The Fourth Watcher by Timothy Hallinan Read Free Book Online

in the smoke she exhales, seeking to soothe his nerves, wanting one himself.
    â€œThe ladyboys.” Thai transvestites have an enthusiastic following among the international cognoscenti and have become a standard attraction in many of the go-go bars.
    â€œNo. They always look like…I don’t know, plastic fruit or something. They don’t seem to have real faces, or even a real age. They look like they might come in jars.”
    â€œPay them enough and I’m sure they’ll come in a jar for you.”
    â€œRose,” he says. His heart is beating irregularly.
    â€œUh-oh,” Rose says. She studies his face. “What’s happening?”
    â€œI didn’t give you your present.” He reaches out and takes the cigarette from her and inhales it hard enough to blow a hole in his back. He is immediately sweepingly, reelingly dizzy. “Jesus,” he says. “I can’t believe I used to do that on purpose.”
    Rose is bent slightly toward him, watching him closely. She takes the cigarette and looks down at it. “Most people don’t try to smoke the whole thing at once.”
    â€œSo—” Rafferty says, and stops. The silence widens around them like a ripple in the center of a pond.
    â€œPoor baby,” Rose says, keeping her eyes on the cigarette as she mashes it in the ashtray. “All those words in your head, and they’re not there when you need them.”
    â€œIt’s almost four A.M. ,” Rafferty says, in full retreat. “Coffee. Coffee is the answer.” He grabs the bubble-gum pink robe Miaow made him buy at the weekend market at Chatuchak. Between the color and the cheerful, slightly fey yellow dragon embroidered on the back, it always makes him feel like Bruce Lee’s gay stand-in. “Coming?”
    She grimaces. “You mean, get up?”
    â€œI know it’s drastic.”
    â€œWait,” she says, and reaches down to a small zippered bag on the floor. Her hand comes up with a tube of lipstick and a loose Kleenex, and she applies the lipstick quickly and blots it, all in one swift, professional movement. “Ready for anything,” she says. She tosses the sheets aside and rises, almost six feet of flawless naked woman. As always, she looks to Rafferty like some ambitious new stage of evolution, an inspired draft of Woman 3.0, a human Car of the Future. She turns her back to pick up the towel she invariably wraps around her, and Rafferty tears his eyes from the long shadowy gully of her spine and the tablespoon-size dimples above her buttocks, and grabs the box on the table. He drops it into his pocket on the way out of the room. Bumping against his hip, it feels as big as a watermelon.
    The fluorescent lights reveal a kitchen that looks like it was used for grenade practice. Flour dusts the counters. Virtually every bowl, utensil, and platter Rafferty owns has ambled out of the cupboard, coated itself with something sticky, and assumed its least flattering angle. He pulls a bag of coffee beans from the freezer and drops a couple of fistfuls into the grinder, clearing a space on the counter with his pink silk forearm.
    â€œOne cake?” Rose says behind him. “All this for one cake?”
    â€œBut what a cake.” The whir of the grinder fills the room. Silently counting to twelve, Rafferty reaches up into the cabinet with his free hand and takes down a box of coffee filters. He drops the box to the counter and uncaps the coffee grinder. “Perfect,” he says, studying the grind. He opens the box of filters and pulls out a nest of tightly clustered paper cones. As always, the edges are stuck together. He ruffles them ineffectually with his thumb, trying without much hope to separate a single filter from the clump.
    â€œYou were going to say something,” Rose says, her eyes on his hands. The lowered lids make it hard for him to read her expression. The towel is brilliantly white against