When they heard, they both imagined one of those green back roads out on Long Island and their parents driving home from a dinner party in some big house. No streetlights, so if their father turned off the headlights by accident when he meant to signal, it would be terrifying for their mother. And she would have a lot to say, in the car. Their parents were not the same in the car as they were at the dinner parties. Probably they had too much to drink. And a cop pulled them over.

The boys were sure there was never any real danger, because their father was a great driver. Both boys had ridden with him after a beer or a few and were never afraid. He would never let anything happen to them or their mother. But then Mike’s mother had been so belligerent with the cop, when she saw that he would arrest her husband, that he arrested her too.

35

Mike is woozy from the beer and feels a cold sweat on his neck as he watches Tweety disappear with a squat man in a leather biker vest. Mike wonders if the guy walking up the stairs, holding Tweety’s hand, is a dwarf.

“That’s her uncle,” says Bridget, “and her pimp sometimes. Only family she has in Bangkok, except for a younger brother.”

“Little guy,” says Mike.

“People are afraid of him. Makes it easier for Tweety to fuck people for money.”

“Why are they afraid of him?”

“He’s a thug,” Bridget says, almost brightly, “from a drug operation up north.”

Mike doesn’t want to think about Tweety anymore. Dancers are now sliding up and down a row of poles, naked except for purple garters and red feathers in their hair. Mike thinks they look like pistons of flesh going up and down.

The American comes back and Mike watches him tap his pointed boot at the bottom of the stairs, impatient, waiting for something. And then Tweety’s pimp uncle is back too, and they are talking. Mike points this out to Bridget, who, he realizes with alarm, is also drunk. She runs her long, pale fingers through her bright red hair and smiles mournfully at Mike.

“Poor Tweety,” says Bridget, “she always knows.”

“It’s her business,” says Paul, clearing his throat, “but that American looks awful.”

“We should do something tonight,” says Bridget. “I’m going to buy her out.”

Paul shakes his head as Bridget walks over to the uncle and the American.

“What is she doing?” Mike asks.

“Who knows,” says Paul, looking at the ceiling and lighting a cigarette. “Who knows life?”