“Not just now.”

“You go to Rangoon first thing in the morning, don’t you? Do you have a hotel yet?”

I didn’t have one because I wouldn’t need one, but he didn’t have to know that. “Out at the airport,” I said.

“The Amari? A good choice. Will you want to have an early night? Bangkok ’s twelve hours different from New York, so I don’t know how you stand on jet lag.”

“I’m all right.”

“You were able to sleep on the plane?”

“Off and on,” I said.

He stroked his vertical stripe of a beard. “Forgive me for saying so,” he said, “but you look a little peaked.”

“Probably jet lag.”

“You feel all right?”

“Well, I’m a little chilled,” I said, “but other than that-”

“Chilled?”

“A little, but-”

“But it’s a hot afternoon. The temperature is well over thirty degrees. That would make it close to ninety degrees Fahrenheit.”

“That sounds about right.”

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “you’re perspiring. So how can you be feeling a chill?”

“I’m sure it’s part of the jet lag,” I said. “And you’re right, it does feel warm in here, and I am perspiring. It’s more an internal sort of a chill.”

“Internal.”

“And it’s no big deal,” I said. “I can live with it.”

“What you need,” he said, “is spicy food. That is exactly what you need.”

“You’re probably right.”

“We will go to a place I know,” he said, “and we will drink beer and eat dog. How does that sound?”

“Uh,” I said.

“And then we will drink whiskey,” he said, “and then we will have some girls. But not children!”

“Certainly not,” I said.

“I know just the place,” he said. “The girls are twelve years old, possibly as much as fourteen. We won’t be robbing the cradle, and we won’t have the U.N. on our backs.”

“What about the SPCA?”

He laughed, got to his feet, left some baht on the table to cover the bill. “An inner chill,” he said. “My friend, after a plate of dog, a glass of scotch, and an hour with a pretty girl, you’ll be as warm inside as out.”