Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel

by Bethany Maines

  Hic et nunc, Nikki’s brain translated gratuitously.

  “You can’t wait for the mythical perfect moment in the future. It won’t come. See what you want and go get it. Shortest distance between two points, that’s what life is all about,” Val said, and Nikki frowned. She had no way of refuting Val’s statement, but she couldn’t quite agree with it, either. She sighed and twisted her drink glass until it tore the napkin it was resting on. Val flicked her lighter on and off, playing with the flame.

  “I’m going to mess this all up,” Nikki said, contemplating the soggy remains of the napkin where it clung to her glass.

  “Mess what up?” asked Val, squinting at her watch.

  “This,” Nikki answered, gesturing carelessly around the airport bar. “The mission. Carrie Mae. Whatever. I’m going to blow it.”

  “You worry too much. Besides, why do you think they partner people up for the first missions? You’re not alone. You’ve got me, and who could possibly need more than that?” Val flashed a wide, toothy grin, and Nikki chuckled.

  “No, seriously, just stick with me, kid. Follow directions and everything will work out fine. You can do that, can’t you?”

  Nikki felt the tightness in her chest ease and she nodded, taking a drink of her orange juice to cover her embarrassment. Val flicked her lighter again and then again, until one of the hyenas by the bar made a move.

  “Excuse me, madam,” a man said. He was fifty-something, but very fit, and dressed in the latest in business casual. Nikki guessed that his Italian leather loafers probably cost somewhere north of six hundred dollars.

  “Yes,” Val purred, flicking the lighter again. The flame reflected in her eyes.

  “This is a nonsmoking zone. You’re really not supposed to . . .”

  “Supposed to what?” Val interrupted, leaning forward and smiling. Nikki could see the predator behind the smile, but she wondered if the man could. “Don’t tell me this is bothering you?” Flick, went the lighter. “It’s not as if I’m actually”—flick—“smoking.” Flick.

  “Yes, but the latest security measures . . . you’re not supposed to have a lighter at all,” said the man, backpedaling a bit.

  “Oh, you’re worried about my safety.” Val smiled and patted his hand. “That’s sweet.”

  The man smiled back, relaxing under the onslaught of feminine charm. Nikki gulped the remainder of her orange juice. With grave deliberation, Val lit a cigarette, took a puff, and then handed it to the man.

  “If you wanted a cigarette,” she said loudly, standing and collecting her bag, “all you had to do was ask. But really, they’re not good for you.” She walked away from the table and Nikki hustled to keep up with her. At the bar, she could see a nonsmoking lynch mob starting to form.

  “I think they’re going to hurt him,” Nikki said, looking back over her shoulder.

  “I hope they do,” Val said. “I hate people who think it’s their job to tell me what the rules are.”

  They made the plane with no trouble, but once in the comforting embrace of a business-class seat, Nikki found her eyelids drooping in a southerly direction. She woke up enough to stumble through the Narita airport and onto another plane. The stewardesses changed race, but not smiles, making Nikki wonder if they simply passed the smile down from generation to generation of flight attendants.

  Once in Thailand, Nikki was a step behind Valerie, as usual. Val navigated the bustling maze of the Don Muang Airport as easily as if it were her local mall. They collected their luggage, with Nikki resentfully hauling her backpack and a second bag that contained the enormous makeup case Rachel had given her. She hadn’t felt confident enough to leave any of the gadgets behind, but the bulky case was messing with her packing philosophy.

  Valerie led them toward the sliding double doors that opened onto a crowded sidewalk. It was nearly 10:00 P.M. local time, but the wave of velvet heat seemed to swaddle Nikki in an instant shroud. After the air-conditioned cool of the airport, the incalescence of the sidewalk pulled at her skin in a riptide of warmth. She took a deep breath as if she had just surfaced, but the heat simply swept in her open mouth and filled her lungs. Val walked on as if the torrid temperature were nonexistent.

  The sidewalk was lit with the grainy tint of a freeway tunnel. Val deposited them into a medium-size line that led to a brightly lit booth.

  “What are we doing?” asked Nikki, adjusting the straps of her backpack.

