Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

She looked up at him, amazed, and found him shaking his hand in the air, and she thought it looked funny, until she saw his eyes. When she saw his eyes, she backed away, two or three feet across the floor, without even getting up.

He looked down at her and through her, and it seemed to take a few seconds for him to bring his eyes out of the hole he had stared in her so he could focus on her face. When he did, he grinned. "That hurt," he said. "Did I push you off?"

She nodded, still watching his face.

"Well, you had it coming." He looked down at his hand and then blew on his fingers. She had taught him how to blow on what hurt, to make it feel better. "There," he said. He shook the hand as though it were wet. "All fine now." He extended the other hand. "Come back up here. I'm sorry. And look, I have a new idea for the house."

She stayed where she was, so he sat and began to draw. After a moment she got onto the chair again, leaving an inch or two between them, and watched the pencil as he sketched a litter of puppies gathered around the dog she'd drawn.

"That one's Donder and that one's Blitzen," he said, indicating two of the four. He wrote the names above them. "You name the other two."

She took the pencil, still feeling the agitation in the air. Trying to find her way back to the feeling of a moment ago, she said, "This one name Dog."

"Write it," Howard said.

She wrote "D-O-G" slowly above the puppy.

"And that one?"

"This one name Howard," she said. "Because he bite."

Howard took the pencil and drew exaggerated fangs on the puppy named Howard. Then he took a new piece of paper and covered it with squares and filled the squares with a comic about a dog named Howard, the meanest dog in the world, a dog who was so mean he bit rocks, and ten minutes later they were both laughing.

But that night, dropping off to sleep, she saw again the look in his eyes. THEN THERE WAS the drinking.

Howard didn't drink often, but when he did, he became someone else, someone sullen and quick to take offense. Twice they left a restaurant without paying because Howard, who had been drinking, said the food was bad and the dishes were dirty, although they'd seemed clean enough to Rose. She'd blushed furiously as he berated the waiter and pushed back his chair, and everyone in the restaurant stared at the two of them. The walk to the door seemed to take hours.

And then, the next morning, he apologized and told her he wouldn't do it again. Weeks passed before he did.

Other than the one time, he never aimed his fury at her. It was always something else-a taxi driver, or someone who bumped Rose on the street, or, one time, a shirt that had come back from the hotel laundry with a button missing. Howard had put it on and buttoned it most of the way up when he came to the empty space, and all of a sudden he was swearing and yelling, and he grabbed the shirt at the bottom and tore it open, sending buttons bouncing across the carpet.

"Goddamned fucking people!" he shouted. "Can't do fucking anything right!"

Rose said, "Which people?"

He'd whipped his head around as though just realizing he wasn't alone in the room. "The… the laundry," he said in his normal voice. He swallowed and steadied his breathing. "They've ruined half my clothes."

"That shirt," Rose said. "You ruin."

"Yeah," he said, looking down at it. "I did, didn't I?" He grins at her. "I'm a jerk."

After a moment she returned his smile.

So yes, there were signs, but she chose not to look at them. To be with one man, not to work, not to have to lie all the time, to know that her family was taken care of and her sister was safe. She wanted all those things. She wanted them too much.

Men have taken her to Pattaya before, and she hated it: the bars, the noise, the streetwalkers, the dirty water. But she's never been to Phuket. All the girls have told her it's much better than Pattaya, that the beaches are clean and the water is clear and the hotels are palaces. At any other time, she'd be excited about it, but she can't be, because she's focused completely on the second half of their trip. After five days in Phuket, Howard has promised her they'll go to the village and he'll tell her parents they're getting married and pay them the dowry.

She hasn't been back to the village since she ran away. And now, to return with a rich, handsome, good-hearted farang, a man who can take care of them all, is almost too much for Rose to believe. Her parents will have their new house. Howard has drawn and redrawn it, making it bigger and more solid every time. Airier.

Her brothers and sisters will grow up differently than she did. They'll have space and light and money for nice clothes. They'll have futures. And she'll be finished with Patpong.

In her mind she's already in the back of the orange taxi with Howard, slowing at the end of the village street, with the kids assembling to parade them in. She barely registers the flight south to Phuket, even though it's the first time she's ever been in an airplane. Her lack of interest tightens Howard's eyes and turns his gaze past her, out the window. She feels the change in his mood and puts her hand on his and says, "Thank you."

He says, sounding like a kid whose surprise fell flat, "It's like you fly all the time."

"Have happy too much already," she says. "Not have room for more."

He smiles at her, and the tension in his shoulders eases. He leans over and kisses her cheek. "We'll see about that." ON THE MORNING of the fourth day, with only two more days before they leave for Isaan, he takes her to the dock, for the trip he's been talking about ever since they arrived.

He's seemed nervous the past two days. He's had trouble sleeping, and wherever they're going, whatever they're doing, he's always ready before she is, sitting on the couch, eager to move, while she scurries around getting whatever she needs. He doesn't criticize her, but his impatience is obvious: a tapping foot, an occasional needless trip to the door, just standing beside it so he'll be ready to open it the moment she's ready to go.

She feels as though he's trying to hurry time along. When she asks him about it, he tells her he's just eager to get up to Isaan, eager to meet her parents and arrange the marriage. They'll be married in the village, he says, and he'll throw a two-day feast for everyone. It seems like a dream, but still, the whole time they're in Phuket, she feels like she's running to keep up with him.

On the rickety dock, they stand side by side, his arm around her shoulders. One of the things she loves about him, she decides, is that he makes her feel short. She wraps her arm around his back and is surprised to find she can feel his heart. It's beating much more quickly than hers.

The boat rides high in the water, battered wood painted white a long time ago, with a faded, abstract brown eye on the front of the side Rose can see. About seven feet back from the prow are a big wheel and some controls, set behind a curve of plastic windscreen that has absorbed so much salt it's almost opaque. The engine is tilted up at the rear, its big propeller hanging almost a meter above the water, nicked and scarred.

An afternoon breeze, chillier than usual, blows in off the water.

"Little," Rose says, eyeing the boat.

"There are only two of us," Howard says. "Just you and me." He throws a suitcase onto the boat and turns to get the four big two-gallon bottles of water.

"This"-she levels a finger at the gray-blue horizon of the Andaman Sea, the water dark today beneath gray clouds-"this very big."

"Ahhhh," Howard says. "The Andaman is a swimming pool. Anyway, you're with me, and I can handle this thing."

"Not hard? Not hard to… to handle?" The new word comes out fine, but Howard doesn't acknowledge it.