Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“But I …” Tooly began, her question drowned out as the vehicle tore into traffic.

“You know who I am,” Sarah assured her. “You remember me.”

They took a sharp turn, causing them to slide across the backseat, Sarah squashing Tooly, making them both laugh. The driver, Tooly noticed, had handlebars rather than a steering wheel — a tuk-tuk was just a motorcycle, it seemed, with a bench at the back and an awning above. Warm wind rushed at her face, row shops blurring past, bumpy roadway disappearing beneath, jolting them up and down.

“ Khao neow ma muang ?” Sarah told the driver. “There was a place along here — I saw it before. Khao neow ma muang ?”

He looped around, pulled over at a food stall, pointing.

“You’re a marvel,” she told him, folding a twenty-baht note into his hand and hoisting Tooly onto the sidewalk in one airborne hop. “Now this,” Sarah said, “is the most gorgeous thing in the world. Have you tried it?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“I woke up wanting khao neow ma muang and thought, I hope Matilda hasn’t tried this, so I can be the one to introduce her to it. It’s heaven. Better than heaven, since heaven probably drags on forever, which must get so boring. This is much perfecter.”

“Perfecter?”

“Much more perfecter. Here.” She twirled around, facing the food stall, raised her eyebrows at the Thai vendor, who smiled back. “Two, please.”

“This girl in my class,” Tooly cautioned, “went to the hospital after eating cuttlefish on the street.”

“Two times out of three, you don’t die from street food. And this isn’t cuttlefish.” The vendor chopped a mango, scooped out sticky rice, drizzled it with coconut sauce, sprinkling toasted sesame seeds atop. “No need to worry about food poisoning — I’ll probably eat all yours anyway.”

The vendor handed the first serving down to Tooly, who held it, the heat of sticky rice warming the underside of the Styrofoam platter. “Mustn’t be polite with me,” Sarah said, rubbing Tooly’s back encouragingly. “If I had mine first, I’d never wait for you.”

Nevertheless, Tooly rested her plastic fork on the rice — Paul minded if she ate first. Finally, Sarah received hers and took a mouthful, eyes rolling to indicate euphoria. “ Much better than heaven.”

Tooly took a nibble: melting mango and coconut-scented sticky rice, slightly salted.

“You have to get the balance of mango to sticky rice right with each bite,” Sarah counseled. “It’s an art. Something my friend Humphrey taught me.”

Tooly tasted a grain of the sweet rice. “You were outside my school bus that time.”

“I was. Everywhere I go, I look for you. If I get lucky now and then, and you happen to be there, how nice!” Noticing Tooly struggling with a mango lump, Sarah jabbed it with her own fork. “Here.”

Tooly bit it off.

“Listen, my favorite person”—to be addressed this way produced a surge in Tooly—“my favorite person, you have no idea how many people would love to meet you.”

“Who would?”

“Everybody in the world who hasn’t. You’re just the best.” She turned to the vendor, asking, “Isn’t this the best girl you’ve seen in your life?”

The old woman clucked.

“It’s a known fact you are,” Sarah said. After only three more bites, she patted Tooly’s hair, stroked her chewing cheeks, and announced that they must leave. “Terrible to do, but there’s a party to prepare for.”

“Okay,” Tooly said, the food losing flavor. “Uhm, I don’t know how to get back from here.”

“You’re not coming with? Abandoning me in deepest darkest Bangkok?” Sarah drew a long white cigarette from a packet of Kools in her purse, lit up, and exhaled a minty stream, then extended her slender arm into the roadway, causing two motorcycle taxis to screech to a halt. “I’ll let you take the first one.”

“I never went on a motorbike before,” Tooly said.

“Poor thing, you look so worried!”

Her driver barked, “Where you go?”

Tooly didn’t know how to direct him to her school, so stated her home address. Sarah paid Tooly’s driver, hiked up her skirt, and climbed onto the other motorcycle. “I hate this part,” she said. “Hate the going-away bit. Big kiss, my dear.”

“I’m a bit scared.”

“Don’t be! Oh, Matilda, I had the most wonderful time. Did you?” Her motorcycle roared off, cutting through traffic, and was gone.

Tooly tentatively grasped the driver’s orange bib, but he yanked her arms tight around his midriff and gunned the motorbike toward the gridlock, weaving through at speed, a terrifying, thrilling ride that ended with a sharp turn down her soi and a sudden halt, Tooly’s momentum squashing her into his back.

Her legs wobbly, she took the elevator up, then dashed for her room, as if this escapade might have left a visible mark that Shelly could see. When Paul came home, she feared that the phone would ring, the school reporting her latest infamy. Instead, she and Paul ate in air-conditioned silence. He was getting up in the mornings again and going to work. Yet he hardly spoke, and they hadn’t watched wrestling in days. After dinner, he retired to the computer in his bedroom, while she sat for hours on a deep leather armchair in the living room. She fell into a strange sleep there, then dragged herself to bed, still feeling the motion of the motorbike as she lay on her mattress.

The next evening, while Paul worked in his room, Tooly went downstairs, imagining that Sarah might still be out there. The building porter at the front gate saluted when she left, careless that this tiny girl strode into the night. Traffic grew louder as she neared Sukhumvit Road. An aproned maid passed, carrying a fish by the gills; it kicked, kicked. Plastic tables around a food stall stood vacant, an empty bottle of Singha on its side, rolling back and forth. Neon arrows pointed to the entrance of the King and I massage parlor, before which stood a trio of cheerless Japanese men, each on a different step, each smoking, one inhaling, then the second, then the third. In unison, they disappeared inside.

November arrived, and the heat remained implacable. When Tooly turned ten, she told nobody at school. Whenever possible, she sneaked out and wandered the neighborhood, glancing around for Sarah. But weeks had passed since their adventure. Every morning, she awoke longing for another.

It arrived.

“Come out and play,” Sarah said through the window of the microbus.

At her stop, Tooly hurtled off the bus and raced back toward Sarah. Such an odd way of walking, the woman had: shifting speeds, hurrying as if taken by a gust, then spinning around and beaming at Tooly, kneeling to stroke the girl on the top of her head, hopping a step ahead, then striding normally again.

“Before I die,” Sarah proclaimed as they ambled through Sukhumvit, “I will learn flamenco. Promise you’ll keep me to that, Tooly.”

“What’s flaminging?”

“Flamenco? It’s Argentinian dancing. Or is that the tango?” She thrust her arm forward, cocked her chin in demonstration. “Anyway, very moody and melodramatic. You would love it.”

This casual assumption of Tooly’s preferences — of how she was — thrilled the little girl.

“I know exactly what you’re like,” Sarah affirmed.

After a long pause, Tooly responded, “What are you like?”

“Me? Well, I like bread with strawberry jam and believe raspberry jam ruins everything. I think those who joke around with such matters are barbarians. And I’m right about everything. Except in the morning, when I’m wrong.”

Tooly looked up to see if she was being teased. “I keep trying to think of something funny.” She showed her empty hands.