"Ten million baht," Madame Wing says. "Shredded."
He hears a rustle of paper behind him, but he can't stop looking at the shredded money, ten million baht cut into narrow, worthless strips. "He also sent this," Madame Wing says.
He tears his eyes away from the suitcase to see her holding out a sheet of cheap notebook paper. It is written in a language he cannot read, just a few short words, a single line of flowing script.
"What does it say?"
She looks up at him with those luminous nocturnal eyes. "It says 'I want the deed to your house.'"
He looks back at the spirals of paper, worthless now. Trying to measure the amount of hate in the gesture. Against all his instincts, he realizes, he wants to know more about that hate.
He says, "Give me the deed."
PART III
31
For the second day in a row, Rafferty is up at six. After months of trying to get up early and failing, he has found the remedy: Sleep on a lumpy couch in the apartment's brightest room. He is at the kitchen counter, working on his second cup of coffee, when Miaow comes briskly into the living room. Her school clothes are primly immaculate, seams plumb straight, her face shining with the effect of the cold water she uses to wake herself up. Her hair is so precisely in place it looks like she arranged it one strand at a time. Rafferty's joints grow weak at the sight of her.
She is preoccupied, all business, and he has a sudden vision of what she will look like as an adult: She will look like a corporate vice president. She stops at the couch, notices the blanket Rafferty dropped when he got up, and goes through a small pantomime of exasperation. She does everything but shake her head. With an expression of sorely tried patience, she picks up the blanket and refolds it into sharp-cornered quarters. When she has placed it neatly at the head of the couch, she turns and sees him for the first time. Her eyebrows chase each other toward her hairline.
"Good morning, Miaow."
She looks at him, then at the clock on his desk. "Am I late for school?"
"No. I'm early. I want to talk to you about something."
She purses her mouth, bringing Mrs. Pongsiri to mind, and angles her head slightly in the direction of her room, the direction of Superman. "A problem?"
"Not about him," Rafferty says. "And not a problem, really. A good thing."
He watches her cross the room and climb up onto the chair beside him. He suddenly realizes he has no idea what her morning routine might be. A pang of guilt pierces him: What kind of father is he? "Do you want some milk or something? Cereal? Eggs?"
"An orange," she says. "And a Coke."
"Coke? At this hour? And an orange?"
"That's what I eat," she says patiently. "Every morning."
"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day," his mother says in his voice.
"Is that why you're just drinking coffee?" She makes a grimace. "Coffee." She says it the way she might say "mucus." "Bean drink. Hot bean drink. And you give me a hard time."
"I'm a grown-up. I don't need breakfast."
"And you hate it," Miaow says.
"There's that," he acknowledges.
"I hate it, too. This is my breakfast. A Coke and an orange. Unless we have grapes."
"I see." He has run out of things to say, so he gets up and grabs an orange and a can of warm Coke. "It's a pretty awful breakfast," he says, pouring the Coke.
"I know," she says, closing the subject.
"Ice?" The question is ridiculous and he knows it.
She doesn't even look up. "Oh, please." She manages to pack into the words a remarkable amount of world-weariness for someone who's only eight.
"I have to say something, Miaow. It's sort of my job."
"I'm used to being alone in the morning," she says with a tinge of grumpiness.
"Me, too." He sits across the counter from her on the living-room side, so he can see her face. The two grumps share a companionable silence as she peels her orange. Its sharp fragrance invades his nostrils. He can hear the Coke fizzing in the glass. He feels inexplicably happy. How could he have missed this for so many mornings?
"What are we supposed to be talking about?" she says with her mouth full.
"I want you to stay with me," he says.
She looks up at him, chewing. "I am staying with you."
"No. I mean forever. Permanently." After what he went through with Rose, he has no idea how Miaow will react. He can feel his heart bumping its way around inside his chest as though it's gotten lost.
She looks quickly away, her face closed. For a long moment, she works on chewing her orange. Then she says, "Okay."
Rafferty makes a firm decision that he will not burst into tears. He concentrates on the orange, half peeled on the table, on how the light strikes the jeweled sections and the fine white threads, and then he says, "Up until now we've been kind of breaking the law. I want to adopt you. Officially. Do you know what that means?"
She still has not looked at him. "Sure," she says. "It means you're really my…um, my father. Instead of just pretend."
"That's right." He has difficulty getting the words out, and she darts him a glance at the sound of his voice, then looks away again. He clears his throat and says, "That's what I want."
"Oh," she says to the refrigerator. Then she says, "Me, too."
Oranges smell like happiness, Rafferty thinks. "We have to go talk to a man today. He's a nice man named Hank Morrison."
"Khun Hank," she says. "All the kids know him."
"Do they like him?"
"He helps." Her enthusiasm is somewhat reserved.
"Well, we have to go talk to him today, after school. He's going to ask us questions, about how we live here and about what happened to you before you came here."
Her shoulders rise protectively. "What kind of questions?"
"About everything," he says.
She looks him full in the face and then, slowly, lowers her eyes until she is gazing at the surface of the counter. With a coiled index finger, she strikes the half orange, sending it spinning.
Rafferty waits until the orange wobbles to a stop. "He'll ask you some questions I've never asked you. I want you to promise me you'll tell him the truth."
"He doesn't have to know everything," she says. "Nobody has to know everything."
"He has to know everything."
Her face sets. "No." She strips a thread from the orange and rolls it into a tight ball between thumb and forefinger, then flicks it-hard-across the room at the refrigerator. Her spine is rigid.
"It's to help us. He has to ask the questions, or the police won't let me adopt you."
She pushes her chair back stiffly, ignoring the half-eaten orange. "I'm going to be late for school."
"So you'll be late. What're they going to do, chop you up and fry you?" He puts a hand flat on the counter between them. "Listen, Miaow, I can make you a promise. I promise he won't tell me what you talk about if you don't want him to. But you have to talk to him."
She looks down at her lap, evaluating the weight of the promise. "We'll see," she says, and Rafferty hears his own equivocation, refined over a lifetime, coming back at him, from a child he has known only a few months. As he watches her shoulder her book pack and close the door behind her, he wonders what other dubious gifts he may have passed on.
Ulrich's drapes are open. Someone has been here. Rafferty pauses at the door, holding it open, listening. It is not difficult for him to imagine someone else standing absolutely still in one of the rooms, listening as well. After a minute or so, he figures the hell with it and goes in. He picks up one of the small stone apsarases, hefts it like a club, grabs the gun with his free hand, and does a quick search. He is alone.