by Jon Evans
Danielle doesn’t say anything. Estelle’s sudden transformation is unnerving, as if the pixieish purple-haired woman has been possessed. Danielle isn’t ready for a heavy political conversation, or this kind of righteous passion.
“Sorry,” Estelle says, reading Danielle’s reaction. She smiles sheepishly, lets her fury dissipate. “Didn’t mean to go into lecture mode. But if you think you want to do something about what you saw, let us know. We can help you set up in Paris, we’ve got friends and places there, or wherever else our next action is. We take care of each other.”
“Everyone’s trying to recruit me,” Danielle says. “Laurent too.”
“We’re hoping to work with him too. He seems like a good man.”
Danielle nods. “So does Angus. How long have you known each other?”
“Since my divorce. Three years, I guess. Not like it sounds, I was already separated when we met. I married a Brit when I was twenty-one and stupid. I was all packed up, ten days away from flying back to Alabama forever, when I met Angus. At a protest, appropriately. And ten days later I decided, at Heathrow, at the gate, I didn’t want to get on the airplane.”
“Wow. Like a movie. Romantic.”
“Maybe a bit like you and Laurent, if you don’t mind me saying so.” Estelle pauses. “You want to know something I haven’t told anyone else yet?”
Danielle looks at her warily. “Okay.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t, but, honey, you give good trust vibes.”
“If it’s something legal, maybe you shouldn’t –”
Estelle laughs. “No,” she says, “don’t worry. It’s not like that. Angus asked me to marry him, before we came here.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow.”
Danielle wishes Estelle hadn’t said anything. She hardly knows this woman. She isn’t ready to discuss her marriage proposal. But she can hardly ignore the topic now. “What are you going to say?” she asks.
“I told him I couldn’t answer him yet.” Estelle sighs. “Not that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with him. I do. I love him desperately. But marriage, having seen how it goes wrong…I’m divorced, my parents are divorced, my brother is divorced, it’s not a great family track record, is it? And let’s face it, with what we’ve devoted our lives to, what are we going to do, settle down in a house in the country and raise a brood? There’s a famous poem in the UK, it starts, ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.’ I mean, the whole concept of marriage is…suspect, I think. For people like us, anyway. I’m sorry. I’ve been brooding like crazy. Picking at it like a scab. As if we haven’t got enough else going on, he had to spring this on me too.”
“He seems like a good man,” Danielle says inadequately.
“Yes. Yes, he is. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to drop this on you. But I haven’t had anybody to talk to. It’s not like I can have a heart-to-heart with Keiran.”
Danielle smiles at the notion.
“How long did you date him?” Estelle asks.
Danielle thinks. “Four months? Five? Not that long. But he’s about the only ex I ever stayed friends with.”
“How did you meet?”
“In California. He was working for some dot-com cyberpunk startup that went nowhere. I was living in an Oakland, in this warehouse squat we called a collective loft, doing a lot of drugs and pretending to be an artist.” Danielle half-smiles. “A match made in counterculture heaven.”
Estelle says, after a moment, “He has a very strong personality.”
“At first he often seems like the world’s biggest asshole,” Danielle agrees.
“And then?”
Danielle sighs. “With him it’s a matter of respect. It’s almost childish. His problem is he’s too smart. I mean, I’ve met a lot of smart people, I’m sure you have too, but take it from me, Keiran’s on a whole different level. He’s so smart he feels total contempt for just about the whole rest of the human race. He assumes people aren’t worth talking to and it’s up to them to prove otherwise. So at first he treats you like dirt. But then if he sees you do something smart or interesting or valuable, whatever, he turns into a pretty decent human being. I mean, he’s still sharp-tongued, you have to grow a thick skin, but he’s not as bad as he seems at first. He’s totally trustworthy, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’d walk through fire for his friends. Complaining loudly the whole way.”
Estelle nods. “That’s more or less what Angus says.”
“Maybe he’s different now. I’ve seen him maybe five times in the last four years. People do grow up. But he doesn’t seem to have changed much.”
“I think his emotional age got stuck at twelve,” Estelle says, and then looks dismayed by her own words. “Sorry. That just came out. Maybe he’ll grow on me.”
“He usually does,” Danielle agrees. “Like a cancer.”
* * *
That afternoon, Danielle sits in their hut and stares at her Certificate of Completion, verifying that she has successfully finished the Satori Ashram’s prestigious yoga teacher-training program, and tries to feel some sense of accomplishment beyond that of a Girl Scout who has received a merit badge. She can turn this piece of paper into a career, if she wants, go back to America and teach nine or nineteen classes a week. The idea does not appeal. She adores yoga for itself, but the notion of teaching it to stressed-out yuppies who will never devote themselves to it like she has is repellent.
The door opens and Laurent enters their hut. He is mildly surprised to see her. “Shouldn’t you be away bending yourself into a pretzel?”
“I’m done,” she says, showing him the certificate.
“Congratulations. Does that mean we’re supposed to leave?”
“No. The next group hasn’t arrived yet. And anyways I’m sure I could stay as an assistant teacher if I want.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
Laurent nods. “You know, I think I will miss this place.”
