by Aaron Dries
Instead, she said nothing. Of course.
Douche bag. You think that just because you’ve got a guitar, you’re better than the rest of us. That you’re more “in tune” with the traveling experience. You yuppie. You’re a fucking tourist, just like me.
She couldn’t shake off her bitterness and, with a sigh of resignation, stamped toward her room. Her hand latched on to the handle, turned it, and she stepped inside. A ray of light was pouring in through the open window, making it difficult to see, but she wasn’t blinded. Not enough. She saw the flurry of movement through the fireflies of dust, saw Tobias’s final thrust.
Caleb could feel him inside, forcing him into a pleasure-song he didn’t know he could dance so well to. Tobias was making him a part of something he’d been excluded from for a long time: a place where Caleb had no control.
Sex left him stranded between that which was imagined and hoped for, and the reality of where he lay. Submitting, needing. To Caleb, sex was both the beginning and the end; it was his making, his undoing. And this was why he couldn’t let go, no matter how hard he tried. He was afraid that letting go would break him, shattering the illusion of order in his life, his flesh. It was worth the risk.
The door opened. There was a shift in the room’s airflow.
It sucked them out of themselves, a backdraft of awareness.
“Oh, Jesus bloody Christ. Tobias, stop!”
But Tobias’s face was pressed close, ignorant—or perhaps he simply didn’t care. There was a thread of his saliva across his cheek.
“The door!”
Caleb could see his sister’s face over the landscape of Tobias’s back. Before he could cry out again, the door had slammed shut.
3
Amity sat on the hostel’s front step, her sketchbook and pencil case across her knees. Her neck felt tight—a week’s worth of sleepless nights back to haunt her. She was chewing her fingernails again, one torn-off cuticle drawing a sliver of blood. This pain couldn’t be felt over the churn of her bowels.
She looked at the picture, an attempt to cleanse what she’d seen and so the people on the street wouldn’t know she had been crying. It was a sketch of Owen, the first man she had ever been with.
They had both been sixteen and went to the same school in Lismore. Owen was partially deaf, his left ear adorned with a conch-like aid that he’d never become accustomed to and was embarrassed by. He would take it off when they were out of class together, preferring to sign in silence, until the burn she sometimes ignited in him took over, and his hands would still, language left behind, as he inched his fingers closer to hers.
Were she to finish the illustration, she would have sketched broad swimmer’s shoulders, tufts of curly Samoan hair, the curve of his brown belly. But Owen’s eyes were all she needed, all she wanted.
She had ridden her bicycle out to the sugarcane fields on the outskirts of Evans Head, a place she rarely visited because it reminded her of her father. There, Owen worked with his uncle. It was night, the air cool but full of ash, the tread of her wheels carved through the fall.
They had been burning back the fields, the sky a mushroom cloud of reflected light against the smoke and billions of firefly embers flirting with stars. The closer she got, the more heat she could feel against her face. It almost got to be intolerable, but then she saw Owen’s silhouette against the flames and stopped.
He left his uncle and the other workers, joined her. Together, they watched it all burn, inhaled the stink of boiling sugar. Owen, bare-chested and sweaty, was blackened by grit. He took her hand and kissed the knuckles and then led her away from the others. He pushed her bike for her.
They found a clearing, crossed it and lay down together near the trees. Ash continued to fall around them, coating their bodies as they removed their clothes. Flickering flame-shadows through the brambles, cast against his lowering body. He had been loving and gentle, and despite the initial pain as he played with her and slipped inside, she found joy. His eyes were open the whole time. Until it was over. His come splayed across the grass. And then he brushed gray ash off her shoulders and helped her back into her clothes. She was shaking. She was alive.
Owen moved away with his parents just under a month later, and when Amity’s mother asked her what was wrong, why was she crying all the time, she’d picked up a tea cup and thrown it against the wall.
