Howard didn't drink often, but when he did, he became someone else, someone sullen and quick to take offense. Twice they left a restaurant without paying because Howard, who had been drinking, said the food was bad and the dishes were dirty, although they'd seemed clean enough to Rose. She'd blushed furiously as he berated the waiter and pushed back his chair, and everyone in the restaurant stared at the two of them. The walk to the door seemed to take hours.
And then, the next morning, he apologized and told her he wouldn't do it again. Weeks passed before he did.
Other than the one time, he never aimed his fury at her. It was always something else-a taxi driver, or someone who bumped Rose on the street, or, one time, a shirt that had come back from the hotel laundry with a button missing. Howard had put it on and buttoned it most of the way up when he came to the empty space, and all of a sudden he was swearing and yelling, and he grabbed the shirt at the bottom and tore it open, sending buttons bouncing across the carpet.
'Goddamned fucking people!' he shouted. 'Can't do fucking anything right!'
Rose said, 'Which people?'
He'd whipped his head around as though just realizing he wasn't alone in the room. 'The… the laundry,' he said in his normal voice. He swallowed and steadied his breathing. 'They've ruined half my clothes.'
'That shirt,' Rose said. 'You ruin.'
'Yeah,' he said, looking down at it. 'I did, didn't I?' He grins at her. 'I'm a jerk.'
After a moment she returned his smile.
So yes, there were signs, but she chose not to look at them. To be with one man, not to work, not to have to lie all the time, to know that her family was taken care of and her sister was safe. She wanted all those things. She wanted them too much.
Chapter 19
Men have taken her to Pattaya before, and she hated it: the bars, the noise, the streetwalkers, the dirty water. But she's never been to Phuket. All the girls have told her it's much better than Pattaya, that the beaches are clean and the water is clear and the hotels are palaces. At any other time, she'd be excited about it, but she can't be, because she's focused completely on the second half of their trip. After five days in Phuket, Howard has promised her they'll go to the village and he'll tell her parents they're getting married and pay them the dowry.
She hasn't been back to the village since she ran away. And now, to return with a rich, handsome, good- hearted farang, a man who can take care of them all, is almost too much for Rose to believe. Her parents will have their new house. Howard has drawn and redrawn it, making it bigger and more solid every time. Airier.
Her brothers and sisters will grow up differently than she did. They'll have space and light and money for nice clothes. They'll have futures. And she'll be finished with Patpong.
In her mind she's already in the back of the orange taxi with Howard, slowing at the end of the village street, with the kids assembling to parade them in. She barely registers the flight south to Phuket, even though it's the first time she's ever been in an airplane. Her lack of interest tightens Howard's eyes and turns his gaze past her, out the window. She feels the change in his mood and puts her hand on his and says, 'Thank you.'
He says, sounding like a kid whose surprise fell flat, 'It's like you fly all the time.'
'Have happy too much already,' she says. 'Not have room for more.'
He smiles at her, and the tension in his shoulders eases. He leans over and kisses her cheek. 'We'll see about that.' ON THE MORNING of the fourth day, with only two more days before they leave for Isaan, he takes her to the dock, for the trip he's been talking about ever since they arrived.
He's seemed nervous the past two days. He's had trouble sleeping, and wherever they're going, whatever they're doing, he's always ready before she is, sitting on the couch, eager to move, while she scurries around getting whatever she needs. He doesn't criticize her, but his impatience is obvious: a tapping foot, an occasional needless trip to the door, just standing beside it so he'll be ready to open it the moment she's ready to go.
She feels as though he's trying to hurry time along. When she asks him about it, he tells her he's just eager to get up to Isaan, eager to meet her parents and arrange the marriage. They'll be married in the village, he says, and he'll throw a two-day feast for everyone. It seems like a dream, but still, the whole time they're in Phuket, she feels like she's running to keep up with him.
On the rickety dock, they stand side by side, his arm around her shoulders. One of the things she loves about him, she decides, is that he makes her feel short. She wraps her arm around his back and is surprised to find she can feel his heart. It's beating much more quickly than hers.
The boat rides high in the water, battered wood painted white a long time ago, with a faded, abstract brown eye on the front of the side Rose can see. About seven feet back from the prow are a big wheel and some controls, set behind a curve of plastic windscreen that has absorbed so much salt it's almost opaque. The engine is tilted up at the rear, its big propeller hanging almost a meter above the water, nicked and scarred.
An afternoon breeze, chillier than usual, blows in off the water.
'Little,' Rose says, eyeing the boat.
'There are only two of us,' Howard says. 'Just you and me.' He throws a suitcase onto the boat and turns to get the four big two-gallon bottles of water.
'This'-she levels a finger at the gray-blue horizon of the Andaman Sea, the water dark today beneath gray clouds-'this very big.'
'Ahhhh,' Howard says. 'The Andaman is a swimming pool. Anyway, you're with me, and I can handle this thing.'
'Not hard? Not hard to… to handle?' The new word comes out fine, but Howard doesn't acknowledge it.
He does arm curls with the water containers. 'Easy as buttoning a shirt.'
'Sometime you not so good with shirt.'
Howard laughs. 'Light a cigarette. It'll relax you. Oh, wait. I almost forgot.' And before she can even react, he drops the water bottles to the deck, making it shake underfoot, slides his big hands under her arms, and lifts her straight up like she weighs nothing. She laughs and beats at his chest as though he's a monster, but he carries her across the pier, leans forward, and puts her down in the boat, which rocks enough beneath her weight to make her grab the side. 'Trip wouldn't have been any fun without you,' he says, watching her hang on. 'You'll have your sea legs in no time.' He turns back to the water containers.
'See legs?' she asks, raising one of hers.
'Not like 'see,' not like looking at legs.' He's been pointing at his eyes to illustrate, and now he picks up a huge bottle of water in each hand and waves her away so he can lower them into the boat. 'The sea,' he says, nodding at the Andaman as he puts the water aboard. 'That's the sea. You know, it goes'-he puts his hands in front of him palms down and makes wave motions-'like that. It can make you sick at first. When you get used to it, we say in English you've got your sea legs.'
She sits on the wooden bench that runs around the passenger compartment and opens her purse. A cigarette sounds good right now. 'Sea legs. You have sea legs?' She's taken to repeating every new term she hears so she can file it in memory, hoping to improve her English more quickly. In her imagination she sees herself in two or three years going to farang parties as Howard's wife, speaking perfect English.
'I don't need them,' Howard says. 'I'm a fish.' Rose suddenly remembers Oom describing herself as 'half fish' the night Rose-Kwan then-went with Captain Yodsuwan. It seems like years ago. Howard puts the other two water bottles aboard and bends to the dock to pick up the black rubber wet suit that looks to Rose like an empty person.
'Not cold,' she says. She finds the pack of Marlboro Lights and shakes one out. 'Water okay.' She swam the day before for hours, forgetting for once about not getting dark from the sun, no longer worried about what the customers and the other girls would think. The water was much warmer than the shower back at the apartment. 'Why only one?'
'You won't need one,' Howard says, climbing aboard with the suit tossed over his shoulder. 'And it's not for
