Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

A sigh escapes the circle of women.

Without looking down at Horner, Arthit says, raising his voice only slightly, "Listen to me. Is there anyone who can't hear me clearly?"

No response. Women in one-piece bathing suits, flimsy wraps, bikinis, T-shirts, cowboy hats, all looking at him.

"You all came out here because there was a rumor that this man was- Who's your favorite movie star?"

A woman beside Rafferty-one of the heavy women from Bottoms Up-says, "Johnny Depp."

"Somebody said he was Johnny Depp," Arthit says. "You ran out here, and he wasn't. He was just a drunk farang who fell down in the street. Is there anyone who doesn't understand this?"

Once again no answer.

"That's what you tell everyone. The customers in your bars, the cops if more come around. You came to see Johnny Depp, but it was someone else. And get rid of those weapons, now. All of you go back to work, except for the ones who are right here." He makes a full circle with his finger. "Count the heads in front of you, in between you and me. If there are four, go away. If there are three or less, stay here."

The outer layers of the circle peel away, women heading back to their bars. Not many of them bother to look back.

"I need you to stay tight around us," Arthit says. "We're going to take him to Silom." He pulls his cell phone from his pocket, pushes a speed-dial number, and says, "Anand. Send Wan back to work. Tell her we're through for the night. Meet us in the car in two minutes." He repockets the phone. "Kosit?"

Kosit and Arthit kneel and get their arms under Horner. Each grabs one of Horner's arms and hangs it over his own shoulders. Then they tug him upright. Horner's head drops to his chest so sharply that Rafferty can hear his teeth snap together.

"Poke. Get that knife out of his chest."

Rafferty grabs the handle of the knife and pulls it out. He's suddenly dizzy with exhaustion, stranded by an outgoing tide of adrenaline. He has no idea what to do with the knife.

"Hang on to it," Arthit says. He raises his voice again. "You women move with us. Keep the circle tight. We're going to a car parked at the end of the street on Silom, and I don't want anyone getting close to us. If anybody asks, he's a drunk who got in a fight. Clear?"

A chorus of affirmatives.

"Here we go. One. Two. Three." Slowly and clumsily, the circle begins to glide toward Silom. "Make noise," Arthit says to the girls. "Talk, laugh." To Kosit he says, "Anand will drive. You sit in back with our friend here and make sure he doesn't die of his injuries."

Kosit says, "Got it."

"Poke," Arthit says. "Give him the knife."

Rafferty does.

"That's the knife we don't want him to die from," Arthit says. With a glance toward Rafferty, he continues. "If he does die, there's no point in taking up valuable hospital space, and we don't want to bother the Americans."

Kosit says, "The river."

"Why not?" Arthit says. "It's already polluted."

The level of audience enthusiasm, which had dropped off a bit when Ferdinand and Miranda came out for their bows, spikes sharply as Miaow runs onto the stage in her mirrored cloak. There are even some cheers, mostly, it seems, from kids. The follow spot hits her, making her the center of a blaze of light until the boy behind the spot snaps it off. He wasn't supposed to turn it on in the first place; it's Rafferty's guess that it's his way of applauding.

The whole cast is lined up now, and Prospero limps onstage, slowly abandoning his crouch as he goes, as though to amaze the audience by revealing that he isn't really an old man after all, but the flourish doesn't get the anticipated response. In fact, the applause drops off somewhat. It remains at a polite level as he takes his place in the center of the line, and then it increases slightly as everyone bows in unison, and the curtain falls.

They stand, Rose grabbing Rafferty's arm and hugging it to her. "Wasn't she wonderful?"

"She was," he says. "And what about that adaptation?"

"It was long."

"It was a lot longer before I got to it." He stands in the aisle as she slips out of the row, and they edge down the slope toward the stage, threading their way between the people heading up toward the exits at the rear of the auditorium.

Rose looks over at him, wearing his one jacket and tie, and then down at the clothes she bought herself for the evening, a loose, off-the-shoulder blouse in a silvery material and a pair of midnight-black velvet pants. "We're a handsome couple."

"You raise the average," Rafferty says.

She pats his cheek in a matronly fashion. "It was a great adaptation."

He takes her hand and leads her toward the stage door to the right of the orchestra pit. Even before they get the door open, they can hear the hubbub of voices behind the curtain.

Rose had sat forward in her seat when the lights went down and the curtain went up to reveal the shipwreck, played way downstage to the accompaniment of wind and wave sounds, with airborne handfuls of silver confetti to simulate splashing water. But after the sailors staggered off the stage clutching their masts and sails and the silhouetted black rock of Prospero's island had loomed in front of the gray cyclorama, she had sunk her nails into his wrist. Not until Luther and Siri were well into their eternal opening dialogue did she sit back and relax, only to claw him again when Miaow exploded into sight on top of the rock. Three or four minutes into Miaow's scene, Rose had wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. When Trinculo and Stephano had stumbled onstage, she'd laughed.

"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.