The Hot Countries Read online

  The look Wallace gives Rafferty doesn’t seem to contain anything that could be mistaken for recognition, but he says, “Sure. Good to see you.” The voice is still deep, although there’s a slight quaver that hadn’t been there before. “Uhhhh, long time, right?”

  Hofstedler gives the pot a determined stir. “Poke has been asking and asking about you, haven’t you, Poke?”

  “Sure have,” Poke lies. “All the time. Wondering what you were up to.”

  “Yeah?” Wallace says. “I been . . . busy.” He glances at Toots, like someone seeking confirmation, and then beyond her to the mirror. He squints at it for a moment, and then his face clears and he says, “Your . . . your beautiful wife. How is she?”

  “She’s wonderful,” Rafferty says. “She’s going to have a baby.”

  “Rose,” Wallace says, with the air of someone discovering gold. He taps the center of his forehead with his index finger, as though nailing the fact in place. “Her name is Rose. So beautiful.” He holds up a huge hand, indicating height. “Big. Big and beautiful.”

  “She’s all those things,” Rafferty says, and he suddenly wants to weep. “Smart, too.”

  Hofstedler, beaming at how well Wallace is doing, raises his voice and says, “A baby she will have.”

  “I can still hear, Leon,” Wallace says. “A boy or a girl?”

  Rafferty shakes his head and realizes he’s overacting for Wallace, who doesn’t seem to need the extra effort. He sniffles and clears his throat. “All I know at this point is that it’s going to be a baby. Or maybe two.”

  Way down the bar, Campeau says, “You kidding? Two?”

  “Runs in the family,” Rafferty says, pushing a perfunctory smile past the resentment he feels toward the man. “Hers, not mine.”

  “You’re married, you’re gonna have a kid,” Wallace says slowly, his eyes scouring the bar in front of him. He pauses, his mouth open, clearly searching for something, and he nods as it arrives. “When you came here, you didn’t know anything.”

  “This is true,” Hofstedler says. “He comes to write a guidebook, and in the dark he can’t find his own pocket.”

  “You were my first guide, Wallace,” Poke says. “To this particular part of Bangkok, anyway. I’d never seen anything like it.”

  “You sure as shit made up for it,” Campeau grumbles. “What with Rose and all.” He’s never been happy that Rafferty took Rose off what he thinks of as “the market.”

  “Somebody had to keep her away from people like you,” Rafferty says, trying to make it sound light.

  Campeau hoists his beer and looks past it at Rafferty. “Little late for that.”

  “Bob,” Rafferty says, and suddenly he’s standing. “What you want to do right now is shut up.”

  “Come now, come now,” Hofstedler says. He reaches across Wallace and pats the seat of Rafferty’s stool, an invitation. “Everyone here is friends, yes?”

  “Sure,” Rafferty says. He sits again, looks down the bar, and says, “Buddies, right, Bob?”

  Campeau holds up his index and middle fingers, side by side. “Couple of fucking brothers,” he says. “And don’t push that fucking jar down here, Leon.”

  “Anger disrupts the adrenal system,” the Growing Younger Man observes.

  Pinky Holland, safely out of the conversational line of fire in his booth, says, “Is that right?”

  “Strictly speaking,” the man who might be named Ron says, “there’s no such thing as the adrenal system.” He pats his hair as though making sure it’s still there. “There are two adrenal glands, but they’re part of the endocrine system.”

  “I know that,” the Growing Younger Man says, just barely avoiding a snap. “System, my ass. The point is that anger can contribute to adrenal fatigue, and adrenal fatigue affects—”

  “You said Varney left something for me,” Rafferty reminds Hofstedler.

  “—everything, it affects everything,” the Growing Younger Man says. Then he says, with remarkable vehemence, “System.”

  “If I said that Varney left it, that is not exactly what I meant,” Hofstedler says to Poke.

  “Varney is the . . . the thug with the mustache?” Wallace asks. He’s rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, and it makes him look exhausted. “The one who talks?”

  “He is,” Hofstedler says, hoisting his stein.

