The Rise And Fall Of Great Powers Part 19

"It's a known fact you are," Sarah said. After only three more bites, she patted Tooly's hair, stroked her chewing cheeks, and announced that they must leave. "Terrible to do, but there's a party to prepare for."

"Okay," Tooly said, the food losing flavor. "Uhm, I don't know how to get back from here."

"You're not coming with? Abandoning me in deepest darkest Bangkok?" Sarah drew a long white cigarette from a packet of Kools in her purse, lit up, and exhaled a minty stream, then extended her slender arm into the roadway, causing two motorcycle taxis to screech to a halt. "I'll let you take the first one."

"I never went on a motorbike before," Tooly said.

"Poor thing, you look so worried!"

Her driver barked, "Where you go?"

Tooly didn't know how to direct him to her school, so stated her home address. Sarah paid Tooly's driver, hiked up her skirt, and climbed onto the other motorcycle. "I hate this part," she said. "Hate the going-away bit. Big kiss, my dear."

"I'm a bit scared."

"Don't be! Oh, Matilda, I had the most wonderful time. Did you?" Her motorcycle roared off, cutting through traffic, and was gone.

Tooly tentatively grasped the driver's orange bib, but he yanked her arms tight around his midriff and gunned the motorbike toward the gridlock, weaving through at speed, a terrifying, thrilling ride that ended with a sharp turn down her soi and a sudden halt, Tooly's momentum squashing her into his back.

Her legs wobbly, she took the elevator up, then dashed for her room, as if this escapade might have left a visible mark that Sh.e.l.ly could see. When Paul came home, she feared that the phone would ring, the school reporting her latest infamy. Instead, she and Paul ate in air-conditioned silence. He was getting up in the mornings again and going to work. Yet he hardly spoke, and they hadn't watched wrestling in days. After dinner, he retired to the computer in his bedroom, while she sat for hours on a deep leather armchair in the living room. She fell into a strange sleep there, then dragged herself to bed, still feeling the motion of the motorbike as she lay on her mattress.

The next evening, while Paul worked in his room, Tooly went downstairs, imagining that Sarah might still be out there. The building porter at the front gate saluted when she left, careless that this tiny girl strode into the night. Traffic grew louder as she neared Sukhumvit Road. An ap.r.o.ned maid pa.s.sed, carrying a fish by the gills; it kicked, kicked. Plastic tables around a food stall stood vacant, an empty bottle of Singha on its side, rolling back and forth. Neon arrows pointed to the entrance of the King and I ma.s.sage parlor, before which stood a trio of cheerless j.a.panese men, each on a different step, each smoking, one inhaling, then the second, then the third. In unison, they disappeared inside.

November arrived, and the heat remained implacable. When Tooly turned ten, she told n.o.body at school. Whenever possible, she sneaked out and wandered the neighborhood, glancing around for Sarah. But weeks had pa.s.sed since their adventure. Every morning, she awoke longing for another.

It arrived.

"Come out and play," Sarah said through the window of the microbus.

At her stop, Tooly hurtled off the bus and raced back toward Sarah. Such an odd way of walking, the woman had: shifting speeds, hurrying as if taken by a gust, then spinning around and beaming at Tooly, kneeling to stroke the girl on the top of her head, hopping a step ahead, then striding normally again.

"Before I die," Sarah proclaimed as they ambled through Sukhumvit, "I will learn flamenco. Promise you'll keep me to that, Tooly."

"What's flaminging?"

"Flamenco? It's Argentinian dancing. Or is that the tango?" She thrust her arm forward, c.o.c.ked her chin in demonstration. "Anyway, very moody and melodramatic. You would love it."

This casual a.s.sumption of Tooly's preferences-of how she was-thrilled the little girl.

"I know exactly what you're like," Sarah affirmed.

After a long pause, Tooly responded, "What are you like?"

"Me? Well, I like bread with strawberry jam and believe raspberry jam ruins everything. I think those who joke around with such matters are barbarians. And I'm right about everything. Except in the morning, when I'm wrong."