He was her first, and there had only been one other, an older man whom she met online. He had crooked teeth, calloused hands. This man was the only person from that other world that she had revealed her deafness to. Ever. Amity would never do that again.
Food stalls had been erected on the street in the five minutes since she’d been on the street. There were platters of chili frankfurters, carrot crêpes and deep-fried insects. Hobbled women, bent double over their canes, bought MSG-coated cockroaches by the handful and chewed on them as though they were popcorn.
Jesus, that’s the last thing I want to see right now.
She didn’t know if she wanted to keep on crying, or if there was nothing else to do but give in and laugh. Amity didn’t think this was a decision she could make; her body would cast that stone of its own accord. And until that point, she had no choice but to relent.
The street looked different than it had the prior day, or even when she’d woken that morning. The mechanics of the city had been exposed, unveiling the ugly, turning cogs of the tourist parade.
This is such the fucking pits.
What beauty there had been had been changed. A view appreciated and then deformed in an attempt to capture it. Something limitless and wild had been bound, and that sad fact made her want to vomit even more. A creature of beauty, little more than an infant, had been tied up with wire so people like her could make themselves appear more beautiful by just standing in its blood.
Well, we all need a purpose, said a voice deep inside. Don’t we?
Fuck you.
Oh, the sharp wit! Yeah, so what’s your purpose here, sweetie?
Shut up.
You’re chaos.
Please, just don’t—
You wander so others can get lost.
A hand landed on her shoulder. Amity knew who it was without having to look; her brother smelled of both yesterday’s deodorant and that morning’s sex. The awkward embrace of unwanted conflict tried to take hold of her as Caleb sat down on the step. Amity couldn’t look him in the eye and nor did she want to. There were barbs under her skin, dragging her closer and closer to an anger she didn’t want to acknowledge. An anger that was juvenile and pathetic, one she knew she had to keep to herself: why had it been Caleb who had scored the guy—as always—and not her?
“I don’t want to talk,” Amity signed. She could tell that Caleb was replying from the tap-tap-tap of breath against her neck.
Calm down, said that voice in Amity’s head. Look, why don’t you just suck in some of this fresh Thailand air and try to work up a smile? Because you know what? It just isn’t worth it.
“Just drop it. Drop it. It’s okay,” Amity signed. “But just remember: nobody likes being the third wheel. Got it?” She handed over her sketchbook and pencil case. “I’ll be back. Just let me cool down. I’ll be fine.”
Caleb rolled his right hand as though turning an invisible crank, the sign for “okay”. “Just don’t be long or I’ll start worrying.”
4
Amity fought the temptation to imagine what the buzzing street must sound like. These kinds of questions were aggravating, and she was upset already. This temptation was fueled by the part of her that reveled in her own pain; the part that enjoyed the taste of self-flagellation.
Why don’t you torture yourself some more and think about him?
And I’m not talking about Owen, sweetie.
I’m talking about him.
Just stop, Amity told herself. Please. Let go.
She forged ahead with the taste of bitter pollution in her mouth, ignoring the crowd. It wasn’t easy. It never was
. She approached the bright blue kiosk, trying to avoid the aluminum fence on the corner, and laid her money on the countertop. She covered her ears with her hands and signaled to the proprietor in the straw hat that she couldn’t hear the sale he was trying to spin. Reading his lips wasn’t an option, either. That, he would just have to deal with.
He looked at her with and nodded. His kind eyes expressed understanding, making her soul lifted.
See, I can do this. There’s nothing that you all can do that I can’t.
Amity watched the man’s finger, all calloused and cracked, tap at the laminated price list and tour description in front of him. He smelled of sour sweat and leather; it reminded her of the elephant across the street.
You’ve got to stop thinking about it.
I can’t. There’s got to be someone around here I can report this to.
And who’s going to listen to you? You’re a thin-looking nobody who can’t speak the language. Good luck with that.
