The Fourth Watcher

6

"It’s a perfume from about a thousand years ago,” Rafferty says. “It’s called White Shoulders, and the man’s squirt gun was full of it. I’m lucky he didn’t get me in the eyes. Hand me the bowl, okay?”

“It smells terrible,” Miaow says. She passes him the bowl, wipes pink frosting from her chin with a brown finger, glances at the finger, and puts it in her mouth.

“Terrible like what?” Rafferty says without looking up from what he’s doing. “Terrible doesn’t tell me anything. If you want to be a writer, Miaow, you need to be specific.” The cake won’t come out of the pan. He turns the pan upside down over the yellow platter and gives it a discreet whack with his knuckles.

Miaow had startled him two weeks earlier by announcing she was going to be a writer. Like him, she said. He’d had to swallow a sudden lump in his throat before he could say anything.

“It’s sweet terrible,” she says. “Terrible like. .” Concentration plows a tiny furrow across Miaow’s flawless eight-year-old nose. “Like if a flower threw up.”

Rafferty raises his eyebrows. “Pretty good.” He burps the cake pan again. The cake doesn’t budge.

Miaow’s eyes are on the cake pan. “White Shoulders is a dumb name.”

“I didn’t name it, Miaow.”

She dredges a thumb through the frosting bowl and licks the clot of pink. “Why would they call it White Shoulders?”

“I don’t know.” He takes the spatula from the bowl and runs it again around the edge of the cake pan, exactly as the magazine recipe directs. He finds the maneuver considerably more difficult than it sounds. “Maybe somebody thought it was sexy.”

“And you?” Rose asks from the living room. She is curled like a dark odalisque on Rafferty’s white leather hassock, which she has pushed in front of the sliding glass door to catch the light. She is in an indolent race with time, trying to finish painting her toenails before the sun dips below the jagged horizon of the Bangkok skyline. Night comes fast here. Her lustrous black hair has been pinned up, baring a slender neck the color of the gathering dusk, with a throb of pink beneath. Her jeans have been traded for a pair of shorts, baring the legs that literally made Rafferty gasp the first time he saw them, when she stepped onstage in the bar. The white shirt hangs in immaculate folds; in a phenomenon that has mystified Rafferty since he met her, Rose’s clothes never wrinkle. She has stuck the ever-present cigarette between her toes to free both hands, and the smoke curls like the ghosts of snakes around her hair. Her eyes slide sideways to his. “You,” she repeats. “Poke Rafferty. Do you think white shoulders are sexy?”

“Actually,” Rafferty says, his gaze sliding easily down the familiar curve of her back, “I’m pretty firmly in the brown-shoulders column.”

“Eeeek,” Rose says languidly, fanning her toes. “A sex tourist.”

At the sound of the word “sex,” Miaow’s eyes swing to Rose and then up at Rafferty, who is looking straight at her.

“Not in front of the c-h-i-l-d,” Rafferty says to Rose, still watching Miaow.

Miaow drops her gaze to the mixing bowl and scoops out more frosting. “W-h-y n-o-t?” she asks.

“Because, Miaow,” Rafferty says, “in spite of the fact that you think you know everything in the world, you are approximately eight years old and there are still things adults only talk to adults about.” The “approximately” is necessary. None of them actually knows how old she is, but they settled on eight soon after she left the sidewalks and moved into his apartment. For all he knows, she’s a tall seven or a short nine.

“Like your dumb book,” she says. “You won’t talk about that either.”

“The word ‘dumb’ is getting a lot of work,” Rafferty says mildly. “Dumb name for a perfume, dumb book. And have you read it, Miaow?”

“You haven’t written it yet.” She turns toward the living room. “He can’t get the cake out of the pan,” she sings to Rose in Thai.

“This is just a complete surprise,” Rose replies, also in Thai. She is inserting white cotton pads between brown toes and giving her total attention to the task. She takes the cigarette from between her toes, glances at it critically, squeezes that final ghastly puff from the filter, and stubs it into submission in the swimming-pool-size ashtray on the carpet.

