Killing Rain

seemed somehow to compress and amplify the noise, the pollution, the pent-up weight of the whole metropolis. I smiled, without any mirth, because I had seen the same thing done to Tokyo with the elevated expressways, to the long-term regret of everyone bar the construction companies and their corrupt government cronies, who profited from the implementation of such schemes and who would no doubt profit again when the city planners determined that now it was time to banish those dark monstrosities they had once seen fit to invoke. By building a subway across the sky, the custodians of Bangkok had made the streets below effectively subterranean. I could imagine a time, not too distant, when the sky train would be so dramatically expanded and agglomerated with food courts and wireless shops and video outlets that life on the streets below, the pedestrians and the cars and the stores, would without conscious planning or the apportionment of blame become by default the city’s true subway, its final stop for those denizens who had fallen through the cracks and who would now lie unseen in a darkness from which they could fall no further.
    I walked, zigzagging along the sois and sub-sois—the main streets and their arteries—between Silom and Surawong, passing several storefront places advertising Internet access and overseas phone calls. Most of these were tiny spaces in larger buildings that had probably gone unused until the Internet arrived and created the possibility of profit for places with a half-dozen tables and chairs and terminals. Soon enough, I found one whose looks I liked. It occupied a ground-floor niche in a gleaming Bank of Bangkok building, and seemed almost to be hiding there. Inside there were ten terminals, several of which were occupied by women who looked to me like bar girls, who were perhaps now sending e-mails to those farang customers foolish enough to provide addresses, telling interchangeable stories of sick mothers and dying water buffalos and the other reasons for this one-time-only, embarrassed request for the farang ’s dollars or pounds or yen. I chose a table that put my back to the wall. The girls, intent on their correspondence, gave me barely a glance.
    Before getting started, I downloaded some commercial software from a storage site I keep and checked the terminal for keystroke monitors and other spyware. When I was sure it was clean, I went to the bulletin board I had established with Delilah, not with any more than the usual inchoate hope.
    But there was a message waiting. My heart did a little giddyup.
    I entered my password and went to the next screen. The message said, I’ve got some time off. Do you?
    Followed by a phone number starting with 331—the country code for France and city code for Paris.
    Damn. I looked around for a second, a reflex in response to having my sense of aloneness unexpectedly disturbed. The girls typed determinedly away, their eyes filled with calculation and hope.
    I looked at the screen again. The message had been left the day before. I wrote down the number, using my usual code, exited the bulletin board, and purged the browser to erase all records of where I’d just been.
    I got up and walked back out onto Silom. My heart was racing, but my brain hadn’t shut itself off. It was hard to believe that the timing of her call was a coincidence. More likely it had something to do with the Manny op. Although I couldn’t be sure.
    I stopped and thought, You can’t be sure? What the hell is wrong with you?
    I’ve never believed in coincidences, not for things like this. Sure, maybe they exist, but you act as though they don’t. Most times, the thing that might have been a coincidence wasn’t, and your doubt helps you survive it. And if you’re wrong, and the thing was a coincidence? Well, what’s the downside? There is none.
    But now there was a downside, apparently, and it was as though my mind was trying to warp my worldview accordingly. What I wanted to believe wasn’t the point. What I needed to believe was everything.
    Then ignore the message. Don’t call her. At least not until Manny is straightened out.
    The thought was depressing. Even painful.
    Dox hadn’t known, and I would never tell him, but his comment about the last time I “got laid” had hit home. Yeah, I pay for recreation from time to time. You have to take care of your physical needs. Something real, though, something worthwhile? Not since Delilah, and there hadn’t been