Killing Rain

opportunity to satisfy myself that she was traveling alone.
    I checked the bulletin board again and saw that she had already left me the name she would be traveling under. Good. I spent the next half hour making the appropriate reservations online. I thought it all through again when I was done, and was satisfied in all respects. The only problem was a sudden feeling of impatience. Everything was set, and I had nothing to do but wait. The next day would feel like nothing more than killing time.
    Ordinarily, killing time in Bangkok would mean taking in a Thai boxing match at Lumpini or Ratchadamnoen, or jazz at Brown Sugar or in the Bamboo bar at the Oriental, maybe an evening with one of the girls from Spasso in the Grand Hyatt. But tonight, it seemed, I would simply go out with a friend.
    The thought felt strange. Not unpleasant, by any means. But strange. It was like hearing a song I had enjoyed a long time ago, and had then somehow forgotten, a simple tune that at the time had been rich and fresh and full of promise and that now, by its unnoticed loss and unexpected reappearance, had been alchemized into something haunting, a reminder not only of what was but also of what had been lost in the accumulated years, the melody now tinged with hope that what was gone might be recovered and fear that its loss instead was irretrievable.
    Dox and I met in the lobby as planned and, after the appropriate precautions, caught a taxi to Silom. I asked him where we were going on the way, but he refused to tell me. It was a measure of the degree to which I had come to trust him that I didn’t just stop the cab and leave. But the childishness of his demurral was irritating.
    We got out in front of the State Tower Bangkok building and took the elevator to the sixty-third floor, the building’s highest. Emerging from the elevator, we walked through a pair of floor-to-ceiling glass doors and were greeted with what I had to admit was an impressive sight.
    Stretching out along the open-air roof below us was a tableau of symmetrically arranged tables covered in white linen and, at one end of the arrangement, a circular bar on a promontory glowing in red, then blue, then yellow. To our left was a higher terrace, upon which a jazz quartet was making music for the diners below. The restaurant’s floor, stone and dark teak, stretched all the way to the edges of the building, beyond which in all directions twinkled the endless lights of the city, the Chao Phraya River, expressing itself only as a sinewy absence of light, winding its way silently through it. A glass sign at the bottom of the stairs announced discreetly that the place was called Sirocco.
    “Well, what do you think?” Dox asked. “Do you like it?”
    “I do,” I admitted, failing to keep the surprise out of my voice.
    “What did you think, I was going to take you to a go-go bar or something?”
    “Is that a rhetorical question?”
    He frowned. “Sometimes you don’t give me enough credit, man.”
    I was surprised by that. Dox played the buffoon so often and so well, it seemed odd to me that he would want to be acknowledged for occasionally possessing some good taste.
    “How did you hear about it?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “I spend a fair amount of time out here, so I keep my ear to the ground. Just opened a few months ago, and it sounded like your kind of place. So I figured we could give it a try.”
    I looked at him and said, “Thank you. I didn’t mean . . .”
    He grinned. “Ah, forget it.”
    “I was just going to say, I’ll order the wine.”
    The grin started to fade, then came back at double voltage. “Whatever makes you happy, man,” he said.
    The hostess brought us to our table. The menu, consisting of what Sirocco called “Inspired Mediterranean Dining,” was as good as the view. We ordered garlic-rosemary marinated grilled double lamb chops, grilled Phuket lobster with lemon and aromatic olive oil, confit of duck and pan-seared foie gras appetizers. I took care of the wine: a ’96 Emilio’s Terrace Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve. It would be a little young, but some air would bring it around.
    “Damn, this is good,” Dox said, after the waitress had opened and decanted the bottle and we had taken our first sips. “I don’t know who Emilio is, but I’d sure like to shake his hand. How do you know so much about wine, man?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know that much.”
    “Cut the modesty routine. I can tell you do.”
    I shrugged again.