Tooly looked up to see if she was being teased. "I keep trying to think of something funny." She showed her empty hands.

"You are the most adorable thing. Say whatever you like around me."

"Where were you born, Sarah?"

"On a game park in Kenya."

"Did you see lions?"

"Thousands."

"Did you pat one?"

"Oh, yes."

"Did he bite you?"

"He licked my hand and smiled."

"Lions smile?"

"If you pat them nicely. Do you like animals?"

Tooly nodded enthusiastically.

"Know where we should go?" Sarah said. "That crazy market with the wild beasts. Shall we?"

"We shall!" Tooly said intrepidly, then: "Am I allowed?"

A tuk-tuk driver deposited them before Khlong Toey, at the fringe of the open-air bazaar, which reeked of panicked fowl. Sarah took Tooly's book bag so the girl could walk freely into the throng. On either side were tarps to keep sunlight off the produce: purple eggplants, green gourds, tamarind pods, ca.s.sava roots, taro. Vendors called across the market aisles, negotiating and laughing, while laborers in coolie hats dragged carts up and down. Tooly looked upward between adult bodies, and the sky dazzled her. Sarah shaded the girl's brow, pointing to a stack of warty vegetables. "Ugliest thing you've seen in your life. This is fun, isn't it," she said, clutching Tooly's arm. "Just you and me. Lead the way!"

Tooly pushed on, peeking into buckets filled with fried baby crabs, red chilies, oyster mushrooms, mouse-ear fungus. Under netting were live toads (eyeing her) beside flayed toads (pink-muscled, arms flung back). On a butcher block lay pig heads. In a metal basin, shiny fish flopped, two leaping over the edge as if in coordinated jailbreak, only to land pointlessly on the concrete floor. A fishmonger tossed them back into the squirming ma.s.s. The paving stones were specked with feathers of the live geese crammed into cages, necks bent to fit inside, the metal wires caked with droppings. Sarah must have read Tooly's expression. "Ready to leave?"

But seeking the exit only drove them deeper inside the market, each aisle offering a different wriggling horror. "That way?" Tooly suggested, and went ahead to prove herself brave. She paused at a bamboo cage of long-beaked birds. "Look!" she exclaimed. "Pied kingfishers!"

"What?"

"They hover over the water. I've seen them before. Their wings go five hundred times a minute, and they look like they're standing in the air. Then they see a fish and they go down into the water and bite it."

"They're beautiful," Sarah said, studying the overstuffed cage. "I'm tempted." She glanced down at Tooly. "Tempted to open it and free them."

"The owner's right there."

"f.u.c.k him!"

Tooly had only heard children swear; it was astonishing to hear a grown-up trying it. "Won't they fly off?"

"I hope so. Now, listen; here's the plan. Don't run when I do it. We'll just walk slowly away, cool as can be. They'll never know it was us." She fiddled with the cage latch. The kingfishers flapped with antic.i.p.ation. The door sprang open.

But the birds stayed inside.

"Why aren't they going?" Tooly asked in a whisper.

One ventured out, fluttering to the ground.

"Run!" Sarah shouted, s.n.a.t.c.hing Tooly's hand, urging her on. "Quick! Quick!" They bolted, Tooly scrambling to keep up, suppressing wild nervous laughter as they barged into carts and flunkies. The netted toads watched them rush past.

By the road, Tooly grabbed the knot at the back of Sarah's cornflower-print dress. Like a horse reined, Sarah slowed from canter to trot to a clopping stop. They caught their breath, grinning at each other. Sarah wiped sweat from her forehead, then reached for Tooly's face, plucked off a fallen eyelash, rolled it on her fingertips. They watched it float to the sidewalk.

After the tuk-tuk ride back to Sukhumvit Road, Sarah gave an affectionate yank of the girl's long frizzy hair and returned her book bag. Goodbye was implicit. Tooly nearly followed her, but she hadn't been invited. Sarah blew a kiss and spun off down the road.

