by Dan Smith
‘So what’s your problem?’
‘I—’
‘Let’s get out of here, Alex. Before they decide it’s got something to do with us. Let’s just go. You and me.’ Now she was back to the confident woman I’d met before. The melancholy and the worry had evaporated as if she had something else to concentrate on. ‘You’d like that?’
‘Yeah, I suppose—’
‘You suppose?’
‘I mean yes. I do want to get out of here. More than anything, but …’ I looked back at the hospital doors.
‘Somewhere you need to be?’ she asked. ‘Something you left behind?’
I shook my head. ‘I haven’t got anything.’
‘You’ve got your money.’
‘Yeah, I got that.’
‘So, you want to get out of here or not?’
‘I—’
‘You can stay here if you like. Fester in that bed, surrounded by all those people, wait a few more days and then follow your guidebook if the coppers let you. Or maybe they’ll just drag you down to a cell.’ She looked at me. ‘Or you can come with me, Mr Anonymous. Test that theory about losing everything so you can be free to do what you want. I’ll take you places you won’t find in your guidebook, show you things you didn’t even know existed.’
‘Like what?’
Domino shrugged, her body language telling me she wasn’t going to give anything away. If I wanted to know her secrets, I would have to follow her. And that was the decision I had to make. All my life I’d been starved of choice. I looked after my mother, that’s what I did. During that time most of my decisions were made for me by other people. Doctors, nurses, solicitors. I’d only ever had to make one real decision, and I still felt the weight of it now, still wondered if it had been the right one. But I told myself even that hadn’t been a real choice. There was never a real alternative for me. But now my choices were limitless.
I looked up at her. ‘You said I should stay here. Get better.’
‘Did I? When?’
‘Before. When you came to see me.’
‘Are you feeling better now?’
‘I think so.’
‘What are you worried about, then? Anyway,’ she winked, ‘I’m with you now. You’ll be fine.’ She held out her hand.
I could stay right here; go back and lie in my bed to wait for the police. I could miss an opportunity. Or I could take her hand and let her show me things that were not in the guidebook. ‘Like this, though?’ I glanced down at my gown. ‘Running away from the police – like this?’
Domino laughed. It was a warm sound. Not too loud. Not raucous and unpleasant. Not the kind of laugh that would attract attention. It was an intimate and comfortable sound, and it made her mouth turn up more at one side than the other. It was a laugh that reached her eyes, made me want to keep looking at her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not like that. We’ll have to get you something to wear.’ She threw her cigarette out onto the grass where it continued to glow. ‘Come on.’ She slung her bag over her shoulder.
I looked up at her, still wearing the same dress she’d had on when she came to see me. Her calves were inches from my face and I could smell the last remnants of cream on her, mingled with the scent of her body. There were fine, light hairs on her calves and around the front of her legs. The domino on her ankle.
I pushed to my feet, standing only a couple of inches taller than her now, and looked into her, feeling a connection. Her green eyes fixed on mine, serious now, flitting gently from side to side as if constantly focusing on different points of my face.
‘Come on,’ she said again, and this time I let her take my hand.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Round here,’ she said. ‘Something I saw earlier on.’ And she took me across the front of the hospital building, into the night beyond the arc of the lights.
I had made my choice.
5
Domino and I moved without sound as we made our way round the white-painted building, passing shuttered windows, and rooms that slept in darkness. The thick-bladed grass was coarse on my bare feet, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, and the ground itself was warm and spongy. From the trees and the bushes the cicadas chirped their music into the night. Ahead, a shaft of light poured from an open window, projecting a stream of orange, which met an impenetrable hedge. The dense foliage broke the light into a thousand shadows that stained the grass.
Domino stopped moving and turned to me, raising a finger to her lips. She ducked onto her haunches and beckoned me closer. I squatted beside her and she brought her face close to mine, brushing her hair back and putting her mouth to my ear.
I could feel her lips against me, and I could hear the sound of her moist tongue in her mouth as she spoke. Some of her hair loosened and fell against my cheek. ‘Quiet now,’ she whispered. ‘There might be someone inside. I’ll take a look.’ Her words were warm against my ear, the sibilants a delicious mix of hard and soft. Her breath tickled my neck, sending shivers down my back.
Domino let go of my hand and put her bag on the grass. She crept to the window, keeping low. When she was below the sill, she raised her head, peering into the room. She paused, stood and turned to me. The light illuminated her face and she smiled, beckoning, so I crept closer and stood to look inside the room.
Directly opposite the window was a closed door. Above and to the right, in the high corner of the room, a small television perched on a shelf. It was not switched on. Below it, a bare wooden table was home to several stacks of glasses, a large kettle and three or four tins. The other side of the room was lined with shelves, most of which were filled with piles of white and dark-blue clothing. From where I was standing, they looked to be trousers and tunics, the type of thing worn by hospital staff.
‘You should find something to fit,’ Domino said.
‘What? No, I can’t take that.’
‘Sure you can. All you have to do is climb in and grab something.’
‘No way.’
‘What you worried about? No one’s going to come in.’
‘How do you know? And there’s bloody police everywhere.’
