The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller

by Timothy Hallinan

  “Mine was a keen awareness that my teeth weren’t very good.”

  “Your teeth are fine,” she says without a glance. It’s a very Thai response. She sips her tea and looks down at Miaow. “And the people, they . . . Well, from a Korean perspective the Thais are a little . . . haphazard.”

  “We are?” Miaow says.

  “From a Korean perspective.” Mrs. Shin emphasizes the words. “Koreans tend to be highly organized. We’re planners and list makers. Not particularly spontaneous, unless we’ve been drinking, and then we’re too spontaneous. The Thais, on the other hand, sort of flow.” She sees the confusion in Miaow’s face and laughs. “Don’t worry, I’m not saying anything bad about the Thais. It’s actually about me, and it has to do with the play.” She crosses the small room again, barefoot, as are Rafferty and Miaow. One of the things Rafferty loves about Asia is how close everyone is to being barefoot all the time. When the two of them came into the apartment, they kicked off their shoes beside a plumb-straight line of Mrs. Shin’s, just inside the door, and the backs of all the shoes were flattened, stepped on repeatedly to make them easier to slip on and off. After all his years in Asia, the sight still cheers him.

  “As a Korean, I didn’t think the Thais measured up to me,” she says, sitting down on her heels in a posture Rafferty has never been able to attain. “And now here I am, twelve years later, slowly turning Thai and delighted about it. And it makes me think about Caliban.”

  Rafferty says, “Ah,” and Miaow says, “Why?”

  “We don’t like Caliban. We’re not supposed to. Shakespeare doesn’t like him. Caliban is the only non-European on the island, except for Ariel, who’s clearly an upper-class spirit, almost English. But Caliban . . . well, Caliban is definitely not English, and Prospero treats him like a dog.”

  Miaow says, “And he’s . . .” She falters and puts both hands on the table.

  “He’s what?” Mrs. Shin asks.

  Miaow shakes her head. “I’m not smart like you.”

  “You’re one of the smartest children I’ve ever known,” Mrs. Shin says.

  Miaow’s mouth opens at the praise and stays open. She looks as if she’s just been hit on the head.

  “So what is it?” Mrs. Shin prompts. “What else is Caliban?”

  Miaow grabs a breath and plunges in. “He’s the only one who doesn’t get off.”

  Rafferty says, “By ‘get off,’ you mean—”

  “Nobody forgives him. Prospero forgives everybody, even after they tried to kill him and his daughter. He sets Ariel free. But nobody forgives Caliban.”

  Rafferty and Mrs. Shin sit there looking at Miaow. Then Mrs. Shin says, “Miaow, I am so happy you’re in this play.”

  Miaow says, “Really?” She’s blushing.

  “Really, totally, completely, one hundred percent, absolutely. But why doesn’t Prospero forgive Caliban?”

  “He tried to fool around with Miranda,” Miaow answers. “She says so herself.”

  “Actually,” Mrs. Shin says, “I think we may take that speech away from Miranda.”

  Miaow starts to smile but whisks the expression out of sight. She’s deeply envious of Siri Lindstrom, the Scandinavian-goddess-in-waiting who’s playing the magician’s daughter and who gets all the production’s beautiful gowns. Behind the envy, Rafferty thinks, Miaow is half in love with Siri. If Miaow had her most secret wish, she’d be blond, blue-eyed, willowy, and named Siri Lindstrom.

  “But Siri loves it,” Miaow says piously. “It’s the only time Miranda says anything interesting.”

  “She’s got lots of scenes,” Mrs. Shin says.

  “Yeah, but they’re all sappy.” Miaow clasps her hands together in front of her chest. “ ‘Oh, Ferdinand, Ferdinand.’ ”

  “Siri will be fine, Mia,” Mrs. Shin says. “Every play needs a love story.”

  “I’d rather whoosh around doing magic,” Miaow says.

  “Well, you’ve got the right part. And look at you. You figured out, all by yourself, what the play is really about.” Mrs. Shin sits back on her heels, looking pleased.

  “What?” Miaow asks, as though she suspects a quiz. “What’s it about?”

