by Zoë Folbigg
Jon looks visibly relieved. ‘Day three. I promise.’
The two share a laugh while Maya picks up a leaflet about chakras. She can still feel James’ thumb stroking her, reassuring her that everything is going to be all right.
Moon walks in with the first tray of broth.
Maya turns to James.
‘Shall we eat this and then catch the news?’ she suggests.
My Travels with Train Man
Train Man’s just come out of the bathroom and I’ve asked him what colour his poo is. It’s not the most romantic conversation we’ve had in the year and a bit since we got together, and I’m not feeling terribly proud of myself either, but there are extenuating circumstances, so let me explain.
Yesterday we arrived at The Haven – the intense detox spa I told you about last week in a stunning and secluded corner of Thailand. And, apparently, talking about your faecal matter is the norm round these parts.
After last week’s hedonism at the Full Moon party (I’ve recovered btw), my body and my mind felt ready for a little detox. I know this is a first-world problem, but it turns out travelling in 2016 makes you somewhat lardy. I knew all that gulab jamun and ghee was going to catch up with us sooner or later, but so too have the SangSom buckets, the Magnums (Magni?) and spending all day sunbathing at the beach. It’s even caught up with Train Man – the only man I know who genuinely looks good in skinny jeans. Or at least he used to.
So we checked into The Haven and set about eating a tasty pre-cleanse menu of tropical fruit and sumptuous salads before we dive, head first, into fasting.
It’s a hippie, holistic kind of place, and our appropriately named spa manager, Moon, welcomed us, weighed us in (I am half a stone heavier than when we left home) and gave us the tour – which included a (clothed) demo on how to self-administer a coffee colonic. As we watched, I felt so guilty about what I’d badgered Train Man into that when Moon said the word ‘anus’, I started giggling nervously. I soon stopped when he handed us the rubber gloves and advised rummaging through our colonic sieves after the event, to see what we might find in there.
‘Knowledge is power,’ is one of the many wise mantras Moon likes to repeat, and I think we’re going to hear a lot more of them in the coming days.
But one of the many things I love about Train Man is that he is a trouper. So here we go, with seven days of sun salutations, clay shakes, herbal pills and the thing I will struggle with most: fasting. If you’ve read my column before, you will know I am sixty per cent water, seven per cent blood, and the rest is all sugar. Not eating pastries, chocolate, brioche and cake might just kill me – but I won’t let it.
I’ll check in with a progress report next week, dear reader – I am hoping to shift that half-stone and have skin that’s more akin to Audrey Hepburn than ET (the sun hasn’t been kind to my ever-increasing wrinkles), but what was Train Man’s answer to my icky question?
‘Bright green, honey. Oh, and I’m sure that Matchbox car I swallowed when I was three was in there.’
Now the bathroom has been refreshed (Those. Poor. Cleaners!) and it’s my turn to get on the board. Wish me luck!
28
‘You’ll never guess who I bumped into!’ Maya and Nena say in unison, and then laugh.
The screen freezes and Maya can only see Nena’s face stuck in time, from a few seconds ago. Caught in amusement at the coincidence of having said the same thing, mixed with the slight confusion of a tiny time delay and a bad connection, wondering if what the other said was in fact their own echo. Nena’s eyelids are half closed as she is frozen on her sofa, her tired face dimly lit by a lamp at one end of it and the glow of the television behind the laptop.
Maya can tell from the smaller window, with her own face in it, that she looks a different sort of tired. Her eyes are narrow and sleep-ridden from having woken at 5 a.m., so she could file her column and Skype Nena before sunrise yoga – although Nena thinks Maya looks tanned and invigorated and said as much when they logged on.
The connection resumes, the frames unfreeze and both women move again.
‘You go first!’ Nena says.
‘No you!’ replies Maya, knowing her anecdote will take some beating.
Nena looks around her living room and keeps her voice low, so as not to wake Ava in her cot in the bedroom. Nena really needs Ava to sleep, even though part of her is desperate to show her off. She hasn’t spoken to Maya in weeks and could do with someone other than her friends inside the TV to talk to. The television is muted and Tom is working late, so Nena speaks her news in hushed tones.
