Jade

by Olivia Rigal

  Olivier and his crew have been preparing for the coming week’s work, looking over a large geological map spread out on one of the tables.

  I read and listen to music until the low battery of my tablet forces me to stop. When I pop out of my electronic isolation, I see that the French lawyers have found cards. They are playing a game called “La Belotte”. I watch them for a while doing a little reverse engineering in my head. It’s a simpler version of bridge with a 32-cards deck. I quickly lose interest. My mind’s drifting away to Oliver, who’s still working with his team. I don’t even know his last name.

  I stand up. He looks up at me, and extends an arm as an invitation, which I can’t resist. I come close to him, and he wraps it around my waist.

  “What are you up to?” He asks, nuzzling his head against me. Liam is the only one who acknowledges the affectionate gesture. He winks at me.

  “Just going up to recharge my tablet, and find something to read.”

  “We’re about done; I’ll come with you to help you pick a book.”

  I grin. I’m pretty sure that reading is the last thing on his mind.

  We go to his room. My sarong is still on the bed where I left it when I ran away this morning; I pick it up and fold it while Oliver puts the map away at his desk.

  Lying on the bed, face to face and fully clothed, we do something we’ve never done before; we talk.

  He already knows most of what there is to know about me. I’m twenty-two, and I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’ve come here to try to figure it out.

  Thanks to generous scholarships, I don’t have the pile of debts that my fellow students have. I’ve also consistently worked while studying, so I even have some money set aside.

  I tell him that I’m not close to my family. We don’t relate. I only have one friend, Agatha, but I also have a few buddies. They are mainly men who are more socially awkward than me who I met in college, and with whom I enjoyed playing video games. Those guys are very sweet in their odd-ball sort of ways, and now they make an incredible amount of money using their mad mathematician skills on the stock market.

  I tell him what I’ve told no one, not even Agatha, who’s very weird with money. I’ve entrusted my life savings to those guys, and they’ve multiplied it. They gave me back the initial amount, doubled, and they are playing with the rest. The last time I looked, I was not rich, but I had enough money to make a significant down payment on a house wherever I decide to settle.

  Now it’s his turn. He hesitates, like he doesn’t know where to start. His father just passed away but they were so estranged he did not even bother to attend the funeral. He has two sisters, and a mother who is in the restaurant business. I can hear affection and pride in his voice when he talks about her. She raised them by herself, and she did a great job of it.

  He goes on from family to school, and tells me that he has an engineering degree from an Ivy League school. His domain is double geology and gemmology.

  “My PhD thesis is a best seller in those fields. It’s a complete analysis of the subject matter from a historical and scientific perspective.”

  “That’s impressive.” I mean it. Very few PhD theses get real distribution. “What is it about?”

  “Nephrite and jadeite,” he says with a cocky smile.

  My jaw drops, and everything falls into place: his answer when he first heard my name, and the crew’s smirks.

  He shakes his head, and says, “I’ve earned world-wide recognition not only with my thesis but also with the field work I’ve done since I started working. No one’s calling me this to my face, but I know I have a nickname, it’s ‘The Jade Master.’”

  “Cute,” I say, laughing.

  His hands slide under my t-shirt, and I know I won’t get any further information from him tonight. All the questions I had for him fly out of my brain through the open window and under the pouring rain.

  ❦

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A STRANGE SOUND BRINGS ME out of sleep. When my eyes open I see the squeaking ceiling fan, and I remember that I’m in Oliver’s room. I stretch on the bed and, it’s a miracle, my back is not killing me.

  It’s not that late, but he’s already gone. They probably went back to the mine for the week. He didn’t say he was leaving or when he would return. I don’t want to be a miserable person; one that spends every single minute waiting for some one else to return, especially because there are few things that I hate more than waiting.

  Agatha better give me a ton of work to do to keep my mind occupied.

  After a quick shower, I go downstairs. Agatha’s back, and she’s having breakfast with James. The rain has stopped. She tells me that the roads to where she was planning to go next are flooded.

  “Why don’t we go walk around the temples in town?” she asks.

  “Sure, sounds like fun.”

  We each throw a raincoat into our bags, and swap our flip-flops for plastic shoes. Agatha’s driver gets us there. I’m happy neither of us has to drive: the roads are covered with mud, and there are fallen branches everywhere.

  In town it’s a real mob scene.

  “Songrkran,” says Agatha.

  “Pee Mai Lao,” says the driver.

  “Different names for the same event,” I say.

  “Yes, how do you know about that?” she asks.

  “I’ve seen pictures of the new year celebration. Initially, you were to take a little water and rice flour and put it on the face of the people you like as a symbol of prosperity for the new year.”

  “Always the inquisitive mind,” she says, and then, mocking me, she puts out a hand to stop the flow of information she fears I’m going to drown her with. “Now it has degenerated, even here, into a giant water pistol battle. Let’s join them and have fun!”

