barely glanced at him, but they treated Anna like royalty. From the moment the maitre d’ walked right around a waiting couple to lead them to a flower-bedecked window table, they received a level of service that made Arthit feel almost important. A cool nod at the maitre d’ and a smudged glass had been swept out of sight and replaced by one that looked as if angels had been buffing it for days. It wasn’t the kind of servile, resentful attention his uniform usually draws; it was more as though the restaurant had opened in the sole hope of attracting people just like Anna, and here one was at last. He felt throughout the meal like the obscure princeling of some minor but emerging royalty.

She’d seemed completely unaware of the staff’s eager attention, and he’d thought, This is how it is wherever she goes.

He’d tried to avoid looking at the prices on the menu, felt his tension mount, and wondered what “piccata” and “tagliatelle” meant. Even during his time in school in England, he’d stuck to Asian and, when unavoidable, English food. Beyond a few obvious dishes, he had no idea what to order, and yet it seemed as though dealing with the waiter was going to be his job.

It became clear that she had the situation under control when she passed him her menu with her finger on something called “osso buco” and then put up a second finger and tapped the menu with them twice, just in case he’d missed the first sign.

After the waiter left, she extended a hand as though inviting him to cover it with his own, but as he reached for it, it was withdrawn, leaving a square of paper. His reflexes, for once, were operating, and he put his hand over