Danielle looks around. Their home for the last week is exceedingly spartan; two-by fours hammered into an A-frame shape with visible cracks between the planks, a misshapen table, folding chairs, and a crude bed with a lumpy mattress and flower-print sheets, canopied by a tattered mosquito net. But she will miss it too. Despite the uncertainty, the constant spectre of danger, this has been one of the best weeks of her life.
“Let’s celebrate your graduation,” he suggests. “Go for a ride.”
“We’re supposed to meet Keiran and the rest tonight.”
He smiles. “That leaves all day.”
They rent a motorcycle from a teenager in Anjuna with a Limp Bizkit T-shirt. Laurent rejects the first machine they are offered and settles on a battered but smooth-running Yamaha. Danielle thinks for the first time of the man in Hampi who never regained the Bajaj Pulsar that the Kishkinda men stole, and makes a mental note to find some way to repay him.
First they go to the beach, which extends for almost a mile between rocky headlands. Westerners, Indians, dogs, and a handful of cows roam and play on its sand, which is fissured by a winding tidal river. Several fishing boats are stationed above the high-tide line, dark wooden hulls about thirty feet long and six wide, each with a single outrigger pontoon the size of a person, attached by ten-foot-long wooden struts. The boats are full of folded nets that smell of fish. The water is warm and glorious. Laurent and Danielle frolick, body-surf, playfight, lean back and float and let the waves wash them where they will. When they walk back onto the beach, the hot sun dries them within minutes.
They remount the Yamaha and zoom through Anjuna, past its cafes and tattooed young Israeli backpackers, fill up at the local Bharat Petroleum station, and ride northwards on the coastal highway, the glittering blue of the Arabian Sea to their left, vivid green jungle to the right. Danielle rides with her arms wrapped tightly around Laurent, her head on his shoulder, wind in her face, the Yamaha engine rumbling contentedly beneath them, and thi
nks: This is happiness. I am happy. She knows they are still in danger. She does not know where she and Laurent will go next, or if he even wants to stay together. But she manages to expel all that from her mind. It is only the future. This is the present, and in it she is happy.
They stop for fresh coconuts and pineapple and cool-drinks, the Indian term for sodas, in a small, dusty village an hour’s drive away. They stop again when they spot an empty beach on the way back. There they find a secluded nook, in the shadow of a huge rock, where they have long, slow, tender sex that brings tears to Danielle’s eyes. They return to Anjuna and wander its vast, kaleidoscopic, twice-weekly market that attracts thousands of tourists and hundreds of locals. Finally they ride south to Calangute as the sun sets, casting a rosy glow on all the world before it dips into the ocean’s warm darkness. Danielle is blissfully exhausted by the time they finally reach Calangute’s Le Restaurant, where Keiran, Angus, and Estelle wait for them.
* * *
“What I’d like to know is why they’re after us in the first place,” Danielle says.
“Yes,” Laurent agrees. “My whole organization, arrested and jailed. Danielle and I captured, and who knows what they might have done to us. Just as your group sends Danielle to Jayalitha. I can’t believe this is just coincidence.”
Angus shrugs apologetically. “And I can’t believe it’s not. Jayalitha was collecting evidence for us, we wanted her to come back to the UK with it, but no bombshells.”
“No point in speculating,” Keiran says decisively. “We simply don’t have sufficient data for any conclusion. Let’s get everyone out of here safely, then try to find out what happened.”
“How long do we have to wait here?” Danielle asks.
“Your new passports should arrive in 48 hours. Mulligan’s finished with them, visas, stamps, everything. He’s DHLing them tonight. Two-day delivery or your money back. You should be safe enough until then. Just avoid anyone who might ask for ID. And try to blend in, stay in places with lots of other tourists. Kishkinda might have sent their own people to look for you. Don’t go anywhere that you stand out.”
Laurent eyes Keiran. “I thought you were a computer security expert.”
“Good hackers understand all security systems,” Keiran says. “Hardware, software, wetware, meatware.”
“Wetware? Meatware?”
“Brains. Human beings.”
Laurent nods. “These brand-new passports of ours – what happens when we pass through outgoing customs, and the Indian officer types the fake visa number into his computer?”
“Define fake,” Keiran says shortly.
Laurent has to think about the answer for a moment. Then he says, “Not issued by a legitimate authority.”
“Define legitimate authority.”
“For a visa, the national government in question.”
Keiran gives Laurent a patronizing look. “Can you be more specific?”
Danielle suppresses a sigh. It’s apparent that Keiran has decided to dislike Laurent. Apparently he hasn’t grown up any in the last four years. He doesn’t look any different, either; still a tall, slender man with pale skin, spiky dark hair, and almost disturbingly luminous green eyes. And he still wears impatience as his default expression.
“The foreign ministry?” Laurent suggests, vexed by Keiran’s questions. “What are you getting at?”
“No. When embassies issue visas, when customs officers check them, they don’t call the foreign ministry. They punch the number into their computer. The legitimate authority is not the foreign ministry but their database. Your visas are as real as anyone’s.”
