Timothy Hallinan: The Queen of Patpong

The policeman ignores them, focusing instead on the man handcuffed to the pole.

"Spiders as big as dogs," says the tall man.

The policeman straightens. "Are you giving me a problem?"

"Feet like shoe boxes." The handcuffed man makes a sound that could be mistaken for a snort. "The girls will bother you."

"Everybody's a critic," the policeman says, bending to rub his shin again. "Goddamn Bangkok cowboy boots. Steel tips. They should be outlawed. I'm going to have a lump the size of an egg." He gives the tall man a severe glance. "I've got half a mind to leave you here. Nobody told me I was going to get kicked."

"Yeah, and nobody told me I was going to be Jack the Ripper. 'Her teeth through her cheek.' Jesus."

"She's scared, right? Wasn't that the point? Isn't that what I was supposed to do?"

"Well, I think you succeeded," says the tall man, rattling the cuff against the signpost. He yanks at it a couple of times. "Arthit," he says, "tell me you haven't lost the key to these things."

Miaow looks up from her plate. "Hell is empty," she says in English, "and all the devils are here."

"Hello to you, too," Rafferty says. He looks at the half-eaten dinner spread across the table. "Thanks for waiting."

"We were going to," Rose says in Thai. She puts down her ever-present cup of Nescafe and adds in careful English, "But we are hungry." She's been studying English six hours a week, trying to leave bar-girl Thaiglish behind, but the past tense is a problem, since the Thai language lacks it. Then she says to Miaow, in Thai, "What was that you said?"

"It's from the play," Miaow says. "The first act. I get to say it."

Rose says, "What are 'devils'?"

Over the noise of the restaurant, Miaow launches into an energetic explanation in Thai that involves one of the more baroque Buddhist visions of hell, and Rafferty squeezes past his adopted daughter's chair to get into the banquette so he can reach under the table and put a proprietary hand on Rose's leg. She pats his hand and then laces her fingers through his, listening to Miaow, who finally has to pause for breath.

"Not a nice thing to say about Poke," Rose says.

"Oh, I don't know," Rafferty says. "Compared to some of the things Arthit just said about me, it's a birthday card."

"He didn't come back with you?" Rose asks. She glances around the restaurant, an American steakhouse on Silom, as though she's worried she might have missed him. The mention of Arthit puts her into anxiety mode, as it has for the past eight months, since his wife, Noi, died.

"He wanted to go home," Rafferty says. "I tried to talk him into joining us, but… well, you know. He's going to get through this alone. If it kills him."

Miaow says, "Guys," in a world-weary tone that almost makes Rafferty sit up straighter.

Rose apparently doesn't see anything precocious in the remark. "I wish I knew someone I could introduce him to," she says. "My girls wouldn't work." Rose's "girls" are former dancers from the Patpong bars who have left the life to work with the agency Rose co-owns, which finds them jobs as housekeepers. And Rose is right, Rafferty thinks; they'd be disastrous matches for Arthit.

"Speaking of your girls," he says, "you can tell your friend Fon that Toy is probably still running. Arthit scared her silly."

"Serves her right." Rose pushes a full water glass toward Miaow and makes a "drink up" gesture. Miaow rolls her eyes but picks up the glass. In keeping with some health advisory she read somewhere, Rose has the two of them drinking more water than they want, although she herself continues to subsist on the instant coffee Rafferty loathes with such intensity. "The little idiot," she continues. "I've never seen Fon so angry. Here she is, slaving in other people's houses all day, not working the bars but still sending money home every month, and her stupid little sister decides to come to the big city and give it a try. Probably thought it was all cell phones and fancy clothes, gold jewelry, going out to dinner with foreign gentlemen. When what it really is, is dancing around dressed in almost nothing and letting fat men grunt on top of you a couple of times every night."

Miaow darts a look at Rose and then looks away.

"Toy didn't seem happy," Rafferty says.

"I'm sure she didn't," Rose says. "And to make things worse, she decided to work in an upstairs bar."

"Why does that matter?" Miaow asks. "What happens in upstairs bars?"

Rafferty says, "Nothing that you need to-"

Rose says, "Upstairs the girls dance naked."

Miaow says, "Oh." For at least the third time since Rafferty sat down, she runs her hand through her hair, which is now chopped to within four inches of her scalp and bleached a sort of margarine yellow with a slight orange cast at the roots, the stubborn remnant of the midnight black that's her natural color. The haircut cost all of Miaow's allowance for five weeks and looks like it was done with a broken glass. She came home with it ten days ago and announced that it was for the play, her school's production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which she's been cast as the spirit Ariel. Ever since the time, four years earlier, that Rafferty had first seen her selling chewing gum on a Patpong sidewalk, she'd worn her hair severely parted in the center and pasted down, a hairstyle he'd come to think of as unchangeable, quintessentially Miaow. And now she looks, he privately thinks, like a very short Sid Vicious. He's still startled every time he sees her. She gives her new hair a tug and says to Rose, "Why would they want to dance naked?"

Rose says, "Money. They get paid a little more."

Miaow absorbs it for a moment. "You never did that." It's not a question, but it is.

"I didn't have to," Rose says. "I was beautiful."

"You still are," Rafferty says.

Rose leans in his direction and says, "What did you say?"

"I said-"

"Oh, I heard you." She shakes her head. "I'm ashamed for wanting to hear it again. Poor, dumb little Toy."

"She believed every word Arthit said. She'll probably run all the way to the train station."

"Just like my sister, Lek, when you and Arthit chased her away," Rose says.

Rafferty says, "We're thinking of opening a business."

"I was that innocent," Rose says. Her eyes roam the restaurant, as though she's surprised to find herself there. "When I first came down to Bangkok, I believed everything. I had no idea how things worked. If it hadn't been for Fon, I don't know what would have happened to me. I was frightened, I was sad, I was stupid. I did everything anyone told me to do. A girl would take me over to a customer-a customer who'd asked for me-and then she'd tell me I owed her ten percent for introducing me. Girls borrowed money they never paid back. One of them stole my shoes, and I had to go out barefoot and buy some flip-flops on the sidewalk. I stepped on a burning cigarette butt."

Miaow says, "I did that, too, once."

"And you were just a kid," Rafferty says. "Both of you."

"I was seventeen," Rose says. "And that's village seventeen, about as sophisticated as a Bangkok ten-year-old. I remember the first time I went shopping with my own money. I'd never owned anything except T-shirts and shorts, and those were secondhand. And here I was, in Bangkok, on my own, with money in my pockets, more money than I'd ever had in my life. And there were stores everywhere. I bought toys, stuffed animals, little plastic pins that lit up. A Santa hat, a ring with a big red plastic jewel in it that I thought looked like a ruby, and a bracelet made of little plastic fruit. The most terrible things-blouses with big buttons and hearts all over them, teddy-bear hair ornaments, brand-new, stiff, dark blue jeans that were loose and too short to be stylish. I was so proud of them. I got all dressed up to go to the bar that night, and the girls just laughed. Everybody except Fon. Well, she laughed a little, but not the same way. She's the one who taught me that you were supposed to spend ten times as much money for a pair of jeans that look like a whole village wore them for a year and that are so long you're walking on the cuffs. That you have to wear real rubies if you're a Bangkok girl. I was a hick. I didn't fit in at all. And some of the girls just hated me because I stood out."