Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories

Siamese Nights

He knew before he’d been posted to Bangkok that you invented a city, any city, from the little you learned every day by accident. This one you had to make for yourself out of noodles and flowers, a glimpse of the river, an odor of scorched spices, office talk, moisture-thickened air that made you gasp, and neon lights shimmying in puddles — beauty in half an inch of dirty water. Or something you’d seen nowhere else, like the gilded shrines on street corners, flowers and fruit left as offerings, piles of yellow petals, people at prayer, their faces the more soulful for being candlelit in the night.

Then you flew back home and told people, and that was the whole city for them, what you remembered. In Bangkok, the availability of food, of pleasure, of people, made Boyd Osier a little anxious and giggly. Strangers smiled and seemed to know what was in your mind. Take me! Taxi! Massage! What you want, sir? You could possess such a place, the people were so polite.

Believing that it was his last assignment, his working life coming to an end, Osier was more attentive in Bangkok than he’d ever been, with the sorrowful clinging gaze of taking a last look. His company had sent him there. It made components for cell phones, the plant in an industrial area outside the city near the old airport, Don Mueang. The work was American; his life alone was something else. Or was he too old for another overseas assignment without his wife?

Osier’s fear was that retirement meant his life would become a vacancy long before he was dead. If he wished to see where the years had gone, he only had to look at his unusual, carefully kept diaries. Instead of pages of scribbles, they were pictorial, a page of sketches a day. He had a small but reliable gift for caricature. His sketches were a relief from accountancy, though perhaps (he told himself) they were another kind of accounting, evaluating the day by illustrating it, the things he saw, the people he met, putting what they said into balloons. He told Joyce he did it for her, because when he was away she always asked, “What’s it like there?” But he knew he kept the pictorial diary for himself, to test his talent without any risk, and to record the passage of time, in sketching that had the calming effect of autohypnosis.

Before he left for Bangkok, Joyce had said, “The place I want to live is somewhere I wouldn’t mind dying.” That rang true, because in other overseas posts, those short assignments when he’d been auditing the company’s books, he’d thought, I would hate to die here — Ireland, Holland, Vancouver, the outsource centers they had developed. Something about the damp, the dark weather-pitted gravestones he’d seen under dripping trees, the insistent cheerfulness of people in the wintry gloom, indoors most of the time, so many of them careworn young people, resigned to their captivity. But Bangkok was his first hot country.

When he arrived, the two other Americans in the company, Larry Wise from Operations and Fred Kegler from Human Services, had befriended him, initiating him with what they’d found out. Their wives, too, were back in the States, so they were sympathetic to him, especially Fred, who cautioned him, telling him how to find a taxi, and a tailor, and what districts to avoid, and good places to eat.

“Sometimes you get a bowl of boogers or a dish of greasy worms that look like garbage, and you think you’re going to collapse,” Fred said. “But never mind, they’re delicious.”

Fred had an unembarrassed gape-mouthed way of talking, his visibly thrashing tongue turning “collapse” into clapse.

“They say they’re not political”—plitical—“but they are. And sometimes someone’s smiling and it’s not a smile. Or they say no and they mean yes.”

His distracting way with these and certain other words—meer and hoor for “mirror” and “horror”—made Osier mistrust anything Fred said.

Larry’s line was always how simple it was to go home. “Hey, look how near we are to the States. I talk to my wife three times a day. We have conversations. Back home I talk but we never have conversations. Is this an adventure? I don’t think so.”

“It seems far to me,” Osier said. “It seems foreign.”

“Foreign I’ll give you. But not far. You got here by going through a narrow tunnel at the end of the ramp at the airport in New York. And came out the other end.”

Larry was right: the world was tiny. It was easy to go home.

They lived in the wholly accessible world, Larry said, the small, wired planet. “That’s why this company’s in profit. Look around. Everybody’s always on the phone.” So Osier never asked how he was going home, he only asked when.

But if separately Larry and Fred were sympathetic and helpful, together they lost their subtlety and were simplified, encouraging each other — rowdy, noisier, teasing, two guys at large in this city where, because they could so easily have what they wanted, they became greedier.

“Osier, want to go out for a drink? Get hammered?” Larry said, with Fred by his side.

“How about it? Do yourself a favor. You don’t have to make a career of it,” Fred said. Creer. This way of speaking also made him seem a mocker.

He went with them once. Larry and Fred brought him to a bar and supervised him.

The Thais did not carouse. They served drinks. They offered food. They offered themselves. Osier squirmed, feeling that he had nothing to offer in return. Every evening after that he said he was busy, because the men still asked. He had not dared to tell them that they’d embarrassed themselves.

Finally they took the hint, believing that Osier was virtuous and a bit dull. They resented him for not joining them, taking it for disapproval, and began to ignore him at work.

And now, as on those other nights when he’d claimed to be busy, Osier was sitting in the cathedral-like waiting room in Bangkok’s central railway station under the portrait of King Rama V, going nowhere, as he told himself. Weeks of this — a month, maybe.

He liked the thought that because he was a farang no one took any notice of him, that Larry and Fred had no idea he came to the railway station waiting room to catch up on his diary. The diary was his refuge. It was less intrusive than aiming a camera at people, and it made him more observant. The Thais were so slight, so strong, so lovely, even the men and boys. He had learned to draw them in a few strokes, the slim-hipped boys, the slender girls with short hair, the crones who might have been old men. They glided in the muggy air like tropical fish, that same grace and fragility, drifting past him in pairs. The same profile too, some of them, fish-faced with pretty lips.

Their spirit compensated for the hot paved city, which was not lovely at all, the stinking honking traffic, the ugly office buildings. The river was an exception, a rippling thoroughfare of flotsam and needle-nosed motorboats. The temples, the wats, the shrines, housed fat benevolent Buddhas and joyous carved dragons, bathed in a golden glow. People knelt and bowed to pray for favors. This he understood, and envied them their belief. Why else go to church except to give thanks or ask for help? The rituals were full of emotion, addressing the Buddha obliquely with petitions and prayers: offerings, the gongs, the fruit and flowers, the physicality of it, the flames of small oil lamps, the odors of incense, seeming to celebrate their mortality. This veneration made Osier’s own churchgoing seem like sorcery.

“How is it there?” Joyce asked from Maine, where she said it was raw. She spoke as though from a mountainside of bare rock and black ice.

How could he reply to this? They’d spent most of their summers in coastal Maine. Joyce looked forward to his retirement, and to the house they’d recently bought in Owls Head. But the mild summers of sea fog, relieved by the dazzle of marine sunshine, had misled them. Now he knew that the other nine months were winter: days of unforgiving wind that slashed your face, days of frost or freezing rain, a weight of cold that slowed you and lay on the night-like days like a stone slab.

“Fine,” he said, shivering at her word “raw.”

He kept to his pictorial diary, the doodles of hats and baskets, the carved finials on temple rooftops, because he had no words to describe the stew of the city — the heat-thickened air, the muddy river, the clean people, the efficiency, the unprovoked smiles, the signs he couldn’t read, the language he couldn’t speak. And so he asked her how she was, and she always said, “About the same,” which meant her knee was giving her pain. She’d been healthy until her knee began bothering her, and then everything changed. She stopped going for walks, sat more, ate more, got heavy, resigned herself to a life of decline and ill health, and began to resemble her mother, who sat slumped in a nursing home.

Sketching was his hobby, but his work was numbers. Osier headed the accounting office, a job he loved for the order of its elements and the fact that no locals were involved on the money side — they couldn’t be, company rule, payroll was secret, locals couldn’t know how little they were paid, what profits the company was making, the low overheads. Larry and Fred were not involved either; only he saw the numbers, units shipped, cost per unit; and when the numbers added up he was done. It was forbidden to email any financial information or take any of the data out of the office on CDs. The office, too, was another world.

After phoning his wife, he improved his sketch of the noble portrait of Rama V, King Chulalongkorn, high up on the station wall.

He liked the idea that the orderly station was always in motion, a place of arrivals and departures. No one lingered here, no one to observe him. He was touched by the emotion of the travelers — families seeing loved ones onto trains, parents with toddlers, tense separations; and all the luggage they carried, some of them like campers, carrying bags of food and water. He was one of the few loiterers.

He loved looking at the girls and women — angel-faced, dolled up for their journey, slender, a little nervous, so sweet, waiting for their trains to blink on the departure board. He came to the waiting room twice a week or more, where he was licensed to stare because of his diary. He had a drink, he found food, he called Joyce. It was not a life here, but a refuge and, like most travel he’d known, a suspension of life.

The Thais were absorbed in their own affairs of travel. That was the beauty of the waiting room. No one was idle; the travelers’ thoughts raced ahead, to the journey. Handling luggage, herding children, checking the clock, they were leaving this place. He knew these people somewhat. He saw them in the plant, at tables, in smocks and gloves, some wearing dust masks. Diligent little people, and when he was among them he felt — was it the business of outsourcing? — that his fate was intertwined with theirs.

He was sketching, smiling at this irrational thought, the night he noticed the beaky woman coming toward him. He’d seen her there before many times; her nose made her unmissable. She was, like him, another loiterer.