‘Emily Snatch! In the park, the other day. So weird. She looks the same.’
‘Oh weird,’ says Maya. ‘How is she?’
‘She’s a baby factory. Churning them out.’
‘Oh.’ Maya feels a surprising stab of jealousy but brushes it off her lap and onto the white tiled floor of the ‘IT suite’, a basic rectangle that’s more of a stark classroom for two than a modern tech hub.
‘Yeah, she has three kids, one of them is in Arlo’s class. She lives near me. We’re hoping to meet up…’
‘Cool.’ Maya has loads of questions about Emily Snatch but feels the sands of time ticking before the sun rises; before Ava needs Nena’s attention; before the connection goes again. So she doesn’t ask any of them, and knows that’s fine with Nena.
‘You go next. Who could you have possibly bumped into out there?’
‘WELL…’ Maya thinks of James, who she left stirring in bed so she could get online before yoga, and feels oddly guilty about the excitement of her news. ‘It’s another blast from our university past.’
‘Oh god, who?’ Nena winces, wondering which of her exes it could be.
‘Jon Vincent.’
‘WHAT?!’
She wasn’t expecting it to be Maya’s ex.
‘Yes.’
‘The Baby-faced Assassin?’
‘The very same.’
‘Mother—’ The screen freezes again, but unfreezes almost immediately. ‘—ucker. What’s he doing there?’ she says, with a crease of her nose.
‘Ooh, I’m so annoyed, Nena. He’s here between filming. He’s only gone and bloody made it as an actor! He comes to Thailand regularly to “reset his dials”.’
‘Urgh, gross.’
‘I literally ran into him on the beach looking all Hollywood. Actually, come to think of it, I reckon he’s had his teeth done…’
‘I’ve never seen him in anything, and I watch a lot of films.’ Nena remembers her current reality is reality television – of course she wouldn’t have seen Jon in anything she watches.
‘I don’t know about films, I think he alternates between Netflix dramas and theatre. I googled him before I called you, to have a little snoop – he must work under another name because the only Jon Vincent on IMDB is a sound engineer.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘The sound engineer?’ Maya says with a half-smile.
‘The Baby-faced Assassin.’
‘Annoyingly, he looks good.’
‘Arsehole. Married? Kids?’
‘Not sure. Don’t wanna ask.’
‘Damn, Maya, if only you knew his stage name, we could find out everything. Maybe he has a bonkers actress wife.’
Maya feels another surprising stab of jealousy. ‘Yeah, I don’t want to ask that either. Don’t want to give him the satisfaction.’
‘What did Jon say?’
‘Not much – we’re kind of avoiding the whole issue – we’re avoiding him really. Although James has been really cool about it.’
‘Go, Train Man.’
‘We’re about to do sunrise yoga though, and I noticed Jon’s signed up for it too. So that might be awks.’
Maya wonders why there’s a fizz in the hollow of her stomach. Or is it the excitement of talking to Nena? She misses Nena.
‘How long’s he there—’
Maya thinks the connection has frozen again, but actually it wa
s the jagged move of Nena’s head turning towards the living room door and freezing intently, to hear whether Ava is crying.
‘Shit, she’s awake.’
‘Get her! Let me say hello.’
‘I don’t want to stimulate her, she’ll be super-awake and hard to settle.’
Oh.
Nena sees the disappointment in Maya’s freckled face and thinks Fuck it, she won’t sleep anyway.
‘Hang on, I’ll go get her…’
While Maya waits, she looks out at the palm trees swaying in the dark. The computer suite feels a bit creepy when she can’t see much outside it, knowing that under the strip light and stark walls she is visible – and visibly alone – to anyone outside. She thinks of James again and wonders if he’s got up, or whether he’s fallen back asleep.
Nena returns to view with a chubby Ava in a patterned sleepsuit, snaffling into her mother’s neck. Maya’s fear levels abate as her heart fills with love and longing.
