The Compass

by Tammy Kling

  There were people who walked into the bike shop and assumed I was Dutch. Many were tourists from other parts of Europe, and some were Asian who couldn’t speak English or Dutch and just pointed to the signs and talked in Japanese or Chinese. The barriers for language were easily covered by the fact that I seemed so much like a local, looked like one, and had mastered the art of fitting in with merely a few words.

  In the essence of escape, I had succeeded. I had escaped the old life and taken on a new one in a new world.

  On a Wednesday afternoon, an American came into the shop and asked to rent a bike. He wore a white T-shirt with the logo of my college alma mater, the University of Florida, on the front, and orange Crocs, which were a sure giveaway of his nationality.

  “I want to rent a bike,” he said.

  “Ik begrijp het niet,” I replied, staring at him as if I did not understand.

  He turned around and waited for his wife, a woman wearing similarly American clothes and shoes. She held a translation dictionary in one hand and a can of soda in the other.

  “Can you say the word for bike in Dutch?” he asked her.

  We waited while the woman flipped through the book. She pointed to the page and showed it to her husband.

  “Fiets,” he said, struggling. “We would like to rent bicycles.”

  “Ja,” I said. Just then Anja walked out from the back.

  “May we help you?” she asked, glaring in my direction.

  The man exhaled as if stress had been released from his whole body.

  “We need to rent bikes,” he said for the third time.

  Anja took care of their order. She fitted the Americans for two beginner bikes, and they were gone.

  “Goede reis!” I said, which meant “have a safe journey!”

  Later that evening we sat in the pub together, and Anja confronted me about it.

  “What is wrong with you?” she said accusingly. “You did not let your fellow countrymen know you were one of them. What, you are Dutch now?”

  “I just prefer to stay anonymous.”

  “Ja,” she scoffed. “So you can hide from your life.”

  That weekend Toin asked me to accompany a group of tourists on a bike outing into the woods and countryside, to see the softer side of the city. It was a tour they did most weekends, with Anja leading along with one of the other bike shop employees, and there was a predesignated route. The tour would begin at the bike shop and wind away out of the city down the roads, into the greener area.

  We started out around eight in the morning, after the last tourist showed up. I had been riding for many weeks now and felt strong, my body awakening before any other part of me, my muscles strengthening and growing.

  The tourists followed in single file, with Anja in the back and me taking the lead. After about an hour, a Mini Cooper came from nowhere and nearly sideswiped me, sending me off the side of the road. I swerved over, and my tire slipped off the edge of the pavement the wrong way and sent me into a slide. My fists gripped the handlebars, and I tumbled over the front and slammed hard onto the ground.

  Anja rode over and jumped off her bike.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

  My heart raced in my chest.

  “I almost got killed by that driver is what happened,” I said angrily.

  “He was nowhere near you,” she said.

  “What? He almost ran me over!!”

  The rest of the tourists sat together in a group, waiting and watching. I picked up the bike and straightened the handlebars, which were bent off to one side. Sweat poured down my forehead.

  “He almost killed me,” I muttered. After that I rode shakily the rest of the day, unable to relax or enjoy the ride. I put the bike up that night and didn’t plan to ride again for a long time.

  Days went by without even a consideration to ride, and when Toin asked if I could take a tour out over the weekend, I told him I had other plans.

  “I heard you were a domestique out there on the tour,” he said.

  “Domestique?”

  “It is the French term for the servant, in a professional bike race.”

  I knew what it meant.

  “I almost got sideswiped,” I shot back.

  “Fear is an emotional response to danger. Of course, it is natural most of the time. But your fear? Is it natural?”

  “I have no fear,” I countered angrily. Heat rose up the back of my neck, and I felt my face getting flushed.

  “What are you fearful of?” he asked, ignoring me.

  “I’m not in fear of anything, dammit, I was nearly hit by a car!” I pointed at the wheelchair. “You of all people should understand!”

  That weekend Anja and Toin hosted a party for Toin’s forty-fifth birthday, and the tiny apartment was jammed with people. Anja served drinks and Stroopwafels, which were Dutch wafer cookies with caramel inside, and a small birthday cake from the market. Toin was the happiest I’d seen him, surrounded by friends.

  “I have someone I’d like to introduce you to,” Anja said, tapping my arm. Toin had just poured me their version of a vodka tonic, with Jenever—a Dutch gin. Anja was accompanied by a dark-skinned man in jeans, loafers, and a lightweight cashmere jacket.