She was not tall but her features were so enlarged as to seem like distortions — menace in her nose, menace in her tangled hair, defiance in her chin. Among these tidy people she seemed like a freak for being so disheveled. But her shabby clothes seemed to inspire respect, even awe, in the passersby. She was someone from the lower world; she had nothing to lose. She had singled him out. Or was he imagining her menace? From a distance, shuffling, she had seemed so sad.

Ignoring half a dozen people near him, she scuffed toward him with a clapping of her plastic sandals. She didn’t look like any Thai he had seen. He hoped that she would walk past him. But she stood before him, near enough to assault his nostrils. Her body odor seemed another kind of aggression: a hum of hostility in her smell.

She began to squawk. The people around him, all Thais, giggled in embarrassment hearing her, yet they were fascinated, too, at the sight of the foreigner being challenged. For those waiting for trains, this was a diversion.

One man said to him, “She talking you.”

She was much too close: her dusty toes in the sandals touched his shoes. She wore a tattered wraparound, her lips smeared with lipstick. One cheek was cut cleanly, and though not a serious wound was crusted with dried blackish blood. She whined a little and nodded to get his attention, seeming to peck at him with her fleshy nose.

The bystander said, “She say, ‘I not myself what you see.’”

This obscure statement made him look away. Without meeting the woman’s gaze, but feeling disgusted as he brushed past her, Osier walked to a bench where a woman and a man were sitting with luggage.

Haunting him with her ripe-smelling shadow, the woman followed, legs wide apart, carrying a shoulder bag. Some of the Thai travelers also followed. Osier turned away and pretended to be busy with his notebook, but still he heard the aggrieved voice.

Someone touched him lightly with a finger. It was the Thai man who had said, “She talking you.”

The woman was gabbling in her sinuses. The foreign language had a twang of incomprehensible menace in it, too.

“She want money.”

At first he resisted, but he got another whiff of her and dug into his pocket. He found a ten-baht note and handed it over.

The woman handed it back, gabbling.

“She want three hundred fifty baht.”

Osier smiled at this precise amount, which wasn’t much, but stopped smiling when he looked up at the woman. She was still talking in her scratchy voice. Her reddened eyes scared him.

“What is that language?”

“It Thai, but she kaek, from India. She want talk you.”

“What about?”

His question was translated. Everything the woman said sounded like a threat or a protest.

“She say she special.”

Osier reacted sharply, as though remembering, and shook his head. He said, “What’s she doing here? I think we should get a policeman.”

“No, sir.” The man looked frightened. “That make her angry.”

“Why does she want to speak to me?”

“You farang. You listen.” The man laughed a little. “Thai people no listen.”

Osier looked at the woman and said, “Hello.”

But the woman’s gaze did not soften.

“She come from far away,” the man said.

The woman clutched her ragged wrap with heavy sunburned hands and turned her beaky face on Osier. She was chewing something, and then, as she began to shout, showing red teeth and dark gums, she grew devilish.

“You come from far away too.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She wanting money. You have money.”

Osier put his hands in his pockets, to protect his wallet.

“She say, ‘I not normal.’ She say, ‘God make me different. People treating me in a bad way because I not normal.’”

The other panhandlers Osier had seen always repeated the same whiny phrases, pleading for food, saying, “No mother, no father.” They made themselves pitiable. But this rough-looking beggar woman was making a speech, becoming angrier, denouncing Thais, proclaiming her abnormality, and, her voice going harsher, all of it seemed threatening.

“I someone else,” the Thai man said, still translating, but slowly — he could hardly keep up with her. And because Osier did not understand anything she said, he looked closer, scrutinized her, and saw that she was not a woman.

She was a man in a woman’s clothes, middle-aged, lined, muscled and graceless, clownishly painted with sticky makeup, in a torn wraparound and a dirty blouse, with big filthy feet and swollen hands, a wooden comb jammed in his matted hair, and demanding money, beginning to shriek, showing her green gummy tongue.

“If you don’t give, sir, she will remove clothes. She will make nuisance and shame.” The Thai man in his panic was clawing in his own pocket for money. “She will show private parts.”

Seeing Osier counting twenty-baht notes onto his lap, the man (Osier no longer saw him as a woman) became calmer and licked the spittle from his lips. He reached out, his thick hand like a weapon, and snatched the pile of money.

“That’s more than you asked for.”

After the man in the wraparound whined his thanks and touched the notes to his forehead, after the Thai translator hurried away, after the crowd of onlookers dispersed, Osier got up and flapped his hand at the lingering cloud of stink and walked quickly out of the railway station, feeling banished.

He thought, Why did he choose me? But the sudden pantomime had been a shattering experience, much worse than being accosted by an aggressive beggar. He’d felt assaulted, and the smell, which was poisonous, wouldn’t easily wash off. Then the unwelcome memory of the man who had provoked thoughts of mutilation and danger gave way to sorrow. It was not the menace he remembered, but the sadness.

He called Joyce and talked inconsequentially to calm himself. She said, “That’s funny. You called me just a few hours ago and said the same thing.”

He wanted to go home. He would have gone home, except that his work was not done. The hours to fill, from five to eight or nine at night, hours that were made bearable by his sketching at the station waiting room, he could not endure at the hotel. His room was small and poorly lit by a dim stylish lamp; sitting in the lobby, he felt conspicuous. He couldn’t take the accounts back to his room, and he had to leave the office at five when all the others left. He’d been using a taxi, to avoid the questions in the company shuttle bus. But now he took the shuttle bus.

He’d turned Fred and Larry down so many times he didn’t think they’d ask him to go with them anymore. He hoped that one of them would say “Drink?” Not because he wanted to carouse but because he wished their protection. He needed to stay as far away as possible from the railway station and the sight of the man-woman who was probably waiting for him.

The Thai workers were competent and hardworking, the factory so well run by the local managers that he had time on his hands. So did Larry and Fred. Like Osier, they had wives back in the States, but it didn’t stop them going to strip shows and massage parlors.

“Soi Cowboy! Great bars! The girls are hot — they wear boots and Stetsons!”

“Great little place called Angels. They’re barely legal!”

They talked like excited boys. Maybe it was a feature of going overseas, a danger in outsourcing — you were infantilized by the efficiency of the locals. Larry and Fred were like teenagers. Had Bangkok done that to them? Even he felt it, the vitality of being among healthy hardworking people.

“Guess Bar — Soi Four. It’s not far.”

“Nana Plaza — amazing women, but they’re all dudes!”

Joyce always asked what life was like in Bangkok.

“I don’t know what to compare it to,” he told her, but thinking of Larry and Fred he wanted to say, “It’s like being young. I guess it’s a kick.”

Because when you were young you had a sense of choices, of not knowing how your life would turn out. Only the old foresaw the undeviating road ahead, and beyond it a darkness. That was how Osier had felt, but now his nights were empty.

In the shuttle bus Fred Kegler said, “Funny seeing you here.”

“Just thought I’d hitch a ride.”

“Maybe we can tempt you to have a drink,” Larry said. But he laughed, because Osier had rejected them before.

“Maybe one,” he said.

The shuttle bus dropped them at Patpong Road. They walked to a bar, Fred leading. “Here we are,” Larry said. It was dark inside, smelling of beer and incense, with side booths. Osier squinted ahead, wondering if he’d be recognized. He liked the bar for being dark.

“Pretty soon you’ll be out of all of this,” Fred said.

He meant Osier’s retirement. Were they gloating?

Osier said, “We’ve got a house. Near Rockland, Maine. My wife’s already there.” Out of fastidious sentiment he avoided mentioning Joyce’s name in this smelly bar.

“A lot of guys opt for the severance package and stay right here in Thailand. You have a bundle coming to you. You’re on one of the old contracts. You could have a second career.”

Creer again; it jarred on Osier and seemed like satire. They didn’t know the half of it, even Joyce didn’t. Yet Osier said in an offhand way, “But what would that be like?”

“That would be a wet dream,” Larry said, giving each word a meaningful lilt.

The bar was everything that Osier had objected to the first time, not just the rankness of beer and the slime of cigarette smoke on the clammy plastic cushions of the booth, the American rock music, and the Christmas lights, but the girls, too — six or seven of them, overfriendly, converging on the booth. They seemed to know Fred and Larry well.

Fred said to one of them, “This is our friend. Be nice to him.”

“We be nice to him.”

Each of the men had a familiar and favorite girl, who brightened at their arrival, almost like a steady girlfriend. Instead of talking to him, as he’d feared, they talked to these bar girls and took them aside, leaving him to nurse his drink with the remaining girls. The girls watched, whispering, as he took his diary from his briefcase. He sketched their pictures on a blank page. They laughed, but for a while they stood still, because he was drawing so carefully.

In the booth of four girls, only one was attractive — tall, thin-faced, slender, a bit aloof, possibly haughty or else shy, while the others fluttered around him.

Osier sketched her pretty fallen-angel face, her long lank hair, then said, “What’s your name?”

But she turned away and wouldn’t tell him. Sketching, he stared, and as he did, he heard Fred call from his booth to Larry in the next booth, “I’ll mud-wrestle you for that one.”

Fred laughed and said, “Reminds me. I told my ex-wife, ‘When you’re fifty you’ll be standing on a street corner waving at cars.’”

Hearing their voices, Osier put his sketchbook away and finished his drink. Larry looked at Osier, sitting with the four girls, and said, “A bevy of beauties! Hey, Boyd, we’re going back to the hotel. Are you staying?”

