6

A Slum Girl’s Idea of an Interesting Man

An outburst of laughter finds its way in from the bedroom, followed by a little spattering of applause, like the first moment of rain.

“Wonder what that’s about,” Edward says, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. He and Miaow are on the living room couch, books face down and out of easy reach on the glass coffee table. He’s volunteered to work overtime to drill Miaow on her lines although he’s the one who really needs the memory work, and she’s compensated him by giving him an impromptu dinner, sharing some leftover som tam, the spicy green papaya salad that most Thais can eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and, probably, in the casket. Edward, who hasn’t yet developed the internal asbestos required by much Thai cuisine, is in full sweat mode from the chili.

“The baby probably drooled,” Miaow says. “Blinked both eyes at the same time.” She looks down at Edward’s socks, visible through the glass top on the table. “How come your feet never smell?”

“I change my socks?” He pushes his plate away. “He’s just a baby, you know. He can’t help it if women get all gooey around him. It’s not like he’s playing to the crowd. And you shouldn’t call him it.”

“I change my socks,” Miaow says, “but my feet still smell. It, it, it. It’s my brother and I’ll call it what I want.” She pulls Edward’s plate toward her. “You’re not going to finish this, are you?”

“I’m already on fire,” he says. “How can you eat anything that hot?”

“You’ll get used to it.” She had hoped the thing about his feet not smelling was a compliment, but he’d shrugged it off, so she tries a new tack. “You’re getting really good as Freddy.”

He shrugs. “I am Freddy. I’m ornamental and dull.”

She sits up, pushing the plate away. “You’re not dull.”

“I wanted to play Higgins.”

Miaow looks down at the food. After a moment, she says, “You’re not right for Higgins.”

He lifts his chin a little and looks down at her over his large, but to her perfect, Western nose. “Really. Well, thanks.”

“No. Dieter is right for Higgins. He’s dry and kind of old-papery and he doesn’t seem to have anything except a head. I mean, he doesn’t feel anything except getting pissed off, far as I can tell.”

“And he’s smart,” Edward says.

“So what? You’re smart. But you’re a good kind of smart, you don’t use it all the time to make other people feel dumb. Dieter’s always keeping score. He’s perfect for Higgins.”

“I still wanted it.”

“You have a heart. It shows. That’s why you were so good as George in Small Town.”

“George,” Edward says gloomily. “Another hole in the air.” He picks up his book. “You’re perfect as Eliza.”

“I was born,” Miaow says, “to play Eliza.”

Edward says, “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“Well, look at me. I mean, I’m sitting right here with you, short and stubby and as dark-skinned as a farmer, and you can’t see me on a sidewalk somewhere? Selling flowers? Or maybe gum?”

“Miaow,” he says. He puts the book back on the table and slides it side to side with his fingertips. “I already know about that, remember?”

“You know the—the fact of it. You have no idea what it felt like.”

“It makes me admire you.”

“I don’t want admiration. Well, I do, but that’s not what I really want. What I really want is never to have been that girl.” She closes her eyes and says in a careful British accent, “My aunt died of influenza: so they said.” Lapsing into Cockney, she adds, “It’s my belief they done the old woman in.”

“But it’s my belief,” Edward says, picking up his book.

Miaow snatches up her own copy. “No way.” She’s flicking through the pages.

Edward says, “You know what your problem is?”

“Poop,” Miaow says, looking at the book. “But”—she makes a tsssss sound, like something landing in a hot pan. “But it’s my belief they done the old woman in.” She marks the place with her forefinger. “I don’t have a problem.”

“Oh, well,” Edward says. “Fine. You don’t have a problem.” In a falsetto intended to suggest a woman’s voice, he reads, “Done her in?”

With her eyes closed, Miaow says, “Yes, Lord love you, why should she die of influenza? She come through diphtheria right enough the year before. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.”

Edward is laughing, but he says, “You missed a couple of—”

“No. We cut them to get to the laugh sooner.”