  “This is Mohammed,” she said. “He is from Dubai.”

  “Hello,” I said, shoveling a handful of peanuts in my mouth. “I’m Jonathan.”

  The man smiled. We stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room.

  “I have relatives living in your country,” he said. “It is nice to meet you. What state are you from?”

  “Right now, nowhere,” I joked. “But in the United States, I’m originally from California.”

  “I have family in Texas, but my home is at The Palm, in Dubai. Have you heard of it?”

  “Is that the artificial series of islands?”

  The man nodded and pulled a photograph from his coat pocket.

  “It is in the shape of a palm tree.”

  “I heard that the majority of the world’s construction cranes were over there in Dubai. Is that true?”

  “There is a lot of development,” he admitted.

  We talked for a long time about the state of his country and the state of mine, fascinated with each other’s lands. He was on holiday for a week and knew Toin through mutual friends. We talked about our travels and discovered that we’d both spent a lot of time exploring the same places in the world. Mohammed had spent a year working in Romania after he graduated from college.

  “Isn’t it amazing,” he said, “that we can be from continents thousands of miles away and connect here in a small patch of earth in Holland. I suspect we could travel to Israel, or Brazil, and attend a cocktail party or festival and find a connection with others.”

  “We’re all just human in the end,” I said.

  “Then why do we allow opinions, religion, or politics to divide us? Why do we kill others in favor of our causes? On my honor, I swear, if you do not believe the same way I believe, and you are in trouble, I will still honor you and help you in your darkest hour.” His eyes sparkled.

  I contemplated my new friend and had a sudden awareness that the level of conversation we were having was not at all the level of conversation I’d had in the past at cocktail parties in Orange County. I couldn’t recall ever meeting a man who cared about anything beyond work, his new car, or the most recent vacation to which he and his wife were jetting off.

  We certainly never talked about honor.

  Mohammed pulled out his business card.

  “Give me a call if you’d ever like to come visit,” he said. “I own a hotel, and you will not have to pay.”

  At the end of the evening, with the crowd thinning, I kissed Anja on the cheek and told her I was headed to my room.

  “I nearly forgot,” she said, holding a finger in the air. “Wait.”

  She turned for the kitchen and was back in moments with a brown envelope stamped with a lot of intern
ational postage.

  “For you,” she said, handing it over. My name was scrawled across the front, and I ripped it open, anxious to read an update from Pete about what he had discovered in Italy.

  The letter inside was handwritten on plain paper.

  Dear Mr. Taylor,

  I was instructed to send this to you. Mr. Peter Spinelli had a heart attack in Rome, Italy, and spent time in the hospital here. I was a member of his nursing staff and during his last days, he appeared to get better.

  Pete spoke of you, and on the morning before he died, he told me to send this message to you. He wanted to tell you he hopes you found the other side of the rainbow.

  Mary Francati, R.N.

  Aurelia Hospital, Roma

  I stood there in the hall and read the letter while Anja peered over my shoulder, reading it, too. A hard lump lodged in my throat, and I fought back tears.

  “Oh my,” Anja said, her hand to her mouth. “Oh no.”

  I looked down at the paper and the tears flooded out, wetting Pete’s last words.

  “Is your friend?” she asked.

  I nodded and walked down the hall to my room and closed the door.

  Yes, I thought. He was my friend.

  At a café the next day, I ordered a shot of Jack Daniel’s and drank it slowly in honor of Pete, the way we used to do on the front porch of the cabin. My stomach was hollow the entire day, and I couldn’t go into the bike shop to work because I couldn’t face making small talk with customers.

  I walked to the library and used the Internet to research Dubai, already planning my next escape and grateful for the mental distraction. I learned about the great construction projects there and the indoor ski area. It was a country being compared to the magical creations of Vegas, with mega hotels that would surpass any found anywhere in the world, including the world’s first seven-star property. The landscape was wide and expansive, with giant skyscrapers jutting toward the sky.

  At the pub that evening, Toin didn’t bring up the letter, so I didn’t either.

  “I think I’d like to go to Dubai,” I told him.

  He just looked at me like I was crazy.

  We moved out into the street to see a full and florescent moon hanging low in the sky.

  “You want to go to another pub?” Toin asked. I looked at his frail figure in the wheelchair. He was thin yet strong, a commanding presence even without the ability to stand. I knew he was only trying to lighten my mood.

  “It’s one in the morning,” I said.

  Toin shook his head, as if he were contemplating our next adventure.

