There’s nothing behind her that she can use. She brings both hands forward, arched into claws. Then she registers surprise, looks past him, over his shoulder.
Kep laughs. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Right. And I turn around and look behind me, like I haven’t seen ten million stupid movies. Like I haven’t-”
Da sees a blur of dark motion and hears something that sounds like a coconut hitting the ground from a high tree, and Kep’s knees turn to water and he pitches forward flat on his face, the flashlight spinning on the floor, lighting the room, the boy from the street, the room, the boy from the street.
I have a stomachache,” Miaow says.
It is 6:45 A.M., and she is fully dressed: jeans with an acute crease, which she irons in herself because she’s never satisfied with the way the laundry does it, and a bright red T-shirt featuring the Japanese teenage girl samurai Azumi. Her bunny slippers are on her feet, but her shoes are lined up beside the front door like well-trained pets. Rafferty sits at the kitchen counter, grimly waiting for the coffee to drip, and if someone challenged him to describe his own clothes without looking down, he’d fail completely.
“Sorry to hear it.” His pre-coffee voice is, as always, a croak. “Do you feel well enough to go to school?”
“I don’t think so. I really hurt.” She goes to the counter and takes the can of Coke he’s pulled out for her and pops the tab.
Rafferty says, “Alka-Seltzer? Good idea,” and watches her down about half of it and then lower the can. She burps discreetly. Breakfast.
The door to the bedroom opens, and Rose, who is rarely at her best before noon, feels her way into the living room. She regards the two of them without conspicuous goodwill and squints defensively at the red of Miaow’s T-shirt. She is leaning against the wall, so loose-limbed she looks as though she plans to go back to sleep standing there, but she is dressed to leave the apartment, in a pair of white shorts and one of Rafferty’s freshly laundered shirts. Her hair has been slicked back with damp hands, but it’s still a gloriously anarchic tangle.
“Miaow’s not feeling good,” Rafferty says, getting up. At the sink he runs hot water into a cup that already holds two heaping tablespoons of Nescafé and stirs it quietly, trying not to make a clinking noise with the spoon.
“Me neither,” Rose says furrily. “My stomach hurts.” She watches Rafferty cross the living room with the cup in his hand. When he gives it to her, she does something with the corners of her mouth that she probably thinks is a smile.
“I’m feeling okay,” Rafferty says on his way back to the kitchen. He pours just-dripped coffee into his cup. “Did you two eat anything last night that I didn’t?”
“The spring rolls,” Miaow says.
The bottom half of Rose’s face is hidden by her cup, but she lowers it long enough to say, “Right.”
Rafferty swallows the day’s first coffee. An invisible film between him and the rest of the world begins to dissolve. “That’s probably it. You both look a little punk.” He knocks back half of the cup and picks up the pot with his other hand. Miaow goes to the door, kicking off the bunny slippers, drops to her knees, and pulls on her sneakers. Rafferty continues, “They probably sat too long, maybe under heat lamps. Maybe you guys should both go to bed for a while, see how you feel in a few hours.”
“All right,” Miaow says, opening the front door.
“Don’t make a lot of noise, okay?” Rose says. She sounds sleepy and irritable, and it’s not an act. “I want to sleep.”
“I’ll work on my notes for the book. That’ll be quiet.” He drinks again and heads for the front door, which Miaow is holding wide. “You two go to bed. Get some rest. You won’t even know I’m here. I promise.”
Rose precedes him through the door, cup in hand, and Miaow closes it quietly behind him as he punches the button for the elevator. Two minutes later, down on the fourth floor, Rafferty inserts a new cassette and pushes “record” again.
DA WAKES ON a village farmer’s schedule, maybe six in the morning, and finds herself on her back, looking up at a rough wooden ceiling. After a moment shaped like a vague question, she rolls over to see where she is.
The room is dim, with interruptions of brilliance. Sunlight shoulders its way through the cracks between the planks that make up the walls. When she withdraws her focus from the vertical strips of glare, the gloom resolves itself into backs, seven or eight of them, between her and the nearest wall. Peep is asleep beside her, nestled up against a child Da has never seen before.
She smells children, none too clean, but not filthy either. Just the slightly salty pungency of child’s sweat. She could be back in the village.