  “Waiting for a taxi.”

  “We can’t just take one of those?” asked Nikki, pointing at the street, which was crammed, end upon end, with taxis.

  “Nah, it’s some sort of unionized thing. You tell this lady in the booth where you want to go, she gives you a ticket, and you hand the ticket to the driver, who deposits you at your destination, then charges you double.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Sometimes the price is really reasonable.”

  Nikki set down her extra bag and, still wearing her backpack, rested it on the railing that cordoned off the line, taking the weight off her shoulders. She’d never been to Asia before. Never been much of anywhere. She supposed that a taxi line wasn’t all that interesting to someone who’d been there before, but she found the hubbub exciting and was having a hard time copying Val’s expression of cool boredom.

  They had reached the front of the line. Val told the woman in the booth the name of their hotel. The woman typed up a receipt, stamped it, and handed it to Val.

  “Mandarin Hotel,” the woman yelled at a driver hovering nearby. The driver nodded and helped them put their bags in the trunk of his taxi.

  As they drove, Nikki noticed that many of the billboards were in English. The city seemed a vast sprawling mess, but modern enough. There was no feeling of entering some mythical, forbidden East, only another grimy twenty-first-century city. Noticing a building surrounded by scaffolding entirely constructed of bamboo, she mentally corrected her classification of the city to somewhere in the early twentieth century.

  She stared out the window at the silent freeway overpass and yellow street lamps flashing by, listening to the hum of the taxi wheels on pavement. She had been on a plane for sixteen hours and her brain felt as though it might slide out her ear at any moment. High above the freeway a stark white billboard proclaimed EDEN. PARADISE FOUND. Busy watching the scenery, she was unprepared when they pulled up in front of a thoroughly modern hotel and she had to scramble after Val.

  “Welcome to the Mandarin,” said a bellboy in slightly accented English, as he opened the front doors with a slight bow. And for the first time Nikki felt as if she’d really and truly left home.

  THAILAND II

  Delicate Elephants

  Nikki woke up with the traveler’s hangover. Dehydrated, confused, sweaty, and sticking to the sheets, she felt the way she did the morning after her three-day post-breakup bender in college. At fourteen hours behind, her body clock was telling her to simply crawl back in bed and stay there, but Bangkok was already bright and sunny, and bustling through its midmorning routine.

  Val knocked on the door, and for once she wasn’t her usual blender full of energy and cigarettes. She was carrying a cup of coffee and was already wearing her sunglasses, but her hair looked perfect as usual.

  “I called Laura,” she said, stifling a yawn. “She’s going to meet us at Lawan’s clinic.”

  Nikki nodded. Reaching for her suitcase, she began looking for things to make herself feel human again.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” said Val, waving negligently and ambling out of the room. “Knock when you’re ready to go.”

  An hour later they walked out of their carefully chilled hotel and into the sweltering heat of a Bangkok day. Born and raised in the Northwest, Nikki had found California dry and unpleasant, like a case of morning mouth desperately in need of a cleansing glass of water, but even California hadn’t prepared her for the intense omnipresent heat of Thailand. She kept moving, as if she could tu
rn a corner and no longer be hot.

  Val gave directions to a cab driver and cracked a window, preparing to light up. Nikki could tell the cabbie was irritated, and she didn’t blame him. The window was the small, thin barrier against the noise and smell of the streets, and Val not only allowed all that in, but she welcomed it with a flick of her ashing cigarette.

  The cab driver wound through the streets and Nikki watched the neighborhoods deteriorate from upscale business to rundown urban poor in a matter of minutes. The cabbie pulled up in front of a small cement block building. Like many buildings in Bangkok, it had a walled courtyard in front and tall front gates nearly flush with the sidewalk.

  A small blue rectangle with white writing was the only indication that the building was meant for public use—the English on the sign read “Chinnawat Clinic.” A guard at the gate was chasing away a gaggle of young boys as they arrived, but he let Val and Nikki in without question. Nikki couldn’t help notice that he was carrying an MP9 submachine gun in the same careless manner in which someone might carry a lunch pail.

