Aperture on the East

by Meris Lee

  Ana,

  I admit that I’ve missed you. My mind is still a mess. I think I’m still in love with you, but I don’t know if I can get over what Ivan had to say about you. I am very fond of that kid. He’s hurt, and now I am, too.

  I am leaving soon for a marine biology conference in Singapore. I am packing as I write. I should have some answers when I come back.

  Vo

  Ana wept while she read the letter. She pressed it to her chest as she imagined that perhaps she and Vo still had a chance. She read the letter a few more times before she put it under her pillow. This might be the last thing she would get from Vo.

  Ana went through the rest of her mail and found a letter from her landlady. It was unusual because her landlady normally called her on the phone instead of writing her a message. She hesitated for a few seconds before opening it.

  The apartment building had been sold to a developer and Ana was advised to move out. The lease had stated that the landlady reserved the right to evict her tenants at any time for any cause. Ana would not receive any financial compensation because she was behind on rent already. The landlady gave a specific deadline in the letter. The deadline, Ana noticed, was tomorrow evening! Ana looked at the envelope again; it was postmarked two weeks ago. Ana let the letter fall to the floor, and then she screamed.

  She screamed and shouted until she had no more voice. She got up and went to the refrigerator to retrieve the vodka as it was the knee-jerk thing to do in all disasters big and small. She drank straight from the bottle and nearly emptied it before she stopped. She tried to go through everything that had gone wrong in her head, and found it overwhelming. She should start packing, and think about where she and Ivan would stay until she could find another apartment. She should plan out how to wisely use the little money she had and look for a new job. She should sober up.

  She took another sip of vodka and turned the bottle upside down to make sure there was not one drop left in it. She thought about Zoe. Zoe needed to be informed about the eviction. She had to tell Zoe now.

  Ana closed her eyes for a moment to collect her thoughts; they were random and chaotic, complicated by emotions even more deranged. A pounding headache started to knock, and Ana needed an escape. She knew of one way to shut off the pain.

  When Ana arrived at the Rocking Waves, the place was as crowded as ever. She looked for Zoe, but was told that the band had taken the night off. A DJ was spinning the music instead. The volume of the music was deafening, but people still attempted to converse with one another via shouting. Ana found Yurik at the bar, and asked him if he knew where Zoe was.

  “Who knows? She gets around,” said Yurik.

  Ana would have slapped Yurik in the face if a man hadn’t come up next to Ana and started talking to her.

  “Hey, can I buy you a drink?” said the man with an accent similar to that of McKenzie’s. He looked to be in his twenties, tall and muscular, with short blond hair and blue eyes.

  Ana looked the man up and down. “Are you sure you are old enough to drink?”

  “Why don’t we find out?” said the man. He ordered two glasses of vodka and placed one in front of Ana. Ana looked at it for a moment, then brought it up to her lips and drank it in one gulp.

  The man called himself Erik and told Ana that he was doing a year abroad at Nha Trang University. He was indeed from Australia. He had flown into the city before school started to get settled. He stumbled into Rocking Waves one day and found it a great place to hang out. He wondered if Ana had been in Nha Trang long and whether she could show him around some day.

  Ana hardly paid Erik any attention as he kept buying her one drink after another. She told him that she just got fired from her job and kicked out of her apartment. Erik shrugged his shoulders and said, “That’s life.”

  As Ana became more and more inebriated she started to giggle for no reason at all. She could tell that Erik was trying to kiss her. She was debating whether to give in when she heard a loud, explosive boom. She tensed up and held still, and soon everyone was ducking for cover as, unmistakably, rounds of bullets were being fired. There were people screaming and glasses being shattered. Ana could hear someone blowing a whistle and yelling for everyone to get out.

  Erik grabbed Ana and they stooped over as they moved toward the exit with everyone else. Once outside the nightclub Ana could see the police cars with the lights flashing and hear the sirens as more emergency vehicles approached. There were fire engines and ambulances waiting as well. When Ana looked back at the entrance of the nightclub, she saw Yurik, handcuffed, being escorted into a police car by two officers. A string of scantily clad women of different ethnicities filed out of the nightclub with their heads lowered, making their way to a police van. A few more men came out with their hands bound behind them, and they were shoved into a few other police vehicles.