‘Ah!’ Maya gasps.
‘She’s a bit snuffly, I wonder if she’s teething.’
‘Oh look at her! She’s grown so much.’
Nena’s tired face nods. ‘I might have to feed her.’
‘And her hair! There’s so much of it.’
Maya’s coos are enough to pique Ava’s interest, and she turns her ruddy cheeks out from her mother’s neck towards Maya, who she is confused to see on the screen.
‘Hello, my gorgeous girl. It’s so good to see you!’ Maya marvels at the monitor and waves.
Ava’s furrowed brow squints back and she turns her body further. Just as she reaches out a hand, the screen freezes again.
‘Oops, you’ve gone,’ Maya says, waiting for the connection to resume. ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’
The screen stays the same. An image, stuck, of Nena on the sofa, obscured by Ava in the foreground. Maya can now see the pattern on her sleepsuit is of little whales shooting water from their blowholes. Her soft black hair frames her bright eyes. Her mouth is a circle of determination and intrigue. Her hand has chubby creases below the wrist as if someone left an elastic band there, and she’s reaching out to touch Maya through the screen.
‘Hello?’
Maya puts her hand to the screen, to touch Ava’s.
‘Hello?’
The connection fails. The screen doesn’t move. And Maya bursts into tears under the strip lighting.
29
March 2016, The Haven, Thailand
‘We store a lot of anger in our thighs, so open them out and let that resentment flush forth from your pelvis,’ says the compact Californian yoga teacher with pecs for boobs. As embarrassing as this is for Maya, the notion of releasing anger from her thighs is preferable to an earlier instruction about letting her anus blossom.
Maya opens one eye and sees James on the mat to her right, exhaling with a sigh as he struggles to keep his legs crossed. He rearranges himself, trying to tie his feet in a bow, but his stiff limbs keep getting tangled in the roomy white kurta pyjamas he took from the Indian palace hotel.
Maya closes her right eye and opens the left. Jon is on that side, a hand resting on each knee, each forefinger and thumb making a circle, his eyes closed as if he’s sleeping sitting up. He looks at peace. He looks in the zone. He looks like Sting might be his dad (he isn’t). On mats beyond him sit Kimberley and an even more lithe woman, who has fishtail plaits and, like Jon, has obviously done this before.
All five disciples sit cross-legged in a line, facing the open front of the thatched studio, waiting for the sun to rise. As peach shards start to poke out of the darkness and a hot blur appears on the horizon, Maya hears the sizzle of Jon’s steady, deep breath.
He’s good at this.
She wonders if Jon has opened his eyes at all during the past forty-five minutes. Surely he must have looked at the women to the left of him, in their spaghetti-strap vests and tiny skintight shorts. Maya is wearing her rather less sexy running gear.
‘That’s it, go deeper…’ the teacher says, as she gently presses limbs and pats shoulders encouragingly as she walks barefoot on the decked floor. She’s had to pat James’ shoulder a lot more than anyone else’s in the class. Maya wondered if the teacher – who Maya thinks is called Jess because she has a beaded necklace spelling out the name above her muscly chest – fancies James, but concludes it’s probably just because James has clearly never done yoga in his life and needs the most help. A yoga teacher wouldn’t fancy anyone so inflexible.
Jess walks along the line.
I wish I were better at this.
Maya wonders why her thighs still feel angry as she tries to bring her crossed knees closer to the mat.
It was just an internet connection.
‘Give your body up to the earth, lift your chest a little so it connects with the rising sun.’
Ava looked so beautiful.
‘Give up any tension you can by offering it to the world. Trust in the universe. Let it fill you up.’
But I feel weirdly empty.
As the sky turns from peach to orange, and nature’s straight lines cut through wispy clouds, Jess asks the class to stand. ‘Now you’ve made the sun rise – you’ve trusted the earth – we’re going to remind the earth to trust us. So let’s finish with vrikshasana, or tree pose,’ Jess says, trying to swallow her loud voice into something more sedate. ‘Gently uncross your legs, crouch, and roll up to standing.’