Surprised in his solitude, Osier said no and left with them in a taxi. This was all? A drink, a giggle, then back to the hotel? He felt kinder toward the two men.

Larry said, “They all have families. Like us. They send money home. Ask them what they want and they won’t say a husband. They’ll say, ‘I want a coffee shop,’ ‘A grocery store,’ ‘A noodle shop.’ Having a drink there, I figure we’re helping the economy.”

“Piss them off and you’re in hell. Horror show,” Fred said, and the hoor grated.

At the hotel, Osier said, “I’ll pay.” After Larry and Fred had gone into the lobby, he said to the taxi driver, “Take me back to the bar.”

“Casanova? Patpong Road?”

“I guess.”

The girls laughed when they saw him, the man who had just left, and that made him sheepish. Did they understand more of what was in his heart than he did? As though anticipating what he wanted, they made a place for him at the far corner of the bar in a small booth.

He said nothing, he hardly glanced at the tall girl, and yet one of the girls said, “You come back see her!”

They knew exactly why he’d come. They were so shrewd about men. But then, what was so complicated about men?

The tall girl emerging from the shadows looked even more like a fallen angel. She walked over, stately in her high heels, holding her head up, dignified, giving nothing away in her expression.

“Have a drink with me.”

She seemed to hesitate. Osier was not dismayed, because after considering the offer, she chose him. She sat beside him and ordered drinks — beer for him, lemonade for herself. They drank without speaking, and for once Osier was glad for the loud music filling the silence and the space.

Finally she said, “You make picture?”

He showed her his diary, flipping pages. She put her finger on the sketch of the king and touched her heart.

“You like Bangkok?”

“I like the railway station.” Though it no longer seemed safe to him.

“Nice station.”

“And I like you.”

She sipped at her lemonade and then looked away. “You not know me.”

“But I want to know you.” And as he sat closer, she made room on the bench, accommodating him.

I am out of my mind, he thought. What did I just say? Am I telling the truth? But at least the room was dark, the music loud, and he was alone. Osier was drunk, he could tell from his slowness, the numb warmth in his arms, his drowsy talk, a creeping weight in his body, his feet like cloth, all of it brainlessly pleasant, making him feel like a big fool. When he put his hand on the girl’s thigh she reacted sharply.

“What’s that?”

She said, “My knife.”

She had to repeat the word before he understood. Smiling, he lifted his heavy arm and placed it on the girl’s skinny shoulder. She shrugged but she didn’t resist. Then he kissed her — on the cheek, like an adolescent’s first smooch. She laughed and became shy.

“You’re pretty.”

She stroked her face with her fingertips. “What country?”

“America.”

He wanted to kiss her again. He felt reckless enough, no one was looking — who cared in this place? He was as anonymous here as he’d once been in the waiting room of the railway station. He winced at his memory of it.

But, drunk, with his drunken sense of sliding slowly out of control, he felt that he was at the edge of a dark pit, a wide bowl of night, about to tumble in face-first. When he leaned to pat the girl’s knee she recoiled again. That reaction made him hesitate and sobered him a little.

He drew back and said, “I have to go home.”

She smiled. She said, “Everybody always go home,” and as he left, staggering into the noise and fumes of the street, Osier reflected on the minimalism of her barroom wisdom.

Back at the hotel, alone with his guilt, he felt he ought to call Joyce. His cell phone was not in his pocket. The girl had stolen it. He deserved the anguish he felt. He used his room phone to call the emergency number to cancel his cell phone account. He was put on hold. Music played. He thought, I am off my head. He called his own number. After a few rings, a smoky voice.

“Hello.”

“Who’s that?”

He heard smoky laughter but no reply.

“You have my cell phone. I need it.”

“I give you tomorrow.”

“When? Where?”

She spoke the name of a bar, she repeated the street, but even so, writing it down, Osier was not sure he’d heard the name correctly. Free had to be three. What was nigh?

The next day was Saturday. Osier hailed a taxi after lunch and read the scribble he had written. The driver said, “I know, I know,” but he didn’t know. They discovered the soi in Sukhumvit, but he guessed at the bar — Siamese Nights.

From the outside, it was indistinguishable from six other bars nearby: neon sign, opaque window, strings of beads hanging at the entrance. But inside it was large, vault-like, and quiet, gong music playing softly, like the melody in a children’s toy. Out of the back window he could see a canal, and plump lotuses in it, floating on their outflung petals, light falling across the water. He was looking into a Bangkok that was enclosed and placid and pretty.

She wasn’t there; hardly anyone was in the bar. He sat in the mildewed air of midafternoon and drank lemonade — it was too early for alcohol. Besides, a beer would tire him, and this being a Saturday, he planned to spend the rest of the afternoon walking — not to the railway station or the big flea market, but simply to exhaust himself in the heat — then an early dinner and bed.

At a quarter past three he saw her. She entered the bar and without hesitating walked straight to him. He was reminded of the directness of the man-woman at the railway station who’d confronted him.

He was relieved to find her manner the same as the previous evening: assured, casual, undemanding, as though they knew each other fairly well. He was glad the place was dark. He’d thought of taking the cell phone and leaving, but now he felt like lingering. He loved her piercing eyes, her thick hair, her height — even sitting down she was almost his height, their eyes level. She was not a sprite, not kittenish like the other girls, but a cat-like presence.

“Lemonade,” she said to the waitress.

A shaft of sunlight slanted through some boards near where they sat, and he could see through that crack the brightness of water, the glittering canal, the floating flowers, the bubbly stagnation shimmering in the hot afternoon.

“This is nice.”

“Everything nice for you!”

She remembered that he’d said she was nice, but what he wanted to say was that he was less lonely. Her accurate memory made her seem intelligent, impatient with small talk.

“I meant it’s quiet.”

“Other bar too noisy. Too many people. Crazy people. Farang ba-ba boh-boh. This better.”

“What’s your name?”

“I Song. What you name?”

“Boyd.”

“Boy,” she said.

He smiled. “That’s right.”

The gong music seemed to slip through him and beat like a pulse, relaxing him. A small boy in a red shirt approached, selling single flowers. Osier bought one for Song, and he felt as he had on his best night at the railway station — serene, calmed, triumphant. The sunlight glancing from the klong glimmered in a bright puddle on the ceiling. He thought, This is all wrong, but this is bliss.

“I’m happy.”

“Why not? Life too short.”

She’d heard that from someone, another farang, and yet it pained him to hear it. It was true. He felt absurdly tearful, thankful to her for saying that.

And now he remembered himself at the railway station, mourning, seeing the travelers leaving on life-altering journeys while he sat sketching their faces, as though grieving for them. He had believed his waiting was a death watch for them, but no, he was grieving for himself, as he waited for retirement. I don’t want to go, he thought, and glancing across at Song, he was creased by a pang, something deeper than hunger, like the foretaste of starvation.

“You’re so young,” he said, and heard fear in his voice.

“Khap khun ka. Thank you. Look young, but not!”

“How old?”

“I hate this question.”

Impressed by her rebuff, he said, “Me too. Any children?”

She laughed and tapped his arm as if gratefully, and said, “No children.”

“None for me either.”

“We same!”

Bar talk, flirty, facetious, but a little more than that, with the revelations of foolery, Song emerging as clever and gentle and self-mocking.

Then Osier remembered. “My cell phone,” he said. “Where is it?”

Song took the phone out of her bag but she didn’t hand it over. She said, “You give me?”

“Why?”

And because he’d hesitated, she gave it to him.

But because she gave it to him so quickly, he said, “Why do you want it?”

“So I can talk you.”

He loved that. He tapped her arm as she had tapped his. He said, “Yes. I’ll get you one. Let’s go.”

He still sat. He didn’t want to leave this shadowy place, Siamese Nights, the coolness of it, the girls huddled on the banquette, laughing, their knees together, the one other farang at the bar shaking dice onto the counter out of a cup and talking to the bartender. The watery light from the klong outside dappling the ceiling gave its fishbowl completeness an illusion of life’s essence.

This is who I am, this is where I belong, this is a place where I can tell the truth. Guessing that Larry and Fred were consoled by places like these, he understood them better. He told himself that he had no wish to possess Song, but only to ease his famished soul by being with her, to relieve his gloom.

But this was peaceful. He thought, I have someone I can tell this to. He told her. She listened with bright eyes, saying nothing, not judging him, her skin so lovely he wanted to stroke her like a cat.

And when at last they were on their way to the cell phone shop, in the traffic and the heat, he wished he were back in Siamese Nights, sitting with Song, looking over her pale shoulder at the canal beyond the back window. Song had sat placidly with her hands on her lap. Osier liked her size, not one of those tiny bird-boned Thai sprites, but rather tall, angular, with a deep laugh, and a presence he hadn’t associated with the Thais he knew. Song was a woman confident in repose, sweet without being submissive, with the melancholy he’d first seen that made him think of a fallen angel.

He said, “Why don’t you have a phone?”

“They cancel. I no pay.”

The clerks in the shop were so helpful, Osier let them explain the calling plans, though he knew most of the details by heart. He chose the simplest one, a six-month plan, renewable, inexpensive. Song picked out a red phone, and Osier signed the agreement.

Side by side in the taxi, he called her number.

“Hello, Boy.”

“Hello, Song.”

“You happy?”

