Was there really anything wrong with that? Elena spoke of love as if it was something I should aspire to, but love didn’t seem to offer her anything but misery. These were the best years of our lives, and she was squandering them in a relationship that stifled her independence. Her fear of being without Roddy paralyzed her, and she denied herself the chance to explore new terrain, to have fun and take advantage of her youth. She accused me of having no passion, but this evening with Carson proved her wrong.
The elevator doors rumbled open on the twelfth floor, and my mouth went dry at the thought of another confrontation. I didn’t want to fight with Elena, but I also couldn’t forget about the hurtful things she said. Standing in the hallway with my keycard in my hand, I paused in front of the door. Deep breaths. She’ll be gone soon, and you’ll deal with this when you get home.
Inside, the room was cool and dim. The only noise was the hum of the air-conditioning unit, blowing gusts up and under the curtains, making them dance against the window. My suitcase sat at the foot of an untouched bed, where I’d left it before we set out for dinner. The other bed had been slept in. Sheets pulled back, pillows askew, towels balled up and tossed in a heap on the mattress. There was no trace of Elena’s belongings. She had already left.
The clock on the nightstand announced 5:45 in bright red digits. She must have taken the first available flight out of Hong Kong. Couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I closed the door, kicked off my shoes, collapsed facedown on the fresh linens. It was nice to have the place to myself, like I usually did when I traveled, the freedom to hog the shower or walk around naked or bring back a guy at the spur of the moment. But as I lay there in the quiet, empty room, I felt loneliness creeping in. For the first time on one of my journeys, I wished I had a travel partner, someone with whom to share this experience, to reminisce with later on.
Fatigue settled in like a heavy weight. I sat up and pulled my shirt over my head and was contemplating whether to dig through my suitcase for pajamas or to sleep in the nude when I saw the note. It was folded in half, resting on the nightstand, “Sophie” written neatly in Elena’s loopy script. I opened it and read:
Dear Sophie,
I’m really sorry to be leaving you this way. This was not an easy decision for me to make. I never meant to hurt you and I’m sorry for the mean things I said.
I truly hope that you can understand how I’m feeling one day and will learn to forgive me. You deserve to love someone and to be loved as deeply as Roddy and I love each other. I know you will find it one day, when you’re ready.
I hope you have an amazing time and enjoy the rest of your vacation.
Love,
Elena
I crumpled it in one fist and tossed it toward the garbage can. As far as I was concerned, I would never be ready for the type of relationship Elena and Roddy had—codependent, unstable, and dysfunctional. As I peeled off my jeans, I thought about all the good things that were going on in my life. I had a successful career, a lease on a studio apartment in New York City, and a well-worn passport with plenty of room for more stamps. The last thing I needed was a boyfriend to mess it all up. And my grandmother always told me, when you let men get too close, that’s what they do: make a mess of things.
Exhaustion, anger, and Jäger descended en masse, causing the walls to start spinning around me. I had to close my eyes and focus my breath to steady myself. Somehow, my head found the pillow. Behind closed lids, all I saw were chest tattoos and blue eyes, dimples in a stubbled cheek. Men may make a mess of things, but some of them sure are gorgeous.
CHAPTER FOUR
The unfamiliar ring of a phone on my bedside table stirred me from a sound sleep. I fumbled with the receiver, disoriented, the way I always was when I woke up for the first time in a strange hotel room.
“It’s me,” said the guy on the other end.
I couldn’t place the voice. I scanned my memory for a sign of recognition and croaked out a noncommittal, “Hi.”
“Sounds like you had a rough night,” he continued. I thought back to last night. Had it been rough? Suddenly, it flooded back to me: Carson smiling at me, touching my face, kissing me in the moonlight. Did I really dance on top of a bar?
“How’d you get my room number?” I sat up in bed, gripping the duvet to my chest, feeling exposed.
“I asked the front desk to connect me to Sophie Bruno.”