Domino shrugged. ‘If you won’t, then I will.’ And with that, she pulled herself onto the windowsill and jumped down into the room. She went straight to the shelves of clothes and took a pair of navy-blue trousers from the top of the pile, holding them up for me to see. I stepped back, spying both ways along the side of the hospital, not quite believing what she was doing. I looked back at her, wide-eyed and questioning, but she stayed where she was, waiting for an answer, so I shook my head. Too small.
After two or three tries, she held up a pair of trousers that might fit me, so I nodded and she threw them at me and moved on to the shirts.
Once she had found a suitable shirt, she came back to the window and passed it to me before pulling herself back onto the windowsill. ‘Give a lady a hand?’ she whispered, so I put my hands under her arms and was helping her through the window when the door opened behind her and a man walked in. He was dressed in clothes not unlike the ones Domino had just stolen for me, except his were white. There was a streak of blood across the front of his tunic.
He stopped in his tracks, the door held open, and everything hung in time for a split second. The man frozen in the doorway, Domino halfway through the window, me with hands under her arms, pulling her through. Then the moment of suspension broke. He opened his mouth and shouted a string of words that had no meaning to me. Anger in his eyes, he ran towards Domino, grabbing her legs and yelling at the top of his voice.
Domino gripped the windowsill hard, pulling against him, and I put all my effort into helping. The man wasn’t big, but he managed quite a fight, tugging and shouting until eventually Domino made it through the window. She slid through the opening, fell onto the grass in a heap, then leaped to her feet, grabbing my arm and saying, ‘Run!’
I was still shocked and I hesitated, wanting to apologise, to return the clothes we�
��d taken, but Domino pulled at my arm.
I held up a hand to the man, offered him a pleading look and then followed Domino’s lead, grabbing the clothes as we made our escape. We ran back to where she’d left her bag, Domino bending to scoop it up before turning and heading directly for the hedge.
‘Jump over,’ she shouted.
I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing. I saw Domino jump over the hedge, but not make it. She landed on top of it, swimming through the leaves and branches, making her way across. I did the same, reaching a little further than she had done but still struggling to get over, feeling the branches raking at my exposed skin as I went.
We tumbled onto the ground on the other side, picked ourselves up and ran as fast as we could until we came to a small copse of trees, where we stopped to catch our breath. Domino collapsed to the ground, her back to a gnarled trunk, and I squatted beside her, my breath coming in palsied gasps.
‘You’re not supposed to exert yourself too much,’ she said between breaths, beginning to laugh through her pained expression. ‘Bloody hurt my leg, too.’
I looked at her, wondering if she was crazy or fun, enjoying the feeling of adrenaline in my body as I sat down beside her. She put her head on my shoulder, laughing into my neck, and when the laughter died, she lifted her face and kissed my cheek. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I think I needed that. Something to pick me up.’
I nodded, surprised by the kiss. ‘Me too.’ I was sore where the hedge had scratched me, the tops of my legs, my arms, but I felt alive again, not like a patient any more.
‘Back there,’ she said. ‘When I was in that room, and you were standing outside, getting all antsy?’
‘Yeah?’
‘That gown you’re wearing looked almost transparent from my angle.’ She raised her eyebrows and looked me up and down. ‘Nice.’
I smiled and glanced back at the hedge. ‘Will he come after us?’
She shook her head. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Really?’ I said, feeling relieved. It had been fun, but I didn’t want it to last too long.
‘Probably send a guard instead. Or maybe some of those cops.’
‘For real?’
‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘Probably. We should go.’
I looked back at the hedge again, fancying that I could see figures moving behind it.
‘You better get changed.’
I looked down at the clothes in my hands. ‘Yeah.’
I pulled on the trousers, slipping them up my legs and underneath the gown while Domino watched. They were tight, but I could fasten them, no problem. Then I lifted the gown over my head, Domino’s eyes on me the whole time, not embarrassed to look me over as I dressed.
‘We’ll get you something else later on,’ she said. ‘And some flip-flops from one of those stalls.’
‘Shouldn’t we go further away? I mean, it’ll be obvious it was us, won’t it? If a guard comes looking. Me walking around in hospital clothes. And there’s the police …’
‘Stop worrying about the police,’ she said, standing up. ‘But yeah, I guess you’re right.’
As she spoke, I felt a sharp stinging sensation in my toe and I let out a yelp, slapping at my foot as if I’d been stung by a wasp. ‘What the hell was that?’ There was something small and hard between my fingers.
As I lifted it closer to my face, so that I could see what had bitten me, I felt another sharp bite. Then Domino was slapping at her legs, too, saying, ‘Bloody red ants. Come on.’
And once again we were running, as if all I would ever do with Domino was run. We were running and slapping our legs at the same time, coming out onto the road, and laughing as we slowed our pace, caught our breath and began walking away from the hospital, making our way among the stalls.
‘You know what?’ I said to her as we approached a warung with all manner of knick-knacks, including flip-flops, hanging from hooks around its frame. ‘I don’t know where we are. I don’t even know what time it is.’
Domino shrugged. ‘It’s not late, I reckon. Just after nine, maybe.’
‘Feels later,’ I said.
‘It gets dark early.’
