“In the time I spent in the Orient, days or decades, I cannot place it, I learned precisely how to panic. That day, I awoke above a small, inconspicuous tavern just south of Ban Mo. There were two bunks in the slummy one-room flat, mine and one also inhabited on the opposing wall to my right. Between us, a poorly hewn and stained dark wood floor that had seen the better part of its life already—chipped and creaking under foot, with lumps and dips to waiver faith in its integrity at each step—marked off a chasm I thought impassable in the stillness of that waking moment.
As my eyes adjusted to the light of morning, I made out the form of a slender, tan, freckled upper-back and shoulders of what I imagined to be a beautiful young woman asleep in that adjacent bunk. Her head faced the outer wall, resting on a pillow with her arms tucked beneath. The sheets, below her back, covered the remainder of civilization, save for her toes, exposed off the end of the too-short cot. She flinched slightly and strands of her long, golden hair drifted across her back. Her head began to turn slowly toward me. As her back arched, slipping the covers from their stay, her arms reached forward like a cat stretching awake under the sun about a safer floor on any lazy Sunday afternoon. I quickly pretended to sleep, listening intently for an assurance that she hadn’t awoken entirely.
After a short period of silence, when no further rustling could be heard from my presumed companion’s bunk, I haltingly opened my eyes. To my surprise, the bunk was empty. I sat up—a creak of the floor—and found her again to my right, standing by the window. The sunlight poured in, falling over what I could see of her body, veiled now by a white nightgown. Given the manner in which she stood—contrapposto leaning against the casement—I could see only her silhouette, for the entirety of her form was shadowed also in waves by the sheer curtain which ruffled over her just then as a cool breeze eased over the sill of the open window.
From that window, by which it seemed the world itself might be looking in, she turned slow and graceful. Facing me, her eyes—hazel, amber, or emerald—I could not tell from the distance, seemed anyway to shift shades, flickering reflections of the sunlight outside. They glowed regardless: bright, joyful, and spontaneous. Her whole being glowed. She was something out of a dream—a vision through the dusty light of that ancient tavern loft. Her mere presence, in that light or any, it seemed, shifted the atmosphere from an aura of decay, even shame, to that of new life, even hope, a word I had not heard or spoke of or thought in a long time. Another breeze eased in, waving fibers of gilded hair across her face. She cleared the strands to one side, setting them behind her ear, and spoke . . .
“Good morning, Captain. Did you sleep well?”
II
Thailand
Bruce
A knock at the door rushed me to my feet. Unintelligible Thai chattered from the other side, from the mouth of an obviously angry master of the house.
“It’s alright, dear,” the woman reassured me.
“‘Dear’?” I thought.
I shouted something back at the man outside, in broken Thai of course, and after a moment’s silence, footsteps were heard moving down the stairs.
“We might have outstayed our welcome, Jack,” she said sweetly.
“‘Jack,’” I thought. “May-be,” I replied.
“What’s say we fly this place and have some real fun, in the city,” she said, beaming.
There was no saying no to that face, to those eyes, which seemed to have life in them for a nation.
“Alright,” I said with an ease and a contentment then foreign to me. “Nothing for me here, anyway. Seems the landlord has it in his mind to throw me out already.”
“Nothing for ‘us’ here, indeed,” the woman said coyly as she, with some effort, pulled up a pair of jeans I hadn’t noticed lying on the floor, and with no apparent effort, completed the look, put up her hair and, upon her wrists, a watch and bracelets, and finally, rings on her fingers.
“Here,” she said, tossing me my shirt. “Put this on, Rambo. Don’t want you causing any more locals to stumble, now do we?”
“‘We’? . . . ‘Us’?” I pondered inwardly, confused at the presumptuous possessives.
“Very well, then. Topless no longer,” I answered, staring at her back as she sat before the tiny, rusted, and faded mirror which leaned precariously atop an otherwise tiny dresser that she must have drawn closer to the end of her bunk the night previous, putting on what makeup she didn’t need. “Does she realize I’ll be gone by sundown?” I thought to myself. “Still . . .”
I didn’t at first notice the glance she gave out of the corner of that spotted mirror as she brushed her eyelash, a look as though she knew otherwise, like she knew my scheme and her counter to it, as if she were a step—or ten—ahead of my planned departure. She told me of it later, you see, of all the glances in all the worlds she gave to me. She kept none for herself.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I interrupted. “What do you mean, ‘She told me later’? I thought . . .”
“Quiet, son! I’m only liable to get through this once. And you’re lucky if that!”
“Alright, alright . . . go on.”
“Yes, where was I?”
“You’ve got a shirt on now, I think . . .”
“Indeed . . .”
We, I, I mean, I packed my single shoulder bag, she grabbed her purse, and we were off: down the creaking stairs—worse than the floor, if you can imagine it—through the tavern, and out into that muggy street. The sun had moved behind the clouds now, though. What was blinding through the open window was now tamed and shut up outside. But nothing could tame that Oriental humidity.
I hadn’t any idea of any named “city” near that tavern, but she seemed to know the way. I only followed my nose in these parts, at these times, and wherever we were heading was the obvious choice for what interested me most at that moment: food, street food.
“Hungry?” she asked with her omniscient air, which would’ve annoyed me more if she weren’t so stunning carrying it.
“She’ll be a hard one to escape,” I thought, I was sure of it. “Yes, quite so,” I answered. We turned a corner, down a market street where the smells overwhelmed the senses: Oyster Mee Sua, Oyster Omelette, Lu Rou Fan, Beef Noodles, the gambit in this grotto. She made for anything oyster, and I, for the Beef Noodles, where I felt safest.
We carried our delicacies, mine in my left hand, hers in her right. The whole time she walked just behind me, I noticed, her left hand looking all the while like it was trying not to rise up and grab my arm, caress my back, or simply and shyly take my hand. I felt nervous, uncomfortable, and the feeling made me remember that I carried something else in every city and in every town: the sky, the memory of what I wanted to forget. “Spirits in the head,” I think they’ve been called.
She stopped at a vendor’s cart to browse what woodworks, scarfs, and trinkets were on display, the same junk in every city it seemed. I drifted as casually as I could to the other side of the street, pretending to shop as well—easy enough—then I slipped into a corner alley and made my escape.
I didn’t realize she was watching over her shoulder. What was it I heard her say through the chatter of that street?
“Time to fall, Bruce . . .”
But I was already gone, alighting from alley to alley, street to street, then at a corner, mounting a rickshaw to the airfield, and I didn’t even ask her name.
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