“I’m happy.” But he caught a glimpse of himself in the taxi’s rearview mirror and turned away from that idiot face.

“Who are you calling?” he asked, seeing her tapping numbers into the phone.

“Mudda,” and, hearing a voice, she smiled and broke into Thai. Osier heard gleeful croaking from the other end and was content.

For the next few days they called each other. He did so just to hear her voice. He didn’t want to think why she called him, but she seemed happy to hear him. He remembered how, when he’d seen her in a group of five or six girls in a bar, Song had seemed the most feminine, the most mature, the softer, the more self-possessed, the only one not reaching out, not trying to catch his eye. She had not been looking at him at all; she’d been looking at the other girls posing for him, smiling slightly, and her narrow smile made her seem strong. She was not a coquette.

Her looking away had allowed him to study her body, which was fleshier than the others’, heavy-breasted. Song sat straight, her legs crossed, and he saw that her makeup had been more carefully applied. He felt a connection: she was the first real woman he’d seen since arriving in Bangkok, and he felt as he had when he’d met Joyce long ago, a pang of desire that was like a seam of light warming his body.

In a reflex of self-consciousness he called Joyce.

“I miss you,” she said.

Burdened by her saying that, with a catch in his throat, he could not reply at once.

He said, “I miss you too,” and wondered if she heard the strain in his voice. They talked a little more, about some trees that needed to be trimmed in the yard, and then he said he had to go to a meeting.

Joyce said, “Please don’t be angry. I know how busy you are.”

Too confused to reply, he said, “Take care,” and called Song a minute later. He said, “I miss you.”

“You make me feel like a million dollar,” Song said.

“I want to see you,” he said.

“See you when I see you,” she said.

Another of her catch phrases; she’d learned these quips from men. The thought made him vaguely jealous, but he was not possessive. He wanted her to be happy.

The next time he saw her — in the friendly bar, Siamese Nights, which was like a refuge by the klong—he said, “I’m going to the States.”

“Always they say that to me.” Though her eyes looked pained, she shook her head as if she didn’t care.

“But I’m coming back.”

“They say that always too. ‘I coming back, honey. Love you!’”

“I mean it.”

“Maybe you not come back. Maybe you be glad. ‘No more Song. No more trouble.’”

What trouble? he wanted to ask. He didn’t know whether he’d be back. He hoped so. The decision was not in his hands. There was a meeting in Boston — headquarters. Then he’d drive to Maine, swing by on the way to check on Joyce’s mother. His return to Bangkok depended on the presentation of the accounts, whether his continued presence in Bangkok was justified.

Perhaps this bewilderment showed on his face. Song said, “You come me.”

He knew what she meant.

“I get taxi.”

Song gave the driver directions. They went through a district he recognized from its noodle shops and street life, not far from his hotel. Off the main road, down an alley, into a smaller lane to a courtyard and a doorway. Song paid for the taxi. A young man in a white short-sleeved shirt at the doorway gave Song a key on a wooden tag.

“You give him baht.”

Osier opened his wallet, and Song plucked out the equivalent of ten dollars.

The young man led them to a ground-floor door, showed them in, switched on the air conditioner. Osier sat on a wooden chair and saw that the room had no windows.

“You want drink?”

“Beer.”

Song left the room, and when she came back with a tall bottle of Singha beer and two glasses, she sat on the bed across from his chair and poured his beer slowly. They clinked glasses. Osier thought: This is how criminals conspire, this is how they behave, hardly speaking, over beer, in windowless rooms, rationalizing their heads off. Yet — giddy, defiant — he thought, I am happy.

Song said, “You take bath”—and she had to repeat it before he understood what she meant.

In the shower, he thought to himself, This is reckless, this is absolutely stupid. And then, Life too short.

When it was Song’s turn for a shower, she turned off the light in the room, left the light on in the bathroom, the door slightly ajar. A stripe of light from the cracked-open door lay across the bed, where Osier was propped against the pillows with his glass of beer.

Wrapped in a towel, Song crawled next to him. Her skin smelled sweetly of vanilla. Her full breasts were cool and damp against his arm. While he drank, saying nothing, she caressed him, stroked his chest. He put his drink on the side table and closed his eyes, loving her touch. And he touched her, not longingly or with any passion, but merely holding her breasts, weighing them in his hand. He made to steady her arm but she shrugged, she wouldn’t let go, her hand went lower.

When he did the same, she reacted with a sudden movement, pushing his hand away with the hand she’d used to caress him.

“What’s that?”

But she had buried her face on his shoulder, and he felt the heat as of a secret against his neck.

“It my knife.”

He became very still. He knew now, he’d heard it all, he even knew the word. He said, “You ladyboy?”

“Why not?”

He was amazed at his own calmness, and recognized a kind of strength in himself. He needed most of all to be kind. He said, “That’s all right.”

“You want me stop?”

Taking shallow breaths that he knew she could hear, he thought for a long time. He didn’t say anything. And then, when she stirred, he allowed it to happen, thankful it was night.

And it ended, a jostling in the dark — a clumsy farewell in a lane of noodle shops outside the room, Song urging him to take a taxi on his own, a sleepless night in his hotel, and he was on his way home through the silver tunnel to America, being shot from one end to the other. Lying on his narrow folded-down airline seat, half asleep in his twisted clothes, in the same posture in which he had been touched, he was flesh. Not weak or strong, but a helpless hot organism in a rapture of possession.

In a rental car, heading north from Boston, observing a ritual, Osier drove to the nursing home where Joyce’s mother was a resident. She sat, her head tipped to the side, looking hanged, in a chair by the window, not so much white-haired as balding. A tang of urine in the air made him catch his breath.

She said, “Have you come to take me away, Roger?”

Roger was Joyce’s father, her late husband.

Osier said, “No. I’ve brought you a lovely shawl, though. It’s silk.”

“I want to go home. Take me home. I don’t want to die here.”

He went cold, hearing this. He hated that she was so logical. Her house had been sold three years ago, to pay for this assisted care. He dangled the shawl to distract her, but she remained agitated and querulous.

“I want the key, Roger.”

“What key?”

“The key for my toe,” she said.

He continued north, ate a lobster roll in Wiscasset, and by midafternoon was in Rockland, driving toward Owls Head. Saddened by the leaves turning russet and yellow, by the chilly air, the dark water of the bays and inlets, he drove slowly.

Joyce’s greeting was “Aren’t the colors incredible?”

But the colors reminded him of something much worse than retirement. The next big storm or the November rains would tear all of them from the branches and beat them to the ground and blow them flat against the fence.

“Lovely,” he said.

Death was the dry veins and the brittle curl in the withering leaves. These weren’t colors. Color was life and heat; a naked body could have color; fish twitching in a tank had color, and when they were dead they lost this brilliance and went gray. He took a drive, parked at the shore, and called Song. With his eyes on three lumpy islands, he heard the purr of her warm voice, heat and sunshine in his head.

“You no forget me.”

“I want to see you.”

“See you when I see you.”

When he got back to the house, Joyce was seated by the window, holding his pictorial diary in her lap.

“It all looks so amazing. Those temples, those flowers, those lovely people.”

The images of his days at the plant were accurate, but after that first meeting with Song, he had disguised his nights, falsified his pictures, turned Siamese Nights into a temple, sketched Song as a slender boy, on one page a balloon enclosing “Life too short,” and another, “Everybody always go home,” and later, “See you when I see you.”

Joyce’s smile tore at his heart, because she didn’t know anything, because she was happy, solicitous, believing he was overworked. He knew how murderers felt when they were in the presence of their unsuspecting victims: powerful, even perhaps pitying.

“I’ve made chowder. Your favorite.”

He thought, That man is not here anymore.

Joyce made excuses for him because he was too ashamed to concoct any for himself. “Of course you’re tired. You’re not yourself. Think of the distance. Flying is no fun. All those security checks. Remember to get some exercise. Don’t drink alcohol. And I really hope you make some friends there.”

He was relieved to be summoned to Boston by Haines, the CEO, to hear the decision. It was up to them. His fate was not in his own hands.

Haines said, “We’re extending you.”

Which meant to him: Song. He called her from Logan Airport. He heard music.

“Where are you?”

“Waiting you. Siamee Nigh.”

He contrived to see her the day he arrived — and, landing, he felt younger, hopeful; life was more complicated but richer. Meeting her involved a lie to Fred Kegler, which appalled him. But it was worth it to see Song’s feline face, her straight hair stylishly chopped apart, her pretty mouth, her full breasts. Her secret ambiguity excited him. A ladyboy was more emphatically feminine to him in an old-fashioned way that reminded him of his youthful romances, and the pallor of her complexion made it seem as if he was always seeing her by moonlight.

They couldn’t spend the night together — it would require him to tell another lie to Kegler. But he saw her on the weekend, not in a bar but by a lake in Lumphini Park.

She wore sunglasses, she carried an umbrella. “Thai people hate sun.”

“What do Thai people like?”

“Like shadow. Like night.” He laughed. She went on, “Farang like sun.”

“I like shadow. I like night.”

So he was no more than a farang? He struggled to make an impression, he talked about taking her on a trip. But he found wooing her like this a humiliation, because she didn’t need him. She was always in a bar, always being pursued.