Like the temptation to imagine the sounds around her, that voice, too, was difficult to ignore. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, only that it was very much there. It was seven years of faint, auditory recollections rolled into a single tongue, formed in the mouth of a belittled, jealous person. The voice was so easy to hate, yet difficult to fight.
I wish I’d been born deaf. That way I wouldn’t know what I’m missing out on.
The urge to snatch up her cell phone was almost choking; her fingertips brushed against it through the denim stretch of her cutoffs. On the other side of that tiny screen she was normal—just like everyone else. But again, she resisted and focused on the proprietor’s laminated tour description instead.
An unforgettable experiennncee. Meet here for trip to Thailands famous 400 meal restauraunt on beach for breakfast. We then go to Koh Mai Phaaw’s where you feed monkeys. We then take you to special cove for snorkeling, swim with fishes!!!!! We then bring you back here for late lunch at Thailands famos 400 meal restauraunt. Very good price. Off-season depature time EVERY TUESDAY at 7 am.
Amity blinked and, in that millisecond of darkness, saw what Caleb’s face would look like when she laid the tickets out in front of him: an expression Amity had longed to see for years. The shock of realization.
Guess what? I’m not the retard you think I am.
But you are, and deep down you know that. You’re chaos, remember? Wait, didn’t we go through this already?
No, you’re wrong. I’m here so people can change the way they think. Just because I’m deaf doesn’t mean I don’t want to be listened to… I love Caleb to death, but man, he’s got to realize that he’s turning into Ma.
Never underestimate how much you can be underestimated.
The proprietor tipped his hat to her and reached forward to pluck up the money but stopped. He glanced up at her through heavy-lidded eyes. He pointed to the soiled baht on the counter and raised the index of his right hand to her. Only then did she realize that the finger ended at the knuckle.
Ticket for one? the gesture implied.
Amity collected her thoughts and cast her decision.
Chapter Eight
Sycamore
1
It was the eve of their arrival. Monday night was about to ease into Tuesday morning. Tickets had been purchased, and the paths leading the tourists to that sugar-white beach off Hua Hin’s coastline were clearly etched, as defined and immoveable as a scar.
2
The Thai teenager was slight of build yet tall for her age, clothed in a pink shirt that pronounced the almond flush of her skin. Two beautiful brown eyes, once wonderful but now cold, slid under the greasy surface of the water. They did not blink.
She’d been split from the upper cusp of her vagina to her sternum; the putrid ink of her intestines darkened the sewer water. A haze of blood. Sweet mango rice escaped, grain by bloody grain, from the sideways knife wound.
Her final meal. Susan Sycamore had watched her eat it.
The girl had downed the dessert quick and fast, swallowing the gloppy mess with the complete trust that she would do so many times again before she died. The teenager didn’t take the time to savor the sweetness of the fruit, the fresh tang of coconut cream.
“I see you,” Sycamore had said over the lip of her beer.
She’d been just one of many white faces in the Chat Chai night market in Hua Hin’s heart, sitting in an open-air bar with a hollowed-out pineapple crammed with chicken fried rice before her. A sea of tourists snapping photographs swarmed, too busy buying their ornamental trinkets and haggling for the best price on that perfect lobster to notice her.
Earlier that morning, she’d bought a pair of electronic hair clippers and reshaved her scalp bald. Tufts of sun-bleached hair fell from her head, landing on the porcelain rim of the washbasin. She’d swept the clippings into a plastic bag. Sycamore couldn’t recall why she’d been so compelled to shave herself in the beginning—but compelled she had been. It was hard to tell why, but the act brought her closer to something. Something undefined, yet obtainable. And until she found it, until that shadow presence revealed itself to her, it would be the carrot on the stick that led her further and further into the dark. From country to country, victim to victim.
She’d watched the girl through the wavering heat waves of a hawker’s barbecue.
“Gonna make it last, baby doll. Last real goo-oood.”
And she had. But it wasn’t enough to still her. It never was.