  We walk down the street, and purchase two water pistols and fill them up. We squirt back all the kids that attack us. Every so often, on the side of the street, there’s a big bucket filled with water where we can refill. The most daring kids come to me, and put rice flour on my face. A more adventurous one touches my hair. I grab him, and make him twirl. He’s laughing hysterically, and I wish that I could learn to let go like he does. I put him down, and look up to Agatha, who is standing there, staring at me with her mouth open.

  “What’s with you?” she asks.

  “New year, new me,” I answer jokingly.

  “I like it, it suits you.”

  That’s when I see him: Oliver. He’s standing on the corner of the street, talking to a young girl. She can’t be older than eighteen; she’s breathtakingly pretty and she looks up to him adoringly. They are not touching, but they don’t need to. The way they stand so close to each other screams intimacy to me.

  I want to look away, but I can’t. I watch him climb onto a motorcycle, the cross-country type with high wheels. She climbs behind him, wraps her arms around his waist and leans her head on his back. She presses herself against him, and says something to him that makes him throw his head back, like it’s the funniest thing anyone has ever told him. I watch the blissful look on her face, and I recognize it. It’s the same one that I was wearing yesterday.

  “Did I say something wrong?” asks Agatha.

  “No, nothing at all.”

  My original carefree smile has turned into an artificial imitation that doesn’t fool her for a second. She turns around to figure out what I was looking at, but now they’re gone. There’s just a joyous crowd celebrating the new year.

  I take a deep breath, and decide to suck it up. I’ll think about what I just saw, and I’ll possibly have my own pity party tonight, when I’m by myself in my room. Maybe it will stop raining for just a little while, and I’ll be able to drown my tears in the pond.

  “Jade, what’s the matter?”

  I need to distract her; the last thing I want right now is for her to walk through my mind and see what a mess it is. So instead of telling her, I raise my water pistol, and spray her f
ace. “Got you!”

  “You did not just do that to me!” She squeals as she sprays me back.

  Now if I shed a jealous tear or two, no one will be the wiser.

  ❦

  It’s almost night when we get back. We had dinner in one of the small restaurants, just the two of us.

  I listened to Agatha’s endless chatter about how fabulously amazing James is. He’s “the one” she’s been waiting all of her life. He loves her, and he tells her so all day long. She’s never going to grow tired of his adoration. She wants to stay in Asia; she hasn’t yet figured out how to but she will.

  I’ve seen this before. Just in the past two years she introduced me to three guys who were “the one.” There was a handsome surgeon, a good-looking attorney and also a stunning construction crew guy. That last one was the one I disliked the least.

  The three of them were tall, blond with blue eyes, and they were built like Greek gods. The three of them were also self centered jerks who left her with a broken heart.

  I wish I could ship her away to some Nordic country, where all the guys are built on that model, so she would start making choices based on something else.

  But who am I to give her a lecture on her choice of men? I just threw myself at a guy I barely know! Come to think of it, I still don’t know his last name. That’s good, because this way it won’t be hard to forget.

  Right, as if I ever forget anything!

  What’s with the other girl? I need to run away to a place where I can really be alone without suffocating from the heat. Maybe next weekend I can fly back to Bangkok, or to Siem Reap and spend a few days being a tourist.

  But for now I do need to continue to suck it up.

  As I close my bedroom door, I can’t even let myself slide down to the floor, as there’s not enough room for that. So I sit on my bed and roll myself into a ball, rocking myself back and forth.

  I try to detach my mind from my body so I can observe myself with some sort of scientific detachment, like I would observe an injured animal. It doesn’t work.

  Shit, it hurts. It’s different from any physical pain I’ve ever experienced before. It’s not as bad as a root canal but it’s bad. I feel as if some giant hand has entered my ribcage to crush my heart. I can’t breathe.

  I’m discovering the ugly feeling of jealousy.

  I force myself to take a big gulp of air, and I hold it in and when I breathe out, a couple of tears come with it. I will myself to stop; I know from watching Agatha that crying doesn’t help. It’s like a self-sustaining cycle: the more one cries, the more one feels like crying.

  I seriously consider banging my head against the wall to distract myself from this misery. I wonder if it would work. If I inflict a physical pain on myself, will it block out the jealousy stab?

  Then I kick myself. I’m getting all worked up again possibly for nothing, and I’m feeling sick because I don’t like it one bit.

  ❦

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IWAKE UP STILL DRESSED on my bed. I’m a sticky mess. I left the door closed so my cell is like a sauna. I catch my sarong and soap and rush out the door. Back at the pond I strip and dive in. I swim to the rock under the waterfall and almost get knocked out. The heavy rains have made the flow much stronger.

  I stand in a half daze when a young voice startles me.

  “Are you okay?”

  I turn around, and I see her. It’s the pretty girl who rode away with Oliver, yesterday. She’s even more stunning from up close. She walks on one of the large tree branches with the grace of a feline. Her arms are outstretched for balance. She looks at me with curiosity; it’s the red hair, probably.

  “My name is Chanlina,” she tells me.

  “Nice to meet you, Chanlina, I’m Jade.”

  “Jade, like the stone?” She’s smiling.

