“He’s teasing,” said Min. “Don’t listen to him, Philip.”
“She’s right about that,” said Mr. Bardin. “You shouldn’t ask advice of me. Philip, I am what your parents would call a scoundrel.”
“You’re not,” said Philip earnestly. “I’m sure you’re not.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, old man.” He hesitated for a moment as if considering something, then said, “That boy Andrew was lying, you know.” He took a deep draft on his cigarette. “There aren’t any high kicks or karate chopping in judo.” He put his head back and released a long twisting cable of smoke. “Absolutely no breaking of things with the feet,” he told the ceiling, then brought his head back down and looked into Philip’s puzzled face. “Those antics at school were pure fiction.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Philip.
“People lie for all kinds of reasons,” said Mr. Bardin. “He was probably trying to impress the other boys.” He smiled. “Or the girls.” He took Min’s arm. “Will you be joining us for dinner?” he asked Philip.
Philip shook his head. “We already ate.”
Min put her hand out to him, and Philip did what his father would do: put his hand up and took her gloved fingertips, letting them curl over his own fingers, trapping them lightly with his thumb and bending his head over them.
“It was lovely to meet you, Philip Preston,” she said. She leaned toward him. For a frightened, ecstatic moment, Philip thought that she meant to kiss him. But she merely put her mouth close to his ear.
“Do not believe it,” said Min, as the hairs on the back of his neck lifted from the warmth of her breath. “This man is the worst scoundrel you will ever know.” Then she straightened up with a laugh, releasing Philip’s fingers, and the two of them moved away.
* * *
The woman in the trousers in the middle of the party room smiled widely as she issued her edict: Don’t ever learn how to make coffee.
Longing for escape, Laura looked across the room to the place where she’d left Philip, but he wasn’t there.
“Mark my words,” said the woman. There was a bit of lipstick on her teeth. “You’ll find yourself in a group of men one day, and they’ll ask you to make coffee.”
There was Philip, behind a potted plant. Laura put her tongue out at him.
“It may seem like nothing,” said the woman, speaking more loudly, jerking Laura’s attention back. “But if you do it, it will diminish you. From that time on, you’ll be thought of as a servant to the others. You’ll be their subordinate; no one will listen to anything you say.” She raised a finger. “If you know how to do something, it will be very difficult to refuse to do it if you are asked. That seems to be how we women are made.” A rueful shake of her head. “And if you know how and you refuse, they’ll be as affronted as if you slapped them. But if you don’t know how, you lose nothing. It’s not a skill they respect. They’ll be annoyed in the moment, but it will force them to think about you differently.” With a hint of wistfulness, “Maybe by the time you grow up, things will be different.” Her brows lowered. “But I doubt it. Promise me right now that you will never learn how to make coffee.”
Laura nodded, although the promise seemed unnecessary. Her mum never made coffee. If as a grownup Laura decided to drink coffee, she presumed that someone else would make it.
* * *
Maxwell Dawson was shorter than Genevieve had expected. His charcoal suit was flawless, no doubt custom made for his powerful build, and unwrinkled although he’d just gotten off an airplane—probably the hotel staff working their usual miracles. He had slipped into the Prestons’ party room without fanfare and was standing in a corner alone, looking at the shelf of Sawankhalok pots Genevieve had procured for a song the month before.
“Mr. Dawson,” she said as she approached him, the words emphatic enough to express strong welcome while not loud enough to draw the attention of anyone else in the room. “How was your flight? You must be exhausted. Let me get you a drink.”
“They brought me one,” he said, indicating the glass that was sweating condensation onto a nearby table. “Liquor doesn’t mix well with jet lag, in my experience.” He took up one of the blue-gray pots, palmed it in his blunt-fingered hand.
“The time change can be so disorienting,” she said. “Perhaps a soft drink?” He shook his head no. “We have some shrimp coming out of the oven in a minute. Can I tempt you?”
“The famous Genevieve Preston,” he told the pot.