Sycamore’s sport was almost impossible to get away with in the United Kingdom. She knew that if you spilled blood in the civilized world, you got caught. Home turf crime, you do the time, and all that jazz. But travel was a different game. Travel was freedom.
In London, she was just another nobody with dreams of reknitting flesh. Back home, she was a schoolteacher, a woman not in control of herself but controlled by laws, policies and expectations. It was a castrated life.
Freedom.
She lifted her bloodstained hands and formed a finger-to-thumb frame, trapping the dead girl within the square. “Click,” she said. A photograph formed in her mind, though it was soon to fade.
3
Tobias and Caleb left Amity in her room, where she was bent over a series of postcards. They walked to the beach, and there, a crowd was loosing paper lanterns into the sky. Bright lights rode the waves of air. Lost shooting stars. Their hands were intertwined in the dark as they kissed. Teenagers laughed around them as they ran with torches, hunting for soft-shelled crabs.
“I am still so embarrassed about this morning,” Tobias said. They were now close together, breast to breast, lying on a weatherworn reclining chair that someone had forgotten to take home after a day in the sun. Tobias’s breath smelled of chewing gum.
Caleb nuzzled his face against Tobias’s stubble, the brush of it against his skin sending ripples of excitement through him. “Please, don’t worry about it. I spoke to Amity today, and sure, she was weirded out about it, but it’ll be okay. She’ll come around.”
“Of all the times for her to walk in—”
“Ah! Don’t even say it, Tobias! It makes me tense up just thinking about.”
“But I feel bad.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. I just do.”
The brittle leaves of the palm trees clattered together in the stirring breeze. Lightning flashed over the ocean. “This place,” Caleb said, “it’s just so beautiful.”
“Yes. It is, isn’t it?”
Caleb loved the chunkiness of his accent; the way words didn’t form in his mouth, they clashed. He was so apart from any world he’d ever envisioned being intertwined with. “I really admire how you’ve just gone off on this huge adventure, Tobias.”
“It’s no big thing. Lots of people do it.”
“No, not all people. And not for so long. Three years on the road—and then going to New Zealand. Wow. The concept floors me, honestly.”
“It’s important to do
it when you are young, before you have a wife and babies and all of that stuff.”
“Ha! Yeah. So you think you’d like to have kids someday?”
“Oh, yeah. I love the babies. I think I will be a good papa. Doing all the jobs and changing the nappies and that kind of thing. It’ll be great.”
Caleb saw the curve of his dark cheeks floating in lantern light. It made him smile. “You’d be a great father. And I can tell that you’re going to make a lot of people very happy one day.” A small lump formed in his throat, and the only way to stop its growth was to tighten his grip on his hand. “Your family must miss you.”
“Yes, of course. And I miss them too. It is not nice missing important things, like birthdays and Christmas. I missed my older sister’s graduation, and she was not happy with me. She is going to be a doctor. A good one too. My parents are very proud of her, and me too. Her name is Alina and she has very pretty hair, just like yours. I feel bad for missing her special day. And even now, after all this time, I still don’t like being away from my little brother.”
“What’s his name?”
“Eldric. He gets so sick very easily. Down Syndrome.”
Tobias looked as though he was going to say more, but fell silent again. Caleb lifted his hand and kissed the back of it. He didn’t want to tell him how sorry he was to hear this—although he was. After all, he hated it when people said the same thing about Amity, because at the end of the day, their apologies on behalf of the universe, on behalf of all empathy, pretty much amounted to beans.
“You make me feel, like, comfort,” Tobias said. “Is that the word? Nobody has done that before. And I think I need that comfort, after being alone for so long. After Matt as well, who was so bad for me. Do you know what I am meaning?”
Yes, he believed he did.
“Do you think I’ll come back here one day and it’ll all be just as awesome? Just as special?” Caleb asked. One of the lanterns in the sky caught alight and trailed toward the dark horizon in a rain of sparks.