Rafferty twists the pan like a Mobius loop. “Of course I can get it out,” he says. “Miaow just expects me to behave like a man and put my fist through the pan or jump up and down on it. Instead I’m getting in touch with my feminine side. Look how patient I am.” He shakes the pan over the platter. “Get out of there, you bugger.”

“How about this?” Miaow says. “Let’s play I’m going to write a story about you. And you have to tell me stuff so I can write it. Why did the man shoot you? And why did he use perfume instead of water?”

“He shot me to make a point,” Rafferty says, hearing the irritation in his voice. “And, by the way, we have a name for people who criticize books they haven’t read.”

“What?” Miaow demands.

“We call them Republicans,” Rafferty says, watching his knuckles go white on the rim of the pan.

Miaow shakes her head. “I don’t know what that means.”

“And they say laughter has no borders.” Rafferty tosses a glance across the room at Rose, who is bent lovingly over her foot. He would not be surprised to see her lean down and lick it, and he briefly hopes that she will. A spill of ebony hair has slipped loose, exploded by the failing sun into a riot of dark color, the way a rainbow might shine against the night sky. “Actually, the cake is just a touch stuck,” he admits.

She does not look up. “Did you remember the butter?”

“The butter?” Rafferty says, and Miaow says, in English, “Oh, brother.” He can actually hear her roll her eyes.

“To coat the pan,” Rose says to her foot. “You were supposed to rub a stick of butter around inside the-”

“Seemed like a lot of fat,” Rafferty says. Rose’s head comes up and Miaow’s comes around. Their expressions are identical, the reluctant anxiety of someone who is beginning to doubt the intelligence of a new pet. “I used honey,” he says.

“Honey,” the females say together, and Rose adds, “Why didn’t you just use cement?”

“Let me,” Miaow says, taking the pan and bumping him with surprising force for a child so small. She puts her thumbs in the center of the pan’s bottom and looks from the surface of the cake-slightly burned, Rafferty suddenly notices-up to Rafferty. Her eyes narrow in calculation. “If I can get it out, you have to tell us why you smell so bad. About the man with the squirt gun. And you have to tell Rose, too, as a present for her happybirthday.”

“Deal,” Rafferty says, watching her handle the pan. “By the way, ‘happy’ and ‘birthday’ are two words, not one.” The words somehow arrived in Thailand permanently joined, linguistic Siamese twins in Siam.

“That’s nice,” Miaow says. “What about the man with the gun?”

“Do you want to hear this, Birthday Girl? ” Rafferty asks.

“You come home smelling like something hanging from a rearview mirror,” Rose says, “and you don’t think I want to hear the excuse?”

“Okay,” Rafferty says. Miaow puts down the pan and goes to the hassock to join Rose, and Rafferty leans against the kitchen counter. “It was for my book.” As little as he wants to talk about this on Rose’s birthday, it at least postpones the moment he is dreading, the moment he is certain Rose doesn’t expect. He switches to Thai for Rose’s benefit. “I’m writing about living. . um, sort of outside the law. Not really doing anything terrible,” he adds as Miaow’s eyebrows contract in her Executive Vice President Expression. “Not hurting anyone, but not exactly behaving either. It’s called Living Wrong.”

“So you got shot because you were being bad,” Miaow says in English.

“I was learning how to be bad,” Rafferty says. “I’ve found nine people who are. . well, they’re crooks. Each of them will teach me how to do something that’s against the law-just a little bit, Miaow, don’t get crazy-and then I’m going to do it one time. I’ll write about learning how and then about doing it.”

“Does somebody want to read about that?” Miaow asks doubtfully.

“I don’t know. All I know is that my publishers are paying me to write it. I never ask whether people want to read it until I’ve cashed the check.”

“But what kinds of things are you doing?” Miaow demands. “What were you doing when you got shot with the perfume?”

“Learning to be a spy. Arnold Prettyman is teaching me how to be a spy.” Prettyman is a former CIA agent who, like hundreds of other spooks orphaned by the thawing of the Cold War, rolled downhill into Bangkok. “Arnold’s teaching me to follow people around Bangkok without getting caught, and once in a while he has someone follow me. I’m supposed to spot the people who are following me and then get away from them. Today I spotted three. I lost two of them, but the man who caught me shot me with a squirt gun.”