Squinting my eyes shut, I tried to recall the events of last night as I fought against the pain shooting through my temples. I remembered our walk from the harbor back to the hotel. But when did I tell him my full name? And why was he calling me now?
“You ready to head over to the Peak?” he said.
“The Peak?”
“You said you wanted to go today,” he said, his voice wavering with uncertainty. “But if you’re not into it, it’s no big deal.”
I looked over at the clock: 12:40. My first morning in Hong Kong had come and gone while I slept off a hangover. This routine was getting old: the headaches, the vertigo, the sagebrush tacked to my tongue. I vowed not to drink for the remainder of my trip. Or possibly ever again.
“No, I’m still up for it,” I said. Enough of the day had already been wasted. As far as I was concerned, today’s itinerary was ruined, so sightseeing with a hot guy who had a destination in mind seemed like a reasonable way to pass the rest of the afternoon. “When do you want to meet?”
“I’m here.”
“Where?” I surveyed the room, confused, thinking for a second he might be lurking behind the bathroom door.
“In the lobby. Ready when you are.”
He hung up the phone, leaving me listening to dead air while I considered the situation. This was highly unorthodox, a vacation hookup coming back the next day. Usually I would kiss a man good-bye at the end of the night and never see him again. What was Carson’s motivation? I pieced together fragments of the previous evening. His blue eyes, his glass of Bitburger, his penchant for poetry, his breath in my ear. As far as I could tell, he seemed harmless. And gorgeous. And we’d never had an opportunity to seal the deal.
I sprang to my feet. Grooming was required if this day was going to end where I hoped it would. Powering through the pounding in my head, I showered in a tizzy, nicking my ankle with the razor as I balanced on one leg in the narrow stall. I searched the contents of my suitcase for my least wrinkled and most thigh-revealing item of clothing: a sundress the color of lemons. Standing in front of the foggy bathroom mirror with a toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, I willed my curls to cooperate but quickly surrendered, pinning the wild frenzy up in a bun on the top of my head.
Twenty minutes after his call, I spotted him lounging in a leather club chair next to the concierge desk, immersed in a book. He stood when he saw me, tucking the book away into a canvas messenger bag he had slung across his body.
“I brought you breakfast,” he said, handing me a white paper bag. “It’s a pineapple bun.”
Inside was a sugary pastry with a crunchy, egg-colored crust. I bit into it immediately, not realizing how ravenous I was until that moment.
“Thank you so much,” I said, my mouth full.
“No problem.” He dipped down to kiss the crumbs off my lips and raised his eyebrows when he saw what I was wearing. “You look amazing in that dress.”
I thanked him again, and we set off. But when we arrived at the top of Victoria Peak, I was regretting my decision to wear a paper-thin, thigh-revealing sundress. The air was lighter up here, free of the humidity that hung over the rest of the city below. A crowded tram had carried us up the side of a mountain, climbing eighteen hundred feet above sea level at a forty-five-degree angle, until all of Hong Kong unfurled beneath us like a postcard. When I stepped out onto the platform at the summit, I shivered as a crisp wind blew directly through the lemon-yellow fabric.
We funneled out of the tram station into typical tourist hustle: the coin-operated binoculars; the street vendors hawking souvenirs; t
he massive, pristine shopping mall with the Häagen-Dazs outside. I fell blissfully into the trap.
“Want to go there?” I pointed to a sign for the Peak Tower, an observation deck mentioned in my guidebook. “It’s supposed to have great three-hundred-sixty-degree views of the city, from the skyline to the outlying islands.”
“I know a much better place to take in the scenery,” he said.
“You did your research,” I said, impressed that he’d come prepared.
“I was here the other day. Scoped it out already. Found a perfect vantage point, not so many people around.”