Tooly looked down her soi, at the end of which stood Gupta Mansions, where Paul would be waiting in high agitation because of her tardiness, with Sh.e.l.ly upset because dinner was cold. A wordless night, a thin sleep, another school day tomorrow. Tooly wished not to exist, to be erased, imprisoned as she was in this unpopular little junk of a girl, exhausted by the constancy of herself.

Bangles clinked, followed by the scratch of a lighter flint. Tooly spun around. Sarah stood there, eyebrows raised, blowing white smoke, a plume swaying left and right. "I'm stealing you."

"Are you allowed?"

"If people only did what was allowed, how dull."

"But," Tooly said, faltering, "I don't know who you are."

Sarah tucked Tooly's hair behind her ear. At this affectionate touch, the girl's face turned down.

"You know me, Tooly," Sarah said. "We've known each other forever."

1999.

DUNCAN HAD BEEN LIVING at 115th Street for months before his parents visited. Naoko urged her husband to go, but Keith left Connecticut only grudgingly. Finally, she prevailed-it was this or invite their son's new girlfriend to Darien for the holidays. So he agreed to tolerate New York for one day, attending a midday Christmas concert at the Met, then scheduling a drop-in at Duncan's apartment to meet this female. At each metropolitan inconvenience Keith encountered-holiday shoppers, the impossibility of parking, the accent of a garage attendant-he turned irritably to his wife, as if she were to blame for the world.

In the week before their arrival, Duncan had considered tidying his room but opted for pa.s.sive rebellion. His defiance dissolved when Naoko called from a phone booth outside Lincoln Center to say they were on their way. He spent the next twenty minutes stuffing soiled laundry under his mattress, wiping down the bathroom basin with paper towels, hiding dirty dishes in the cupboards.

"I can offer you white wine or ..." Tooly said, hands clasped before her, looking from Naoko to Keith, then back at Naoko, who presented the more sympathetic countenance. "Actually, white wine is all we have. That okay?"

"Plus, we got three types of chips," Duncan added.

Keith, an unblinking lump of middle-aged Scottish clay, looked askance at the sofa, where his wife invited him to sit. "I only drink if I'm getting drunk," he said. "And I'm not getting drunk with my son."

"I've gotten drunk with him," Tooly said, "and I can recommend it."

Duncan gave an embarra.s.sed cough.

"Diet soda," Keith ordered. "Can we get the TV going?" He did the honors, switching to NBC Nightly News, which was broadcasting a segment on New Year's security measures after the arrest of an Algerian caught with explosives at the border, possibly for a terrorist attack in Los Angeles.

"Wrong," Keith told the television, when the anchor spoke of the upcoming Year 2000 celebrations.

"What is?" Tooly asked, handing him a soda can.

"The Year 2000," he said. "If the counting starts at one A.D., you don't reach the millennium till 2001. Not like there was a Year Zero. How hard is that for people to understand?" He looked at the TV again, which now showed footage of Bill Clinton joshing with a foreign dignitary. "Can this guy just go?" Keith said, meaning the president.

Naoko's wandering gaze suggested that it wasn't the first time she'd heard such laments.

"It'll take industrial cleaners to get this guy's stench out of the Oval Office," Keith continued. "It's time to restore dignity to our country."

"I like hearing such patriotic American views delivered with a Scottish accent," Tooly said, offering a smile.

"Give me one iota of evidence changing anything I just said to you," he said, glaring at her.

Late that night, Tooly lay in Duncan's bed, thinking about his father, who, during a hundred hectoring minutes, had not once looked at his son. While Tooly knew it to be unfair, she couldn't help but like Duncan slightly less for having this man as his father.

Duncan hugged her back, sliding his legs up to spoon with her. She felt vaguely unsafe with anyone behind her like that when sleeping. "Flip!" she said jovially, as if he were an egg. Their positions reversed, she pulled herself against his back, warming it with her naked front. "Your spoon was a travesty," she told the nape of his neck. "I had to act."