He stops laughing. “You cut them.”

“Sure. They were just slowing things—”

“I’m in this scene, Miaow. Why don’t I know about that? Are there any other cuts I might want to hear about? Any of my lines, for example?”

“No. And so what? We made my speech shorter, not longer.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and Mrs. Shin. She cut Small Town, too, you must remember that. And you weren’t in The Tempest, but she cut that—”

“Fine. Are there other cuts? Are the two of you planning to share them with the rest of us any—or, wait a minute, was it the three of you? Was Dieter in on the, the script conference, too?”

“I don’t know why you’re—”

“Maybe we should go through them now and I could, you know, write them down? Might be good if we all had the same script.”

“You were being so nice a minute ago.”

Edward leans back on the couch and closes his eyes, and Miaow briefly envies him his lashes. Why couldn’t she have lashes like—

“I’m sorry,” he says. “We’ll do some more tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong? I mean really wrong?”

“I just—I just—” He raps his knuckles, hard, on the glass tabletop. “I just can’t stand this part. Freddy. I feel like that, that thing in a, in a department-store window that they use to show off stupid clothes.”

“A mannequin.”

“Thank you for that. Yes, as you remind me in your second language, a mannequin. They could put me on a dolly and wheel me around the stage. That way I could keep the crease in my pants.”

“You hate the part that much?”

“I do. He hasn’t got an idea in his head. He’s—he’s a slum girl’s idea of an interesting man.”

Miaow nods and busies herself straightening up the table.

Watching her, he dabs the tip of his index finger into the som tam and touches it to his tongue, then wipes his tongue on the back of his hand. “Is it really always this hot?”

“Fon likes it that way.” She looks at the plate he’s just touched and says, “Are you finished with that?”

“I might take it home and sneak some of it onto my dad’s plate. Then maybe lock the door to the toilet.”

“I’ll wrap it up for him,” Miaow says, and picks up the dish.

He says, “You are not a slum girl.”

“But I was. It doesn’t just wash off.” She starts to get up but he puts his hand on her arm. She pulls away and says, “So what’s my problem, then?”

“What do you mean, what’s your—”

“A minute ago. You said, You know what your problem is?”

“Yeah,” he says. “That sounds like me.”

Miaow sits forward, as though to get to her feet, but instead looks over at him. “Well, what is it? You must have had something in mind.”

He looks down at his lap for a moment. “Do you really believe you can—anyone can—turn into someone else?”

“That’s a trick question. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t ask me. You know too much about me to ask that unless you’ve got some stupid argument in—”

“Do you think you’d be who you are now if you’d never lived on the street? It you’d been some, some brainless, useless rich girl who thinks God dealt her a royal flush for no reason, who spends her time counting her dresses and getting her hair done and practicing makeup tips from YouTube, do you think you’d be who you are? If the worst thing you ever worried about was that your dimples weren’t the same size or you were wearing last year’s shoes, do you think you’d be who you are? Do you even know who you are?”

“I know exactly who I am.”

“Excuse me, but you haven’t got the faintest fucking idea who you are. At least, you don’t have any idea who you are to me, or to the people who—who care about you.”

It takes her a moment to work her way up to it. Then she says, “Who I am to you?”

“Miaow,” he says. “I only took this awful, stupid part so I could be with you.”

She’s looking directly at him as he begins the sentence, but the moment he says be with you her eyes slide past him to the wall. She’s still holding the dish.

He says, “Are you just going to make me sit here?”

“Well.” She very carefully puts the dish down and sits back. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.” There’s a chorus of ooohhhs from the bedroom. “Maybe we could hug each other?”

It seems to take her forever to slide down the couch to him, and the moment he puts his arms around her, they hear Rafferty’s key in the lock. In less than a second, they’re pressed against opposite ends of the couch like a pair of mutually repellent subatomic particles, staring at each other, and then Miaow begins to laugh. By the time Rafferty has kicked off his shoes and come into sight, they’re both laughing.