He goes on to tell me, softly, in few words, about the travel-adventure company he’s starting with a Parisian friend he met in India. They’re pitching to investors this week. He draws a business card from his leather notebook, and I move next to him to accept it. We sit close together despite the heat. The card has images of kayaks, palm trees, a shadow doing yoga.
—Travel gets you into the world, he says. We’re about that. You’re only in the world through your body, you know, the way it interacts with different places and with people.
—You’re not from Nova Scotia? I ask.
He shakes his head, unsurprised to be asked this.
—I grew up in New Zealand, England for school, then India the last six years. I have an odd accent. I know.
I observe the rhythm of his gestures. He exudes ease, comfort with his body despite the heat. He wears a faded red T-shirt that looks soft. We are still talking as the sun begins to set over the river island and people crowd down to the quais with picnics and music. The man who isn’t Seb buys beers from a man selling Heinekens, who knows Hindi and is amused to speak it with the man who isn’t Seb. We go on talking. I learn about his love affair this way. His first month in India, he met a girl from America. She was learning Ayurvedic medicine in Varkala. She wanted to be a doctor. It was years ago, but he describes her vividly, talks of the way some people burrow inside you and won’t let you forget them. He didn’t realize. All that mattered to him at the time was freedom, the ability to follow his instinct in any direction, unfettered.
—And now?
—Yeah, he says, you can go too far with it, like anything. Go too far with freedom and it shuts itself off. I lost her. She must have married, changed her name. I can’t find her.
This isn’t the Seb of Ella’s time. He is reflective. He feels regret. Yet such sensitivity may have been exactly what Ella found in Seb. With a start, I realize how close I’m sitting, the way my face is tipped to his, my eagerness for his soft, slow words, for the texture of his voice and breathy silences. And him? He is pushing the girl, the lost love, between us. I have slipped into Ella, become too much. And this is the point.
Nevertheless, I try to recover myself, to return to researcher mode.
—So you did love her. You just didn’t realize it at the time.
He makes a joke and dismisses the subject. Later, his friend meets us on the quai and invites me to dinner. The friend’s flirtation only exacerbates Seb’s disinterest. I leave them, pondering in the harsh light of the Métro tunnel how this encounter will feed the development of Seb. This man lost all contact with his Varkala love, as Seb had with Ella. He grew sad when speaking of her years later. Is Seb similar? What, if anything, did he feel? He and Ella spent so much time together. Is he haunted, wherever he is, by the Ella who, according to the journals, he couldn’t love?
11
THE SUN ON THE ROAD TO X burned down into rock valleys dotted with shrubs and pines. The road tacked at hard angles. I’d asked polite questions when we rented the car and bought green mango strips with chili at the market. How long was the drive? How often would Seb return to X now that he lived in Chiang Rai? He was laconic. I almost regretted coming. Then he said something weird:
—I think you’ll like the people in X. It’s like … they’re playing at being.
His body leaned toward me into a turn, brushing my shoulder.
—Isn’t everyone, I asked, playing at being?
—No, he said, smiling at the road. I’m different.
—Why?
—Take you, for example. You’ve come here, you’ll find yourself or whatever, and you’ll go home. This isn’t a phase for me, he said, gesturing to the countryside around us, wild and mountainous. I’ll do this for the rest of my life. I’ve given up home.
He spoke gently, but his words reproached me for clinging to a home that had never been real. Brief flash of us traveling together, nomadic around the world. I asked where he’d go next.
Seb slid his hands around the steering wheel.
—Korea or Saudi, maybe … supposed to pay well there.
Silence settled again as Seb eased around the switchbacks, controlling the descent of the car. Muay had been scandalized when I told her about my trip. Alone? With someone you don’t know? I’d told her I trusted Seb, which was shorthand for the grounding I felt when he was there.
—In X, they’re fun, Seb was saying. Nothing is serious. When the house flooded during the monsoons, we bought beer and Super Soakers and shot the floodwater out the windows.
—Why did you move?
