The Postcard

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘Thanks,’ he replies, pushing his matte black rectangular glasses up his nose. He took his contacts out as soon as they got back to their room since the muddy Mekong water had got trapped behind them, but Brooke likes a man in glasses. The dimple in his left cheek sinks a little as he blushes.

  ‘So, I thought you wouldn’t want to pass this one up without hearing more at least.’

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘English film director and his supermodel wife. Apparently her make-up artist was at some wedding you shot in India – which we at the agency knew nothing about of course, but let’s not dwell on that…’

  ‘It was a friend’s wedding, I wasn’t paid.’

  ‘Well, anyway, the make-up artist said you were a dream to work with, and the supermodel loved the images she showed her.’

  Is she sure they were my images?

  ‘So her assistant did a little search on you, got past all the Train Man stuff and – boom – found you through us. They want to meet with you asap to discuss.’

  ‘OK…’

  ‘It’s a two-parter. An English country wedding in the Cotswolds, followed by a party in a chateau in the south of France. Johnny Depp’s house or something. Lots of NDAs to sign. Very exclusive. But it’ll open so many doors. If done right.’

  James sighs and slinks back into his chair, his hands behind his head and his tired arms swelling. Inside he wants to do cartwheels, even to have been asked is an honour, but James isn’t a cartwheeler; his triumphant fist pumps are quiet and internal.

  He looks around the internet cafe guiltily, as if he’s cheating on Maya by even asking questions, and drops his arms to his sides again.

  ‘When’s the wedding?’

  Please say it’s next year.

  ‘July.’

  ‘Next July?’

  ‘This July. They want to meet you in the next few days. At their home in Fitzrovia, to discuss details, what they want et cetera.’

  ‘Wow. Do they want me to be the photographer’s assistant, or do the reportage pictures?’

  ‘No, James, they want you to be the photographer photographer.’

  ‘Shiiiit.’

  This is big.

  This is really big. James had been getting by, shooting upscale weddings that were being featured in the glossy bridal magazines – he’d even done some editorial fashion and celebrity shoots, but it wasn’t exactly lucrative, he was still very much making a name for himself when he and Maya booked their round-the-world tickets. But a celebrity wedding. An A-list wedding.

  Johnny Depp’s house?!

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m in Luang Prabang.’

  ‘Where the hell is that?’

  ‘Laos.’

  ‘Nope, none the wiser.’

  ‘Let’s just say it’s far from Fitzrovia. Near Thailand.’

  Brooke’s face drops. ‘Oh. Disappointing.’

  ‘Look, can I just chat to my girlfriend and get back to you? We’re heading to Indonesia next and she had her heart set on it.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘No, I need to speak to her.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure Testino would ditch backpacking for this gig. And we haven’t even discussed the fee yet.’

  James holds up his hands to his ears. He doesn’t want to know how bountiful the fee is if he can’t do the wedding. ‘Don’t tell me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Let me just talk to Maya, see what she says.’

  ‘OK, but I can’t tell them you have to think about it, that’s embarrassing. I’ll try to stall, but get back to me in, say, three hours?’

  James’ heart sinks.

  Brooke doesn’t look like she fancies him quite so much.

  ‘I need to get back to them by the end of play today with an answer, otherwise it reflects badly on us too.’

  Fuck.

  ‘OK cool.’

  ‘In the meantime I’ll fire off some info for you, so you have the offer written down, a bit more detail about locations and timings and things. I’ll redact the fee part, if you really don’t want to know. And we’ll reconvene in three hours, yes?’

  Brooke’s blue eyes bore into the lens.

  ‘I’ll get back to you by then.’

  ‘Great. Oh, and James?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Don’t be a dick.’

  56

  James picks up his camera by its sturdy lens and pays the teenage boy behind the counter, a boy with big ears and an eager smile, before weaving out into the street. The dusk light in the pink sky over the historic centre illuminates lantern-festooned streets and alleyways, and it feels like a perfect time to get some pictures.

  Three hours.

  Vendors arrive and start to set up their stalls for the night market, laying out their fabrics and wares, some on tables, most on the floor, all on large squares and rectangles of colourful cloth under bright red and blue canvas gazebos.

  James sees a child, quietly winding herself in three multicoloured shawls that her mother is hoping to sell tonight, playing hide-and-seek on her own. James raises his camera to the mother, to ask if he can take a picture. The woman nods. The little girl, her black wayward hair tamed across her head in a low side parting tucked behind an ear, looks at James. Through his glasses, through his camera lens, he sees mischief behind the shyness. He gives her the pain au chocolat he had bought Maya from the bakery on his way to the internet cafe, and she devours the pastry as if it’s the first thing she’s eaten all day.

  All around James are colourful paper lanterns and fabrics – in pale lilacs and soft yellows – shades more muted than the brightness of Hoi An – backlit by the pink sunset, seducing him on his walk, distracting him from the conversation he’s dreading.

  I need my wide-angle lens. I’ll go back for my wide-angle lens.

