“She doesn’t want to be called Miaow anymore,” Rose says, and something in her voice makes Rafferty look up. “She wants to be Mia.”
Rafferty frowns a question at her, and Rose lifts her eyebrows and nods.
Rafferty gives up on his list. “Oh, boy.”
“She asked me about whitening creams. She’d like to dye her hair reddish brown, too.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to be Johnny Depp,” Rafferty says, “but that’s not going to happen either.”
Rose says, “Johnny Depp’s got a girl. A French girl.”
“Not that part,” Rafferty says. “I’d like to be Johnny Depp selectively.”
“It’s easy to make fun of it,” Rose says, “but it’s important to Miaow. You probably remember, maybe not very clearly, what it was like to be young.”
“I’m not that much older than you are.”
“Actually,” Rose says, “compared to me, you’re a big, sheltered baby.” She extends her arms and gives her nails a critical survey. “But we’re going to have to figure out what to say to Miaow. She’s already worried about being short, and she doesn’t think she’s pretty. And now she feels like a dark little peasant girl with the wrong name.”
“I don’t know,” Rafferty says. “This seems like mother territory to me.”
“No problem. I’m just being polite, sharing the situation with you. I’ve already decided how to deal with it.”
“Yeah? How?”
“I’m going to dye her hair and buy her some whitening cream.”
“The hell you are.”
“As you said, it’s mother territory.”
“Well,” he says. Nothing authoritative comes to him. Then he says, “What are you going to call her?”
“Whatever she wants.”
“Not Harold,” Rafferty says. “I draw the line at Harold.”
Rose says, “Children need a strong father.”
He reviews his list, which now has two items on it, and he’s not sure about the second one. “So I’ve done my part?”
“You’re everyone’s dream father.”
“Okay.” He looks at his watch. “It’s late enough to start to bother people about this book.” He picks up the phone, glances involuntarily at the patch of cloth covering the microphone in the ceiling, and dials a number high up on the yellow list. “Mr. Porthip, please,” he says. He covers the mouthpiece with one hand and says to Rose, “The way this guy looks, I think I should talk to him first, or he won’t be around.”
Porthip seems even more frail than he had at Pan’s fund-raiser. The enormous office, jammed with Chinese antiques, has an unpleasantly sour smell, like damp, dirty cloth that has been allowed to mildew. The black lacquered desk is bare except for a glass and a matching pitcher of water with slices of lemon floating in it. Ringing the pitcher in a semicircle are seven vials of prescription drugs. Porthip follows Rafferty’s gaze and points a knotted, quivering finger at each vial in turn. The skin on his hand is hairless and yellow, the veins like blue highways.
“Pain, pain, nausea, pain, diuretic, antidepressant-if you can imagine that, an antidepressant for death-and these big ones that don’t do anything.” His voice is taut, making Rafferty think of wire being drawn through a hole too small for it. He is speaking English.
“But you take them,” Rafferty says.
“Because I’m supposed to. That’s what they’re for. They’re nothing, but they make me feel better because I take them. They give me the illusion I’m doing something, not just lying down to die.”
“You never know.”
“If that comforts you, go ahead and believe it,” Porthip says. “But I’ll tell you: Every cell in your body knows. You know with every breath you take. You know every time the second hand on your watch goes all the way around, and you think, ‘There’s another one gone.’”
Rafferty takes a longer look at the man. The face is taut and shrunken, but the tightly cut Chinese eyes are bright with fury, the eyes of an animal in a trap. “What does it make you want to do?”
“Be twenty,” Porthip says. “Twenty with a hard dick.”
Rafferty says, “I wouldn’t mind that myself.”
What happens to Porthip’s face could be a smile or it could be pain. When it passes, he says, “This isn’t what we were going to talk about.”
“No. Pan.”
Porthip puts both hands flat on the desk. They still tremble. “Are you going to ask me questions, or am I supposed to make a speech?”
“He’s a complicated character,” Rafferty says, feeling sententious. “I want both the good and the bad in the book. Let’s start with-”
