A Nail Through the Heart

37

He matches the phone numbers to the faces in the file Arthit gave him and chooses the toad-faced one, the one who seemed to be calling the shots during their single encounter. While the phone rings, he surveys his little domain: two homeless children tucked away in one bedroom, a murderer chained to the bed in the other, sweetheart temporarily displaced. A tomato-soup-can burglar alarm stacked beside the door. His dream home.

A child answers the phone.

Rafferty has a sinking feeling he's been experiencing a lot lately. The last thing he wants to do is begin to think of Toadface as an actual human being. "Can I speak to your father, please?" he asks in Thai.

"Sure," the child says. Then she shrills, "Papaaaaaaa!"

Papa. Just what he wanted to hear.

"Hello?" Toadface says.

"This is Poke Rafferty."

"That was fast." The man's tone is fat with satisfaction.

"Yeah, well, don't get ahead of yourself. Clarissa hasn't given me any money, and I couldn't raise fifty thousand dollars if you gave me a year."

"And you've only got two days. Doesn't sound like we've got much to talk about." Rafferty hears a child's question, and Toadface says, "In a minute, sweetie." His voice is completely different.

"That's one way to look at it," Rafferty says. "Two days from now, I don't come up with the money and you go ahead and destroy my family. And I lose a child I love, and you get zero. Nothing. Not a baht. Think about it. Does that sound like a worthwhile objective?"

The child asks another question, but it goes unanswered. It is repeated. Finally Toadface says, "Have you got something else in mind?"

"I do," Rafferty says. "And you guys are perfect for it."

Rafferty is picking up the tomato cans when the boy comes into the room. He immediately begins to help.

"We don't need these anymore?"

"I don't think so. Everybody who wants to kill us is busy."

Miaow has gone to her room. She seems upset about Chouk's presence, especially the information that he is handcuffed, and Rafferty wonders whether she'll turn it into a bulletin for Hank Morrison at their next meeting. The boy is wearing his new blue sweatpants and the pink T-shirt Miaow bought Rafferty as a gift. It's too small for Rafferty, but on the boy it hangs like a poncho.

"Let's put these away for Rose," Rafferty says. The boy follows him into the kitchen.

"The policeman who was here," the boy says. "Is he your friend?"

"One of them. I actually have several."

A pause as the boy works something through in his head. "You like him, even though he's a policeman."

"I like some crooks, too."

"Huh," the boy says, unconvinced.

Rafferty closes the cabinet door and heads back to the living room, the boy trailing in his wake. He sits at one end of the couch, leaving room for Superman, but the boy sinks into a cross-legged stance on the floor. He fluffs the rug with the palms of both hands, something Rafferty has watched him do dozens of times. "Soft," he says.

"That's the point."

He opens his mouth, thinks about it, and strokes the carpet as he would a puppy. At last he says, "Too bad the world isn't soft."

"Ah," Rafferty says with a twinge of unease. They seem to be having a talk.

"Do you know why it isn't?"

Rafferty gives the question some thought. "You mean, why is it softer for some people than for others?"

"Yes."

"I have no idea."

The boy doesn't even blink. "Who does?"

"Oh, well," Rafferty says. "Lots of people have theories. Priests, politicians, philosophers. I think they're all guessing, though."

"What's your guess?"

"Dumb luck," Rafferty says, glad Rose isn't there to hear him.

"That just makes me angry." The boy's jaw comes forward, bull-doglike.

"Then believe something else. Karma, reincarnation, Cosmic Lotto. Being angry's just going to make things worse."

A shrug, too weary for a child his age. "Like it matters if I'm angry."

"Right now you're dry, you're wearing clean clothes, you just had that awful pizza with all the pineapple on it. You've got a bed to sleep in tonight. You've got friends."

"Because you gave it all to me," the boy challenges. "Tomorrow if you change your mind, I'll be on the street again. How do you think that feels?"

"Better than being there tonight. And I didn't give it to you, we all did. Why do you think we did that?"