He wondered if, in spite of the longing he felt, he was kidding himself. How could he care this much for a ladyboy he’d met in a bar? Was it that he’d had a glimpse into his sexuality that he’d kept in a dark corner, a sort of corner like Siamese Nights, where he’d groped Song and not been shocked? Or in the room. It my knife.

That night, alone, he went to Soi Four and chose a ladyboy bar at random. It was loud, filled with drunken farangs, some ladyboys in shorts dancing on a mirrored stage under a glitter ball.

“You buy me drink?”

“Sure, what’s your name?”

“Me Nutpisit.”

She was elfin, with eager eyes. But he knew she was a ladyboy, cute, rather small, pigtails, a miniskirt, knee socks. They drank together — she had a Coke — and later he paid forty dollars to the bar to release her. They walked to a hotel off a side street nearby.

“I give you shower.” Nutpisit took him by the hand and switched on the bright lights in the bathroom. Through the open door, he saw himself in the mirror, his surprised face, the leering lipsticked boy.

“No,” he said, and pulled his hand away. In a panic of self-disgust he began to apologize. The ladyboy Nutpisit, who had seemed so girlish, began to rage at him. Osier was frightened by the violent temper of someone so small. Nutpisit began to push him, then slapping him so hard, reaching for his face, she scratched his upraised arms. She raked his ears with her furious fingers. He pleaded with her, but she would only be quieted with fifty dollars.

Osier fled down the street like a felon, plucked at by the teasing girls sitting outside massage parlors. He had hoped he might respond to another ladyboy; then he would feel liberated from Song. But the experience had only served to show how much he needed Song.

He called her and heard loud music. He knew she was not at Siamese Nights. “I have to see you. Where are you?”

“Tomorrow better.”

He agreed; how quickly she had power over him. It was physical, it was her flesh. It my knife. To show her he was serious and protective, that he respected her and was even proud of her, he took her to dinner at a restaurant by the river. Some people stared. They seemed to know.

“They say, Why you with katoey?”

He didn’t care. This wasn’t Maine. He said, “I want you.”

At this she touched his hand, and he caught hers, and they held hands across the table like lovers.

“I never did anything like that before,” he said.

Song said, “I understand.”

The softness, the sympathy in the way she said it, the word itself, made him confessional. He explained what an ordinary life he had lived, the places he had been sent to audit accounts, that he had no brothers or sisters, that he had felt lonely when he’d gotten back to the States. She listened, she held his hand. He could not stop himself from talking — and it was more than he had said to anyone the whole time he’d been in Bangkok, more than he had said to his wife for years.

When he was finished, Song said again, “I understand.”

They sat on the terrace, watching the narrow sampans that were powered by big square engines and long drive shafts that, plowing the river, gave them impressive waterspout tails. They ordered bowls of noodles, he drank beer, she drank lemonade. Strings of tiny bulbs, like Christmas lights, had been draped on the low hedges and spindly trees at the margin of the terrace. They cheered him as the same sort of lights had cheered him when he’d been a boy. Was this an effect of travel? That if you went far enough you found a version of your childhood?

“We go upstairs?” Song asked, pincering noodles with her chopsticks.

Osier knew what she meant — his hotel was nearby. He wanted it, but superstitiously he told himself that there was plenty of time.

The sidelong looks of people did not embarrass him, but only reminded him of how happy he was to be with Song. And a defiant thought that had entered his mind and that had been developing over the past days was that the very oddness of the affair, an older man and a ladyboy, such an unlikely pairing, had to be proof that this desire was real — not mere curiosity but passion. And if love was the feeling of generosity, of gratitude, of unending mutual possession, it was perhaps love, too, driven by a sexual desire that had a reviving power.

“We go upstairs tomorrow night,” he said, to give himself the thrill of anticipation. “I have a meeting in the morning. Early. You know boss?”

“I know boss.”

“Boss have meeting.”

He had begun to talk in this halting oversimple way and was glad that no one but Song could hear him.

Song said, “I know meeting.” She took out her handbag and applied makeup. “You business.”

“Me business,” Osier said.

She raised her head in a superior way, flashing her eyes, and said, “Natang meehoo — pratoo mee da.”

Osier smiled and leaned toward her.

“Window have eye — door have ear.”

He said, “Where you going now?”

“Go to bar.”

Something in his heart convulsed. Jealousy, and more than jealousy, a wrenching, like a sickness.

“Why not go home?”

Song shrugged. He knew that shrug — it meant, What about money? A certain cluck meant money. A way of rolling her eyes meant money. Men in the bar would buy her a drink. She might allow herself to be touched, or persuaded for money to go with them. What did he know?

“You want money?” he asked.

Song didn’t speak. She was thinking hard, her face smoothed by the thought she was keeping to herself.

“If I give you money, do you promise not to go to the bar?”

She leaned toward him. “You think I like bar? You think I like men touch me?”

Her mouth twisted in disgust at tuss me. Osier, pleased by the energy in her response, was encouraged by her indignation, which was like proof of her morality.

“What about me?”

She touched his arm, then made affectionate finger taps on his hand. “My friend.”

“I give you money. No bar.”

“If I have money, I don’t need bar.”

He soothed her, saying, “I have money,” and never in the whole time he’d known her had he enjoyed such rapt attention, Song’s eyes fixed on him, her pretty lips moving as though murmuring a prayer, or soundlessly counting. Feeling powerful, taking his time, Osier agreed on a sum, the amount Song suggested, more than he had imagined. But he paid; he wanted to be certain of her. He couldn’t bear to think of her being pawed in the bar.

Song said, “This for my mudda.”

When he kissed her at the taxi stand that night she held him tightly.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

All the next day he was so distracted by his work that he had lunch later than usual, in the empty cafeteria, eating as the staff was finishing the dishwashing and stacking the chairs for the mopping. Osier sat at the only free table, and as he began to eat he saw Fred Kegler enter the room.

“Mind if I sit here?” Fred was holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee and already seating himself. “You’re having the chili prawns. I love the chili prawns.”

This sort of chat made Osier anxious, because he felt sure it was intended to put him at ease. There was more of it: weather, an upcoming holiday, Fred’s son in Little League, all insistently casual.

Then he began laughing softly, and said, “Spent the weekend in Pattaya. I know a guy there, American, married a local girl.”

“It seems to happen a lot,” Osier said.

“Big mistake. He’s miserable. I’ve got this theory.”

Someone announcing a theory was always unstoppable and usually wrong. Yet Osier listened, because his reputation was for being mild, a listener.

Still holding his Styrofoam cup of coffee, Fred said, “The more polite and submissive people are outside in cultures like this, the more rude and domineering they are at home.” Fred was nodding, meaning to go on. “I’m talking about the women. These smiles, this sweetness. That’s all for public consumption. In private it’s the opposite, like they’re taking revenge. Like they’re corrupted. And not just here. I did a tour in Japan, different company. Those sweet little geishas turned into dragons at home.”

Osier, hearing crupted, disbelieved him, and said, “That’s a theory, but what’s the proof?”

“My friend is the proof,” Fred said, and sensing defiance in Osier, he seemed pained. “Hundreds of guys here are the proof.” He lowered his head and spoke in a whisper, “Some of these girls here, let me tell you, they’re not really girls. They’re dudes.”

This obvious warning by Fred had only made him more defiant. Larry had not said anything, but Osier had noticed that while seeming to avoid him, Larry was ever more watchful.

He could only call Song in the late afternoon. Song said she was in her room. He had no reason to doubt her.

He said, “I miss you.”

“I miss you.”

This echo worried him. Did she mean it as much as he did? He felt with such a person that they were only pretending to speak the same language.

“I want to see you.”

“I want to see you.”

I’m insane, he thought. But he didn’t have the power to stop, because the worst of it was that she was stronger than he; she was dominant. She didn’t need him, she could find the money from someone else. And she was a freak of nature, a kind of unicorn: he’d never find anyone like her.

He had never seen her room. He wanted to see her in it, to know her better. He waited for night to fall, then took a taxi to the address she had dictated to him. The room was in an old building smelling of fish sauce and hot cooking oil. But it was swept, it was tidy. What struck him about the room itself was the enormous calendar, the portrait of the king bordered in yellow for the royal jubilee, and the shrine in the corner, an image of Buddha, a flickering candle, some blossoms in a dish, a pair of amulets laid out side by side, and between them a slender tube of ivory chased in silver.

He was glad for the darkness, for the rattly air conditioner, because its noise killed conversation.

Song pulled the blinds and led him by the hand, like a child, into the bathroom. Dressed in a bathrobe and standing just outside the stall, she gave him a shower. Afterward she dried him and put him to bed. While he waited, buffeted by the air conditioner, it seemed to him that he was not in a room at all but another dark tunnel, being propelled toward its end and unable to do anything but allow himself to be tumbled.

Song had taken her shower, and in semidarkness she lay beside him and held him. She was the protector, she was active, while he lay safe, thinking, I am flesh, I am insane, I am happy, hold me.

“Magic knife,” he said, touching her.

But she hadn’t heard.

That became the pattern of their meetings: her room, the separate showers, the drawn blinds, the roaring air conditioner; and the pattern turned into a ritual without words. As a ritual, everything was allowable, and later he never thought about what had happened, having left everything in the dark: life with the lights out.

His floating dream-like indecisive life away from the precision of work matched the city with its smothering heat. The clasp of humidity and the gutter smell gagged him, and yet his mood swelled him with buoyancy. This, with the whole hot city pressed on his eyes, blurring everything around him, made him feel like someone bumping forward under water.