James stands up in a shot and untangles his giant pyjamas. ‘What Indian guy is that much taller and that much fatter than the average man?’ James had said when he first tried them on. Maya thought he looked as sexy as Sidharth Malhotra, her favourite Bollywood discovery, and told him to keep them, but now they do make him look kind of clumsy.
Maya rises more gently, and Jon, eyes still closed, does an elaborately slow and precise roll up. James shoots Maya a look that says he thinks yoga is bollocks and Maya tries to suppress a smile. As the class wait for Jon to unfurl, open his eyes and appreciate the sunrise, Maya tries not to appreciate his chest. He’s wearing only pale grey yoga pants under his beading bare torso and Maya can see each vertebrae stack as he stands tall.
Jon finally opens his eyes and realises everyone is waiting for him, he has an audience. He runs his fingers up through his messy blond morning hair. ‘Sorry about that,’ he shrugs. ‘I went somewhere special.’
Jess gives an understanding smile.
Jon coughs politely into his fist. ‘“I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old”,’ he says, taking in the view, flabbergasted by its beauty.
‘Beyoncé?’ asks Maya.
‘Baudelaire,’ confirms Jon.
Under Jess’s instruction, the class stand on one leg, with one foot pressed against the inside of the opposite inner thigh, their palms pushed together above their heads. They look like a row of fence posts – some more rickety than others – as they take in the lines of orange, blue and white stacked in front of them in the sky above the sea.
Maya looks out to the horizon, feeling less sad about the aborted call than she did an hour ago but still confused by the internal conflict she feels in paradise.
‘And rise, rise, rise out of the floor, ready for another day,’ says the all-American yogi, ending with a ‘Namaste.’
‘Namaste,’ Jon replies, closely followed by the rest of the class.
James wobbles on one leg as he tries not to lose his balance, but dizziness from the lack of calories and the inflexibility of his limbs makes him fall to the mat with a ‘Fuck!’ As James breaks his fall with his palms and gives up, Kimberley lets her anus blossom and accidentally releases the fart she’d been battling to hold in for the entire class. Maya’s inner child finally enables her to relax and she and James stifle a giggle.
30
‘Receive one thousand for your thesis,’ James reads from the board.
‘Oh, don’t mind if I do!’ says Maya, taking a crisp pink bill from the bank and puffing out her shoulders.
<
br /> Maya and James are on their small terrace, playing the battered old Game of Life from the box they borrowed from the common room, seeking solace from the midday sun. It also helped distance them from the tasty food smells coming from the restaurant kitchen.
James winces as he spins the wheel. Even the soft click and whir of the little plastic prong on the number wheel is bothering the dehydration headache that’s starting to creep across his temples.
‘Nine,’ he says, while he pushes his brown Wayfarers up his nose and advances a plastic yellow car around a track. He lands on a red rectangle. ‘Get married,’ he says sombrely. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
Maya feels frustrated. They went through this when they played yesterday.
‘Spin the wheel and I give you money depending on the number you land on,’ Maya says begrudgingly. She’s already annoyed that James landed on ‘journalist’ – the career with the biggest salary apparently – and he gets 20,000 every pay day.
James spins again and works out how much his wedding gift will cost Maya. Maya doesn’t make the obvious joke and ask James who he’s marrying, she’s not in the mood, but she rummages in the small plastic bag of colourful cars and pink and blue pegs, takes out a pink peg and flicks it across the board at him.
‘That’s 2,000 please.’
Maya frowns and hands over the money, then spins the wheel for her turn.
James tries to lighten the mood. ‘So Nena was OK?’
‘Yeah fine.’
‘Tom all right?’
‘For fuck’s sake! Teacher. Salary 8,000.’ Maya rolls her eyes. ‘No, he was out, it was just Nena.’
Maya doesn’t mention Ava.
‘She seems OK though.’
James spins and Maya watches life’s lottery favour him again.
‘But it cut out, we didn’t really talk for long.’
‘I guess you told her about running into Jon.’