  “I think I should call my brother,” I said finally. “Can I use your phone?”

  Toin handed his cell phone over and lit a cigarette, pulling his chair over to the side. I dialed my brother’s number and waited.

  “Hallo?” I said, in my best Dutch accent.

  “John? That you?”

  I was silent. Tears backed up in my throat.

  “John?”

  “Hey, bro,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Halfway across the world. Where are you?”

  He laughed. “I’m on a business trip actually. Right now I’m standing in front of the Nike store in Times Square, on my way to a meeting. I can’t believe it’s you.”

  I imagined him wearing an expensive suit, ducking into some doorway where the homeless people slept in the bustle of human traffic, straining to hear me across the miles. Loud noises and voices pierced the background.

  “She made it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Lacy made it, John. I thought you’d want to know. She’s out of the coma and working in a bookstore in Orange County. The Independent.”

  I said nothing. It had been two months since I left, and four since the accident. Months had passed since I saw her, but it seemed like it had been years.

  “She’s been in therapy. She doesn’t remember anything about the accident.”

  I felt my whole world unraveling like a ball of string.

  “She didn’t speak for two weeks after we told her that you and Boo were gone. But she’s bouncing back now. She’s living in a flat near Laguna.” He paused. “The house was too painful for her to go back to, so I helped her pack up her stuff.”

  “Stop,” I said.

  “But John . . . ”

  “Stop!” I shouted. Toin was looking at me now. He reached into the bag on the side of his chair for another cigarette and fired up the lighter, igniting it. The end burned red, glowing in the darkness.

  “I just thought you’d want to know . . . ” he said. “She’s doing fine.”

  I said nothing. A knot traveled into my heart and remained lodged there. The sounds of car horns pierced the background on the other end of the line.

  “This has been devastating for all of us,” he said, filling the silence. “I loved Boo like my own . . . ” His voice broke. “John, please, just listen to me. It’s time to heal, John. It’s time for all of us to move on.”

  “You’re telling me to move on?”

  “Maybe those weren’t the right words,” he said. “But what if you changed the expectations of your life?”

  We hung up and I felt the heaviness of my old life envelop me, everything and nothing at all wrong with what he had said.

  She’s doing fine.

  I handed Toin his phone.

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” I announced.

  “Where will you go?” he asked.

  What if you changed the expectations of your life?

  “Dubai,” I told him. “I think I’m going to visit Mohammed in Dubai.”

  Chapter 12

  FORGIVENESS

  The next morning I woke early enough to catch the brilliant moon shining in through the window, translucent like a big glass ball.

  I packed up the last of my belongings, including two cycling shirts Toin had given me. We said our goodbyes, and I told Anja she could drive me to the airport if she promised there’d be no messy farewell. It was easier leaving them than it was Solomon, perhaps because I knew they’d have each other, and I was just another lost soul who wandered into the bike shop one day.

  Despite her promise, Anja embraced me tightly in front of the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, and we remained there for a while.

  “Do the right thing,” she said.

  I walked into the terminal and started for the Alitalia ticket counter. The monitor listed flights to Dubai International, and I searched for the times as a sea of people passed by. I stepped forward and stood in line, and, when it was my turn, I approached an older ticket agent in a dark green vest.

  “Are you going to Los Angeles?” she asked.

  I stared at her blankly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you want to buy a ticket?”

  The sign behind her had two flights: one for Dubai and one for Los Angeles. I stared at it, and I turned around and surveyed the line behind me, gathering my thoughts. There were people of many nationalities, some Muslim, some Asian, a few Americans, and most of the others Europeans.

  I pulled my passport out of the bag and shoved it across the counter, my heart racing.

  “Dubai,” I said firmly.

  The agent put the passport down beside her keyboard and began typing.

  My stomach burned, and the sensation lifted up across the center of my body and settled into my arm. I shifted the backpack uncomfortably, but the pain didn’t go away. I felt a heaviness settle in, as if I was going to vomit.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  “Sir?”

  I looked down at the floor, resting my forehead on the counter.

  “Are you okay, sir?” she asked. Soon there were three agents standing beside her. One walked around and took my bag, holding it for me.

  “Los Angeles,” I whispered.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  Inside I felt an urgency I hadn’t felt befor
e. I needed to get home, and if I didn’t go now, I wouldn’t have the courage to face what I had left behind. It was easier to ignore the loose ends and move forward to a different land. It was easier not to confront the past.