Just the photograph. Just his wife’s face.

Of course he knows that he’s not seeing the other things. He’s stopped seeing them in self-defense, amazed to learn how much sadness inanimate objects can give off, an emotional vapor that says, When I bought that / was given that /put that there, I didn’t know. I thought the world’s natural state was to be whole, I thought it would remain whole.

I thought if anything ever happened to one of us, it would happen to me.

Beside the framed photograph, a stack of work waits for him. Papers he needs to review pointlessly, reports he needs to initial pointlessly, a calendar of pointless meetings he’ll drag himself to, just a little late, so he can sit on the periphery, against the wall instead of at the table, and try to look attentive. Try not to look like a man who has just been hit by a train.

He trudges across the room and sits down with a sigh he doesn’t hear. The chair makes its invariable squeak of complaint, something he has meant to take care of for weeks-a squirt of WD-40, what could be easier? It would just take a second. The can is on top of the filing cabinet, put there at his request by one of the secretaries a million years ago. Picking it up would take more strength than he possesses. He thinks briefly about getting up and throwing the chair through the window. That’s something he can visualize doing. Breaking things. For that he could find strength.

He reads the first sentence on the top page of the stack and then reads it again. Halfway through he goes back to see what the memo’s subject is. It’s got something to do with a new copying loop, a list of people who are to be copied automatically on several sorts of documents, very few of which ever cross his desk. He takes the page, rips it lengthwise down the center, and sits there, holding half of the sheet in each hand, looking right through the photograph.

In the three days since he found the pills buried in the flour, Noi has paled and lightened. She seems to walk more weightlessly, to absorb more light, to carry her pain more easily, as though it were a cloak she can lift from her shoulders when the weight becomes too much for her. Today, as she stood at the stove heating the water for his coffee, he had the sense that if he squinted hard enough, he could see the stove through her. That she was some sort of colored projection in the air.

That she was already beginning to fade.

Of course, the impulse, the instinct, is to hold on, to wrap his arms around her and anchor her. To do whatever it takes to keep her beside him. But to do that would be to keep her in her pain, the smoldering in her nervous system that will simply get worse until she bursts into flame like a paper doll. Fire no one can put out. Won’t it be better if she simply goes to sleep?

Of course it would. Of course it wouldn’t.

That morning, as he drank his coffee, trying to act the way he acted every morning-as though this were just the beginning of another day in an infinite progression of days-Noi pulled her chair around from the side of the table where she usually sits and put it beside his. She wound her arms around his neck and leaned against him. He sat there cup in hand, inhaling the smell of her shampoo, feeling the heat from her skin, listening to the flow of her breath and watching the room ripple through the tears in his eyes, while his heart slammed against his ribs like a fist. They sat there until the coffee was cold. Neither of them spoke a word.

His phone rings.

He looks at it as he might look at a scorpion on his desk. It continues to ring. Finally he drops the scrap of paper in his left hand and reaches for the receiver, seeing the glint of his wedding ring. Picks up the receiver and says his name.

“This is Thanom,” says the voice on the other end, a voice with some snap to it. “We need to talk. Now. Come up here.”

Arthit hangs up the phone, thinking, Poke.

“I’VE JUST HAD an interesting chat,” Thanom says as Arthit comes through the door. Today Thanom is in his usual uniform, not the ceremonial outfit Poke had described him wearing at Pan’s fund-raiser. He has a short, flattened nose and an upper lip that’s longer than the nose above it. Those features, plus round black eyes as expressive as bullet holes, have always made him look to Arthit like a monkey. But he’s not a monkey one should underestimate. Thanom has a perpetually wet index finger raised to detect the slightest shift in the political winds.

“Really,” Arthit says. “A chat with whom?” He has not been invited to sit.

Thanom gives a tug at the left point of his collar. “A friend of yours. The farang who’s writing Pan’s biography. What’s his name?”

“Rafferty,” Arthit says. “More an acquaintance than a friend.”

“Is that so,” Thanom says, not making it a question. “I’d heard otherwise.”

“Obviously I have no way of knowing what you’ve heard.”

Arthit’s tone sharpens the interest in Thanom’s face, but he puts it aside for the moment to pursue his topic. “I’m apparently on some sort of list of people he’s supposed to talk to about Pan, although I can’t imagine why.”

Arthit says, “Who gave him the list?”

Thanom leans back in his chair and regards Arthit speculatively. “That’s an excellent question. I should have asked it.”

“You’ve been behind a desk for a while,” Arthit says, pleased to see the spots of red appear on Thanom’s cheeks. “Focused on more important things than nuts and bolts. First-year-patrolman stuff.”

“No, no,” Thanom says between lips that are stretched tight enough to snap. “A really good policeman never forgets the basics.”

Arthit says, “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

Arthit can practically see Thanom make an imaginary mark: One to get even for. “Did he tell you who gave him the list?”

“I don’t know him as well as you think I do.”

“It’s been a while since we talked, hasn’t it?” Thanom says. “It’s a shame my responsibilities don’t give me more time with my men. One thing about your friend interested me. He kept asking to see the files on Pan. When I said it wasn’t possible, he asked whether they were even accessible. As though we might have misplaced them somehow.”

“That is interesting.”

Thanom lifts his tie and glances at it, as though he expects to find a stain. “Any idea where he might have gotten the idea?”

“None. Is it true?”

Thanom’s eyes come up. “Of course not. We don’t misplace files.”

“That’s a relief,” Arthit says. “Since we’re the institutional memory of law and order in Bangkok and all that.”

“You don’t know where he could have picked up such a notion? Your friend, I mean.”

“Acquaintance. No, of course not. But if he’s got whole lists of people to talk to, maybe one of them suggested something of the sort.”

“Yes, yes,” Thanom says, holding up a hand. “And you personally,” he says. He squeezes some feeling into his voice, as persuasive as food coloring. “How are you bearing up?”

Arthit has no idea how Thanom knows anything is wrong with Noi. “Beating against the tide,” he says, “as we all do.”

“Do we?” Thanom says, standing to signal the end of the conversation. “I don’t think so. I think some of us learn to ride it.”

FOR PURPOSES OF his work, Rafferty’s favorite kind of people are the ones who are dumber than they think they are. The policeman, Thanom, had practically redefined the category. Yes, of course he’d be happy to help Rafferty, especially in light of the call he’d received. Rafferty certainly had prominent friends, didn’t he? Heh, heh. And the time was long overdue for a book about this disgusting man, this scab on the Bangkok social scene. Practically a common criminal, for all the flash and the…um, amazing girls. Here Thanom had actually stopped talking long enough to press the side of his index finger against his upper lip, blotting sweat Rafferty couldn’t see.