  The atmosphere inside the building was one of constrained optimism. The clinic was painfully clean. Dirt and dust had been banished with a regimental exactitude, but the sparse furnishings, threadbare curtains, and sun-faded cheerful health posters featuring happy Thai couples only served to remind the viewer that times were hard.

  They had barely entered the room when Laura Daniels came scuttling through an interior door to greet them.

  “Oh thank goodness,” she said, throwing up her hands and rushing to embrace them. “I’m so glad you’re here!” She released Nikki from her hug and patted at her like a potter pushing clay into shape. “Welcome to the Chinnawat Clinic!”

  She was blondish, plump, and cheerful. The wrinkles on her face were set in permanent laugh lines and her smile seemed a perpetual accessory, but Nikki thought she could detect underlying strain behind her eyes. She was dressed in simple khakis and a pink button-up shirt. Her hair had been tucked into a scarf that fluttered behind her as she moved. Nikki got the feeling that Laura thought this was dressing down.

  “Thanks,” said Val, dusting at her sleeve as if Laura’s hug had somehow dirtied it. “Is there someplace we can go to talk?” She looked around the room, not quite resting her glance on the receptionist, who was eyeing them with a skeptical air.

  “We can use Lawan’s office,” said Laura, beaming. “It’s this way.” She led them behind the desk and into a labyrinth of corridors.

  “What can you tell us about Lawan?” Val asked.

  “Lawan is a dedicated crusader for human rights,” said Laura, proudly.

  “So she didn’t skip town with the contents of the till, then,” Val said. Nikki knew she was joking, but she could see that Val’s tone had annoyed Laura.

  “We help nearly one hundred and fifty people a day, mostly women and children, and we’re financed entirely through donations and volunteer efforts,” said Laura. “Our patients are among the poorest in the city, and we feel that getting them medical care is only part of our mission.”

  “What’s the other part?” Nikki asked when Val didn’t respond.

  “This,” said Laura, throwing open a door to a wide courtyard. Children ran across the sandy ground and climbed on a plastic jungle gym. On the far wall, in big block English letters, someone had painted a quote and surrounded it with bright colors and images of flowers and trees.

  PEOPLE NEVER STOP WAITING FOR THE CHANCE TO CHANGE THE THINGS THAT MAKE THEIR LIVES UNLIVABLE.

  Nikki thought it was an unwieldy quote, overly long and lacking in the succinctness of a truly good line, but she appreciated the sentiment.

  “Kids?” Val asked, apparently not noticing the quote.

  “Those, too,” agreed Laura. “Lawan was helped by my scholarship foundation. That was where we met. She was so young, but even then I could tell that she was destined for great things. We sent her to a boarding school, and it helped change the path of her life. When she came back to Thailand—and believe me, she didn’t have to—she dedicated her life to offering that same chance to others. The kids come here to be in a safe place and maybe get something to eat. Without Lawan, many of them would have already been turned out in the brothels. Lawan believes in building a better future for Thailand. You can’t fake belief like that. So, no, I don’t think she left town with the till or any of the foundation’s money.”

  Val half-shrugged, half-nodded, but didn’t speak. Nikki looked at the building again, seeing the sparsity of decoration this time not as an indication of poverty, but as part of Lawan’s spartan determination to use everything to succeed.

  A tackraw ball flew through the air, interrupting Nikki’s pondering. She caught it and turned it over in her hands. A bit larger than a softball, it was plastic, but made to look like interwoven strips of rattan. Tackraw was a game played like a cross between hackey sack and volleyball, and Nikki had been intrigued by it when she’d seen it in the guide book.

  “Hi,” said a little girl, approaching Nikki.

  “Hi,” Nikki said, holding out the ball. The girl giggled. With a second look, Nikki realized that the girl was probably about fourteen, but so small and pixie-like that she looked younger. She had sparkling black eyes and perfect white teeth that flashed every time she smiled, which was often.

  “I’ll want to see her office,” Val said, and walked away with Laura.

  “Play?” the girl suggested, holding up the ball.