“Excuse me?”
“Your reputation has preceded you,” he said, removing the lid of the pot with a little grating noise.
“All good, I hope,” she said without dimming her smile, although she was not at all certain of his meaning.
He said nothing, peering into the small well of darkness, while she felt a gathering anxiety—was a madman in charge of her family’s future?
“When I was preparing to come over,” he said, finally, replacing the lid and returning the pot to the shelf, taking up another, “at least three different people made a point of telling me not to miss one of your parties—if I was lucky enough to get an invitation.” His voice lacked the light tones of flattery; it sounded almost as if he were scolding her.
“Of course you’d be invited,” she said warmly. “You’re the guest of honor.” Squashing her frustration: How could she beguile a man who wouldn’t even look at her? “And while I suspect that you’re teasing me, it is lovely to think that they’re talking about my parties back home.”
“I didn’t realize anyone actually considered DC home,” he said. The pot he had in his hand now was Genevieve’s favorite, a small unglazed globe with a beak and comb and tail pinched out on its surface to make a fat rooster. It was unprepossessing, but by far the most valuable piece in the display. “I thought the population there was fully imported, all lawyers and politicians.”
“I was born there,” said Genevieve. She hated the abbreviation DC; it sounded like a medical procedure. Washington was dignified, a hero’s name.
“Such a European-looking city,” he said. “And the cherry blossoms—spectacular.”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Genevieve. “Picturesque.”
Those damned cherry blossoms. She suspected that many who raved about them had never seen them. The festival was mistimed, scheduled too early in the spring; the Cherry Blossom Parade often marched down a chilly avenue flanked by tight-budded trees. The 1968 festival, the last one Genevieve had seen, had been unpleasantly windy, cool gusts ripping the petals from the boughs and swirling them around the parade marchers and watchers like angry snow.
“You’ve been in Bangkok, what, two years?” he asked.
“Just over four,” said Genevieve, pleased that they were on the subject already.
He put his fingertip on the nipple of clay that had been pinched into being centuries ago to make the rooster’s beak. Genevieve bit back the admonition that sprang to her lips: Be careful with that.
“I don’t think anyone else from the project has been over here as long,” he said. Only after the following pause had elapsed did Genevieve realize that she’d missed her cue, to say You know, I think you’re right, with wide ingenuous eyes. “Blame your husband,” he said. “He’s too good at his job.”
“If he were that good, the dam would already be built and we’d be home,” she said, and immediately felt scalded: Why had she said that? He lifted his eyes to hers for the first time.
“Do you not like it here?” he asked.
His eyes were brown and heavily lashed, an oddly feminine detail on such an otherwise masculine man.
“It’s so hot,” she said lamely. She grasped for a narrative thread, found herself clutching at the Ladies’ luncheon conversation. “And the Thai can be so confusing,” she gabbled. “That whole kha kha kha thing they say. Why can’t they simply say yes or no?”
“They like harmony,” he said. “They don’t want to tell you no.”
“How
do they even understand each other?”
“They understand each other,” he said. “We don’t understand them, that’s all.”
There was a pause, during which he scrutinized her face and then moved his eyes downward in a way that wasn’t, Genevieve thought, quite nice. She knew she should say something, anything, to draw his attention up to her face again, but instead she felt herself preening a little, letting him look. In the cool of the party room it was possible to wear a fitted dress, and this one was particularly flattering.
“Heat is interesting,” he said. “It affects different people different ways.” The rooster pot fit into his palm like an apple; he rolled it between his hands as he spoke. She watched the little beak twist now clockwise, now counterclockwise. “Some people get looser. Less uptight, as the current slang would put it; have you heard that expression?” She shook her head. “Others become more callous. It’s as if some personalities soften, while others bake to brick.”
This was where she would normally inject a lubricating clump of syllables, How interesting or Do go on. But she said nothing, and he spoke again.