  “Yes, it seems everyone finds it amusing.”

  “My name means ‘moonlight’ in Cambodian,” she says, “and my classmates find it amusing too.”

  She walks almost to the end of the branch, and then turns around as light as a gymnast on a beam.

  “You’re not going to jump, are you?”

  “No, don’t worry. I’m not crazy; it’s not deep enough.”

  She takes three light steps, turns around again and flies up in a perfect back flip on the branch. She defies gravity as she runs to the end of the branch before lowering herself in the water by the strength of her arms. Her body slides in so swiftly that there’s almost no wrinkle on the surface of the water.

  “Some days I dream that I am a ballerina,” she declares.

  “From what I see, you are one, already. The only thing you need is an audience.”

  The answer makes her blush. She’s so lovely that I am sure there is not a heterosexual male on the earth who would not be attracted to her.

  She is sweet, too. She tells me about her thoughts on a merger between the classical occidental ballet, and the Asian traditional dancing. Russian ballets could be enhanced, she thinks, by the hand movements, which are the trademark of Cambodian dancers. Her hands fly around her like two graceful birds as she shows me what she means. I fall under the spell of those magical hands, which seem to have a life of their own. Her fingers flex outward with amazing grace.

  I think about Oliver, and I want to hate her, but I can’t. How could I? None of my tormented feelings are her fault. She looks so innocent.

  “Do you dance?” she asks.

  I shake my head no. I have the grace of the hippos in Disney’s Fantasia. That’s what my dear brother told me when I was twelve, giving the kiss of death to any temptation I could have entertained of giving dancing a try.

  “So, what do you do for fun?”

  “I listen to music, and study all sorts of things.”

  She makes a face at me, “You study for the fun of it?”

  “Yes, like you move for the fun it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like to understand why things are as they are.”

  She thinks about it and says, “Is that why you are so sad?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look sad, like you need to understand everything and have forgotten how magical life can be.”

  She pulls herself out of the water effortlessly. She makes me think of those Chinese movies, those in which the heroes fly above the treetops.

  As she dries herself off a bit, she tells me, “You have to let a little magic into your life, otherwise you’ll never be happy.”

  I watch her go, and think that I’m not sure I’ve ever believed in magic. I’m really sorry about that. My life would probably be more fun if I did.

  ❦

  While every one else goes about their day, Chanlina stays by herself in the main room. She’s turned one of the tables into a study desk; books are scattered around. As I walk by, I glance at them. Despite the fact that the titles are in French, it’s obvious that they are school-books with titles such as “Littérature du 19ème,” and “Physique - Chimie” or “Mathématiques.”

  Looking at the books it hits me: she doesn’t just look young, she is young. Young enough to still be in high school. I pray that my fit of jealousy was totally unwarranted; Oliver couldn’t possibly be having an affair with such a young girl, could he? If he is I’m truly a poor judge of character and I’m glad that I found out in time.

  I get back to work, thankful that the dull tasks that I have to carry out require my full attention. I get a reprieve and stop obsessing about the nature of their relationship.

  She’s still at it when I’m done. The French Literature book is tucked away in her bag, as well as that of Math. I look over her shoulder, and I admire her handwriting: it’s as light and as elegant as she is.

  Even though I just meant to pass by, I can’t help but see where she’s gone astray in her chemistry exercise. With her pen in mouth, she’s absorbed in her work, and hasn’t even noticed me.

  She’s startled when I ask, “Would you c
are for some help?”

  “You can? You would?” she asks back, looking up incredulously at me.

  “Sure, let me show you.” I sit next to her and start at the beginning of the exercise. I fly over the part that she got right, congratulating her for it, and then I slow down to show her where she went wrong. I understand why she made her mistake, and explain to her the reason she’s wrong.

  Even though it’s in French, I browse her Chemistry book for a similar exercise, but there are none, so I make one up for her.

  I ask her to do it for me, and to speak out loud her thought process, as if she were speaking to a very slow person. She does it, and, this time, she gets it right.

  She looks up at me, and says, “Wow, you should be a teacher!”

  “Nah, I have no patience in a classroom,” I tell her. “I can do tutoring, because it’s one-on-one and it’s easy to figure out where the other is stuck. Dealing with twenty or thirty students at a time is not for me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yes, I’ve tried. After a few hours, I felt like taking a baseball bat and cracking a few skulls open to check if there was even a brain inside.”

  She laughs, and admits that, in that case, I’d better stick to research or lab work.

  “I can help with Math, Physics and Biology,” I tell her. “But I’m clueless about French.”

  “Oh, right,” she says. “You noticed all my books are in French. I go to school at the Lycée Français of Vientiane. I’m in ‘Terminale.’”

  I remember, that the French go backwards. The first year is the 12th year, and, from there, you countdown to graduation. The ‘terminale’ is the last year, the final one.

  “So High School is almost over,” I say.

  “Yes and next year I’ll be going to college.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Most likely Florida. That’s where my grandmother just moved. I’ll have to stay with her, because my father travels most of the time, and he says that I’m too young to live by myself.”