We stopped in front of the warung and Domino turned to me. ‘We’re about half an hour away from Lake Toba. And that’s where you’re going, right?’
I nodded and looked around, seeing things in a new light now I had some inkling of where I was. I thought it strange that everything should look so different just because I had a vague idea of my location on a map. And yet it made the place more real. I smiled and breathed deeply. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Lake Toba. That’s right.’
Domino nodded and turned to the woman at the stall. She was wearing a sarong and a cotton top, a second sarong strung around her shoulder, a heavy bundle inside.
Domino said something to the woman and pointed at a pair of flip-flops, looking at me and asking if they’d be big enough.
The woman reached up to take them down, turning so I caught a glimpse of a small baby wrapped within the sling of the sarong over her shoulder. She passed the flip-flops, new and smelling of rubber and plastic, and I slipped them on, nodding, telling Domino they were fine.
I paid, putting a few notes in my pocket so I didn’t need to reach for the money-belt every time, and then we moved on, stopping at another warung. We bought a couple of spring rolls and something wrapped in green leaves before Domino grabbed my arm and indicated a policeman further down the road, close to the hospital entrance, where the car was still parked.
‘Let’s go over here,’ she said, leading me away. ‘Where it’s dark.’
So we hurried off the roadside, heading to where the grass was thin and a banyan tree grew with prop roots so thick and so many that they were indistinguishable from the main trunk. The tree was like a forest of its own, and we slipped into its cover.
‘You think they’re looking for us?’ I asked.
‘I don’t reckon. He’s just standing there smoking a cigarette, doesn’t look like he’s in a hurry to do anything. Anyway, they won’t come over here; most of them think these trees are haunted.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Relax,’ she said as she sat down on the compacted dirt. ‘We’ll sit where we can watch him. If he looks like he’s coming this way, we’ll leave.’
I checked the ground for ants, then settled beside Domino, close enough that our hips were touching but neither of us moved away. The banyan roots fell around us, some thick and woody, giant fingers reaching for the ground, penetrating the soil, others clumped together, winding round one another, coiling like serpents.
I watched the policeman through the trunks of our strange forest and bit into the spring roll, burning my tongue on the vegetable filling.
‘So you want to go together?’ Domino said.
‘Hm?’
‘Lake Toba. It’s where I’m headed, too.’
‘Really?’
‘Coincidence, eh?’
I took another bite.
‘There’s a place,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting some friends there. You can probably stay awhile.’
I stopped eating and looked at her, thinking for a moment.
‘No pressure,’ she said. ‘I mean, do what you like, but it would be fun, I can promise you that.’
‘Yeah, that would be good.’ Already I felt a sense of excitement. Domino wanted to be with me.
‘Maybe we’ll get to know each other better. I’ll show you those things I told you about.’
‘I’d like that.’ I didn’t want to sound desperate, but I wanted to be with her. She was exciting and beautiful. And she was strong. Being with her made me feel stronger. I had thought I could do this alone, but the crash had killed my confidence. Domino could bring it back for me. Maybe she’d even travel with me awhile.
‘So,’ I said. ‘Are you a traveller, or … ?’
Domino laughed.
‘What?’
‘Traveller,’ she said. ‘Sounds like a gypsy or s
omething.’
I felt a little embarrassed and turned away. ‘No, I meant …’
‘Don’t worry, I know what you meant. Yeah, I guess I am, sort of. You? You a “traveller” now?’
I shrugged. ‘For a while, I suppose. Couple of months here, then I’m going to Bali.’
‘Bali’s nice.’ Domino nodded and passed me one of the banana-leaf bundles.
I turned it over in my hands, seeing how the maker had put it together.
‘Nasi bunkus,’ she said. ‘Take the leaf off before you eat it.’
I removed the leaf, handling the package of hot sticky rice inside, biting into it and finding a delicious spicy mince.
‘I’m not really travelling,’ she said. ‘Not like you. I kind of live over here. We have a place on the lake, we hang out. Every now and then I go back to Oz, but I always come back. I like it here.’
I continued eating and looked out at the road where the stall lights glowed in the night. The policeman had finished smoking his cigarette and was talking to his partner. I could feel Domino’s hip against mine, feel the warmth coming off her. I glanced at her legs, pulled up towards her, the dress riding up her calves, the tattoo on her ankle. ‘So how do we get there?’ I asked. ‘This place of yours, I mean. Bus?’
‘Can do.’
‘Is it going to be like the one I was on before?’ I asked. ‘People hanging off it?’
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and smiled. ‘They’re all like that. You don’t fancy going through it again, eh?’
‘Nope.’
‘You want to walk? Might take a while. Or there’s always a taxi,’ she said, pointing at a couple of cars pulled over by the roadside. ‘Bit more expensive, probably just as dangerous, but it’s not a bus and it’s not walking.’ She dropped her arm, her skin brushing against mine as she reached for her bag, digging for cigarettes. ‘And it’s another experience.’ She lifted out a red packet and took one of the cigarettes.
I could smell them before she even lit it. She offered me the pack but I said no.
‘You don’t smoke?’
‘Not really.’
‘Not really? Either you do or you don’t.’