The boy looks down at the carpet. He makes scissors from his fingers and pretends to trim the nap. He shows Rafferty nothing but the top of his head. When he speaks, Rafferty can barely hear him. "Phuket," he says.

Rafferty had thought he had used up his evening's supply of apprehension, but there it is again, dead center in the middle of his chest. "Right," he says. "Phuket."

The boy looks up at him and then away. "You won't tell Miaow."

"I won't tell anybody. Look, there are lots of things I've never asked Miaow. I figure it's her business to tell me when she wants to. It's the same with you. It's your story, and you tell it to her when it's time."

"I'll never tell it to her."

"Your call."

He plays with the carpet again. "It was a man," he says.

Immediately Rafferty thinks of Ulrich. He breathes a couple of times to make sure his voice will be steady. "What happened?"

"I went down there because the police were looking for me here. And I wanted to be someplace where I didn't have to be, you know…" His voice trails off. "Where I didn't have to be Superman." He tugs the carpet hard enough to lift it from the floor. "I wanted to stop taking yaa baa."

"Good for you."

"And I met a man. He saw me on the street and talked to me. He was an American, like you, and he…he seemed to like me. Not just for sex. He took me to movies. Real movies, in theaters, not videos. He bought me things." Rafferty remembers the boy's sullenness during their shopping expedition and, with a pang of shame, the irritation it had provoked. "He let me stay with him. I slept and slept. I stopped taking pills and smoking. When he wanted me, he gave me whiskey so it wouldn't hurt so much." He lifts his head and looks in the direction of the hallway that leads to Miaow's room. "It still hurt, really, but I said it didn't. I got to like the whiskey." He seems to lose the thread for a moment, gazing down the hall. "I began to think he loved me," he says. "His name was Al."

"What happened?"

"He ran out of money. One day he had money, and the next day he didn't. They were going to throw us out of the room. So one night Al brought home two men and told me they had paid to fuck me, and I was going to fuck them, or he was going to kick me out. I thought about going, but I had seen the money. I fucked them."

"I'm sorry," Rafferty says.

The boy shrugs the sentiment away. "That night, after the two men left, I waited until Al was asleep. Then I got dressed and opened the dresser and took the money. And then I crawled across the bed and bit Al's ear off."

His eyes are locked on Rafferty's. "He bled a lot," he says, still watching. When Rafferty doesn't avert his gaze, the boy looks away. "I ran. All the way back to Bangkok."

First Chouk's story, now this. Rafferty shuffles through a dozen replies and finally says, "You didn't deserve any of that."

"Then why did it happen?" The boy's voice scales so high it almost breaks on the last word. His eyes are enormous, and Rafferty sees them for the first time as what they are: the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy. "Why did it happen to me? Why not somebody else?"

"Wait," Rafferty says. "This is a big question. Give me a second here." He leans back against the couch and rolls his head slowly around to get the stiffness out of his neck. "Okay. Listen to me, even if I make some mistakes, right?"

"Fine," the boy says.

"Nobody can really answer that question. Why am I lucky? I don't know. I've never gone hungry, I've got both arms and legs. You've had a shitty life, and I don't understand that either. Rose would say it's karma, but I don't understand much about karma. So do I know why you had to be the one that man treated that way? No. I can't explain how the guy handcuffed to my bed could have gone through what he went through either, so I'm a complete bust. By the way, you were wrong about him. He wasn't one of the ones who did all that. He was one of the ones it was done to."

Superman ducks his head awkwardly, and Rafferty knows that it is all the apology the boy will make.

"Anyway," Rafferty says, backtracking, "you're here now. Al's not. Who knows? Maybe he died of blood poisoning. Maybe the tsunami got him. But you're here. And you're wrong about why you're here. We didn't just give it all to you. If you hadn't been a good kid, I'd have bathed you and debugged you and thrown you back on the sidewalk, no matter what Miaow said."

The boy mumbles something to the carpet.

"Say what?"

"Not good. Me."