  Ana wanted to stay and make sure that Zoe was really not at the nightclub, but the police were clearing the area and Ana was forced to leave with Erik. Erik held her arms as she tried looking back several times. Her head felt like it was spinning in circles and her feet were heavy. Erik got a taxi and Ana gave the address of her apartment building.

  When they got off the taxi, Erik had to help Ana upstairs and open the door to her fourth-floor apartment. Ana pointed toward her bedroom; she wanted to sleep off her headache. Erik almost had to carry Ana to bed because she was so weak. Ana moaned when her head hit the pillow. She saw Erik remove his shirt and wipe his sweat off with it. It was a warm summer night, the air damp with moisture from the impending storm. Erik was looking at her amorously. Ana thought that perhaps she should ask him to leave, but she didn’t have any strength left. Erik lay down next to her, and Ana closed her eyes.

  Chapter 33

  It was an unusual rainy day and Ivan decided to stay home and read. Before summer camp ended everyone received a book about the marine species in the waters surrounding Vietnam. It was a book intended for pre-teens with colorful photographs and fun facts, but it was written in Vietnamese. Ivan had to read it with the help of a dictionary, but he was glad to have something to pass the time while waiting for Sofia to return.

  Ivan heard the knock on the door and went to answer it. He opened the door when he saw through the peep hole that the visitor was Vo. Ivan gave Vo a big smile as Vo patted him on the back.

  “Mr. Nguyen, I thought you didn’t want to see us again,” said Ivan.

  “What made you think that?” said Vo. He looked around.

  “My ma is still sleeping, I think,” said Vo.

  Ivan asked Vo to sit down, and offered some water.

  “I want to see you, too,” said Vo. “How have you been? I checked on the little boy that you ran into, and he had no signs of injury whatsoever. I know that you were probably pretty scared yourself, right?”

  “I was,” said Ivan. “I’m glad the boy is okay. I’ll be more careful in the future. I lost control of my skateboard and ran into the street after I hit the kid. A car could’ve run over me. I still get goose bumps when I think of it. I could’ve been killed. And I was afraid that I would be in jail for the rest of my life because that kid was bleeding so much that I thought I had killed him.”

  “We all learn from our mistakes,” said Vo.

  “Do you make mistakes?” said Ivan.

  Vo chuckled and said, “Too many to count.”

  Vo paused, and then said, “I am leaving for Singapore this afternoon, but I want to say goodbye before I go.”

  “You didn’t go and say goodbye to all of your camp students, did you?” said Ivan.

  Vo gave him a grin.

  “Well,” said Ivan, “I’m glad that you still like my ma enough to want to say goodbye to her before you go on a trip. She’s really not that awful. I was only complaining about her when I felt bad. All kids blame their parents for everything, right? I mean, I learn to do a lot of things for myself because she gave me a lot of freedom and autonomy. She’s not a controlling kind of parent.”<
br />
  “Oh yeah?”

  “My ma makes the best tea and she’s a really good cook. She keeps her house clean and beautiful all the time,” said Ivan. He looked around at the mess in the house, and then said, “Well, usually, anyway.”

  “It’s okay, Ivan,” said Vo, “I know.”

  “She’s had a lot of bad luck, so she gets a little sad sometimes. She gets drunk only once in a while. It’s not like she’s an alcoholic,” said Ivan. He bit his lower lip. He knew he just told a lie. He couldn’t tell if Vo believed it; Vo just kept on smiling.

  Ivan and Vo were talking about the book that Ivan was reading when they heard the sound of a door opening. Ana came out of her bedroom with her hair un-brushed and shirt wrinkled. She was rubbing her forehead when Ivan called out, “Look who’s here.”

  Ana dropped her jaw. She was still trying to find her words when someone else came out of her bedroom. It was Erik, shirtless and with equally messy hair.

  “Last night was wild,” said Erik. He rubbed Ana’s shoulder and went toward the bathroom.