  “Something wrong with that man, bad wrong,” Wallace says, blinking to refocus. “I’ve seen him before.”

  Rafferty says, “Where?” and to Hofstedler, he says, “Wait, what do you mean, that’s not exactly what you meant?”

  “Not this guy, not him personally,” Wallace says. “Never met him until tonight. I mean, I don’t think I have.” His eyes are focused on the middle distance, looking at someone no one else can see. “But people like him, I’ve seen them before. Not many, but some.”

  To Rafferty, Hofstedler says, “I mean he did not leave the envelope for you himself.” He glances at the others, as though seeking support. “He came in and talked of this and that—what was it tonight, Bob?”

  “I don’t care what he talked about,” Rafferty says. “Just tell me where the envelope—”

  “I am telling you,” Hofstedler says. “I think it is all one piece. Astronomy, he was talking about astronomy, about how something with great gravity can bend space into a . . . a—”

  “A lens,” the Growing Younger Man supplies.

  “Just so.” Hofstedler nods slowly, as though it requires an effort, and frames a large circle in the air with both hands. “A lens. A curve of space like one in glass, so that light, when it passes through this space, is bent. Imagine this, space curving.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Leon,” Wallace says, coming back into the room from wherever he’s been, “tell him about the envelope.”

  “So he talks,” Hofstedler says, as though Wallace were in a soundproof booth. “But all the time he talks, I think he is looking for you. Waiting for you.”

  “That’s right, come to think of it,” the Growing Younger Man says. “He kept staring at the door.”

  “Guy’s got balls made of brass,” Campeau says. “Last time he was in here, we practically kicked him into the street, but he comes in tonight like we were his fucking fan club and just starts talking again, but you know what, Poke? They’re right. He was waiting.”

  “Yes,” Leon says. “He talks and talks, and finally he says, ‘Is Rafferty coming?’”

  Rafferty says, “He did, did he?”

  “And I say I am not in charge of your schedule, maybe tonight you stay home, and then he asks where you live.”

  “And you said?”

  Hofstedler gives him both hands, palms up, Delsarte for How would I know? “I said I have no idea, yes? Nobody here knows where you live. We are friends, but we do not go home with you.”

  “What did he say when you told him you didn’t know where I lived?”

  “Something about the red shift,” maybe-Ron says. “How a gravitational lens can distort the red shift.”

  Rafferty says, “The red shift.”

  “He said the red shift is how we know which things in the universe are close and which are far away. He said it was very important to know what was close and what was far away.”

  “And whether it’s coming toward you or going in the other direction,” the Growing Younger Man says.

  “Listen to me,” Wallace says, breaking in. He blinks heavily a few times, and Rafferty thinks he might have lost the thread, but Wallace says, “It was his tone. When you’ve lived with violent men, you learn to listen to tone. He was being personal.”

  Hofstedler says, “This is why I was telling you what he—”

  “Until then he’d been bullshitting,” Wallace says, “but this was different. That thing about needing to know what was close and what was
far away, that was a threat.”

  “Yes,” Hofstedler says. “He said if something is coming toward you, you need to know how far away it is and how fast it is coming. So you can get ready for it—is this not right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Then he said, ‘Tell Poke I’m sorry I missed him,’ and he left.”

  Poke says, “The envelope.”

  “Yes, yes.” Hofstedler reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out the kind of envelope that might hold a greeting card. “Two minutes after Varney went out, that child, the same one from before, came back in and put this on the bar and went away again. So you see, he didn’t exactly give it to you, but—”

  “Got it, Leon.” The envelope says Philip Rafferty on it in an expert calligraphic script, done freehand in black ink. Unlike the first envelope, which had been soaked through, this one is almost completely dry, just one circular splotch from a raindrop that hit dead center in the curve of the capital R that begins Rafferty’s last name, diluting the ink to create a dark circle, a little like a bullet hole.

