“He doesn’t have any money,” Arthit says.
“I didn’t say anything about money,” Pan says.
Rafferty says, “Then what?”
“You like it here, don’t you?” Pan asks, and Rafferty feels a sudden dip in the center of his stomach.
Studying Pan’s face, Arthit says, “I don’t know about this.”
Pan looks at Arthit and then at Rafferty. “Aren’t we looking for a way to walk out of this room?”
Rafferty says, “We are.”
“Then these are the stakes,” Pan says. “If you lose, you will voluntarily leave Thailand.”
“Poke,” Arthit says.
“I can’t do that,” Rafferty says. “I have a wife and daughter to take care of.”
Pan shrugs the higher shoulder. “That should make the game more interesting.”
“Forget it.”
The flush on Pan’s face deepens. “Consider the alternative,” he says. “I destroy your friend here, and then I have you thrown out of the country, and then your friend undertakes some act of vengeance that probably gets him killed.”
A vista of emptiness opens up in front of Rafferty. It feels like part of the walls and floor have fallen away and there is nothing above or below but gray, empty space with drizzle falling through it. Life without Thailand: life somewhere else, uprooting Miaow, explaining it all to Rose.
Possibly losing both Rose and Miaow.
Rafferty says, “And if I win?”
Pan shrugs. “Name your bet.”
Suddenly Rafferty thinks of something he might actually like to have. More important, it’s something Pan will never give him. If Pan won’t bet, they might all be able to walk away from the table. “I’m a writer,” he says. “I want your permission to write your life story, without interference.”
“You’re joking,” Pan says. His biography is a kind of holy grail among Thai publishers, as unattainable as it is desirable. Several well-known writers have announced plans to write the man’s life, only to abandon the project later for unspecified reasons. The only book that actually made it to press was lost when the printing plant burned down.
“That’s what I want,” Rafferty says. “Gives you something worth playing for.”
Without taking his eyes from Rafferty’s, Pan raises his right hand and massages the lower left shoulder as though it is still sore from the seed sack’s strap. He seems completely unconscious that he is doing it. Then he laughs, but without much conviction. “Write my life story? And I don’t try to stop you?”
Rafferty says, “You not only don’t try to stop me. You cooperate.”
“I’m leaving,” says one of the businessmen. “Send the money to my office.” The other joins him to leave, but Pan says, “You’re staying here. Keep an eye on the farang. I’m not going to get cheated again.”
His eyes drop to the green surface of the table and then come up to Rafferty’s. The room is silent and as motionless as a window display. He purses his lips and drums his fingertips on the table for a second. His eyes make their quick circuit of the room. Then he says, “I can beat you.”
“Poke,” Arthit says. “Don’t do it.”
“Got an alternative?” Rafferty still can’t believe that Pan will accept the stakes. He reaches over and grabs the deck of cards, squares it, cuts and shuffles it once, puts it in front of the spot where Pan had been sitting, and waits to see what the man will do. With an abrupt jerk, almost a muscle spasm, Pan lifts the low shoulder and lets it fall again. Then he adjusts his jacket and points to his fallen chair. One of the bodyguards picks it up and puts it back in position, and Pan sits. He puts out a hand, and a bodyguard gives him a cigar, which he centers in the pink mouth. He waits a moment, until the lighter has come and gone, and then shuffles the deck twice and passes it to Rafferty to cut again.
“So tell me,” he says, picking up the deck. “Why are you so interested in writing about my life?”
“Something Balzac said,” Rafferty answers. “I just want to know whether it’s true.”
The first two facedown cards hit the table, one for Rafferty, one for Pan. “Who is Balzac?”
“A French writer who died a long time ago.”
Rafferty’s second facedown card lands.
“And what did he say?”
“Something to the effect that behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”
Pan’s second card lands eighteen inches from his first.
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6
The owner has taken advantage of the cool air towed in by a late-night drizzle to kill the expensive air-con and prop open the door to the street. It’s one of Arthit’s regular haunts; he had stopped at the bar to grab a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black before heading for a corner booth. Rafferty followed along.
The place is funereally quiet, the drinkers solitary islands of silence, except for Arthit and Rafferty, who whisper, heads together, in the corner. Now and then the gloom lifts as a car passes in the soi, the small street outside, with a sizzle of tires on wet pavement, its headlights throwing the drinkers near the door into sharp silhouette.
“Call him in the morning,” Arthit says, putting down the bottle for the fourth time. He’s knocked back about a third of the contents, and the ice over which he poured the first few drinks is now a memory. “Tell him you’ve changed your mind.” He hoists his glass.
“He gets his way too often,” Rafferty says. “He needs his goddamn face slapped.”
Arthit takes two long swallows, the way Rafferty drinks water. “Far be it from me,” he says over the rim of the glass, “to remind you of one of the foremost precepts of your adopted culture: Keep a cool heart.”
“Like you did,” Rafferty says, and immediately regrets it.
Arthit lifts his drink and sights the bar through it, turning his head slowly with the glass in front of one eye. He doesn’t speak.
Rafferty says, “Sorry.”
“You’re right,” Arthit says. He takes yet another numbingly large slug of Black. “I behaved like a child. And Pan should never have been in that game. I put Vinai in charge of choosing our pigeons, and I am-most-” He shakes his head. “Almost called the whole thing off when he brought Pan in. But Vinai said Pan would enjoy it, said he’d think it was a terrific joke.”
“He might have, if he hadn’t been so drunk.”
“Well,” Arthit says, and drinks, a sip this time. “He was.” He looks idly around the bar, just a cop survey, obviously not expecting anything interesting. “You don’t want to write the book.” His eyes wander to the glass in his hand, and he sets it on the table again and picks up the bottle.
Rafferty has seen his friend knock it back before, but never quite like this. “What’s that thing with his lips?”
“He got burned, don’t know how. You saw his hands. The file on him said the lip balm is psylochogical-psychological. He thinks they’re hot, his lips, so he cools them down with menthol.”
“If I’m going to quit, tell me what I’m missing. What’s the story I’m not going to write?”
Arthit closes his eyes, and for a moment Rafferty thinks he might be going to slump sideways, but then he opens them again, looking at a spot in the center of the table with an intensity that suggests that he’s trying to get the room to hold still. “Father was a farmer. Had some land, Isaan dirt, all rocks and scrub. Every year they’d work themselves to death, and every year they’d borrow money. They were going to lose everything. So Pan came to Bangkok.” He sits there, regarding the invisible spot on the table.
“And?” Rafferty prompts.
Arthit tilts his head back as though it is too heavy for his shoulders. “And he’s a tough boy. You can see that when you look at him, even now.”
“He’s gotten soft,” Rafferty says.
“He’s hard underneath it.” Arthit’s eyes go to the wall, and he squints slightly. “He came to Bangkok, I said that, right?”