  “Forgiveness. It’s about the healing power of forgiveness. And do you know why I think Prospero doesn’t forgive Caliban at the end of the play? Because Prospero doesn’t understand Caliban.”

  Howard Horner’s face flashes into Rafferty’s mind. “That’s a very liberal attitude.”

  “Well, I believe it. I believe it’s impossible to hate anyone you understand. Don’t you feel the same way?”

  Rafferty’s pause is all the cue Mrs. Shin needs. “Well, perhaps not. But I’m the director and you’re the condenser, so you have to help me make this work.”

  Rafferty says, “At the end. We could do something at the end. After everybody’s gone, maybe Caliban becomes more human.”

  Mrs. Shin has a habit of squinting at nothing when she’s thinking about the stage. “Could be. Let’s ponder it.” She sticks out her lower lip, completely unaware she’s doing it, and then she turns to Miaow. “I’ve got something for you.”

  “For me?”

  “And it solves a problem. A problem with Ariel. Mia, think about the stage direction in the play just before you do the ‘Full fathom five’ speech. The one that says ‘Enter Ariel, invisible.’ Have you wondered how we’re going to do that?”

  “Well, sure,” Miaow says. “I mean, how can the audience see me if I’m invisible? And if they can see me, how do they know I’m invisible?”

  “That’s the problem,” Mrs. Shin says. “Let me show you how we’re going to solve it.” She pushes herself back on her haunches and rises effortlessly with a grace that Rafferty, whose legs have gone numb, can only envy. “Maybe I thought of this because you’re so bright. I’ll be right back.”

  She goes past the kitchen and into the hallway to the rear of the apartment, and Miaow leans over to Rafferty and says, “I know who you were thinking about. When she said about understanding the people you—”

  “Well, let’s keep it to ourselves, okay?”

  “Jeez,” Miaow says, pulling back, all the happiness gone. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Miaow, I didn’t say you were—”

  “Mia,” Miaow says in a sharp whisper. “My name is Mia.”

  “How about giving me a little time with that? You’ve been Miaow the whole time I’ve known you, so just let me have a few weeks—”

  “It’s been a few weeks. It’s been a few months.”

  “Well, I need a few more. I actually have some other stuff on my mind.”

  “Look at this,” Mrs. Shin calls from the hallway, although they can’t see her yet. “No, wait. Mia, go turn on the overhead lights. That’s the switch right inside the door.”

  Miaow gets up and hits the switch, and the apartment brightens somewhat.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Shin says, “look here.”

  She comes into the room with something hanging over her open fingers, a glittering strip about ten inches long and six inches wide. It flashes when it catches the halogen lights recessed in the ceiling.

  Still at the light switch, Miaow narrows her eyes and says, “What is it?”

  “Look at yourself,” Mrs. Shin says proudly. “Well, I know you can’t actually look at yourself, but feel how you’re squinting to see what it is? That’s what everyone’s going to do.” She comes to the table and holds out the glittering hand, and Rafferty sees that the strip is made up of rectangles of mirrored plastic, each about two inches square. Small holes have been bored in each side and white thread passed through the holes so the squares could be sewn together.

  “This is your cloak of invisibility,” Mrs. Shin says. “Bigger, obviously. It’ll hang from your shoulders to the floor, and we’ll put a couple of white spotlights on you. You’ll just be a dazzle, a sort of moving sparkle.”

  “Ohhhh,” Miaow says, coming to the table. Rafferty hasn’t seen her face this open an
d this rapt in months. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Siri’s going to want it,” Mrs. Shin says, and then she laughs. “But it’s all yours.”

  Miaow reaches out and passes her fingertips over the surface of the mirrors. She swallows before she speaks. “A sparkle. I’ll be a sparkle.”

  “You’re already a sparkle, Mia. That’s why you’re playing Ariel.”

  A deep flush darkens Miaow’s face, and she quickly looks down at the table. Rafferty watches the reaction with a twinge of jealousy. It’s been a while since anything he said or did made his daughter this happy.

  “Oh, I hoped you’d be pleased.” Mrs. Shin gives Miaow the strip of mirrors, and Miaow turns it over in her hand.