  Rafferty slides a thumb beneath the edge of the flap and pops it open. It’s a commercial card for a person who’s suffered the loss of someone close, and on the front is a photograph of gently rolling green hills with a fading sunset in the distance, all seen through a tidy, somewhat fussy typeface that says, With Sympathy.

  Wallace, looking over Rafferty’s shoulder, says, “Somebody dead?”

  “My guess is, not yet,” Rafferty says, unfolding the card. There’s no preprinted message inside, but three lines have been handwritten there, in careful, even precise, block letters. It says:

  you’re probably wondering,

  or what?

  coming right up.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Wallace says.

  “It means he wants something from me, and there will be consequences if I don’t give it to him,” Rafferty says. He’s keeping his voice level, trying for an easy tone, but he feels as if something very large has squeezed itself into his chest, its knees folded against his lungs. He closes the card, putting a lot of effort into keeping his hands steady, and tries three times to slide it into the envelope before he succeeds. He feels Wallace’s attention on him and turns to see the old man watching the care with which he’s closing the flap. Wallace’s face is so empty he might be sitting alone in the dark.

  “Wallace,” Rafferty says, “you said you’d known people like Varney before. Who were they?”

  He has the feeling the question has to travel a considerable distance before it reaches the part of Wallace’s mind where the answer is stored. Wallace takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, he says, “Guy’s a back-shooter.” He puts a straight index finger on the bar and draws it slowly toward himself like someone tracing a trail on a map. “If he’d been in my squad,” he says, turning the line into an arc, “I would have led him straight into a minefield.” All five fingers snap up from the bar’s surface, and he says, “Boom.” His eyes come up to Poke’s, and there’s no question that a much younger Wallace is looking out through them. He says, “Never let him get behind you. Never.”

  12

  He Does Not Share the Stage Well

  Rose and Miaow will have absorbed their two hours of the dreadful Reverend Slope and Barchester Towers by now, and Rafferty wants their company as intensely as he can remember ever wanting anything; he needs them to help him shrug off the anxiety that’s wrapped itself around his chest. So he begs off Leon’s request to help him take Wallace home, promising to do it next time, even as Wallace dismisses the idea, saying Poke will be no help getting him home, since he barely knows Bangkok at all.

  “Yes, but the parts Poke does know are the Bangkok we now live in,” Hofstedler says. “You, you know the Bangkok of the ghosts.”

  Wallace pushes his stool back from the bar and says, “Some of my best friends are ghosts.”

  “Well, Rose would say you should be nice to them,” Rafferty says, getting up. “If you’ve managed to get on a ghost’s good side, you want to stay there.”

  “Ghosts are the only people who can still make me laugh,” Wallace says. “You got my leash, Leon?”

  “You are joking,” Leon says. “I go with you because I enjoy your company.”

  In the end Rafferty’s guilty conscience compels him to wait the long moments it takes Leon and Wallace to organize themselves and get through the door. As he walks them onto the sidewalk, he can’t help noticing that Hofstedler keeps a pinch of Wallace’s sleeve firmly between his thumb and forefinger.

  They stand under the bar’s meager awning, looking through a sparse sparkle of rain at the activity in the street. “Remember,” Wallace says, “when they put the night market in and that old guy Trink went on and on in the newspaper about how thousands of people would be burned to death if the government didn’t listen to him and knock the whole thing down?”

  “Old guy,” Hofstedler says. “He was old when I got here, and he’s still alive.”

  It was before Poke’s time, but he knows about Bernard Trink, a diminutive Belgian who wrote, for years, a sort of sex-trade roundup in the Bangkok Post each Friday, complete with snaps of particularly lissome “demimondaines” and tips about which bars were allowing the dancers to “show.” The guys in the Expat Bar called the column “The Tart Mart.” Eventually an epidemic of politically correct sanity broke out among the Post editorial staff, and Trink was put on book reviews.

  Wallace says, “And that fucking Dinty Moore beef stew.” To Poke he says, “He’s in the country with the world’s greatest food, and the guy could not get enough Dinty Moore canned stew. Wrote about it all the time: ‘Foodland is no longer selling Dinty Moore beef stew.’” He’s smiling broadly, and he looks more like the man Poke first knew. “Town was a lot funnier back then,” Wallace says, and the three of them let a moment pass in silence as the crowd parades by.