  James walks past a temple, along a quieter street at the edge of the town and up the wide steps of the faded French villa, past the reception area and the man with the dragon on his shirt. He knocks twice on the thin double wooden doors before opening the right-hand one.

  ‘Maya…?’

  He hears a trickle of water and sees her bare back through the open bathroom door, her skin illuminated by the copper bath.

  ‘In here!’

  James closes the door and flips the shutters on the window, protecting Maya from agile eyes and cicadas that might be lurking as night arrives.

  The trickle of water, a constant hot stream, fills the deep bath and eases Maya’s tired limbs. James walks around the bed quietly, towards the open door to the bathroom. He sees Maya’s spine, her freckled and bronzed shoulders, the white marks around the back of her neck where her bikini top is tied. He can smell the frangipani and jasmine on the air as if it’s Maya’s skin emanating such aromas. He sees the line of her collarbone kissed by the wet tips of her wavy chestnut hair as it unravels from its tie.

  It’s not her fault.

  Click.

  James photographs the woman he loves and his heart breaks. He so wishes they wanted the same thing.

  She turns around and looks up, the freckles on her face lit by the golden shimmer of the tub, the slow hum of the ceiling fan offsetting the heat she’s feeling from the steamy water.

  James walks in and lowers his camera.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ she asks.

  James is disarmed. He wants to slump onto the closed lid of the white toilet and cry. Just looking at Maya makes him feel wretched.

  ‘No, nothing worth the Skype call,’ he says mysteriously.

  I’m not trying to break your heart.

  ‘I’m going to go back out, get some shots, I’ve just come back to get a lens.’

  James doesn’t tell Maya that the light is enchanting out there; was enchanting out there – he knows that when he opens the room door again, the sky will be completely different, yet equally mesmerising.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No! You fi
nish your bath, you look so beautiful in there. And it’ll do you good after today.’

  James lifts his lens and takes a few more shots of Maya as she sponges her shoulders. Through the lens, he sees her, yet he can’t see what she really wants.

  I know it’s not what I want.

  ‘I need to go and have a wander. A think.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  James doesn’t look sure. He looks downbeat and cagey.

  Maya has a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach.

  She glances at the old station clock on the bathroom wall; thick black hands power through a face covered in steam, almost in a straight line.

  Six o’clock.

  James kisses Maya’s head.

  ‘I won’t be long. I’ll be back so we can get some dinner, yeah?’

  ‘OK,’ Maya says in a little voice, examining her toes stretched out in front of her.

  In almost five months since they left home, James has never shown any preference to be by himself; to go off for a walk on his own. Every time Maya said she’d go to the 7-Eleven to buy a bottle of water or a Crunchie, James got up to put on his flip-flops too. Every time she said she wanted to climb a hill or walk along a wall or seek out a local pastry shop or go to a chemist to buy tampons, James wanted to go too. If either of them had ever craved some alone time on this trip, it was Maya, which she would conveniently achieve on a run. Have some headspace and get it out of her system; walk back through a hostel or hotel-room door sweaty and relieved but comfortably aching to see James again. James hasn’t once shown any desire to go off, to be alone. Until now. And his solemnity is making Maya feel distinctly uncomfortable.

  ‘See you in a bit.’

  The long wooden doors click shut together and Maya looks to the room beyond the bathroom door and the chaise longue. The simple four-poster bed. It’s voile mosquito net moving in the gentle breeze despite James having closed the shutters. The teak chest of drawers neither James nor Maya bothered to put their clothes in. The vintage tea set on top of it. A peep of a backpack stuffed under the bed. Maya can’t tell whose backpack it is in the shadows, just that it looks like the shape of a person.

  Stop winding yourself up.

  Maya looks back at her toes and turns off the tap. The molten water is brimming high against the edge of the bath and Maya feels a flash of guilt about the self-indulgence. But it’s a good bath.

  I needed this.

  Her limbs were tired from the kayaking, her feet already crinkled from a day spent in water. Maya rubs her toes for one last clean, deep red nail polish looking weathered around the cuticles and the edges. Her runner’s feet are both tired yet revived. Maya stands in the tub and reaches for the large white waffle sheet she left on the floor, and wraps it around her like a bridal gown.

  I’ll touch up my toes while he’s out, she thinks, looking down at her feet.

  Maya reaches into her washbag next to the sink for a shade of nail polish called Temptress and plants herself, in her towel, on the chaise longue. She’s mindful not to let any drips of blood-red polish go anywhere other than her nails, and mindful of feeling alone for the first time in a long time. The knot in the pit of her hungry stomach, which is weighed down by a secret, grows. She is unnerved by the shape of a figure under the bed.

  57

  As she sinks deeper into the gravitational pull of the chaise longue, Maya is startled awake by a smash. Her eyes widen, her pupils shrink. Her body is cold and damp. For a split second she thinks she fell asleep in the bath but realises she isn’t seasick, she isn’t drowning, she’s just startled. A bloody trail oozes on the floor and Maya looks at it with alarm, to see a small glass bottle is smashed into three pieces against the orange, beige and grey pattern of the old tiled floor.