He stopped his diary, stopped sketching anything except market stalls and boats on the river, or the pepper pots of Buddhist stupas and the daggers of temple finials. He did not dare to draw any people for fear of being reminded how different he was from everyone else. Abandoning the diary and doing fewer drawings, he shook off the spell he’d cast on himself in his sketching.

That perplexed, oversimplified cartoon figure he drew to represent himself, wearing glasses, a startled question mark over his head, trying to make sense of Bangkok, no longer appeared on the pages of what was now a cluttered sketchpad. He could not bear to depict his confusion. He wanted to be a blank page. Ceasing to account for his days, he clouded his memory — memory, the useless ballast that gave the slow passage of his aging a heaviness that dragged him down. He was renewed each day by not remembering, stewing in a pleasurable anticipation of seeing Song, savoring the foretaste of desire, a creaminess of vanilla on her skin.

Now he knew why he had spent so many nights at the railway station. That waiting had been an evasion of this settled mood of acceptance. In a discarding frame of mind, flipping through the pages of his pictorial diary, he found a sketch he had made early on of the man-woman who’d demanded money from him. It had been done weeks before she’d accosted him, when he’d seen her as just another of the station’s loiterers. He’d drawn her as a fussed and fretting creature, bird-like with her beaky nose, in a Gypsy skirt with a bright shawl. He had not seen her distress or the spittle on her lips. The sketch was colorful, even merciful. He let it stand.

Putting all his earlier life aside, not thinking of Maine, concentrating on the present — himself and Song — he was happy. He still called Joyce every day, or she called him. Song said, “Who?” because the calls were so frequent. He never said, “My wife.” He denied he had a wife — he told himself he was sparing Joyce the indignity of mentioning her.

“Boss,” he said. Song knew the word well.

Joyce was satisfied with the plainest details of his life in Bangkok. The more mundane details pleased her most; she understood them best, stories of power cuts at the plant, heavy traffic, a tummyache. Joyce was like an old forgiving friend, a link with another life, a different narrative. He could not tell her how happy he was. Where would he begin? She and her mother were consumed by ill health; they didn’t complain; for every ailment there was a remedy, yet this speculation occupied the whole of their lives. Any mention of his happiness, his luck, his good health, would be a violation of their self-absorption.

He’d never believed he could be this happy. He had assumed he’d finish here, hang it up, go home, persist, try not to die. But this was life itself, and he had always felt he’d lived on the periphery. Now he knew he was isolated in his happiness. The others at the plant seemed to know. Strangers did not wish him well, and he sensed that Fred begrudged him. One evening, saying, “I want to show you something,” Fred had tried to reopen the cautioning conversation. He took Osier to a bar. He did not talk to the girls. The bar was on the same soi as Siamese Nights. It was as though he was demonstrating his superior self-control.

“Some people come here and take things so seriously,” Fred said. “They see poor people and want to give them money. They see little orphan kids and want to try to rescue them. They even fall in love. Bottom line, collateral damage.”

And with clatteral, like a slickness on his lapping tongue, Fred leaned across the table, seeming to peer into him, trying to determine if Osier had been touched by what he’d conjectured.

Osier said, “And some people come here and make generalizations. Most people do.”

“Life can be so simple,” Fred said, talking over him. “Just be a tourist. You can have a hell of a time here if you don’t take it seriously.”

Osier said, “You can have an even better time if you do take it seriously.”

“You Catholic?”

“Fallen away, pretty much. But if I’m anything, I suppose…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Me too. What about church?”

The mention of church in this bar, the girls leering from a banquette, offended Osier as much as mentioning Joyce’s name here. He knew they were talking about Song without saying so, and that Fred was pained by the subject.

Fred left him there. He hadn’t been specific, but Osier knew that someone must have seen him with Song. And everyone talked.

Osier walked to Siamese Nights and met Song, and while they were sitting, holding hands, Joyce called to tell him that spring had come to Owls Head, the snow had started to melt. After he hung up, Song stared, the obvious question on her face.

“Boss,” Osier said in a burdened voice.

“Boss,” Song replied, more lightly, but eyeing him.

One afternoon Song called to say that she’d meet him after work at the plant. She had a surprise. She’d never come to the plant before. She was calling from a taxi on her red phone.

She remained in the taxi, parked next to the security fence, away from the guard in the security box at the gate, but even so, Osier knew that she’d been seen. She wasn’t being indiscreet — showing up like this proved that she cared for him. She didn’t go to bars anymore. She saw him most evenings, and on weekends he stayed at her apartment, marveling at the completeness of his new life. Still, she seemed suspicious, as though wishing to know him better, perhaps wondering whether he was withholding a secret.

“My mudda come,” she said when Osier got into the taxi.

Her mother was at the apartment, cooking. Song wanted to prepare him for it — the old woman was staying for a week.

But she was not an old woman. She was probably younger than Osier, only mannish and careworn from a hard life.

“She have a farm.”

She was no more than fifty or so, which meant that Song was younger than he’d guessed. The woman was faded, with a deeply lined face, sad eyes, and a laborer’s coarse hands. He saw that Song was a refinement of her mother.

The woman, who was named Wanpen, did not speak English. She was active, eager to please, expressive in her movements, and through Song gave Osier to understand that she was glad to see him. Then, as if to show her gratitude, she labored in the kitchen cubicle, strands of damp hair against her face. She whisked vegetables in a wok and made soup and noodles and spring rolls.

Osier did not spend the night when Song’s mother was there, but he visited most evenings after work and was content in this secret nighttime life. He sat and was waited on in a rather formal way, the old woman calling to Song, and Song serving him; and it seemed to him that his life had never been this full. He was surprised when, at one of these meals, he got a call from Joyce.

He kept the call short, while Song whispered to her mother. And when he’d finished, Song said, “Boss.”

“Boss,” he said.

He was not apologetic anymore. He was grateful. Perhaps that was love, the sense that you were reborn, remade anyway, given hope.

“I’ve just been back to the States,” Larry said, one lunchtime that week, taking a seat in front of him, setting his meal tray down. “Saw my wife. My kids. Just what I needed.” This was the same man who had hooted, Soi Cowboy! Great bars! The girls are hot — they wear boots and Stetsons! Then he said, “You can go home too, you know.”

Did he regret having taken Osier to the clubs? Maybe he felt he was responsible for whatever Osier was rumored to be doing.

Osier said, “One of these days.”

Relieved, Larry began eating.

Osier could not tell him what was in his heart. He wished he were alone, that he were not part of this enterprise — the hotel, the plant, the company. It was too much like an encumbering family.

Passion had brought him to this point, and in the week of not being able to spend nights with Song, because her mother was there, he could see his life more clearly — not in the hot headlong way he had first felt, blinded by desire, but calmly, studying Song in his mind, and himself with her. It seemed incredible that the consoling softness of someone’s skin and the contours of a body could change the course of his life — and so late in his life too, when everything had seemed so circumscribed by the inevitable.

Now — it was odd but not upsetting — nothing was certain. He was happy, he was hopeful, he felt lucky. He was amazed by the completeness of his life.

“She like you,” Song said on her mother’s last night. And Wanpen smiled, seeming to understand what was being said. “She ask who you talk to on phone.”

The mother was that shrewd. Osier said, “What did you tell her?”

“I say boss.” She laughed. “She not believe me.”

With feeling and a flutter of helplessness, Osier said, “The boss tells me what to do.”

Song spoke again to her mother, who answered solemnly. Song said, “She trust you.”

Osier felt a burden of responsibility, the woman putting her faith in him.

“She always worry about me,” Song said, and seeing that Osier was thoughtful, she added, “Because I different. I not like other people.”

Osier wanted to say, Maybe I’m not either. Maybe I’m different too. But he said, “Tell her not to worry.”

Repeating this in Thai, Song made her mother smile. The woman pressed her hands together and bowed in gratitude. She was small, sturdy, and seemed unbreakable.

Osier knew he’d made the woman a promise. He had spoken without thinking, yet he meant it. As on those other nights, he thanked the mother and said goodbye without kissing Song, backing up, clumsily chivalrous.

The following night they met at Siamese Nights, Song with a glass of lemonade, Osier with a Singha beer. Song said, “My mudda, she really like you,” and it seemed to mean everything.

“She’s a lovely woman. So energetic. You know?” He motioned with his hands. “I imagine your mother in her village, and I see sunshine and green fields and chickens and fruit trees…” He described the idyllic landscape he had seen from the train on his one-day trip out of Bangkok, which he’d sketched in his diary.

When he finished, smiling at the thought of what he had described, Song said, “I understand.”

Later, at her apartment, she took charge of him, bathing him, scrubbing him, massaging him, exhausting him, being generous. It seemed that she was rewarding him for being so kind to her mother, but with a lavishness that approached debauchery.

Of course they suspected something at the plant, but they didn’t know him, or were less sure of him. He was like a man receding as they watched him, backing away, growing smaller and simpler, blurring in the distance on a long road. Osier liked that. He was strengthened by his secrets. He knew now that a kind of happiness existed that no one could even guess at — unthinkable for these techies who assumed everything was thinkable.