“You’re saying you broke into the Government of India’s computer databases?”
“Please,” Keiran says scornfully. “It wasn’t even hard. Their security is shockingly inept. Patches years out of date. Their network was reasonably hardened, but once I got onto it, a script kiddie could own that database.”
Laurent nods slowly. “I’m impressed.”
“We still have to buy your plane tickets. Where are you going from here?”
Danielle and Laurent look at each other. They haven’t discussed this at all. Danielle quails at the thought of talking about it in front of the others.
“We’ll get back to you tomorrow,” she assures Keiran.
“Do you want to come stay with us until you go?” Estelle asks. “We’ve got a lovely huge house, five bedrooms, more than enough space. And Angus cooks. Good thing, too, ‘cause all I can make are grits and boiled peanuts.”
“That’s nice of you,” Danielle says, smiling at her. She decides she likes Estelle, who seems much more relaxed, more comfortable in her skin, with Angus beside her. The same seems true for Angus; they are one of those couples who seem to take the jittery edge off each other’s personalities. “But it’s too much hassle to move our things tonight, and then tomorrow there’s no point in moving for just one night.” And, she doesn’t say, the ashram is safer.
“Also,” Angus says, “there’s some kind of party tonight, if you’d like to join us.”
She blinks. “A party?”
“A beach rave up by Arumbol,” Keiran explains.
Danielle chuckles. “You’re here twenty-four hours and you’ve already found a party. Keiran, you’ll never change.”
She means it fondly, but she can see, by a wince that quickly vanishes from his face, that he is genuinely stung. She guiltily wishes she could take her comment back.
“Everyone needs a little playtime now and then,” Estelle says. “Come by the house at eleven if you’re interested.”
* * *
Danielle is quiet on the ride back to the ashram. This last week, living in the ashram, waiting for Keiran to arrive, spending every moment living with potentially imminent danger, has been awful, yes, but also thrillingly intense. She and Laurent have clung to one another like children in a storm, barely let each other out of their sight. Being separated was inconceivable. Now their time here is almost over. They have never even talked about what they will do if they make it out of the country. Danielle supposes it was a silent mutual agreement not to jinx their escape. But now they have to talk.
She still knows little about the man she has spent almost every waking moment with for the last ten days. They have traded plenty of colourful anecdotes, from his life in the Foreign Legion and hers as an American counterculture nomad, but no actual history, and he tells his stories like they are of no more importance than amusing tales from a dusty old book, like they happened to someone else. She has told him about some of her exes, but he has never once mentioned any other women, though she is sure there must have been many. Nor has he spoken of any friends. She knows he is gracious, considerate, strong, brave, smart, funny, and devastatingly good in bed, but she has never seen any real emotion in him – the closest he has ever come is his annoyance at Keiran tonight. It is almost like he is a robot, built to be the perfect boyfriend, with enough of a dangerous past to make him romantic, but no actual baggage.
She doesn’t know why Laurent has made such an impact on her, why the thought of leaving him makes her feel sick. It isn’t just the intense, romantic nature of their first encounter, the way he saved her from some awful fate, their escape from peril like a knight and a princess in a fairy tale. It isn’t just that, unlike most of her relationships, he rather than she is the prize, it’s Laurent who is more beautiful, glamorous, untameable, exciting. It’s that when he’s away from her, she feels old, dull, forgettable, but when he’s with her – she has never felt so intensely alive.
“You’re quiet,” he says, as they walk back to their hut after passing the ashram, nodding to people they recognize as they pass. All the women smile extra brightly at Laurent. Everyone likes him.
They re-enter the hut and he relaxes back on the bed. Instead of joining him and letting him wrap his strong warm arms around her, as she normally would, and as she wants to, she sits on one of the folding metal chairs and says, “We should talk.
”
He cocks his head. “Something wrong?”
“Yeah. The future.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
She says, “Does it even exist?”
“Is this a metaphysical question?”
“No. What happens the day after tomorrow?”
He looks puzzled. “We get our passports and leave the country.”
“Yes. But where are you going? And where am I going? Are we going to the same place? Are we going together? What happens to us now? We haven’t talked about this at all.” Danielle is breathing hard as she speaks. She realizes she is clutching her thighs tightly with her hands and forces them to release.
It takes Laurent an agonizingly long moment to answer. “No. No, we haven’t talked about it. I confess I thought, I suppose I just assumed, that we would both go to the same place, and we would be together there like we are here. If –” He takes a deep breath. “I know this has been strange and sudden between us. Are you saying –” He stops again. Then he says, simply, “Do you want it to end when we leave? Is that what you think is best?”
“No! No. I want – I don’t know what I want. But I know I want you to be there.” Laurent looks at her and says, “I want to go to whatever place you go.”
She blushes with relief and begins to smile.
“But I don’t know if that will be possible.”
Her smile vanishes. She feels like someone just poured a bucket of ice into her stomach. “Why not?”
“I have duties. You know that. My friends and colleagues have been arrested. Jayalitha has been murdered. Kishkinda continues to poison thousands. I can’t give up the fight and go back to America with you.”