  ‘Shit.’

  Maya jumps up, clutching her white waffle towel loosely around her, then screams when she spies a figure under the bed.

  It’s just a backpack.

  Standing firm to regain her balance and her composure, Maya reconfigures the towel so it is tight like a bandeau dress, then pads barefoot into the bathroom, admiring the precision with which she painted her toes; anxious that the polish on the floor doesn’t seep and stain the beautiful tiles.

  I have to clear that up.

  Maya grabs a loose roll of toilet paper and looks up at the clock face, no longer obscured by steam, and hurries back to the bedroom.

  It’s 8.40 p.m. and James has been gone for over two hours.

  I was asleep for ages.

  Maya looks to the door, before crouching down and smearing the thick droplets of drying enamel across the tile, turning it from deep scarlet to brown. She tries not to cry as she knows she’s making it worse.

  This is so unlike him.

  Maya throws on her jersey dress, and then unzips the front pocket on her small daypack, takes out a Sharpie and looks around for a piece of paper.

  Nothing.

  She doesn’t want to tear a page out of her precious notebook, the Liberty one with trip jottings and column ideas and notes on what makes a hotel bedroom lovely – so she goes back to the bathroom and takes another few sheets of toilet paper. She walks back to the chest of drawers and writes, although thick black pen bleeds onto the thin paper:

  Gone to look for you around the night market. It’s now 8.45 p.m. I’ll come back here if I can’t find you… Mx

  Three sentences. More desperate than the three sentences with which Maya first caught James’ attention. A note. The note. In this note, panic stifles hope.

  Maya grabs her coin purse and room key and steps into her bronze Havaianas. She gives one more look around the room before she leaves. Standing at the threshold and glancing back over her shoulder, the room feels eerie, not enticing. She curses herself, sad and hungry to the core, lamenting that decision to not bring phones with them on this trip.

  Where is he?

  58

  Weaving among the stalls of the night market, treading carefully so as not to step on artisan textiles, batik bags, hippie-chic clothes and low-lit lanterns, laid out proudly and orderly on colourful blankets on the floor, Maya looks at a merchant, a young mother, and smiles. The woman smiles back, before scolding her daughter, who is twirling around in a whirl of colourful scarves and shawls.

  Has she seen James? Might he have photographed her? She has a face he would have liked to photograph.

  The merchant looks back at Maya, hopefully, and proffers a dress she thinks Maya might like. Plain yellow cotton with a band of little lilac flowers like forget-me-nots dotted around a width above the hem. Maya takes the offering, stroking the dress, pretending to be interested, plucking up the courage to ask the woman if she’s seen a Western man with a camera around his neck. But she knows she probably won’t understand her question.

  Maya feels the soft cotton dress, stroking it with her thumb. She pictures herself in a not-distant future and thinks it would look lovely in Ubud or Borobudur, from pictures of towns she has looked at, places she and James are meant to be heading to next. She nods and smiles at the vendor, as if to say it’s lovely, looking from the woman to her daughter and feeling terrible that now is not the time to buy a new dress, before giving a look of apology. As Maya releases the fabric from her tanned and tired hand, she hears a voice whisper, low in her ear.

  ‘You’d look beautiful in that.’

  Maya inhales sharply, and spins around.

  ‘What the actual—?’

  ‘Can I buy it for you?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Maya’s arms hang by her side in defeat.

  ‘Same as you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world, so stunning and serene. I’m here to see Luang Prabang. And you. Please, Maya, please let me buy you that dress.’

  ‘Jon, no.’

  The vendor looks confused.

  Maya’s brow knits as she looks up at Jon, smilin
g down at her.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she tries again.

  ‘Third time a charm? Isn’t that what they say?’

  Maya looks around the low labyrinth of the night market. She can’t see James, tall and reassuring and ready to rescue her again. Maybe he isn’t going to rescue her this time.

  ‘This isn’t a coincidence, is it?’

  ‘Would you believe me if I said it was? That it’s serendipity.’

  Maya thinks for a second, and opens her mouth, but words fail to come out.

  ‘Well, I think it’s serendipitous we’re both here, in another beautiful place, bumping into each other again. Star-crossed lovers, if you will. But I did make it happen this time, I have to confess.’ Jon holds up his palms in submission. ‘I’ve come for you, Maya.’

  ‘Come for me?’

  The little girl, her hair swept in a low side parting, messy and sticking up behind her ears, steps forward, to watch the white couple in front of her in fascination, as if they are something from a soap opera she once saw on her friend’s television.

  ‘Just hear me out please.’ Jon brings his palms together. ‘I skipped the le Carré shoot to find you. I’m going to get in all manner of trouble with my director, but I’m not going back to finish filming until I’ve said this to you.’

  ‘Jon, don’t.’

  Maya puts her finger to his lip and she remembers how they felt on her neck, where his whisper still lingers.

  Jon moves it away gently, putting his hand around Maya’s wrist. ‘When we wrap, I want to go home, I want to go back to London, with you. Home means nothing without you. My life has meant nothing without you for the past seven years. Please.’