The Fear Artist (46 page)

Blinking fast, Rafferty bends down and hoists a squealing Miaow off her feet and totes her into the living room, not even feeling her weight, and says, meaning every syllable, “I’m
so happy
we’re all here.”

T
HE HAMBURGER
A
RTHIT
picked up because it was the fastest thing he could think of has grown cold and greasy-smelling, and now, as he lifts the latch on the gate, it’s also getting wet. It couldn’t be as wet as he is, he thinks, but it’s certainly too wet to eat. And, come to think of it, who needs to eat?

He’s halfway up the concrete walk to the door when he sees her, sitting on the top step with water dripping from the ends of her short, blunt-cut hair, her head down. As he nears, he can see her shoulders stiffen, but she doesn’t raise her eyes to his.

He stops in front of her. She still hasn’t looked up, and she’s in the middle of the step, so he’ll have to squeeze past her to get to the door. What does he say to get her attention?
Excuse me?
His sigh seems to come from his center of spiritual gravity, and she dips her head even lower. He looks past her at the house with its dark windows and its familiar, empty rooms, and he throws the hamburger into the hedge and says, “Please. Come in.”

T
HAT NIGHT THE
rain upriver eases for a while, and three runoff dams that had been emptied to prevent their bursting are reopened to drain off some of the water rampaging down to the sea, and the level in the river drops. It’s not much of a drop, and it’s probably only for one night. But it
is
one night.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, drinking his coffee, Rafferty reads the newspaper story headlined
BODY FOUND IN BURNED HOUSE: ARSON SUSPECTED
. He reads it again, more slowly, and then puts the paper down and says aloud, to no one, “
One
body?”

The Phoenix Program is historical fact. Those wanting to know more can Google it for a variety of perspectives or, for a more all-encompassing (and somewhat negative) account, can look to Douglas Valentine’s scrupulously researched book
The Phoenix Program
. It’s also historically accurate that the Pentagon turned to the Phoenix Program as one source when cobbling together recommendations to the president in the days following September 11, 2001.

The bloodshed in the south of Thailand is, I’m sorry to say, ongoing and has claimed more than 5,000 lives to date.

This was not an easy book to write and, as usual, I want to thank the people who helped the most: Bronwen Hruska and Juliet Grames at Soho for giving Poke’s little family a home, and Juliet for a vigorous edit; my agent, Bob Mecoy, for taking me to Soho in the first place; the staff of The Novel Cafe on Main in Santa Monica for creating such an evocative atmosphere and for keeping the coffee flowing; and all the writers whose brains I’ve picked over the years.

I use music as an energy source when I write, and for providing the playlist for various components of
The Fear Artist
I want to thank Jason Isbell and the 400, the Drive-By Truckers, Sara Bareilles, Tegan and Sara, Franz Ferdinand, The National, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Neko Case, Joe Henry, Randy Newman, the late great Townes Van Zandt and Warren Zevon, Arcade Fire, Over the Rhine, Ryan Adams, Conor Oberst, Neil Young, the perpetually energizing Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris (who have helped with every book), and—on the classical side—Eric Satie and Maurice Ravel.

And thanks to all the folks who have written to suggest music to me. I listen to all of it and buy quite a lot of it. Some of it will be found in the playlists above.

In fact, thanks to all the readers who have written to me at
www.timothyhallinan.com
, often at the time I most needed encouragement. After a year spent staring at a screen and trying to stage-manage a daydream, it’s great to realize at long last that people actually read it.