—Oh, you can’t stay in X. You’ll see. And …
His expression hovered between a smile and a wince.
—And?
—There was a girl.
—In Chiang Rai? I asked, feeling my stomach tighten.
—In X, he said. With some Thai girls, it’s … It can be too much.
Seb’s laughter, raw and nervous, made me feel an immediate sympathy for the girl.
—X is a strange place, he said. It’s like time doesn’t move there. I knew if I stayed, I’d wake up really old and not know how it happened.
Whenever Seb said something serious, his vowels changed, became almost British. In another tone, practical, logical, he said:
—Now this is what I’ll never understand. Different vendors selling exactly the same thing at exactly the same price right next to one another. How does that work?
Along the road, pineapple carts were spaced at intervals, then tamarind sellers, pomelos like bowling balls, then carts filled with baskets of a small brown fruit I thought was longyan.
—Think of the opportunity, I said. You could sell guavas, condoms, anything different and make a killing.
—Ay, capitalism, Seb said. Can’t take the American out of the girl.
—You could sell haircuts.
—Or stereo equipment.
—Or motorcycle tires.
We descended this way, the sun burnt orange, moon rising low in the sky. The highway smoothed and flattened, and there were lane markings, billboards, and traffic lights. In Chiang Mai, we stopped at a riverside restaurant Seb knew before pressing on to X to eat the lotus and forget the pull of home.
THE PATIO WAS LIT WITH TORCHES and thronged with zombies, chests painted white, flappers budding out of red feather boas, Batman and Superwoman straining a hammock, wine-stained Bacchae, Hansel and Gretel smeared in icing, human-size insects, antennae bobbing, faces distorted by carnival masks. Electronica buzzed in my bones. Seb’s friends were dressed as butterflies. They gave me satin, wings, and glitter. Seb persisted in his white T-shirt, refusing offers of rapiers, wigs, and lederhosen. We left our bags in the car. I wondered where we would sleep.
At the edge of the lawn, fire sticks burst into flame. A crowd gathered to watch as a man swung the chains in simple circles. He stopped. A girl was crossing the lawn, silver bangles reflecting the torchlight, wings slipping from her shoulders. Her hair in dreads made a sort of crown. A murmur moved over the patio as she took the fire sticks. Ribbons of light unwound from her arms, fire scripts spinning in air.
—She’s good, Seb said under his breath.
Another butterfly girl, beside us, heard him.
—Nunchucks, she said. You need them if you want to get good. She practices every day.
The arcs soared higher, energetic. Seb turned to her.
—I’ll leave you my pair, darling. I can’t use them in the north. No parties like this.
The girl looked me over; then Seb squeezed her shoulder as she wandered off. Her brash British accent remained in my ears, unsettling.
Around me, everyone was falang and young—though costumes made it hard to know for sure. In a corner of the patio, a man was crouching with a fancy camera, tucking it close to his abdomen for different angles on the dancing flames.
—These people, What do they do? I asked Seb.
—English teachers, mostly. She’s in massage school, he said, gesturing
to a girl making grass angels on the lawn. Some on gap years …
I liked how he would say something, then let it settle, feel its weight. He took a fresh beer from the cooler and opened it against the ledge. The fire dancer had stopped to talk to someone. Seb took a swig of his Chang. The flame dangled like a listless pendulum from her wrist.
I asked Seb about the other girl’s accent. Something off about it, British but too strong.
—She picked it up from Tatiana and the others, he said. American as you when I met her. She’s from Ohio.
Across the patio, a Thai woman, uncostumed in a white tunic and jeans, was looking around her, amused, twisting her long black hair around her wrist. It made me feel sane to see someone else registering how senseless all this seemed. Feeling my stare, she smiled.
—Are you from here? I asked, moving toward her.
—Not far, she said. Chiang Mai.
—How do you know these people?
—They’re friends, she said with a hint of suspicion.
I wanted to tell her that I was more out of place than she, that I’d asked out of solidarity. But I looked just like everyone else with my glittered face and butterfly wings.