"You're a spoon fundamentalist."

"I support traditional spooning values. You have cheapened the office of the spoon and it's my job to restore honor and credibility to the spoon."

He twisted around, laughing. "Tooly?"

"Duncan?"

"I completely f.u.c.king love you."

She smiled and poked his cheek, then got out of bed and lay on the floor among dust b.a.l.l.s, printer paper, socks under the bedframe. "It's boiling in here tonight."

"The super went away for the holidays and left the heat going so that no one complains."

His arm hung over the edge of the mattress, and she encircled his wrist with her thumb and forefinger, holding still for a minute. But, eventually, you must do things with things. She pulled his wrist closer and nipped the b.u.mpy bone, causing him to yelp and laugh. Tooly stood, stretched, and put on yesterday's outfit, then went to the living-room window, peeking onto the fire escape for the pack of house cigarettes. None left, and Noeline had gone for the holidays.

She gazed down at the street. Seemed ages since her first night here, when-contemplating an icy walk home-she had preferred the warm bedcovers (and the warm man) in Duncan's room. She could've slipped those credit cards from his wallet then, and concluded it. Instead, she'd nested here, they mistaking her for one of them, she making the same error-until that pre-Christmas dinner, when Tooly observed anew the division between her and other people.

Venn was the only person who protected her. And she wanted to have something for him, to justify her time up here. Duncan was the obvious target, yet she couldn't bring herself to do that. The others? Emerson was her preference, yet gaining his confidence required stroking the man's ego, and she refused. Standing in the dark corridor, she noticed the light under Xavi's door. She rapped with one knuckle, as if her others weren't so sure. "Hey," she said, as he opened. "Want to walk the pig with me?"

They borrowed the animal and were off, footprints and hoofprints down the frosted sidewalk. Xavi was skittish about touching Ham, but she forced him to pat the creature, which seemed to cause the pig to fart, sending them into tears of laughter. Composure regained, they continued to the red-brick path across the Columbia campus, which was nearly deserted this close to the holidays-just the distant hollers of a few frat boys. Ham kept b.u.mping into her leg, like a child jealous when the grown-ups chatted.

"I'm a detective," Xavi remarked.

"How's that?"

He named a street in Brooklyn-to her alarm, the street where she and Humphrey lived. Weeks earlier, Xavi explained, he had found a city map in the corridor by the front door, amid all the Chinese menus and America Online marketing disks. At first, he'd a.s.sumed it was garbage, because it was covered in pen lines. But he'd never owned a map of all five boroughs, so he'd kept it. Problem was that the lines made navigation nearly impossible. What were those? Delivery routes? There was a pinp.r.i.c.k hole where ink had saturated and loosened the fibers of the page. Everything radiated out from that point, at the end of a small street in Brooklyn, just off the Gowa.n.u.s Expressway.

He took her map from his inside pocket. So there it was: must've fallen from her pocket on that first visit, when she'd opened her coat and flopped atop Duncan on the floor. "Never seen it before in my life," she said.

Xavi grinned. "I'm a detective!" To celebrate, he took a cigarette from his velvet jacket and lit it grandly. He had a peculiar way of smoking, cheeks filling, as if not to inhale. He inquired about her place in Brooklyn, but she diverted the conversation to his studies, and how he was going to make the fortune that they all knew would one day be his. Pure finance was extremely lucrative, he explained, but it left him cold. Entrepreneurship was what appealed. A dot-com, maybe.

"Can I get a drag off that?" she asked.

"Only if you give me a million-dollar idea."

"I have a ten-cent idea," she responded, grabbing the cigarette.

He took out his PalmPilot, which he flipped open with a flourish, rapping the stylus pen on the screen, like a conductor's baton on the music stand. "Go."

"Well," she said, exhaling smoke. "What about a dishwasher-like product, but for the whole apartment, so you pour detergent into a hole in the floor, press a b.u.t.ton, and leave for an hour, then return, and the house is clean."