So this is why he brought me here. How many times had he been to the Peak over the past week, and with how many different girls? I mentally prepared myself for a scripted experience, rehearsed lines, and a staged kiss in a picturesque spot. Then I thought, Had the night before been a repeat performance as well? If it had been, why did that suddenly bother me? Carson grabbed my hand and steered me to the right, toward a stone trail that led up and around a leafy hill. At his touch, I dismissed the thought of previous travel companions he may have known. In this moment, anyway, I was all that mattered.
“Besides,” he continued, “those tourist traps are no fun. They’re overpriced and overcrowded.”
I pictured my guidebook and my carefully planned itineraries, reflections of my affinity for the tourist traps. As we walked beneath a canopy of tree branches, I wondered if I would have chosen this path had I come here alone.
“So how’d you sleep?” he asked, pebbles crunching beneath our feet.
“Seems like I closed my eyes and two minutes later the phone was ringing. But aside from a headache, I feel well rested.”
“Wish I could say the same.”
“Still tired?”
“Yup. Aussies were snoring all night. I should’ve just sprung for a damn hotel. Must be nice to have a private room, huh?”
The pang of loneliness I’d felt the night before shot through me again. “It has its downsides.”
“I’ve been staying in hostels for months,” he said. “You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
“I thought you said you’d only been in Asia for a few weeks.”
“I have been, but before that I was backpacking through Europe. Oktoberfest, remember?”
“That was six months ago,” I said. “It’s April now. You’ve been traveling nonstop this whole time?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Well, longer than that. I started last summer, camping around the States.”
To think that Carson had the free time to travel for months on end made me envious, maybe even a little resentful. My trip to Oktoberfest had been a hasty two-night detour on my way back from a two-week stint in the Zürich office. The forty-eight-hour respite from work had been a real treat, though when I wasn’t in the tents, I still found myself chained to my smartphone. If I had my way, I would’ve spent two whole weeks touring Bavaria. I’d always wanted to see Neuschwanstein Castle and drive through the Alps. This trip to Hong Kong was my first extended vacation since spring break of my senior year in college, when I hadn’t yet strayed from the shores of Cape May. Carson’s lengthy escapades made my weekend touring seem tame.
“How long do you plan to keep going?” I asked.
“Till my money runs out. At this rate, about another five or six months? I’m not totally on top of my cash flow.”
“Wow.” I was flabbergasted. “Where to next?”
“I’m considering Macau,” he said, then smiled. “Maybe I can double my money at a casino, make this trip last even longer.”
The idea of completely draining my assets, or worse yet, risking them on a game of chance, was dangerously out of my comfort zone. I maintained a spreadsheet of my personal finances, carefully balancing my monthly income with expenditures. My bills were paid in full and on time, and at every opportunity, I siphoned off excess cash for both a nest egg and a travel fund. My vacation was just as strictly budgeted as the rest of my life. I contemplated our fundamental differences, me and this guy I’d met less than twenty-four hours ago. I doubt he’s ever seen a spreadsheet in his life.
We walked on through a thickening tunnel of trees, slivers of sunlight piercing through the branches and casting shadows that danced with the breeze. The steep, curving pathway was more of a hike than I’d been expecting, and I was happy that I’d had the good sense to wear comfortable shoes. Even my dress seemed appropriate now that I was working up a sweat. My breath deepened, and Carson placed a comforting hand on my back.
“Almost there,” he said.
We turned a corner, and green gave way to blue. Victoria Harbour burst into view, with buildings on top of buildings, competing for space, reflecting the sun off their mirrored façades. Gray, glassy water bisected the land before snaking off into the horizon. In the distance were mountains, the farthest ranges fading into the far-off sky, their crests disappearing into clotted cream clouds.
“This is what I was talking about,” he said.
“It’s breathtaking.”
“Worth the walk, no?”
He ran his fingertips in light circles between my shoulder blades, leaned down and kissed the tip of my earlobe.
