She ran back inside, grabbed her book, and belly-flopped onto the couch. With the thick paperback of Nicholas Nickleby spread before her, Tooly went still. When reading, she appeared comatose and deaf. Yet inside she moved all the faster, hurrying along a tall wooden fence through whose knotholes she observed extraordinary scenes: a whip-bearing butcher cleaning his hands on a leather apron, say; or a pickpocket with a stump for an arm; or a crafty innkeeper eavesdropping on clients. Sometimes she found her view blocked by a mysterious word — what, for example, was an “epitome”? Nevertheless, she hastened forward, finding the next knothole, having missed only an instant. To disappear into pages was to be blissfully obliterated. For the duration, all that existed was her companions in print; her own life went stilclass="underline"
“May I — may I go with you?” asked Smike, timidly. “I will be your faithful hard-working servant, I will, indeed. I want no clothes,” added the poor creature, drawing his rags together; “these will do very well. I only want to be near you.”
“And you shall,” cried Nicholas. “And the world shall deal by you as it does by me, till one or both of us shall quit it for a better. Come!”
She considered the word “shall,” wishing to utter words like that to stammering friends who inquired, “May I — may I go with you, Tooly?” To which she’d reply, “You shall!”
Paul stood beside her, lips moving, words emerging but not sounding yet, her ears still switched off. A stick of dried spaghetti in her mouth, she finished the chapter, then closed the book. “I saw a tree babbler,” she said.
“Where?”
“In a tree.”
He lowered himself into an armchair, rubbed his face. “Don’t eat raw spaghetti.”
“I shall not.”
“Why are your lips green? Were you tasting toothpaste again?”
“Maybe.”
“Just have something normal from the fridge.”
“There wasn’t anything normal.”
“What was there?”
“Nothing.”
He frowned disbelievingly and rose to check. But why would there have been food? They’d only moved in the day before. Every cupboard was empty, the fridge unplugged. He had left her alone for ten hours. “Nothing since breakfast?” he asked.
“I didn’t have breakfast.”
He opened all the cupboards again, ashamed of his oversight and uncertain how to respond. He checked the clock. (In place of numbers, its display had birds; instead of chiming, it twittered on the hour. By now, they could tell time by birdsong.) “It’s blackbird past owl,” he said. “I have to feed you.”
“You shall.”
She described the tree babbler but fell silent when the elevator doors closed after them — he opposed talking in elevators, since outsiders could hear. They crossed the building’s courtyard, which was lined with frangipani trees and flanked by twin fountains, spray misting the hot evening air. “Nothing at all?”
“That spaghetti,” she replied. “When I was on the balcony, I saw places down the road where they have food.”
“We’re not eating things from the street, Tooly.”
“Can I try?”
“There’ll be proper restaurants,” he said. “They probably have Italian in Bangkok. You like spaghetti.”
“Can I see down our street first?”
“You saw from the window.”
“Only from high up.”
“Well … okay. But follow me and stick close.” He stepped from the complex and onto the soi, directly into the path of a motorcycle, which swerved around him, its whoosh fluttering her T-shirt. Walls ran along both sides of the lane, hiding the expat apartment buildings, while electricity cables hung from utility poles like vines. They walked single file toward the main road, Sukhumvit, passing a cart of tropical fruit on ice: papaya spears in plastic bags, skinned pineapples, hairy rambutans. The shopkeeper attacked a mango with a butcher knife, severing it on a tree-stump cutting board.
Gray blotches spattered the dry pavement. It was rain — from specks to a gushing torrent within seconds. They speed-walked for Sukhumvit, where tuk-tuk taxis awaited. “Can we take one?” she asked.
“They’re not safe,” he replied, the downpour plastering white hair over his forehead, rain dribbling down his spectacles. “It’s like a cart — you can just fly out. We need a proper taxi.”
They continued into the deluge, rain overwhelming the grates, water rising out of the gutter.
“Look!” she said. “Rats! They’re swimming.”
“Don’t look at them, Tooly! They’re diseased. Tooly — keep up!” Glancing left and right for a taxi, he hurried onward, inadvertently leading them down Soi Cowboy, a strip of winking-neon bars, with hookers sitting cross-legged on stools, smoothing down miniskirts, gabbing in Thai above tinny pop music. They spotted the farang man and cooed. One waved innocently at Tooly, who waved back. “Don’t!” Paul told her. “Really, don’t.”
She spotted a taxi and flapped her arms at it, then tugged Paul’s shirt so that he might turn and believe he’d discovered it himself.
“Here’s one!” he exclaimed, pushing past, nearly treading on her. “Hurry, I’ve got us a cab!”
Communicating to the driver that they wanted lasagna was beyond Paul, so he allowed the man to drop them outside a place in Chinatown.
A waitress ushered them into No. 2 Heaven Restaurant, past a tank of underbite fish, which glared at each new customer, and with good reason. Framed photos of suckling pig, roast lobster, and shark’s fin soup hung on the red-gold walls. Paul took a metal water carafe and slopped a wave into her glass, which filled with a fast glug and overflowed onto the maroon tablecloth, a dark patch that expanded.
“Do animals get haircuts?” she asked.
“Which animals?”
“Rats.”
“They don’t need them. Their hair doesn’t grow long.”
“It just stops growing?”
“Yes.”
“So why doesn’t people’s?”
“People’s what?”
“People’s hair.”
“Tooly, please. We’re about to eat.” He raised his menu.
She consulted hers. “You don’t like sweet-and-sour, do you.”
“No,” he confirmed. “I want food that can make up its mind.”
“What is ‘cheeking breast’?”
“It should say ‘chicken breast.’ ”
“They have something called Unique Leg of Camel. What’s ‘unique’ mean again?”
“One of a kind.”
“Isn’t every camel leg one of a kind?”
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Please, Tooly, let’s not talk of animals at the table.”
This made discussing the menu difficult. Eventually, she defied him, speaking so fast that he didn’t have time to object: “They have something called ‘lamb without odor’ and ‘slice pigeon.’ ”
“We’ll get the chef’s special noodles,” he informed her, closing his menu. “Plus crab meat with asparagus.” Paul always picked for her. It never occurred to him that this was bossy.
“I shall tell them our order,” Tooly said, swiveling around for a waiter. “Excuse me!”
“Tooly, quiet.”
“Then how do we get them to come over?”
“We wait. That’s why they’re called waiters.”
The staff confirmed his interpretation, chatting at length by the fish tank, then vanishing through the swinging kitchen doors for dishes that sailed past their table. Tooly swallowed hard, suddenly famished.
She folded and refolded her napkin. Paul did the same. Now and then, he refilled their water glasses. Something to say! She wished for a sentence. When they were on flights or at home, there were distractions. But dining, seated opposite like this, there was nothing. Silence sat between them as if upon its haunches on the table. She watched the uniformed doorman, who watched the fish, which watched Tooly. “Is that man a soldier?” Tooly asked, knowing he was nothing of the sort.