  “Sorry,” said Nikki, shaking her head. The girl shrugged and kicked the ball in a lobbing arc back to the ring of waiting children. In her mind’s eye, Nikki could see the life of a prostitute that Lawan had helped this little girl avoid, and she shuddered at the idea of seeing the girl painted up in garish makeup and waiting for someone to buy her soul an hour at a time. Her respect for Lawan grew even more.

  She hurried after Val and Laura, and had almost caught up with them when they turned a corner. A second later she heard Laura shout out. Running around the corner, Nikki saw Laura tugging at the shoulders of a man in a white coat; he looked like one of the clinic’s staff members. A second man—heavy set, Caucasian, with dark hair and a garish purple shirt—was tugging at something in the orderly’s hand. Val was approaching the little group with long angry strides.

  “Hey!” she yelled, and the white man’s head snapped up.

  He looked back at the orderly and with tremendous strength shoved the orderly backward into Laura, sending them both sprawling. The dark-haired man snatched the object he’d been struggling over out of the orderly’s hands and took off running. The orderly, seeing Val and Nikki bearing down on him, scrambled to his feet and ran in the opposite direction.

  “Go after him,” yelled Val, pointing at the orderly. “I’ve got this one.”

  Nikki nodded as she passed and adjusted her run to a full sprint. Ahead of her, the orderly tipped over shelving, scattering supplies across Nikki’s path. His footsteps echoed as he passed through a covered breezeway between buildings and then crunched out into a gravel-paved courtyard. Nikki hit the courtyard in time to see him bounce from a crate to the wall and then up and over a six-foot-tall back gate with the fluidity of an action star.

  “Jeez,” she muttered, scrambling after him. The street behind the clinic was busy with pedestrians, and Nikki caught only the barest glimpse of the orderly’s white back as he disappeared up the street. She arrived at the street corner and looked both ways for her quarry, and then shrugged her shoulders in defeat as she saw the white jacket hanging over the edge of a stair railing.

  She walked toward the front of the clinic, going the long way around the block to walk off some of her adrenaline. Up ahead of her there was a commotion and she watched as Val shoved someone into the side of a tuk-tuk as she ran by. Nikki took a step, ready to run, and then thought better of it. It was a long block and the two were already well ahead of her. There had to be a smarter way.

  She ran up the block to where she’d
last seen Val. Tuk-tuks were parked in the street, their drivers gathered in small groups, chatting. Nikki spotted one of the three-wheeled, open-sided vehicles with the keys still in the ignition and jumped in. Revving the engine, she tossed the tuk-tuk into Reverse and rolled out into traffic. She heard irate screaming and then a thump as the tuk-tuk’s owner jumped onto the back.

  Nikki rounded the corner of the block just in time to see Val’s quarry taking off on a motorcycle. Val was on the sidewalk, hands on her knees, panting.

  “Get in!” Nikki yelled, slowing down enough for Val to leap on.

  “Your friend seems a little upset,” Val said, landing in the backseat. Nikki glanced in the rearview mirror at the tuk-tuk driver, who, still screaming in Thai, was climbing in beside Val.

  “Watch the road!” Val yelled, and Nikki jerked her head around in time to narrowly avoid a bus. The purple-shirted man was easily weaving through traffic on the more nimble motorcycle. Nikki pulled around the bus, gaining a little on the bike. They were in an older quarter of the city, where the streets were worryingly narrow and the human population seemed to think everything was a sidewalk. Ahead of them, the motorcycle took a hard left. But as he took the turn, a sparkling disk flew out of his pocket like a Frisbee and smashed into the wall—shattering.

  “You’re not going to make that turn,” said Val in a carefully neutral tone, ignoring the debris from the motorcycle and focusing on more important information.

  “I’m going to make the turn,” Nikki said.

  “You’re not going to make it,” said Val again, this time with a distinct note of urgency.

  Nikki assessed the situation again. “You’re right. I’m not going to make it. Get out.”

  “What?” Val yelled.

  “Be my monkey,” yelled Nikki, pointing out the side.

  “Be your own monkey, bitch!” Val yelled back, not getting the concept.

  “I need the balance. Hang out the side!” The tuk-tuk driver was spewing something, probably swear words, but was already clinging to the frame of the vehicle.