“A man I knew once had been living in West Africa for a year or so when I went to visit,” he said in a storytelling tone. “I arrived at a moment of crisis: a young stray dog had dug under the wall of the storehouse and eaten a ham.” They were now both watching his hands as they moved back and forth, the pot rolling between them. “This was a man who, when at home, pampered his Yorkshire terriers shamelessly; but on the other side of the world I watched him shoot a puppy in the head without a blink, before offering me lunch.”
Genevieve imagined a Rudyard Kipling tableau, the dog whining and wagging, its tummy tight with stolen meat, the sahib in linen shirt and trousers staring coldly down, desert orange stretching away in all directions.
“It’s always a problem sending a man to a hot climate,” said Maxwell Dawson. “You never know what you’ll get back.” He tossed the pot into the air. Say nothing, she told herself, stifling her gasp, say nothing. He caught the pot, tossed it up again. “I wonder if that’s also true of a woman. Are you the same person who left the States three years ago?”
“Of course I am,” she said. Her eyes followed the five-hundred-year-old morsel of pottery. Up, down, up. She thought, You know I said four. The muscle of his arm swelled and pulled at the cloth of his upper sleeve; the white knobs of his knuckles flexed as his hand opened and closed.
“Are these pots valuable?” he asked.
She hesitated, on her lips Heavens, I don’t know, I just think they’re pretty, but something stopped her.
“Very,” she said, two hard syllables.
He caught the pot with one hand and held it. Smiled. “Perhaps you could show me where you got them,” he said, putting the rooster back onto the shelf, turning it so the little beak faced out into the room. “My wife rather fancies old bits of pottery.”
His wife. Was she mistaken, then, about the undercurrents of their exchange?
He turned back toward Genevieve, the larger motion of his body hiding the smaller movement of his arm. He was very close to her now. He must have taken a step toward her; or had she moved toward him? His arm crossed the space between them and he curled the fingers of one hand, the one he’d used to toss and catch the little rooster, lightly around the swell of her forearm. At the touch, she felt a warm electrical jolt.
“There’s a large outdoor market very near my hotel.” His voice was still conversational, casual. “You must have to shop sometimes.”
“My servants do most of it,” she said. To her horror, her own voice was low, almost sultry.
“I’m at the Erawan. Room 510,” he said. “Perhaps you might be shopping in that area next week. In the hot hours.”
A movement then, out of the corner of Genevieve’s eye. She turned to see the Number Three, Sarah. She was carrying a heavy tray and had clearly come to set it down on the low table by Genevieve, but something she had seen or heard had stopped her in her tracks. Under their double gaze, the girl backed away a couple of steps.
“What do you have there?” said Maxwell. Genevieve felt his grip on her arm dissolve. He beckoned to the servant; she approached and he leaned forward to examine the contents of the tray. He took up an hors d’oeuvre in its fluted paper, popped it into his mouth. “Mm,” he said. “Mrs. Preston, would you like one?”
“Sarah, please take those somewhere else,” said Genevieve. She could hear her own heartbeat coming through the words, making them waver. The girl looked up and their eyes met. “Go,” said Genevieve.
The girl stumbled backward as if from a hissing snake, whirled around so fast her braid flew out behind her. She caught one foot on the fringe of the carpet that lay on the polished floor, and lost her balance.
* * *
“Another wild success,” said Robert, as they were getting ready for bed that night. “Dawson himself told me that he found you charming, and the curry the best he’s ever had in Thailand.”
“That’s good,” Genevieve said, unpinning the fall from the back of her head. It was warm from lying against her skull; it felt like a sleeping mouse in her hand. She placed it on the dressing table and took up a comb, drew its long pointed handle just above her ear, isolating a lock of hair; she rolled it around to make a spiraling curl, reached for a hairpin.
“I know what you’re thinking about,” said her husband, bending to kiss the top of her head as he loosened his tie. Her fingers stilled, holding the curl and the pin, and her eyes went to his in the mirror. “That disaster with the hors d’oeuvres.” He pulled the tie from his collar.