Joyce, too. His happiness gave her heart. She could not imagine the source of his happiness, nor would he ever be able to explain it to her, yet she would accept it, as she accepted most things. She heard that note in his voice.

“I’m glad it’s all going well.”

Pleasure made him bold, passion made him guiltless. He did not wonder how she would manage without him. Already she was managing without him, and if she wanted to know what the future held for her, she only needed to visit her mother, as she did most weekends.

Osier’s confident frame of mind made him more efficient, more observant of the routines at the plant, catching the shuttle in the morning, working on the accounts, making small talk in the cafeteria, heading back to the hotel in the shuttle with the others. Larry and Fred did not stop at the clubs anymore.

Some weeknights Osier slipped away to see Song, but that meant a late return to the hotel. Weekends, from Friday night to Sunday evening, he spent with Song at her little apartment near Siamese Nights.

One Friday at lunchtime, Fred sat heavily at Osier’s table, commanding attention in the very act of seating himself — elbows on the table, arms upraised, trapping him.

“Great news. I just found out there’s an awesome old church here on the river. Holy Rosary. Catholic. Services every Sunday.”

Fred said this with the same gusto as he had in the past, shouting in a strip club, I’ll mud-wrestle you for that one.

Osier said, “I had no idea.”

“They’ve actually got a priest. I emailed him and told him about us. The company — American company, expat staff, Catholics. He was stoked. They got a pretty diverse collection of communicants.”

Osier was not sure what Fred was saying, whether this was innocent enthusiasm or some sort of ploy. He’d winced at clection. He tried to think of an answer to the question he knew was about to be asked.

“So how about it? You want to come along?”

Had Fred suggested going to a market, or a concert, or an art exhibit, or even a Buddhist temple, Osier would have found it easy to say no. But a church service — Catholic — was another matter. He felt ambushed. He was the one who had been disapproving of the clubs, the one who had kept his nights a secret. He guessed that Larry and Fred had their suspicions. Why else had Larry harped on going back to the States? You can go home too, you know. A club would have been easy to reject, but how on earth could he turn down a Catholic Mass on a Sunday?

“Okay,” Osier said.

And now he had to explain to Song. Sunday-morning Mass meant that he could not spend Saturday night at her apartment, because that would complicate meeting Fred in the lobby at seven a.m., as he’d agreed.

“Company business,” he said, hating his lie. And sitting in Siamese Nights, he made up a story in which the boss figured.

Song listened, watching him with her smooth moonlit face. She heard what he said and nodded, but Osier knew that all her inarticulate alertness, her wordless wondering receptivity to every twitch and pulse, told her he was lying. But now it was too late for the truth. If he changed his story and honestly told her about the church service, she’d still be convinced he was lying.

She said, “When I see you then?”

“Saturday night’s out. Sunday’s a problem.”

“I understand.” And the way she said it, lightly, with no bitterness, he took to be a measure of her wounded pride.

Siamese Nights was quiet, the other girls gathered at one table, facing the front door for customers. Osier hugged Song to make a point. Normally he never touched her in public. She stiffened, resisting him as though violated, as though he’d touched her head.

“We can go to your place.”

“No. You busy.”

He wasn’t busy. He knew this was a rebuff. And a moment later his phone rang. He had forgotten to shut it off. He looked and saw Joyce’s number, and didn’t answer.

Sensitized, Song noticed that too. “You don’t want to talk to your friend?”

He said, “It’s nothing. Nobody.”

No one was more alert to a further slight than someone who felt rejected.

“Nothing. Nobody,” she said.

And to prove it was nothing, he called Joyce back, damp and breathless with shame, Song watching, and before Joyce could speak more than a few words, he said, “I’ll have to talk to you later. I’m in a meeting,” and switched off the phone. Song was wide-eyed.

“See? Nothing. Just work.”

“Nothing,” she said.

“My boss,” he said.

“I understand.”

That simple exchange made him suffer. Saturday, he called Song. She didn’t answer — no Please leave a message, either. He tried to calm himself by sitting in the garden of a temple, sketching a Buddha, but the picture was no good, the face lopsided, the eyes cruel.

No answer from Song later that night, even after five tries, the last at midnight. Imagining the most lurid scenes — scenes he himself had enacted — he couldn’t sleep. Nor did she answer in the morning. And he reflected that in all the years of being married to Joyce he had never tasted such delight or endured such anguish as in his six weeks of loving Song.

“This is Missy,” Fred said in the lobby on Sunday morning.

A woman of forty or so, freckled, in a blue dress, with kindly eyes, said, “Melissa DeFranza. I know Fred from Vancouver. I’m in sales and marketing. On my way to a workshop in Singapore.”

“I mentioned I was going to a church service and Missy jumped,” Fred said.

She said, “That’s what I need. Spiritual renewal. So nice of you guys to include me.”

In the taxi, Missy said that she hoped to do some shopping and wondered if the stores in River City were open on Sunday. Fred talked loudly about his family and said that he had managed to live as an expatriate in Bangkok because he had created—crated—a special relationship with Jesus. He talked; Osier tuned him out.

The church, Holy Rosary, near the river, had a pencil-point steeple and arches, the whole of it faced in cream-colored stucco. Osier, no longer keeping his pictorial diary, could not break his habit of drawing such buildings in his head, and it relaxed him to see that this one would have been easy to put on the page. The church was a study in straight lines. Flowers filled the altar, which was draped in white linen, its marble supports picked out in gold. The faces on the stained-glass windows had an Asian cast.

He felt it was blasphemous to resent having to attend, yet he wanted it to be over with, so that he could see Song and resume what he now saw as his real life.

Osier knelt and prayed for things to go right for him. He asked God to understand. Yet God knew he had come under protest. Osier would not have been surprised to see the lovely domed ceiling crack to pieces and fall on his head — or something worse — for his hypocrisy.

The priest, a Thai, or perhaps an Indian, murmured the prayers, soothing Osier with their familiarity. But at one point, turning to face the mostly farang congregation, he hesitated in his delivery. At the same time there came a moment of traffic roar. The front door of the church had been opened and shut.

Glancing back, Osier saw Song making her way up the center aisle. When their eyes met, Song pressed her hands together in veneration, as though in a temple, and took a seat in the pew just across the aisle from him.

Osier’s heart raced. He struggled to breathe. Even in her best dress, a silk shawl over her hair, and wearing high heels, Song looked out of place — the dress a bit too red, the shawl revealing her lustrous hair, the high heels noticeably too high.

“Let us pray,” the priest said.

The congregation knelt. Song followed their example, her eyes cast down. Osier was burning with shame and indecision. His hands had gone clammy. What if she stood up and screamed at him?

Utterly at peace, without a clue, Missy DeFranza, kneeling between Osier and Fred, said her prayers. Osier pretended to pray, and as he did, he lifted his head and saw that Song was staring at him. Her gaze was unreadable. Osier tried to convey his helplessness to her in a meaningful shrug, but she was unmoved. And when she sat, she seemed like a bright-feathered and flamboyant bird, conspicuous in scarlet, with silken plumage, too beautiful to be praying.

The priest mounted the pulpit and gave a sermon, full of pauses, its theme the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. And when, after that, the priest led the prayers, Osier could hear Song in a clacking voice declaiming a prayer in Thai, and it sounded like blasphemy. Osier, terrified, tried to anticipate what Song’s next move might be and how he might counter it. If she lunged at him, should he wrap her in his arms and drag her from the church? If she began shouting, denouncing him, ought he to hurry away?

But he saw, almost with disbelief, that Song was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. And the priest at that moment was leading a benediction.

Had Fred seen any of this? Osier thought of making a run for it, just ducking out. But when the priest announced a hymn, and the people stood, holding hymnals, Osier looked across the aisle and saw that Song was no longer there.

This was worse. He endured the service to the end, then filed out with the others, squinting as the sun blinded him, and shielding himself, preparing to be accosted. But she had gone.

“Lunch,” Fred said.

“Not for me,” Osier said. He was choked with nausea.

“There’s a great noodle place right near here on the river.”

“I’ll buy,” Missy said. “I’m on expenses.”

“I could use a drink,” Osier said, and followed them, looking around for Song.

In the restaurant, digging at his noodles, Fred said, “Know where you find some awesome Christians? Korea.” Because he said Kree-ah, Osier felt it was untrue. “That Mass did me a power of good.” And, as though boasting, unashamed, he added, “I’ve done some terrible things in my life. Wicked things.”

“It’s all good,” Missy said.

“No,” Fred said. “It’s mortal sin, pure and simple.” He was looking at a ladyboy who was sitting with an older farang. “She’s not a woman, sentimental and afraid. She’s a man.”

Osier said, “What’s your point?”

“She’ll do what a man does,” Fred said.

Osier, not eating, sipping at a glass of lemonade, suddenly stood up and said he’d just remembered that he had something urgent to do. He hurried out and took a taxi to Song’s. His knocking roused the neighbor in the next apartment. She poked her head out and made Osier understand through hand gestures that Song had gone out.

He went to Siamese Nights, almost empty in the Sunday-afternoon somnolence, a trickle of music, a few girls at tables. He sat to calm himself, then left without drinking. He walked along the hectic sidewalk in the direction of his hotel, and at a wide intersection he saw he was lost. He stood among a row of parked motorcycles and called Joyce. She did not answer. This was not surprising. It was three o’clock in the morning in Owls Head. One of the motorcyclists agreed to take him to his hotel. And so the weekend ended in silence and humiliation.