—They can be silly, she said, but it’s different, and I like variety. See you again soon, she said politely, moving past me.
Seb, who had been talking to someone, noticed us and leaped after her, taking her hand. They hugged a long time. I felt a noble bruising. He loved her. How could he not? She was herself amid this lurching sea of travesty. If I were him, I’d love her, too. Alone in the crowd on the patio, I was too much, out of place, angry at myself and at Seb.
On the lawn, a man in a sailor suit was singing and stumbling away from a flapper trying to calm him. Giving up, she sat on the grass and smoked, while the sailor bared his chest to sing to the moon.
—He’s singing Icelandic folk songs, Seb said, beside me again. Out of control.
Seb reached as if to put a hand on the small of my back but stopped, thinking better of it. Next to us, a group opened a Styrofoam box of pad thai and began to eat with their hands.
—Sing the one about the lovesick goat man!
The sailor’s movements grew wilder, more exaggerated.
—His ex used to live in the house, Seb said. From Norway or Sweden. Incredibly sexy.
I shot him a glance. Was I his confidante, a drinking buddy?
The sailor set off toward the driveway, the fire dancers nowhere in sight. Dunking the sticks in kerosene, he blew tongues of fire.
—He’s going to kill himself.
—He’ll burn.
Laughter. The voices were high-pitched and overly clear, as if telling stories to children.
—Burning bodies.
—Smell bad. Putrid.
—Charred skin.
—A roast, Seb said under his breath.
A group assembled in front of the sailor, lurching right, then left, mirroring his rocking. I expected Seb to help, but he just leaned his elbows on the ledge, shaking his head.
The man began to dance more vigorously. Towering over those trying to calm him, he sloughed them off like insects, his face waxen in the firelight.
A splash extinguished the flames. I looked up in time to see the female fire dancer set a bucket on the pavement. Someone caught the sailor’s arm, but he wrenched himself free, wiping his face and then fleeing beyond the hedges and into the street. The pursuit continued.
—He’s going right for the monkey, Seb said. They keep a wild monkey in a cage. It screams at you with a human scream. Tear your face off if it ever got out.
Soon there were strains of a victory song from the street:
—What shall we do with a drunken sailor? What shall we do with a drunken sailor? What shall we do with a drunken sailor?… Ear-ly in the morning.
The rescue party appeared on the lawn, carrying the subdued man by his wrists and ankles.
—Put him in the brig!
—Not yet. Rusty razor first!
The music had stopped. The man lay limp on the lawn, a plaything for the revelers, who appeared to be shaving the soft hair on his stomach. I turned to Seb in disgust, but he was no longer there.
I was independent, of course, and didn’t need to be hitched to his side all night. But his absence made me anxious. Why couldn’t he have said where he was going or that he’d be right back? Hoping to find him, I moved into the house, feeling suddenly the effects of all our drinks. Masked creatures brushed my body as they passed.
Sinking down against the wall of a corridor, I breathed patchouli and sandalwood, smells that signified a world without weight. Low light turned faces alien blue, drunk on our elsewhere Orient. The Thailand of X is not a place on any map, but a made-up country, a land of grown–up children who’ve stopped clocks to live in a world projected onto living space. X is a playground with motorbikes and monkeys, where everyone is young, glittered, and feathered. X is not a place, but the negative of place, latter-day colonialism of the existential kind.
I got to my feet and walked on, jostled by masked inebriates. Time stood still. If I couldn’t find Seb, I’d be stuck here. I’d wake up in this corridor, an old woman with butterfly wings.
Pressing on a half-open door, I found myself in a room full of butterfly girls, chatting and draped over triangle cushions and bamboo mats in a circle. Pictures of Hepburn-looking women were taped to the walls, along with cutouts of collaged red lips and Louis Vuitton handbags.
—Sit down, someone said, and tell us who you are.
I recognized the faux-British accent.
—Seb’s friend from Chiang Rai, I said.
—We didn’t think he was fucking non-Thais, she said, laying out tarot cards. That’s his rule, anyway, what he says.