“Come sit.” He pulled me by the hand toward a bench at the railing. I joined him, pressing my hip against his as I sat. We kissed gently, a light, lingering caress of our lips. I felt myself sink into the romance of the scene: a foreign city, a sunny day, a handsome man leading me through a forest toward our own private view of the skyline. Carson may have rehearsed this, may have even been here with other girls, but for me, this moment was spontaneous, pulled straight from the pages of a fairy tale, not a guidebook.
I could have spent the entire afternoon kissing him on that bench. But after a short time, he pulled away and looked out into the distance.
“The light is perfect right now,” he said, then produced a spiral-bound sketchbook from his messenger bag. “Would you mind?”
“Of course not.”
As he flipped through the pages, I caught glimpses of charcoal faces, flowers, food, and landscapes, until he stopped at an exact replica of the vista below us, sketched out in shades of gray. He pulled a pencil from the binding and poised it tentatively over the drawing, his gaze alternating between the paper and the sky.
“That’s incredible,” I said. And it was. The night before, Carson said that he dabbled in the arts, which I brushed off as the pie-in-the-sky daydream of an aimless slacker. But the piece he held in his lap was the work of a genuine artist with undeniable talent.
“It’s shit,” he said.
“No, it’s not. It’s amazingly realistic. It looks like a black-and-white photograph.”
“I did this the other day, when I came up here,” he said. “But it’s missing something. So that’s why I wanted to come back, to try to fix it.”
He bit his lower lip, scrutinized his sketch with a furrowed brow, set to work on making changes. We sat in silence as I watched him draw, maneuvering his pencil on the page as if conducting an orchestra: up and down, side to side, light touches alternating with broad strokes. As I compared his rendering with the real world before us, I couldn’t understand what he needed to fix or why he thought it was “shit.” The details were impeccable, down to the smallest ripple trailing the wake of the Star Ferry as it crossed the bay between Hong Kong and Kowloon. I noticed the gentle white curve of the convention center roof peeking out from behind a skyscraper; what seemed so huge and ethereal last night was now reduced to a tiny blip in a vast expanse. I thought about what Carson had said the night before, how we were part of something bigger in this world, how we were all intertwined, no matter how distant we may seem from one another, how lonely or independent we may think we are.
“When you’re done with this trip,” I said, “when your money runs out, what’s your plan?”
“Haven’t thought that far ahead yet.”
“Well, are you going to go back home to San Francisco?”
His jaw flexed and released, his eyes never leaving the page. “No, I don’t think so.”
“What about a job?” I pressed on. “You really have an obvious talent here; you could go far as a designer or an illustrator.”
Carson stopped sketching, met my eyes, formed his mouth into a tight, thin smile. “You’re full of questions.”
“I just don’t understand how you have no idea what your next move is gonna be. I’ve had a five-year plan for as long as I can remember.”
He raised his eyebrows, looking amused. “And what does this five-year plan entail?”
“I revise it every year, but right now, I’ll have earned an MBA and worked my way up to senior associate at my firm.”
“That’s it?”
“I’d also like to live abroad at some point, have a home base in a foreign city instead of New York, just for a little while. But I’m not sure if that’s realistic. I have to go wherever my job decides to send me.”
“Nothing else?”
I paused to think. It sounded ambitious enough as it was. What else could I possibly fit in there?
“No,” I said.
“Sounds extremely practical.”
“I’m a practical person. A planner. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I just think that life’s not worth living without a little passion, which your five-year plan has very little of. There’s that whole living abroad thing, which is cool, but you don’t seem really committed to making it happen. It seems like your whole life plan revolves around your job.”
“I have career goals, and there are very specific steps I need to take in order to achieve them.”
“And that’s great. I’m just saying, you can’t always control everything. Some things you have to leave up to the roll of the dice. If all you’re concerned with is following a practical plan, you’ll wake up one day, old and alone, and discover the world has passed you by. And then you’re dead.”
The Wild Woman's Guide to Traveling the World Page 3