The Queen of Patpong

Chapter 30

The level of audience enthusiasm, which had dropped off a bit when Ferdinand and Miranda came out for their bows, spikes sharply as Miaow runs onto the stage in her mirrored cloak. There are even some cheers, mostly, it seems, from kids. The follow spot hits her, making her the center of a blaze of light until the boy behind the spot snaps it off. He wasn't supposed to turn it on in the first place; it's Rafferty's guess that it's his way of applauding.

The whole cast is lined up now, and Prospero limps onstage, slowly abandoning his crouch as he goes, as though to amaze the audience by revealing that he isn't really an old man after all, but the flourish doesn't get the anticipated response. In fact, the applause drops off somewhat. It remains at a polite level as he takes his place in the center of the line, and then it increases slightly as everyone bows in unison, and the curtain falls.

They stand, Rose grabbing Rafferty's arm and hugging it to her. "Wasn't she wonderful?"

"She was," he says. "And what about that adaptation?"

"It was long."

"It was a lot longer before I got to it." He stands in the aisle as she slips out of the row, and they edge down the slope toward the stage, threading their way between the people heading up toward the exits at the rear of the auditorium.

Rose looks over at him, wearing his one jacket and tie, and then down at the clothes she bought herself for the evening, a loose, off-the-shoulder blouse in a silvery material and a pair of midnight-black velvet pants. "We're a handsome couple."

"You raise the average," Rafferty says.

She pats his cheek in a matronly fashion. "It was a great adaptation."

He takes her hand and leads her toward the stage door to the right of the orchestra pit. Even before they get the door open, they can hear the hubbub of voices behind the curtain.

Rose had sat forward in her seat when the lights went down and the curtain went up to reveal the shipwreck, played way downstage to the accompaniment of wind and wave sounds, with airborne handfuls of silver confetti to simulate splashing water. But after the sailors staggered off the stage clutching their masts and sails and the silhouetted black rock of Prospero's island had loomed in front of the gray cyclorama, she had sunk her nails into his wrist. Not until Luther and Siri were well into their eternal opening dialogue did she sit back and relax, only to claw him again when Miaow exploded into sight on top of the rock. Three or four minutes into Miaow's scene, Rose had wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. When Trinculo and Stephano had stumbled onstage, she'd laughed.

"You told me the clowns were terrible," she says as they climb the stairs to the stage.

"Well, they were until tonight. The kid who played Trinculo was great."

"He was the little one?"

"In the big yellow cape."

"He was funny. And he's almost as little as Miaow."

At the top of the stairs, Rafferty stops. "We've just seen the final curtain, right?"

"What's that mean, the final curtain?"

"When the play ended, just now. Everything was solved, everybody was saved, and all the secrets came out. Didn't they?"

Rose's face assumes an expression Rafferty can only characterize as complicated. "Yes," she says with some caution in her voice.

"So," he says. "Were you or weren't you in Patpong that night? And don't ask me which night."

Rose gives him a full and frank gaze and says, "You told me to stay at Arthit's. So of course I stayed at Arthit's."

They stand there, looking at each other and listening to the cheers and laughter from the stage.

"Well," Rafferty says, "I'm glad that's settled." He opens the door, and they step around a bunch of canvas rocks and find themselves far stage left.

"Oh," Rose says, staring up. "Oh, my."

From where they stand, the mighty rock is a jumbled construct of two-by-fours covered with heavy canvas, with three sets of roll-up stairs staggered beneath it to hold Miaow up. Looking at it from this perspective, Rafferty is happy he hadn't known how fragile the structure actually is. He wouldn't have been able to think about anything else whenever Miaow was on her path.

Rose says, "I wish I'd seen it this way first."

Clumps of people have gathered all over the stage, each attracted by one of the actors, and Mrs. Shin trots from group to group. Luther So stands, theatrically exhausted and literally mopping his brow, in the middle of a mob that looks like half the population of Chinatown, while Siri clasps a funereal armload of flowers, undoubtedly presented to her by the mob of adoring boys that presses on her from all sides. Her onstage lover, Ferdinand, is playing to a coterie of boys who seem to be wearing discreet makeup.

Rafferty hears half a dozen languages: English, Thai, Mandarin, what may be Swedish from Siri's parents, who are trying to elbow their way through the boys, Italian from somewhere, and a few he doesn't recognize.

"She's over there," Rose says.

Rafferty looks and sees first a bulky cape wrapped around one of the scrawniest little boys he's ever seen, a kid whose shoulders are barely wider than his neck and whose thick glasses, which he hadn't worn on the stage, are the size of silver dollars. His parents, not much bigger than he is but just as studious-looking, flank him proudly, and in the middle, her back turned to Rafferty and Rose, is Miaow, still wearing her mirrors.

"Trink-something," Rose says.

Rafferty says, "Wait a minute." He opens the program and runs his finger down the cast list. He comes to Trinculo and follows the line of dots to the actor's name: Andrew Nguyen.

He starts to laugh.

"What is it?" Rose says.

"Nothing." Miaow has heard his laugh and turned, and she waves them to her, her face incandescent with happiness. When they reach her, she hugs Rose and then Rafferty.

"Where's Pim?" Miaow asks.

"At Arthit's," Rose says. "Learning to be a maid. You were wonderful."

"Thank you," Miaow says politely, but it's clear she has something else on her mind. She steps to one side, inhales, breathes out, and inhales again. "Mom," she says. "Dad." She swallows and turns to the kid drowning in the yellow cape. "This is Andy."