  “You’re good,” Rafferty says.

  “They deserve good,” Mrs. Shin says. “They’re wonderful kids. And it’s a wonderful play. An enchanted island, spirits, a magical storm, a shipwreck, revenge turning into forgiveness. How could you not love it?”

  “I’ll work on Caliban.”

  “Please. You know, there’s one clue that Shakespeare might have known that Caliban had a better side than the one we see, although you have to look at the play on the page to find it. He speaks in verse, Caliban does. The clowns speak in prose, but Caliban speaks verse, and he’s got that beautiful speech about waking up from good dreams and wishing he could dream again.”

  “I can identify with that,” Rafferty says.

  “Oh, don’t be silly. You’re drowning in blessings. You’re living in a city you love, you have a beautiful wife and an amazing child. Oh, and speaking of your wife—her name is Rose, right? This play is eating me alive. Look at this place, it’s filthy. I need somebody to help me clean.”

  “No,” Miaow says immediately. “Her girls—I mean, they . . .”

  “They’d be great,” Rafferty says, fighting down an urge to kick Miaow in the shins. “I’ll give you the number for the agency.”

  “But . . .” Miaow is rocking back and forth in sheer anxiety. “Those girls, they’re not . . . they’re not really . . .”

  “I know all about it, Mia,” Mrs. Shin says. “I think you should be proud of what your mother is trying to do. Giving those women a chance at a different kind of life.”

  Miaow says to Rafferty, “You told her?”

  “Sure,” Rafferty says. “I’m proud of Rose. You should be, too.”

  Miaow’s face is as closed as a stone. “Fine,” she says, snipping the word at both ends.

  “We’ll be going,” Rafferty says. He stands, and his numb legs hold him up. “Thanks for the tea. Come on, Miaow.”

  Miaow says, “Mia,” but she reluctantly lays the mirrored fragment on the table and follows him to the door.

  Mrs. Shin says, “You’re going to be beautiful, Mia.”

  “Not as beautiful as Siri,” Miaow says. She’s not meeting anyone’s eyes.

  “You’ll be beautiful in a different way.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What she means to say is thank you,” Rafferty says. “We’re finding our way through a little snag in the growth process. The politeness area of her brain has shrunk.”

  Miaow says, “Poke.”

  “Don’t tease her,” Mrs. Shin says, opening the door as they slip into their shoes. “I need her to be in good spirits, no pun intended.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Rafferty says.

  “I can take care of myself,” Miaow says.

  “Yeah, well, don’t trip over your lower lip on your way out. Thanks again, Mrs. Shin.”

  “You take care of my little Ariel.” Mrs. Shin gives Miaow a fingertip wave, which Miaow acknowledges with a nod that borders on curt. With a quick glance at Rafferty, Mrs. Shin closes the door.

  Rafferty and Miaow walk to the elevator in complete silence. He pushes the button, and Miaow slips in between him and the closed doors, facing them with her back to him. They wait without a word until Rafferty says, “This won’t do, Miaow.”

  “You told her,” Miaow says.

  “I don’t know how to break this to you,” Rafferty says as the elevator doors finally slide open, “but the school knows pretty much everything about us.”

  “Omigod,” Miaow says, sounding so American that Rafferty almost does a double take. “Everything?”

  “There were about five thousand forms to fill out just to get you in. And then interviews.” The elevator starts down.

  “But suppose Siri finds out.” She’s got her fingers knotted together, chest high, just barely not wringing her hands. “Suppose Andy—” She breaks off and abruptly closes her mouth.

  “Who’s Andy? That’s the second time you’ve mentioned him.”

  Miaow’s response is a savage kick to the elevator wall. “Skip it.”

  “Absolutely no problem,” Rafferty says. The two of them ride down in an elevator that feels like a diving bell. They endure an ear-popping silence until the car shudders to a halt and the doors open. “And whoever Andy is, either he’ll like you for who you actually are or he won’t. And if he doesn’t,” Rafferty says with a sudden surge of heat, “fuck him.”