I didn’t correct her. The fire dancer, hiding a smile, rose from her seat and took my hand, leading me to a free cushion. There was a teapot in the center of the circle, a clay pipe streamed white smoke, and fat bundles of incense burned in coffee mugs throughout the room.
—Have some tea. Lapsang souchong.
—Smoky.
—Poppy.
—No, that’s opium. Idiot.
—No judgment.
Someone handed me a cup. Tea leaves drifted lazily to the top. Lapsang souchong had the taste of smoke, of ashes.
—Tell us all about yourself, someone said. Can we not interest you in a smoke? How long have you been in Thailand?
—A month, I said.
—You’re a baby! You’ll stay on. You’ll love it. None of us ever wants to leave!
—You can’t get a closet in London for what we pay here, said the faux-British girl.
—She’s American. You’d never guess, would you?
—She’ll never tell you. You’d have to beat it out of her.
—We did! Have a listen.
Laughter.
—It’s sad with Seb gone, she said, shifting subjects. We miss him. And Fah was lovely.
—She’s not dead, is she? Just have her over! I’m sure she’ll tell you all the luscious bits, what he’s like, all you want to know.
More laughter.
—Separate beds, the fire dancer told her, gesturing at me, rolling her eyes.
The faux-British girl reshuffled her tarot deck. She warmed to me after that. We talked. Stubborn Americanisms stuck out under her polished vowels and ascending interrogatives. I wondered if it was a conscious effort. When I grew tired and tried to leave, she held me back.
—Your tea leaves! Tatiana reads them! she said, gesturing to the fire dancer.
—I should be first, said another girl.
—Come here, the fire dancer said calmly, brushing away the other cup.
There was a huskiness to her voice I found agreeable. But I didn’t want my tea leaves read. I’m superstitious and don’t like these things. I hate the tarot, for instance. But Tatiana was staring at me. It’s rare for someone to really look at you. I know it’s silly, but it made me feel close
to her. Adjusting my wings, I moved next to her, holding my cup to my chest. She smiled, taking it from me. Her arms were covered with tattoos, a snake eating its tail at her wrist.
She stared up at me from the teacup, then put a finger inside to adjust something.
—Now you won’t die, she said, putting the finger in her mouth.
When I laughed, she narrowed her eyes at me.
—I may have saved your life, but there will still be a break. Nothing I can do about that.
My instincts said to bolt, but as I scooted backward, she grabbed my elbow.
—Look, she said, tilting the cup so I could see. It’s better to know.
I looked, but the leaves made no shape.
—The pattern means a break, she said. See?
She pointed, but the clusters of leaves and stained ceramic meant nothing to me.
—Most of the patterns are about challenging times, she said, periods of change, moves, even war, conflict. Most people think that if the leaves break here, it’s a bad sign. You become someone else. Or something else. But it can also mean opportunity.
She looked at me carefully with something like pity. I felt anger rising. I wanted her to laugh so that I could laugh and then leave this ridiculous room.
She traced circles with her finger on the soft part of my wrist.
—Has it happened already? I asked, thinking of the adoption.
—No, she said, dropping my hand to take a joint from a girl next to her. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s not exact science.
She flung the leaves from my cup into an ashtray.
Outside, the patio was nearly empty. I made a tour of the perimeter, scanning the lawn. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, shadows appeared, people under trees. I made out Seb’s white shirt, purple in the blackness. Relieved, I ran toward him, then stopped. He was bending toward someone, her face tipped toward him in the darkness. Long black hair. I retreated to the patio amid the cloying incense, kerosene vapors, and jasmine.
As I stood, confused, sorting hot feelings, the screen door banged. Then a click. The photographer I’d seen earlier stood in the doorway, his camera pointed at me.
—Sorry, he said. Do you want to see it?
He showed me my image in the display: my profile shadowed by butterfly wings. I’d forgotten I was wearing them. He clicked through other images. In all of them, orange bled into the night. Faces and limbs became stretched patches of flesh.
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