“Beautiful enough for me,” the driver says with a grin. “Beautiful enough that I’m beginning to worry about my daughters.”
“I know how you feel. They’re babies, and then they’re not.”
“And we’re all surrounded by boys.”
Rafferty sees Andrew’s earnest face, his black glasses, the anxiety in his eyes. “It’s hard not to feel sorry for the boys,” he says. “They haven’t got a chance.”
The driver laughs. “Girls can eat boys alive,” he says. “It’s a good thing they don’t know it.” He eases the car left, checking the outside mirrors, getting ready to turn. “So you’re better off than a lot of people,” he says. “Wife, daughter, love.”
“I am, aren’t I?” He leans back. “That was a terrible cigarette.”
He’s in and out of the apartment building in less than five minutes. He takes the elevator to his floor and goes straight to the door to the stairs. He’s not worried about running into anyone, because Mrs. Pongsiri will be at her bar, lying to customers and keeping the girls in line. The smell of paint haunts the hallway like a ghost of his former life, when the color on his walls mattered. In front of the door to the stairs, he stretches up to work the masking tape free from the top of the doorjamb. When he’s got the yellow ticket, he puts it in his pocket without looking at it. Then he goes into the stairwell and once again dials the number in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
This time he doesn’t break her heart. “My name is Poke Rafferty,” he says to the answering machine. “P-O- K-E. I’m in Bangkok. When you get this message, please call me at this number.”
Then he goes down the stairs, thinking about Murphy.
Part Three
16
The stewardess who has accompanied Murphy from the first-class cabin indicates the express lane for VIP passports with an extended arm, fingers together and slightly curved, plus the hint of a bow at the waist. He walks on without acknowledging her, speeding up just enough to cut in front of a red-faced Korean businessman who starts to protest and then, looking at Murphy’s jeans and wrinkled shirt, grimaces and slows to let him in.
The flight from Kuala Lumpur should have been only a couple of hours long, but a thunderstorm kept them on the runway for ninety minutes and its little sister made them circle Suvarnabhumi’s sprawling runways for another forty, the city wet and dark below them. He’d looked down, checking to see whether the flooding in the low-lying areas was visible and not much caring one way or the other. As far as he’s concerned, the river and canals could sink the whole city. Might clean it up a little.
Murphy is not good with delays. It takes him about two minutes to get to the woman who’s processing the passports, and when she takes her time leafing through his to find a blank page-it’s the thickness of a small-town phone book-he holds up his right hand in a loose fist and moves the thumb like a mouth so it appears to be saying, in Humphrey Bogart’s voice, “Hurry it up, sweetheart.”
The woman, startled, looks first at the fist and then at Murphy. He leans into the counter and says, in a conversational tone, “Either stamp the fucking thing or get your boss over here to do it. You may be on Thai time, but I’m not.”
The woman’s face reddens. She rises as though to call for assistance, but a flicker on her monitor draws her attention. She glances down at it and her eyes come up to his for a second and then down again, instantly. She straightens, grabs her stamp, hammers it onto a blank quarter page, and hands it back to him. She says, “Enjoy your stay,
He’s already on his way.
Murphy is traveling with nothing but a fat, battered briefcase-so full that the only way he can keep it closed is by cinching a belt around it-so he angles around the baggage carousels with their tiers of slowly rotating bags and all the schlemiels waiting for them, and he wonders for the ten-thousandth time why people buy black luggage that looks exactly like everybody else’s black luggage. On cue, a tired-looking Anglo man wrestles a giant black bag halfway off the conveyor belt, sees the number on the ticket, and crossly shoves it back on. His wife, who hasn’t moved a muscle to help, says, “Told you.”
He’s headed to the taxi line when one of the uniforms from Shen’s outfit materializes at his shoulder. “No bags, sir?”
Murphy hoists the briefcase and says, “Whaddaya call this?” and pushes it at him. “I didn’t expect you. I’m a day early, and I didn’t call anyone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shen’s showing off, isn’t he? Where’s the car?”
“Right outside.”
He follows the uniform, musing about whether Shen’s insistence on having tall men in his outfit is a strategic decision or the expression of some sexual kink. Shen seems to be as close to sexless as any man his age Murphy has ever met. Maybe Nirvana for him is being surrounded by tall, identically dressed men. Murphy’s come up against weirder glimmers.
“Do you think there’s anything, however repulsive,” he says to the man he’s following, “that doesn’t turn
“I’m a driver, sir.” The man steps into the revolving glass door.
“What’s that mean?” Murphy says when he’s through the door himself. “They cut ’em off?”
“Here’s the car, sir,” the driver says, and sure enough there it is, a mirror-polished Lincoln Town Car guarded by a pair of airport policemen, who step away and offer two-finger salutes, touching just the index and middle fingers to the brims of their caps as both of them avoid Murphy’s eyes.
“Nice to see you guys doing something,” Murphy says in Thai to the one who holds open the rear passenger door. He slides in, and the cop closes the door. A moment later the driver’s door opens and the driver gets in with a little difficulty, ducking his head as he squeezes through the door.
Murphy says, “You know where we’re going, right?”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
“Okay, then, where?”
The driver eases into the traffic loop. “Major Shen-”
“No, we’re not going to see Major Shen. Fuck Major Shen. I’m going home. Do you know where that is?”
“No, sir, but Major Shen-”
“Major Shen isn’t in the car, son. But I am. And right this minute I’m looking at the back of your neck.”
After a moment the driver says, “Yes, sir.”
“Aaaahhhh,” Murphy says in disgust. He pulls out a cell phone and hits a speed-dial number. When it’s answered, he says, “Hey, y’all.”
Major Shen says, “Murphy? Is that you?”
“No,” Murphy says in falsetto. “It’s Dolly Parton. I was just sitting in the tub, lookin’ down and watching ’em float, and I thought of you.”