Just a tiny pause before she replied, “That carpet will never be the same.” She drove the bobby pin in against her scalp, trapping the curl.
“Was it one of the good carpets?” Robert said, head tilted back, grimacing as he worked a collar button loose.
“No,” she said. She pinned the curl on the other side and reached for the scarf that hung from the mirror, slung it around her neck and pulled it upward carefully, cradling the back of her hairstyle at the nape, then tied the points at the top of her forehead. She watched Robert’s reflection bend each elbow in turn to undo first the left cuff, then the right, and drop the cuff links into the leather cup on the dresser. Then the long row of buttons on the stiff cotton front. Always the same sequence: collar, left cuff, right cuff, then shirtfront top to bottom.
“Mr. Dawson was interested in the Sawankhalok pieces,” she said, dipping a washcloth in the jar of face cream and wiping it across first one cheek, then the other. “I thought I might take him around the little shops next week.” She found a clean place on the cloth and wound it tight around her index finger, closed her eyes and worked her fingertip carefully across one eyelid to remove the color, hearing her mother’s admonition, Never mistreat the tissues around the eyes or in time they will take their revenge.
Robert replied from the bathroom, his voice lost in the rush of the tap.
She twisted the cap off a jar of moisturizer and dove her fingertips in, captured a shoal of cream that she smoothed upward in long strokes, collarbone to jawline, cheek to brow, slipping her hands around her neck. In the mirror, her husband emerged from the bathroom, trousers unzipped; in one motion he slid them and his undershorts down, then stepped away from the puddle of cloth. No man would ever stand naked in his socks again, she thought, if he ever once saw himself do it.
“Who was that girl Bardin brought?” he asked, taking his pajamas from the flat pile under his pillow, shaking out the top and putting his arms into the sleeves, left then right, then buttoning hem to neck, squinting with chin on chest to align the topmost button with its buttonhole.
“Min something. She’s Vietnamese,” said Genevieve. “Giles Benderby was pressing her for gruesome stories.” She dipped her ring finger into the jar and patted cream against the soft places under her eyes.
Robert sat on the edge of the bed, peeled off the left sock and then the right, leaving the
m in dark balls on the floor, then swung his legs up onto the bed and lay back against the pillows.
Genevieve rubbed her hands together, driving the last of the cream into her skin, then screwed the top onto the jar and returned it to its place on the vanity.
“The Benderbys are altogether too coarse,” she said. She went around to her side of the bed, turned the covers back, and got in beside her husband. Settling her head against the pillow, careful not to crush the hairstyle under the scarf or touch her anointed face to the linen, she reached with still-moist fingers to turn off the bedside lamp. “At home, I don’t think that we’d know them.”
* * *
The new driver might have become a dull figure, of no interest to Laura, if she had not spied him in the garden late that night of the party, near the servants’ quarters at the back of the property. The wooden structure was strictly off-limits to everyone except the three house servants who slept there; the children accepted this, putting the Quarters into a category with other uninteresting grown-up things like cigar-smoking and olives, and jokes like the one about the polar bear, which Philip got spanked for listening to. Not even Kai, who went everywhere else in the garden and was responsible for the care of all of it, went into the Quarters. He didn’t live there; both he and the driver arrived daily from their own homes somewhere in the city beyond the gates.
At first, Laura was not certain that it was Somchit; he should have gone home for the day long before then. Also, she’d never seen him dressed this way: no tie or jacket, just a short-sleeved shirt with the collar open. There was no reason for him to be slinking around the garden, or anywhere near the Quarters. He simply had no business being there.
Of course, neither did Laura have any business seeing him there; she was breaking rules by being out of bed so late. She pressed her forehead against the window glass, holding her breath so as not to fog the view, and watched the slim figure as it went down the path through the garden and disappeared into the darkness beside the gates. A moment later he emerged, now part of a complicated play of shadows. Half man, half wheeled, the apparition pulled open the gate and, just before slipping through, turned its face back toward the house.
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