“Why perfume?” Rose asks, fanning the fumes away with a tapering hand.

“Better than a bullet,” Rafferty says. “Anyhow, it’ll help me remember not to make that mistake again. A nice faceful of White Shoulders.”

Miaow makes a roof out of her fingers and looks at it as though she is daring it to collapse. It is not a carefree pose.

“So,” Rafferty says in what he hopes is a light tone, “that’s all there is to it. I was practicing being followed, and I got it wrong, and I got squirted with perfume. Nothing dangerous about it.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Rose says, a tone so neutral it shimmers with menace.

“But-” Miaow says, and stops. “You didn’t want to tell me about this. Why would anybody write a book they can’t tell a kid about?”

“I’d like to know that, too,” Rose contributes. She has long been of the opinion that Rafferty’s books inspire bad behavior in tourists, a conviction he privately shares.

Miaow shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. “Why don’t you write about bears? Or fish? Or elephants that can sing? Why don’t you write something that makes people happy?”

“Not everybody can write Fluffy Bunnies in Bubble Land,” Rafferty says, hearing the defensive edge in his voice. “People write about what they’re interested in. This is what I’m interested in.” He avoids the strongest argument, which is that he needs the advance his agent has negotiated for Living Wrong. His savings, never particularly robust, have become positively tubercular.

“What’s what you’re interested in?” Miaow challenges.

“What I always write about. What goes on at the edges.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything.” He takes a breath and slows himself. “Look,” he says. “You walk down the street, any street, and nine out of ten people are doing the same thing you are: They’re shopping, or looking through windows, or going to meet somebody, or just getting from one place to another.” He looks across the counter at Miaow. “Right?”

“So what?” Miaow says.

“That’s exactly right. So what? Those nine people aren’t interesting. But the other one, the tenth one, is doing something else. He doesn’t want us to know what it is. He’s afraid of something. He’s waiting for someone he’s not supposed to see. He’s just broken the law, or he’s just about to. He rigged the lottery. There’s a tarantula in his pocket. He put broken glass in his shoes that morning as a religious penance. He looks around a little too much. He licks his lips a lot. He’s the one I’m interested in.”

“I’m not,” Miaow says promptly. “That was me. When I was begging, or cutting purses, or sneaking behind some restaurant where they threw good food away. Or running away from some man who wanted me to be bad with him. That’s not interesting, it’s ugly.” She looks around the small room. At him, at Rose, at the cake pan on the counter. At the walls keeping them safe and together. “This is what’s interesting.”

“I agree,” Rose says.

“Then the two of you can write your own book,” Rafferty says. “That’s not what I do, okay?”

For a moment nobody speaks. Miaow is looking at him with a puzzled expression. Finally Rose says, “My, my.”

“Well,” Rafferty says, “you asked.”

Rose curves a defensive arm around Miaow. “When you touch a dog and he bites,” Rose says, “you’re usually touching someplace that hurts.”

“What if it wasn’t perfume?” Miaow’s voice is pitched a half tone higher than usual. “What if it was a real gun?”

“It wasn’t,” Rafferty says, feeling the whole evening go south. He reaches out and defiantly scoops frosting from the bowl.

“I don’t want a fight on my happybirthday,” Rose says. “Poke, you promise to stay alive for Miaow and me, and, Miaow, you stop worrying so much. You’re going to be an old lady before you’re ten.”

“I’ll be careful, Miaow,” Rafferty says. “Honest.”

Miaow starts to argue, but Rose lifts a hand. “Miaow,” she says, “you said you could get the cake out of the pan. Can you?”

“Sure,” Miaow says, her tone making it clear the discussion isn’t over. She slides off the hassock and comes around the counter, so she is standing next to Rafferty. She turns the pan over and says, under her breath, “Fluffy bunnies.” Rafferty puts a hand on her shoulder, but she steps sideways, out from under it, and says, with the same muted vehemence, “Bubble land,” and then she does something fast with her thumbs to the bottom of the pan. The cake falls onto the plate with a surprising clunk and immediately breaks in half. Miaow gives it a critical look and says, “I’ll fix it with icing.”