"Oh, shut up," Rafferty says. "I know enough about you to know you're a great kid. So you bit a guy's ear off." He can hardly believe he's saying the words. "He had it coming. It wasn't your fault. You're smart, you're tough, you're self-sufficient, you're brave, you can fix anything…" He runs out of steam, hearing the hollowness of his words.

The silence stretches between them, and the boy offers him a way out of it. "I fixed the lock on Miaow's closet door."

This is real news. "Really? It's not permanently locked anymore? She can close it?"

"No problem." The boy glances up at him. He is on safer ground. "What did you do when she closed it before?"

"Took it off the hinges," Rafferty says, happy to have a question he can answer.

The boy lowers his face and makes a sound that could be a snicker. "The hinges," he says.

"See? You can do things I can't. I can do things you can't. That means we can do things for each other, doesn't it?"

A dismissive shake of the head. "Yeah, yeah." The boy puts a hand down in preparation to get up.

"Hey. You started this. I'm not exactly an expert on life, but you asked me a question and I think you ought to sit here until I finish making a fool out of myself."

The boy doesn't respond, but he remains seated.

"Look, the world is softer for some people than others. That's the way it is. Some people don't have enough to eat, some weigh three hundred pounds. And you, you got a really shitty deal. Okay, that's too bad. We all agree, it's just terrible. It absolutely keeps me awake nights." His tone brings the boy's head up sharply. "So what can you do? You can't change the world, you know. It's too damn big. So what does that leave?"

The boy says nothing, just sits cross-legged with both palms pressed to the carpet, his fingers splayed like those of a runner about to start a sprint.

"I hate to give advice, so I'll tell you a story instead. It's a Tibetan Buddhist story. A young monk goes to the wisest man he knows, the abbot of his temple, and asks the same question you've just asked: Why is the world so hard and sharp? Why does it have to hurt my feet? And instead of answering, the abbot asks the kid whether it would be better if the world were covered with leather-have you heard this?"

The boy shakes his head.

"Okay, so the young monk says sure it would. It'd be a lot better. And the abbot asks the kid whether he knows how to cover the world with leather, and the kid says no, of course he doesn't, because he's a smart kid, a realistic kid. There's no way he can cover the world with leather. 'Fine,' says the abbot. 'Can you cover your feet with leather?'"

Superman's eyes lift slowly to study the wall above Rafferty's head. After a long moment, he nods once. "Then what?" he asks.

"Then we're going to get you into a school," Rafferty says. "And you're going to hate it sometimes, because you're just going to be a kid, not someone who runs things, but you're going to stay there because you belong there. Nobody's giving you anything. You'll earn it by being a good, smart kid and by showing up every day and by staying away from yaa baa and glue and whatever the hell else you were stuffing into your system. And if you screw up, you know what? There's not going to be a net. You're just going to fall. We can help you, but only if you want it. If you don't want it badly enough to pay for it, there's nothing anybody can do."

"You can do this? You can get me into a school?"

"No problem." Rafferty replays his conversation with Morrison in his mind. "I think."

"You'll try?"

This is not something to take lightly, and he pauses long enough to feel the boy's eyes on him. "I promise."

"Why?" He still has his hands braced on the floor, as though he is ready to bolt from the room.

"Because Miaow loves you. Because you helped her."

The boy looks away, out through the sliding glass door at the lights of Bangkok. His body is very still.

"And because I think you're a terrific kid," Rafferty adds awkwardly.

The boy says, without turning, "And you don't want anything?"

"I want you to work. I want you to do whatever you have to do to put leather on your feet so you can step on the sharp stuff without hurting yourself."

The boy gets up, all in one motion. Rafferty can remember being that limber, but not for quite a while. Superman puts both hands in his pockets and stares at the floor. Then he takes a slow step and then another, toward the hallway. At the last moment, he detours toward the couch. Without looking at Rafferty, he pulls one hand from his pocket and reaches out and touches him on the shoulder lightly, just brushes him with the backs of his fingers.

As he goes down the hall, Rafferty hears him say, "The hinges."