Monday was no better — repeated calls, no answer. Tuesday — no answer. And this was the week of the quarterly audit. He had never been busier, and the numbers didn’t tally. On one of those nights in his hotel room, walking quickly to the door, he caught sight of a figure in the full-length mirror. He saw that it was not him in his green short-sleeved shirt but a beaky woman in a sari, hands upraised to plead, lipstick on her mouth, a slash wound on her cheek, a comb jammed into her hair, imploring him. He was startled at first, then sad, seeing this sister abandoned to ridicule. He called Song again and got no answer.

In the cafeteria, Fred and Larry sat together. Osier was sure they had been talking about him. To discourage their gossiping, he sat with them.

Larry said, “You look like you’ve had some bad news.”

Such bluntness always put Osier on the defensive. He began to protest.

“Just pulling your leg,” Larry said. But Osier was sure that Fred had said something.

That night, the Wednesday, Osier went to Siamese Nights. He saw Song sitting in a booth with an older man, Indian possibly, or Arab. Osier did not hesitate. He snatched Song’s arm and lifted her, and before the startled man could react, he dragged her out of the club and pushed her into a taxi.

“I love you,” he said.

She sulked at the words. She said, “You a bad man. You lie to me. You take you wife to church.”

“That wasn’t my wife. I love you.”

To prove it, he took her to his hotel. He had brought her there before for a drink — she even seemed to have an understanding with the doorman and the lobby staff, something in the oblique way they acknowledged her, familiarly, as an equal, not deferential. But this was a more conspicuous visit. He needed her to know that he was not ashamed.

In the bar, he ordered her a lemonade, and a beer for himself.

Song was looking over his shoulder. “That man.”

Fred, leaving the bar, his back turned, but unmistakably Fred.

“You friend,” she said.

“Not my friend.”

“You boss?”

For simplicity — how could he explain? — he said yes, and as he said it, she looked again in the direction of the door. Osier didn’t dare to look. He assumed that Fred was lingering, because Song was still watching, her head moving slightly.

“Maybe you boss see you.”

“I don’t care,” he said, but a catch in his throat made him think that he did care.

“I go home.”

“No. Come to my room.”

This he knew was reckless, but he was determined to show her that he was not like any other man she’d met, not like anyone else who’d said, “I love you,” and pawed her. He needed to be serious, even solemn, to reassure her. He had sworn as much to her mother.

He drew her to the bed and held her, both of them clothed, and said, “Tell me about your mother’s farm.”

“In the village,” she said. “Grow rice, have chicken…”

And as she spoke, he could see it, greeny-gold in the sunshine, the graceful huts on stilts, in the thickness of banana trees, under the feathery umbrellas of palms. The rice fields, banked in big squares, filled with water, mirrored the blue sky. Her mother stood over the smoking cookstove under the house, stirring the noodles in the wok. The most durable sort of human happiness. Song mentioned the children playing, her brother on his bicycle, and Osier could tell that it meant everything to her.

“Go on,” he said when she hesitated.

He easily fitted himself into that landscape. And when he fell asleep in Song’s arms he dreamed of the village, and a detail she had not given him, a fierce dog barking at him.

He woke in the darkness. He was still dressed. Song had gotten into the bed. She’d had a shower. Her dress was folded on a chair.

“I’m going to the States,” he said.

He could tell even in the darkness, by the way she breathed, that she disapproved. She held his arm as if restraining him, though he hadn’t moved.

“If I don’t go, they make trouble for me.”

Song became thoughtful, then said, “What trouble?”

“Telling stories about me,” he said, and because he was ashamed of speaking this way, he whispered, “They no like me.”

He could tell he had her full attention, as when he had said, “I have money,” and her lips had moved as though in prayer.

She said, “They make you go home?”

He didn’t answer, but his silence was like a statement, and Song’s eyes were on him.

“Who say?”

“My boss.” He had to keep it simple — language was always a problem. But when he uttered the formula, she held on tighter, and he felt the desperation in her fingers.

“Boss,” she said disgustedly.

He regretted the word, his lame excuse, but the truth — Joyce, his pension, his early retirement, all of it — was too complicated to explain. He longed for the time when no more explanations would be necessary.

“Don’t worry.”

“I coming back, honey.” She sang it, as a kind of jeer, and that stung him. Her English had improved and was lethal in its accuracy when she was mocking.

Song said nothing more. The air conditioner restarted, filling the room with clatter. Instead of breaking the spell, the noise made any more talk impossible, and the mutter, with the blast of cool air, roused them. They made love joyously, but with defiance, too. Afterward he thought, How many more years of work? One or two. How many of life? Twenty or more. He was not old — Song had shown him that he was just beginning. He wanted more of life, more of Song. He craved that simple golden world of greenery that she took for granted, that he’d once imagined to be unattainable.

Even in Bangkok she was an oddity, and together they were a greater oddity, but they were alike.

In the morning he called Song a taxi, and he rode the shuttle with Fred and Larry. He was aware of their scrutiny. Had Fred said anything?

Fred said, “We’re thinking of hitting a few clubs tonight. Want to join us?”

This from the churchgoer who had a special relationship with Jesus. All that Osier could think of was his plan to go back to the States, to announce his intentions. He had no words for what he felt, no name for the state he was in, no way of saying what it was that had happened in the night — none that made any sense to him. If this was love, it was something he had never known before. He sorrowed for Joyce, for himself — not for Song. He knew that when the period of grieving was over she would have everything she wanted.

“I can’t go,” he said. This was the same man who’d gotten him to go to church. But this was different.

“We figured,” Larry said.

Osier looked at them both and said, “I know what you’re thinking. But there’s nothing wrong with me.”

Where had that come from? He was sorry he’d blurted it out. That they had no reply was like a challenge to him.

He spent the day finishing the quarterly accounts and making arrangements for flights back to the States. He called Haines and asked for discretionary leave, a week. He called Joyce, saying that he would be coming. And that night he slept well, knowing that he’d made his decision.

His phone rang in the darkness. He guessed it was Joyce, perhaps fretting, a confusion in the time difference. But it was Song. She had never called at this hour, and whenever she called she was circumspect. But she sounded certain — odd for this predawn hour.

“Boy?”

He blinked at the name. “Yes?”

“No more trouble.”

“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Where are you?”

“No more trouble.”

Her self-assurance gave him hope. Even if she was not love, she was life, and she had allowed him to discover something about himself. He was someone else, not the man he had been. Away from home, in the hot night of this city, he had become transformed. It was a glimpse of difference he would never have found in the States. It made him wonder, and that wonderment was his strength. Hearing Song’s voice, he yearned for her.

“I want to see you.”

“I want see you,” she said.

“See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Then he slept deeply, consoled by her confident voice.

Neither Fred nor Larry was in the lobby when the company shuttle drew up. The doorman said he hadn’t seen them. Normally they were waiting for Osier, holding cups of coffee from the urn in the lobby.

He called Fred’s cell phone number but got a recorded message. He tried Larry.

“It’s me,” Osier said when Larry answered. “Shuttle’s here.”

Larry sighed, a kind of whistling, and gasped a little, sounding like a weak child. “I’m at the hospital,” he said. “I’ll be all right. But I don’t know about Fred. He’s in tough shape.”

“What happened?”

“Couple of guys jumped us last night. They went after Fred. If I hadn’t intervened they would have killed him.”

“What, a robbery?”

“No robbery. Just”—Larry’s voice was weary, wounded— “mayhem. Screaming mayhem. The guys came at us with knives. They cut Fred real bad. You gotta call Haines. And Fred’s wife. Maybe the embassy, too.”

Osier stood in the courtyard of the hotel, the great hot city roaring around his head. The driver signaled from the van, querying with his hands, a gesture that asked, “Shall we go?”

Osier went up to his room but could not summon the nerve to break the news to Haines. To comfort himself, he called Song. “Big trouble,” he said, and he was going to say more but he didn’t trust his unsteady voice.

“No trouble,” Song said.

He had hardly started speaking when she cut him off with uncharacteristic efficiency. She knew everything — the bar, the injuries, even the name of the hospital where the men had been taken. And after this explanation, “I want see you.”

He had once thought, I can choose. People were happy who believed that. He was miserable, because he was no longer ignorant, because he knew he had no choice, and such misery seemed like a guarantee that life went on and on.

“Why did you do this?”

She hadn’t understood. She said, “Wiv my knife. Wiv my friend.”

He said, “I don’t know,” and the panic in his tremulous voice chastened him. Osier dropped his arm. He didn’t want to know how things would turn out. That was an unfair abbreviation, like knowing in advance the day of your death. He tried to be calm. He lifted the phone to his face and said it again.

“But I know,” Song said, with a steady voice of utter assurance, of insistence, taking possession of the whole matter. “Never mind. I love you.”

The manly fury in her voice was dark, even the word “love” was bloody and hellish. He was terrified by her certainty.

“I want see you,” she said.

“No.” And when he said it, he heard Song snarl into the phone. The awful noise of objection was like the crackle of a harsh hot light, exposing everything he’d ever said and done, burning away his shadow. “I’ve got to make some calls.” She made the noise again. “Okay — later. Siamese Nights. Where are you now?”

“I downstairs. Waiting you.”