  Vo stood up, and Ana could see his hands clenching into tight fists. Stunned by the whole scene herself, she could not think of a single word to say.

  “Who was that?” said Ivan.

  Before Ana could snap out of her stupor and answer, Vo had left the apartment, slamming the door shut behind him.

  “He came to make up with you, but it’s hopeless now,” said Ivan. “I hate you. I hate you.” He turned and ran out of the apartment, too.

  Ana’s legs gave out all of a sudden and she fell to the floor. Her heart was racing and her body trembled. Her mind was blank as she tried to process what just happened. Vo was here. It was a chance for atonement. But it happened too fast, and before Ana could seize it, it was gone.

  “Ana, are you okay?” said Erik.

  Ana lifted her chin and stared at Erik for a moment. She stood up and went to her bed to get Erik’s shirt, and then she came out and threw it at him. She pushed him toward the door.

  “Wait, what’s going on?” said Erik.

  Ana didn’t stop until she shoved Erik out of her apartment. Ana was exerting all the strength that she could muster and Erik nearly fell down the stairs. Ana shut the door, and then she sat down against it to cry.

  She didn’t have long to bury herself in sorrow before her cell phone rang. She ignored it. The ringing stopped, but then it started again. Ana didn’t want to talk to anyone. She was going to sit and drown in her tears. Her heart had already died.

  The caller was persistent and the intermittent ringing went on for another five minutes before she went to get it, trying to turn it off. Before she pressed the power button, she recognized the phone number to be that of the Nha Trang Police Department. She had gotten a call from them recently when Ivan was arrested.

  Ana dried her tears with her hand and dialed the number back. When someone answered, she identified herself as Anastasia Romanova. Had someone from the police station been trying to reach her?

  “Yes,” said the woman on the other side of the phone. “Are you the mother of Zoe Romanova?”

  Ana’s heart sank when she heard Zoe’s name.

  “Yes, I am. Is she okay?” Her hand squeezed her phone tightly as panic began to set in.

  “I’m afraid not, Ms. Romanova. Zoe is in the hospital, in the intensive care unit. We need you to come to the police station first with her passport, and then we will take you to the hospital. She is being guarded by the police.”

  Ana hung up the phone and hurried out of her apartment. She was asking a million whys as she urged the taxi driver to speed up. She had no doubt about the answer, however. She alone was the reason why the whole world had crumbled into pieces.

  Chapter 34

  The night would’ve been silent if it weren’t for the frequent, intermittent chimes of different pitches and tempos coming from the vital signs monitor. There was also the whooshing sound with each breath the ventilator delivered to Zoe via an endotracheal tube, about ten times a minute. Ana dozed off several times, and each time she awoke thinking hours had passed, only a few minutes had gone by according to the clock on the wall.

  At dawn the nurse came in to check the two infusion pumps fixed to a steel pole next to Zoe’s bed. They were running four different medications and fluids into Zoe’s central line, threaded into the jugular vein on the right side of her neck. These pumps were noisy throughout the night as well, sounding off alarms for various reasons. Very quickly, Ana figured out which button she could push to silence each alarm without jeopardizing the flow of the medications.

  The nurse listened to Zoe’s chest, checked all the lines and tubes, and then she turned Zoe from one side to the other. “We don’t want her to get bed sores,” she said to Ana.

  An aide came in and helped the nurse change the pad underneath Zoe. Ana stood up and offered to assist, but the nurse told her to relax. “We’ve got her,” the nurse said. Ana watched the nurse and the aide give Zoe a towel bath, and reminisced the first few years of Zoe’s life when she would put Zoe in the bath tub for a rinse and some play time before bed. The bell-like giggles of Zoe when she was a toddler came back to Ana vividly. Ana did take care of Zoe, and they used to have fun. When Ana played on her guitar, Zoe would sit and listen, even hum along. Zoe loved the guitar more than any of her toys. After Leo died, Ana was too heartbroken to touch the guitar again, and it became Zoe’s property. The guitar was a link to the spirit of her father and a reminder of how her mother used to be, Zoe wrote in her diary, which Ana had found while packing to leave Russia.

