"You told me the clowns were terrible," she says as they climb the stairs to the stage.
"Well, they were until tonight. The kid who played Trinculo was great."
"He was the little one?"
"In the big yellow cape."
"He was funny. And he's almost as little as Miaow."
At the top of the stairs, Rafferty stops. "We've just seen the final curtain, right?"
"What's that mean, the final curtain?"
"When the play ended, just now. Everything was solved, everybody was saved, and all the secrets came out. Didn't they?"
Rose's face assumes an expression Rafferty can only characterize as complicated. "Yes," she says with some caution in her voice.
"So," he says. "Were you or weren't you in Patpong that night? And don't ask me which night."
Rose gives him a full and frank gaze and says, "You told me to stay at Arthit's. So of course I stayed at Arthit's."
They stand there, looking at each other and listening to the cheers and laughter from the stage.
"Well," Rafferty says, "I'm glad that's settled." He opens the door, and they step around a bunch of canvas rocks and find themselves far stage left.
"Oh," Rose says, staring up. "Oh, my."
From where they stand, the mighty rock is a jumbled construct of two-by-fours covered with heavy canvas, with three sets of roll-up stairs staggered beneath it to hold Miaow up. Looking at it from this perspective, Rafferty is happy he hadn't known how fragile the structure actually is. He wouldn't have been able to think about anything else whenever Miaow was on her path.
Rose says, "I wish I'd seen it this way first."
Clumps of people have gathered all over the stage, each attracted by one of the actors, and Mrs. Shin trots from group to group. Luther So stands, theatrically exhausted and literally mopping his brow, in the middle of a mob that looks like half the population of Chinatown, while Siri clasps a funereal armload of flowers, undoubtedly presented to her by the mob of adoring boys that presses on her from all sides. Her onstage lover, Ferdinand, is playing to a coterie of boys who seem to be wearing discreet makeup.
Rafferty hears half a dozen languages: English, Thai, Mandarin, what may be Swedish from Siri's parents, who are trying to elbow their way through the boys, Italian from somewhere, and a few he doesn't recognize.
"She's over there," Rose says.
Rafferty looks and sees first a bulky cape wrapped around one of the scrawniest little boys he's ever seen, a kid whose shoulders are barely wider than his neck and whose thick glasses, which he hadn't worn on the stage, are the size of silver dollars. His parents, not much bigger than he is but just as studious-looking, flank him proudly, and in the middle, her back turned to Rafferty and Rose, is Miaow, still wearing her mirrors.
"Trink-something," Rose says.
Rafferty says, "Wait a minute." He opens the program and runs his finger down the cast list. He comes to Trinculo and follows the line of dots to the actor's name: Andrew Nguyen.
He starts to laugh.
"What is it?" Rose says.
"Nothing." Miaow has heard his laugh and turned, and she waves them to her, her face incandescent with happiness. When they reach her, she hugs Rose and then Rafferty.
"Where's Pim?" Miaow asks.
"At Arthit's," Rose says. "Learning to be a maid. You were wonderful."
"Thank you," Miaow says politely, but it's clear she has something else on her mind. She steps to one side, inhales, breathes out, and inhales again. "Mom," she says. "Dad." She swallows and turns to the kid drowning in the yellow cape. "This is Andy."
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The Queen of Patpong pr-4 Page 34
