Timothy Hallinan: The Queen of Patpong

"You certainly stood out when I came in," Rafferty says. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Miaow fidget. For the past eight or nine months, Rose's past, which she'd previously taken for granted as part of the family landscape, has become an object of both interest and a certain amount of embarrassment. In the relatively exclusive private international school Miaow now attends, a former street child whose adopted mother was a prostitute is conspicuous in all the wrong ways. Eight months ago she'd had Rose lighten her hair to a dark red, and she'd bought skin-lightening cream. Next was her name. She's already told them that the play's program will inform the audience that Ariel is played by Mia Rafferty.

Rafferty has to face the fact that his daughter is turning into a petit bourgeois. Surrounded every day at school by kids from middle-class and upper-middle-class families from all over the world, Miaow has been looking for the magic that would transform her into one of them. And she seems to hope that the play will help her make the transition.

"Sir?"

Rafferty looks up to see a waiter, maybe eighteen years old, with a carefully trained flop of reddish hair over his forehead, fine high cheekbones, and a waist narrower than Scarlett O'Hara's. His eyes go to Miaow's hair, widen for a split second, and then bounce back to Rafferty.

"Do you need a menu?"

"No," Rafferty says. "Miaow, what did you have?" Miaow is more a red-meat expert than Rose, who thinks all beef should be cooked gray the whole way through, and then cooked again. And served to someone else.

"The rib eye," Miaow says, pushing the remains toward him for inspection, although there's not much left. "It was good."

"The same," Rafferty says to the waiter. "Medium rare. With some french fries. Cook the french fries until they scream."

The waiter says, "Sorry?"

"I want them very crisp. Burned, even. And a Singha."

"Rib eye medium rare and a Singha, and french fries that scream," the waiter says. His English is much better than Rafferty expected it to be, yet another sign of the ways in which Bangkok is changing. When he first got here, most people's English was rudimentary at best. "Do you want them to scream in French?"

"If you can arrange it, I'd like them to scream 'Sacre bleu.' "

"Of course, sir. Singha, coming up." He leaves.

Watching him go, Miaow says, "He's cute."

"He's an old man," Rafferty says.

"He liked your hair," Rose says. For the first couple of days, she'd looked at Miaow's blond chop with horror, but lately her gaze has grown speculative.

Rafferty says, "Don't even think about it."

Rose puts both hands at the nape of her neck and lifts the long, heavy fall of hair, then lets it drop again. "Do you have any idea how long all this takes to dry?"

"To the second. I've spent some of my happiest hours waiting for it to dry."

"Look at Miaow," Rose says. "She washes it, dries it with a towel, and then messes it up with her fingers. How long, Miaow?"

"Three or four minutes," Miaow says. "But then I have to keep messing it up all day."

"Of course," Rose says, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"It has to be messed up right," Miaow says.

Rafferty says, with some nostalgia, "It's amazing how your part's disappeared."

"It hasn't," Miaow says. "That's why I have to keep messing it up. Andy says it's-"

Whatever Andy said it was, Miaow decides not to share it. She clamps her mouth closed and starts pushing around the remnant of her steak.

"Who's Andy?" Rafferty says, exchanging a glance with Rose.

"This guy," Miaow says. Nobody says anything, so she adds, "He's in the play."

"When the play's over-" Rafferty begins.

"No." Miaow ruffles her hair. "I won't keep it blond, but I'm not going to start parting it again. I looked like a baby." As long as she's ruffling it, she grabs a tuft and tugs, as though she's hoping to get another half inch of growth. "What do you think about it for the play?"

"I think it's great," Rafferty says truthfully. "For the play."

"Since Ariel's sort of a he," Miaow says.

"I guess so," Rafferty says. As the only professional writer among the school's parent population, he'd been asked by Mrs. Shin, the Korean drama teacher who's directing the play, to cut it down to seventy minutes or so, mainly to get the roles to a length the kids could memorize. As a result he's spent several months immersed in The Tempest. "But Ariel's a spirit, not a person," he says, "so I think it's right for the character to be, you know, not really a girl or a boy. The costume and the hair-I think they're going to be great."

"Caliban, though," Miaow says, "Caliban has to be a boy, right? Even though he's kind of magic, too. Because he tried to mess around with Miranda, and Prospero is pissed-I mean, angry-at him."

"Miaow," Rose snaps.

"Sorry," Miaow says. "The kids all talk English, and they say that all the time."

"Well, you don't."

Miaow changes the subject, asking Rafferty, "What's an anagram?"

"It's a word that has the same letters as another word but in a different order. Like 'eat' and 'ate.' Or 'life' and 'file.' " Rafferty watches Miaow visualize the words in her head and move the letters around. "Or 'vile' and 'live' and 'evil.' Is this about Caliban?"

"Yes. Mrs. Shin says it's an anagram for… for-"

" 'Cannibal,' " Rafferty says. "It isn't exactly, not the way we spell it now. But the Elizabethans were kind of adventurous about spelling."

"But if he meant 'cannibal,' it means he didn't like Caliban, right?" Miaow says.

"When Shakespeare wrote the play, new kinds of people were being discovered all the time," Rafferty says. "There were all sorts of ideas about them. Some Europeans didn't think the savages, as they called them, were human. The English were snobs, and as you know, a snob is someone who dislikes anyone who's not like him." He's trying clumsily to make a point about Miaow's school, but it sails past her. "Mrs. Shin is interpreting the play so it's about colonialism. Remember, we talked about interpretation, how people at different times find different meanings in Shakespeare's work. From a modern point of view-one point of view anyway-Caliban is the original inhabitant of the island, and whether he's evil or not-"

Rose drops her fork with a clatter on top of her cup, which tips over and spreads coffee across the tablecloth.

A man's deep voice says, "Well, well. Rosie."

Rafferty looks up to see a tall, very solid-looking white man looming over their table. He's at least six-two, mannequin handsome, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with a jawline so square it looks like a caricature. His pale hair is perhaps half an inch long and has been allowed to grow in front of his ears in squared-off sideburns. It looks like a helmet.

From behind the man, another man, almost as big, says, "This the one that got away?"

Rose hasn't said anything. Rafferty looks over at her and sees astonishment and, behind it, like an electric current, a buzz of fear.

"I suppose this belongs to you," the man says, his eyes flicking to Rafferty and then away again. "The little hubby, maybe? The kid can't be yours, though, can she? I mean, you'd have had stretch marks, and I remember real good you didn't have stretch marks."

Rafferty starts to get up, but the man pushes the table back against him, trapping him partway up, without even glancing at him.

The man says to Rose, "I think you met John." He turns his head a quarter of an inch toward the other man. "Oh, that's right, you didn't. But you talked to him on the phone, remember? Out on the rocks." Finally looking at Rafferty, he says, "Stay down, Hubby,"

Rafferty shoves the table back and pushes himself the rest of the way up. He says, "I always stand when a lady comes to the table."