From his vantage point on the sidewalk eight stories down, the fourth watcher is bored.

Lights snap on and off in the windows of the apartment he has been gazing at as the people living there move from room to room. He wishes the child had left the apartment empty during the day so he could have installed the little microphones. That would be much more interesting than this.

Anything would be more interesting than this.

He turns into the department-store doorway in which he stands, mannequins frozen fashionably in the dark windows, holding their poses as though they hope he’ll take notice. He shields the striking match with his body, worried not about the wind but the brief flare of light, which he knows-from personal experience-lasts long enough for a good shooter to do his work. Normally he wouldn’t smoke so much on the job, but this particular assignment is testing the limits of his ability to remain sane. It’s his first time in Bangkok, a city that he’s been told is the world’s largest brothel, and he’s never been so bored in his life.

The cigarette, a cheap Korean counterfeit Marlboro he brought into the country with him, burns rewardingly in the back of his throat. It’s the burn he’s become accustomed to, the burn he looks forward to forty or fifty times a day. When the watcher first arrived in Bangkok, two days earlier, he had bought a pack of real American Marlboros at the airport, lit one eagerly, taken a deep drag, and tossed the pack away. No bite. He likes a cigarette with bite.

So far this evening, he has seen no other watchers, which is something new. The only interesting thing about this job is that the man he’s watching seems to be being followed by half the city.

Coming out of the bedroom, Rafferty stops at the sight: the two of them curled together on the couch, snug as puppies. Rose’s hair falls over both of them like a lush black shawl, spilling off Miaow’s shoulders and over her plump brown knees. Miaow is gazing dreamily down at the three candles burning on the cake, one for each decade of Rose’s life. The glow of the candles paints Rose’s and Miaow’s faces with gold, making them smooth as water-carved stone. Through the sliding glass door beyond them, the lights of Bangkok glitter like bad costume jewelry. A sentence spontaneously assembles itself in Rafferty’s mind:

Everything I want is here.

“You both look beautiful,” Rafferty says. His heart is beating so hard it feels like it’s taking a hammer to his ribs. Now that the time has come, he is terrified. He slips into his pocket the small box he retrieved from the bureau in his bedroom and comes the rest of the way into the room, trailing a vaporous wake of White Shoulders. Leaning against the cake is a square of white, an envelope with a rose drawn on it in colored pencil, Miaow’s medium of choice since she decided that crayons were for babies. Although she showed him half a dozen attempts at the envelope, she has not allowed him to see the card.

“The cake is perfect,” Rose says. “I’ll remember it my whole life. Look, you can hardly tell it was broken.”

“Shall we sing?” Rafferty asks, sitting on the floor, on the other side of the table so he can see them both. His mouth is dry. “You can start, Miaow.”

Miaow sits up and crosses her hands in her lap. It makes her look like a miniature lawyer. “Not yet. I have to tell you something first.” Then she stops, her eyes on a spot on the table. After a moment she begins to move her lips as though trying out the words she will say. Finally she says, “Ohhhhhhh.” She kicks one heel against the couch. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” Rose leans toward her.

“Don’t know if you’ll. .” Miaow’s eyes go to Rafferty with an unfamiliar urgency. “Promise you won’t get mad.”

“Me?” Rafferty asks. “When was the last time I got mad at you?”

“Just a few minutes ago,” she says, “but you always forget.” And to Rose, “Maybe you. . maybe you’ll be mad.”

Rose touches the tip of Miaow’s microscopic nose. “Why would we get mad at you?”

Miaow turns her head away from Rose’s finger. This time her heel strikes the couch harder, and a puff of dust halos the candle. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have. .”

Rose glances at Rafferty, who raises his shoulders a tenth of an inch and lets them drop. “Shouldn’t have what?” Rose asks.

“Ohhh. .” and suddenly Miaow is blinking fast, a sure sign she’s on the verge of tears. “It’s. . it’s dumb. I mean, stupid.”