  Poke is about to say goodbye when Hofstedler clears his throat and says, “Look at them. They think it was invented for them.”

  “They’re young,” Wallace says, watching the men in the rain. “They can have it.” He turns and registers Poke standing there. Confusion clouds his face, and Poke realizes that Wallace has forgotten who he is. Poke gives him a parting smile anyway, and Wallace surprises him by snatching his arm away from Hofstedler’s pinch and throwing it around Poke’s shoulder. Wallace is a few inches taller than Poke, so Poke has to look up at him to see that Wallace has recognized him again and is smiling. “You grew up good, kid,” Wallace says. “Give my love to your wife, to Jah—” He shakes his head as though something has gone loose inside. “Not Jah, Rose, to Rose.”

  “Will do,” Rafferty says, knowing he won’t. He’s not going to have that conversation again.

  “Beautiful girl,” Wallace says. He gazes past Poke, at the street. “So many beautiful girls.”

  Hofstedler and Wallace are barely out of sight when Poke’s eye is caught by rapid movement to his left. He freezes midstep, seeing people scatter as the small boy with the dreadful buzz cut shoves his way through the crowd, breaking into a full-out run, slowing slightly when he sees Rafferty and then picking up his pace as though one of the more persuasive Buddhist hells has yawned open and its demons are right behind him. Rafferty ducks behind a pair of slow-moving drunks, thinking, Could be Varney chasing him, but when no pursuer materializes from the crowd in pursuit, he does one fast, final survey and takes off after the kid.

  It’s too crowded for him to run, but he can track the boy by the trail of pissed-off drunks and the occasional off-balance woman, the second of whom is sitting on the pavement surrounded by the scatterings of a very full purse and swearing a sort of Ingmar Bergman stream of Swedish syllables. A bit farther on, he pushes past a slight young man in shorts who’s making a disproportionate fuss about a skinned knee.

  The Patpong area is shaped lik
e a capital H, with the two uprights of Patpongs 1 and 2 bisected in the middle by the cross street, which runs through a gap in the night-market booths. The cross street is to Rafferty’s right, and the relative disorganization of the crowd in that direction pulls him in.

  As he emerges from the area between the booths, the neon of the Queen’s Corner gleams to his left. A pair of ladyboys from the Betty end of the spectrum stand at the entrance with open umbrellas, smoking like a couple of jazz drummers and halfheartedly trying to wave a few customers in from the rain. Directly in front of Rafferty, the short stretch of pavement leading from Patpong 1 to 2 is relatively empty. To his right and left, Patpong 1 is jammed, but whatever groove the boy might have cut through the crowd has had time to close itself behind him, or else the boy went straight across, toward Patpong 2.

  “A kid?” he calls in Thai to the ladyboys in front of the King’s Corner. One of them makes a little hitchhiking gesture with her right thumb, directing him toward Patpong 2. He waves thanks and starts to run again, then thinks better of it and slows to a brisk walk.

  Among the inbred cluster of Bangkok’s “adult entertainment” districts, Patpong 2 is the cousin nobody likes, the family member who gets the room without the window. It’s right there, just a few dour meters from Patpong 1—which, while it’s decades beyond its rancid peak, continues to attract throngs of gawkers who don’t know any better. Still, Patpong 2 is a marathon dud, even though it shares the Patpong name and offers the same shopworn attractions, plus an assortment of spuriously upscale “cocktail lounges,” where wannabe executive punters sit at tables, drink hard liquor, and hit on the waitresses, who have shown up solely to be hit on. There’s also an all-boy go-go bar that seems to have wandered several blocks down Surawong from the gay stretch that’s blossomed there in the past eight to ten years, known as “Soi Katoey” in honor of the ladyboys who decorate it each evening. Other than these minor variations, the family resemblance to Patpong 1 is marked.