  Miaow helps the doors slide open with a shove and stalks across the lobby, her shoulders almost as high as her ears. The day gleams painfully bright through the glass doors. They’re halfway to the door when she stops and whirls on him.

  “I don’t have any friends. Not any, not real friends. Everybody looks at me like I’m a black peasant kid. And I am. Siri asked me . . . she asked me whether I was a scholarship student. Like charity. Like I came down from some farm somewhere, so some rich person could make merit. Like my mother and father raise pigs in the mud and I usually wear rags and have snot on my lip. What am I supposed to say? I don’t know who my mother and father are? I used to live in the street? My mother, my stepmother, used to be—”

  “That’s enough,” Rafferty says. He puts his hands on her shoulders, and she stiffens, so he kneels down until their eyes are level. Her upper lip is shining with sweat, and her eyes are all over the place. “Nobody loves you more than Rose does,” he says. “Probably nobody ever will. She’d die for you. Do you know that?”

  Miaow grabs a breath, holds it for a moment, and then lets it out in ragged spurts. She finally meets his eyes, and at that instant she starts to cry. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses her hot, wet face against his. “I just want . . . I just want to . . . to be like everybody. I want people to like me. I don’t want to get up every morning with my stomach all feeling like it’s got ice and glass in it, and have to smile at you and Rose before I go to school, and wish all day I could be back in bed and pull up the covers. I’m not big like you. I’m not brave. I need friends. I want . . . I want . . .”

  “You are brave,” Rafferty says. “You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. And you know what? About those kids? They’ll like you when they know you better. Look at you, you’re younger than they are because you skipped a grade, and you’re not real tall yet, so you look even younger. And so maybe they’re kind of snobbish, you know? Maybe they think it actually means something that their parents have money. Maybe they’ve had little tiny lives and all they’re comfortable with is stuff that’s familiar to them. And you’re different. Maybe they’re a little afraid of you.” He holds her at arm’s length. “Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “I’m not brave,” she says, but she’s not crying anymore.

  “What you have to do,” he says, “is remember that you’ve had four or five lives already, compared to them. They’re the babies. You know more about the world right now than they will when they’re thirty. Just go to school in the morning, knowing that you understand things about real life, not just school life, that they’ve never had a hint of. And know that you’re big enough to forgive them, without them even knowing you’ve done it.”

  She stands there, all four feet of her, waiting for something Rafferty isn’t sure he has to offer. What he says is, “And play Ariel all the way to the back row, b
ecause there isn’t another kid in the school who has the magic to do it.”

  Miaow sniffs. Her eyes are downturned but flicking back and forth as though she’s reading a page, and he knows she’s sifting his argument for weak spots. He also knows it’s full of them. But if he says anything else, it’s just going to get weaker.

  She nods and scuffs her right shoe over the marble floor, producing a squeal that bounces off the walls. She does it again. Then she says, “Let’s go.”

  Rafferty rises, looks down at the thatch of short yellow hair, and ruffles it. She immediately scrubs her fingers through it to disarrange it her way. He says, “I love you,” and she reaches up and takes his hand. She slides her feet over the marble until she reaches the door, producing a long, agonizing string of squeals.

  Mrs. Shin’s apartment house is tucked away off Sukhumvit Soi 11, and there’s no traffic on the little street, not even any vehicles except for a couple of motorcycle taxis parked in the building’s shade. The drivers are out cold, balanced on their seats with their bare feet on the handlebars, demonstrating the Thai genius for sleeping anywhere. Since Miaow hasn’t yanked her hand back, she and Rafferty hold hands as they head for the boulevard to flag a taxi. It’s after three, and the buildings and road surfaces have had all day long to absorb heat. It radiates from the walls and sidewalks, wrapping them in a claustrophobic personal climate that’s rich in perspiration. There isn’t even a whisper of a breeze.

  “I like Bangkok best from high up,” Miaow says.

  What Rafferty hears is a roundabout acknowledgment that she’s grateful to live in their eighth-floor apartment. It’s oblique, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t cost her anything. He gives her hand a little swing. She resists and then gives up and takes exactly one skip. His heart lightens.