“You’re never stupid, Miaow.”

She reaches across the table and snatches the card she made. “Yes I am. I’m stupid. Why would you want-”

“Whatever it is,” Rose says, “if you want it, I do, too.”

Miaow looks at her hard enough to see through her. “You promise?”

“I promise. From here.” Rose touches her heart. “To here.” She touches Miaow’s. “Tell us.”

“I can’t,” Miaow says. Then she kicks the couch again, jams her eyes closed, and shoves the card at Rose. “Go ahead,” she says.

Rose holds the card to the candlelight. “What a beautiful envelope. Did you draw this?”

“Uh-huh.” Miaow’s voice is barely audible.

“Here goes.” Rose slips a nail beneath the flap and opens it. Miaow hears it and grabs her lower lip between her teeth, eyes still closed. Rose removes the card, looks down at it, and her eyes dart to Rafferty’s with an amazed appeal Rafferty has never seen in them before. Miaow has opened her eyes and is watching her with all her being, chewing her lower lip.

“Oh,” Rose says. It’s her turn to blink. “Oh, Miaow.”

“Is it-” Miaow fidgets with her entire body. “I mean, are you, are you-”

“No, no, never.” She leans down and kisses Miaow on the forehead. “I’m honored.”

“You are?” Miaow’s arms are still knotted, as if she is cold.

“It makes me very happy,” Rose says. She looks down at the card again and then across at Rafferty. “Poke,” she says, and then she swallows. “Say happybirthday to Miaow.”

“To Miaow?”

Rose turns the card toward him. It depicts a very tall woman with long hair holding hands with a very short girl whose hair is severely parted in the middle. They are surrounded by colored candles, a wreath of flame. Underneath the picture, in English, are the words happy-birthday to us. “Let me read the inside,” Rose says. “It says-” Her eyes come back to Rafferty’s, and she exhales and starts again. “It says, ‘Dear Rose. I don’t know my happybirthday. Can I have yours? Because we love each other. Sincerely, Miaow.’ ”

“It’s dumb,” Miaow says, close to tears.

“It’s beautiful,” Rose says. “It’s the best present I could have.” She puts both arms around Miaow, and Miaow pushes her head fiercely against Rose’s chest.

“Hey,” Rafferty says, “Let me have some of that.” He moves to the couch and wraps his arms around both of them, with Rose in the middle.

“We don’t have a present for Miaow,” Rafferty says.

“My happybirthday is my present,” Miaow says into Rose’s shirt.

“We have to do better than that,” Rafferty says. He leans across Rose and smooths Miaow’s hair. He knows she hates it, but he can’t help himself. “Is there something you want?”

“I have everything,” she says. A year ago she had been living on the sidewalk.

“There must be something.”

“Wait a minute.” Miaow sits forward. “Can I be nine?” Her eyes travel from Rafferty to Rose and back again. “If this is my happybirthday, I should be-”

“Okay,” Rafferty says. “You’re nine.”

“Oh,” Rose says, sitting bolt upright. “We have something else.” She reaches down and grabs her purse and then roots around in it. When her hand comes out, it has the Totoro T-shirt in it. “And look,” she says, bringing up the other one. “One for each of us. We can dress the same on our happybirthday.”

Miaow looks from one shirt to the other, and stuns Rafferty by bursting into a wail. Then she grabs the T-shirt and runs from the room. “Help me,” Rose says urgently, fumbling with the top button on her shirt. “You start from the bottom.”

In less than a minute, the white shirt has been shoved behind the couch and Rose is wearing her Totoro shirt. Miaow comes back into the room wearing hers, scrubbing at her eyes with her forearm. “We’re twins,” Rose says. “We have the same birthday, so we’re twins.” Miaow climbs back up on the couch and leans on Rose’s shoulder, two furry forest animals in their nest.

“Happybirthday to all of us,” Rose says. “It’s everybody’s happy-birthday.” She kisses Miaow on the forehead and turns to kiss Rafferty on the neck. Then, very softly, she licks his ear.