  Ana’s thoughts were interrupted when the attending physician and the neurosurgeon came to round on Zoe. Zoe had a craniotomy and her head was still wrapped in bandages with a line coming out of it. The other end of that line was buried under the skull to monitor the intracranial pressure. Ana had been told that if the pressure was too high, it could lead to death or permanent brain damages. The doctors examined Zoe, and exchanged information with the nurse in jargons beyond Ana’s comprehension. Ana listened intently anyway, her hands shaking nervously again. It was almost like she was the defendant on a sentencing trial, and any minute now she could be awarded the death penalty.

  “The pressure inside Zoe’s head seems to be stabilized. We’ll leave the monitor in for a few more hours,” said the neurosurgeon. He exited of the room.

  Ana was somewhat relieved to hear the news, but she wished that the neurosurgeon could have told her more, even if it wouldn’t have made a difference in Zoe’s care. She looked to the attending physician, who, as if sensing Ana’s worries, turned to speak to her.

  “We have kept her sedated and paralyzed so she won’t fight the ventilator, but later this morning we will try to wake her up and see if she can breathe on her own. If she can, then sometime today we should be able to take that tube out of her throat,” said the attending physician, who had the kindest eyes.

  “Oh, thank you, doctor. Thank you,” said Ana. That was about all that she could think of to say. She felt like she should be asking some questions, but she was too happy to hear of Zoe’s good progress to think of any.

  Ana was alone again when daylight came. It was another rainy day and the wind was howling. Someone had brought her a breakfast tray but she didn’t have any appetite. She stood by Zoe’s bed to take another look. Zoe’s eyes were purple and blue, and her face was swollen. There were minor cuts around the nose and the lips. Ana held Zoe’s arm in her hands, and inspected the bruises on it. Ana wanted to kiss Zoe’s wounds, and blow on them like she used to do when Zoe would fall and scratch her knee in her toddler years; little Zoe would then stop crying and throw herself in Ana’s arms for a hug and a squeeze. Ana tried to remember what it felt like to hold Zoe. It had been a long time since they even held hands. Ana felt a world of regrets, and wanted to plunge forward to embrace Zoe, but she was barricaded from Zoe by a wall of wires and tubes.

  Someone knocked on the door. Ana turned around, and was sur
prised to see McKenzie. He was accompanied by a Vietnamese police officer in uniform.

  “Ana, I hope we are not intruding,” said McKenzie.

  “No. Come in,” said Ana.

  McKenzie and the police officer came toward Zoe’s bed.

  “This is Tuan Le. He’s a friend of Zoe’s,” said McKenzie, pointing toward the police officer.

  “Are you the officer who found her?” said Ana.

  “Yes. I wish I had found her sooner. I am so sorry,” said Tuan. His voice trembled, and his eyes were downcast. Ana thought that he could burst into tears at any second.

  “If it weren’t for you,” said Ana, ”she might’ve been dead. So thank you. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “No, it was my fault. I led her down this path. I used her,” said Tuan. He buried his face in his hands, and started weeping.

  McKenzie threw his arm around Tuan’s shoulder, and told him to sit in a chair in the corner. Tuan obeyed.

  Ana didn’t know what Tuan meant, but she was more curious about why McKenzie had come to visit Zoe in the first place.

  “Ana, I have a lot of explaining to do,” said McKenzie. “You should sit down, too.”

  Ana complied, and McKenzie started pacing the room.

  “You see, Ana, I’m not really from Sydney. I’m from Moscow,” said McKenzie in perfect Russian. Ana was shocked.

  “Why did you pretend to be from Sydney?” said Ana.

  McKenzie switched back to English and said, “I work for the Investigative Committee of Russia. We got a lead on a Russian syndicate that was operating in Vietnam. They were active in Hanoi, but moved their camp to Nha Trang after the new international airport opened here. Their main business is human trafficking all along this side of the Pacific Ocean. They bring Russian women down here, and smuggle Southeast Asian women into Russia. I was sent here to assist my Vietnamese counterparts in the investigation.”

  Ana’s eyes enlarged, and she said, “But your Australian accent—”