'No problem,' Rafferty says. 'I'll sic the boy on them.'
The minute Rafferty hangs up, the phone rings. The screams of children in the background identify the caller as Hank Morrison before he can even say hello.
'Poke. Let's get together.'
'What about the prospective parents?' Rafferty tries another position on the couch and rejects it.
'We're in the ooh and aah phase. It'll last a couple of days. You want to get this started?'
'More than anything in the world.'
'When? I'll need at least two or three hours, Poke, one with the two of you and one or two with each of you alone. Not today, though,' Morrison says. 'I'm jammed. How about tomorrow afternoon?'
'Give me an hour after she gets home from school. Say, four, four-thirty. Is there anything I should bring?'
'Your passport, visa, whatever you've got. Something to show you're solvent-a year's worth of bank statements ought to do it.'
'No problem.' Thanks in part to the shudderiferous Madame Wing.
Morrison says, 'Hold on,' and Rafferty hears the phone hit the desk. A moment later the voices of the children are muted, and Morrison comes back on the line.
'Had to close the door,' he says. He clears his throat. 'Poke, don't take any of this wrong, okay?'
'Any of what?'
'Of what we're about to discuss. Is she a virgin?'
The muscles in Rafferty's shoulders go rigid. 'I have no idea,' he says stiffly.
'She's going to be examined, Poke. Medically, I mean. Most of the time, there aren't any snags, if only because there are so many ways a hymen can be broken accidentally, but any sign of repeated sexual activity-'
'As I said, I have no idea.'
'You've never talked about it with her?'
'We've talked about everything in the world except that.'
'Well, I'm going to have to talk to her about it.'
'Good luck,' Rafferty says, imagining the set of Miaow's mouth when she's planted her feet.
'You've got to tell her to answer me,' Morrison says. 'Tell her how important it is, that we could have problems if we don't know the truth. And that includes you, Poke. You've never touched her improperly, have you?'
'Hank, if it were anybody but you, I'd come over there and slice you from gut to gullet and put in a defective zipper.'
'I have to ask you the question. I'll have to ask her, too.'
Rafferty's heart is hammering in his ears. 'If you have to, you have to.'
'Poke, how emotional are you about the possibility that she's been abused in the past?'
'No more emotional than anyone else would be.'
Morrison pauses. 'Which is to say what?'
'Which is to say I'll kill anybody who messed with her.'
'That's what I was afraid of. Look, I can either tell you what she says in our interview or not tell you. Which would you prefer?'
He weighs it for a moment. 'Don't tell me. I want to hear it from her, when she's ready.'
'What's your gut feeling?'
'I think, at the very least, people have tried.' He tells Morrison about Miaow's defensive reaction when she is hugged too quickly or when she does not initiate it.
'Aaaahh,' Morrison says. 'It doesn't necessarily mean anything. Some of the most abused kids are also the most physically affectionate. They've learned it's the best way to manipulate adults.'
'Well, that's not Miaow. Miaow manipulates adults by having the strongest will since Margaret Thatcher. Strong enough to talk me into putting up with Superman.'
'On a temporary basis, I hope.'
'Until I can figure something else out.'
'Poke, you're not the first person to try to help that kid. He's had a lot of chances.'
'Oh, please, Hank. Compared to who?'
'You can't think about these children in the same way you think about American kids. Compared to a lot of the little lost souls abandoned on the streets of Southeast Asia, that's compared to who.'
'We're getting along fine,' Rafferty says, and the door to the apartment opens and the boy walks in. He has the worst black eye Rafferty has ever seen, something straight out of the 'Our Gang' comedies. The scrape on his forehead is a crust of brown, but his long hair is clean and neatly brushed. It falls over the damaged eye with a sort of Veronica Lake effect. He waves stiffly at Rafferty, as though the gesture is new to him, and Rafferty returns the wave.
'He's a good kid to have on your side in a fight,' Rafferty continues, making a fist and pretending to hit himself in the jaw. The boy laughs. Rafferty tells Morrison about the attack the previous evening, making it sound like a random mugging. He smiles at the boy and gets one in return. Superman sits on the carpet, waiting for Rafferty to finish. He fidgets from side to side. He looks eager about something.
'Well, be careful of him,' Morrison says. 'Don't give him a chance to steal from you.'
'I'm not worried about that. It's just stuff.'
'That's either a noble statement or a stupid one. Bye, Poke.'
Rafferty hangs up the phone and looks at the boy. The boy looks expectantly back at Rafferty, as though he is waiting for something. Rafferty feels his smile go stale, and he sees something like disappointment come into the boy's eyes. Finally, just the tiniest of gestures, the boy turns his head an eighth of an inch toward the opposite wall and lifts his chin.
Rafferty looks in the indicated direction. His fax has a paper tray attached to it.
'You fixed it!' Rafferty jumps to his feet and practically runs to the fax. The paper tray is in place, firmly anchored and ruler straight. He turns to the boy.
'I fixed the ring, too,' the boy says shyly. 'Now it only rings twice before it answers.'
'This thing has been broken for months.'
'Easy,' the boy says. He is looking at the carpet.
Rafferty starts to hug him and then slaps his hands together instead. There are probably twenty ways to handle this, and nineteen of them are wrong. He goes through at least seventeen of them mentally before he says, 'How much do you know about garbage disposals?'
Sok Pochara is having an unusual day.
He has been driving the cab since 6:00 A.M. His first fare, a farang man, threw up in the backseat, reminding Sok that it is rarely a good idea to pick up someone who is flagging you on all fours. After Sok cleaned the cab, he picked up the fat twins, two men in their forties who looked exactly alike, dressed exactly alike, and talked exactly alike. They could barely squeeze into the back of the cab. When he dropped them off, they split the fare exactly and tipped precisely the same amount, which is to say zero. They were followed by a ladyboy in an all-white wedding gown with sparkles on it who was weeping uncontrollably and who jumped out of the cab at a stoplight without paying him. The cab is still sweet with his/her perfume when he picks up the girl with the two big suitcases.
Airport, he thinks as he pulls to the curb, barely beating out two other cabs. He loads her luggage, as heavy as he is, into the trunk, gets back into the cab, and says, 'Where?'
'Anywhere,' she says. 'Just drive.'
'That could get expensive,' he says, and she reaches forward and drops a thousand-baht bill on the seat beside him. 'I'll drive,' Sok says.
Half an hour passes. Sok decides to see how many times he can cross the river without covering the same ground twice. The meter says 820 baht when the girl's cell phone rings.
'Hello?' she says. Then she listens for a long minute. Then she says, 'I understand,' and leans forward and says to Sok, 'Stop here.'
