‘Another round?’ I asked.
‘Sure, cheers.’
‘Chris? Another drink?’
He held up a thumb. At the bar I ordered three beers. When I returned, Chris was speaking with two women he’d lassoed into our group. They looked bored as he waved his hand around drunkenly, describing the majesty of the Himalayas. I still felt a sickening twist of jealousy seeing him with other women.
‘Here.’ I pushed the bottle under his nose.
‘Violet!’ He took the beer and held up his palm. ‘High five?’ I held up my own hand and let him smack it. I took the other beer to Noah. But I didn’t feel like drinking mine.
‘Hey, Violet,’ Chris shouted. ‘VIOLET!’ For the first time I could remember, I didn’t feel like talking to him.
‘She’s busy, Chris,’ Noah hollered over my shoulder then rolled his eyes good-naturedly. ‘Pisshead,’ he said.
‘Does he always drink a lot?’
‘Not when we’re travelling. I think he gets a bit bummed here, though.’
Chris banged his beer bottle down on the table between us.
‘There you are,’ he said. He had the sweaty, bewildered look of someone who had started to slide from merriment to drunkenness. He put his arm around my shoulder.
‘Violet and I have known each other forever,’ he told Noah. ‘She’s so pretty.’ He dropped a sweaty hand heavily onto my hair.
Noah looked Chris in the eye and said, ‘Chris, mate, d’you want a water?’ He was ignored. ‘Mate, how much beer have you had?’
Chris waved his hand dismissively. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Mate,’ said Noah, ‘it’s only quarter past six and you’re pissed as an Irish parrot. Maybe you should have some water.’
Chris took the glass Noah was offering and drained it. I decided to get out of there.
‘Noah, I’m tired. You have my beer. It was good to see you.’
‘Okay, honey. See you soon.’
I gathered up my bag and picked my way through the crowd. Chris jumped up and followed me. ‘Violet, we haven’t even had a chance to chat yet.’
I wanted to tell him he’d ignored me since the moment I arrived but I knew it would sound petulant. He’d probably invited a lot of people.
‘We’ll catch-up another time,’ I said, keen to be gone.
‘Wait.’ He followed me out. ‘Let me walk you home.’ The fresh air seemed to revive his senses. I bit my lip.
‘Come on, otherwise I’ll go back in there and keep drinking. And nobody wants that.’
I looked up at him. He was still perfect. He still had the smile of that boy I’d held hands with in the hockey goal.
‘Okay.’
‘Okay,’ he said, guiding me down the street.
As we walked he kicked along a stone. The silence returned but it wasn’t as oppressive as it had been the night before.
When we reached my building Chris sat on the concrete steps leading up to the entrance.
‘That’s my office.’ He pointed to one of the tallest buildings, with a red sign that glowed like the electric element on a stove. ‘Nobody there really knows me. The senior guys all knew my dad. Sometimes I think they knew him better than I did.’
I looked towards my window. He lingered. I wanted to take him inside and feed him soup, tuck him between clean cotton sheets until his vitality returned.
‘Do you want to come up for … tea, or something?’ I asked, mentally searching my allocated cupboard in the kitchen. I was almost certain there was some chai that I’d bought in a vain attempt to re-capture my time in India.
‘Yeah, sounds good.’
Once inside he seemed to relax. I chatted about India as I tore the ends off two sachets of chai and boiled the kettle.
I heard a heavy slam. The air rippled and walls shuddered. A man I had never seen before came out of Jordan’s room. He had slick, black hair, and was dressed in white boxer shorts and a cotton robe that hung open to reveal a muscular body.
‘People are trying to sleep,’ he barked. Then he added even louder, ‘Keep it down!’ He stared at us, fuming, before he returned to his room, slamming the door again.
‘I guess that was my housemate, Jordan,’ I said.
Chris and I looked at each other and collapsed into giggles. I slid open the balcony door. A wave of warm, moist air entered the flat. ‘Let’s go out here where we won’t get in trouble.’
We picked up our cups and stepped out onto the balcony, admiring the landscape of neon and glass.
‘It’s a pretty cool city,’ I said. ‘Do you think you’ll stay?’
‘For now. I don’t really feel like there’s much for me in Melbourne. It’s too small. Too full of memories.’
‘I know exactly what you mean.’
‘I feel guilty not being there with Mum. But I was going crazy.’
After a while he put his teacup down and announced he should go. I walked him to the front door.
‘It’s so nice to just be with someone. Someone you can be yourself with,’ he said.
I rested my head against the door frame and waited for him to leave. But he stood there, his eyes trained on the floor. ‘You’re a good chick, Vy,’ he said.
‘You too, Chris. Um, I mean. You know.’ My nerves were back. I slid my hands into my pockets. ‘You’re a good guy.’
‘Well,’ he said after a moment. ‘Bye.’ He leaned forward and kissed my cheek.
‘Bye,’ I whispered as he walked away. I felt more confused than ever.
Chapter Twenty-one
The second and third week of my self-imposed one month probation passed. I got an email from Harry that made me laugh, and wrote to tell him about my job, Silvie and my first meeting with Jordan.
I continued with my Cantonese classes. Though I was making no progress.
‘Bah. Ba-aAH. BA! BAaa. Ba-a-a-a.’
Madam Tzu taught us that we must perfect our inflections before we could even think about moving on to vocabulary. The difference between one inflection and another was as broad as the difference between a shoe and a cat. The slightest down emphasis on a sound could transform it from a sheep to a shipping container.
‘Gah. Ga-aAH. GA! GAaa. Ga-a-a-a.’
The work at Glaxo was monotonous, but the people were nice and there was a steady stream of diversions to keep us from realising what drudgery our employment was.
I was staring at the form for our elaborate, international, cross-code footy-tipping competition one slow Thursday afternoon, when a message arrived from Chris:
Come downstairs.
Now?
Yes!
He was waiting with two coffees and a chocolate croissant from Delifrance. ‘I know it’s your favourite.’ He passed me a cappuccino in a paper cup.
‘Thanks, what’s going on? Do you have a meeting or something around here?’
Chris loosened his tie. Unsatisfied, he tugged it free of his collar and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘I quit.’
‘What?’
‘Well …’ He grimaced. ‘My boss and I decided it wasn’t working out.’
‘When?’
‘About half an hour ago.’
‘What are you going to do?’ I searched his face. All I could think was that he’d be going back to Melbourne.
‘I’m thinking Nam,’ he said.
‘Nam? As in, Vietnam, the country?’
‘Yeah, I’m thinking I’ll get out of here for a week.’ He tore off a piece of croissant and popped it into his mouth.
‘But … but …’ I was speechless. Things had just started to turn around after our disaster date and now this. Chris was going away again.
That Friday he invited me to his ‘emancipation’ drinks at a themed bar called Wall Street, where the drinks prices rose and fell like the stock market. When I arrived, Chris was leaning over the bar handing a fistful of bank notes to the barmaid, in exchange for a large tray of what looked like Advocaat mixers. He saw me and pointed to his tray of drinks and
mouthed, ‘Bargain’ with a grin.
Chris’s workmates looked like a chorus line in their pink or light blue business shirts, rolled up to the sleeve. They stood apart from his main group of traveller friends, and clutched shallow drinks served over ice: Scotch rocks, Whiskey rocks, and other dark spirits.
Noah was there, and so was the Italian couple, Giorgio and Belinda, attached as ever.
‘We’ve got to save our coins,’ Chris shouted as he passed me one of the squash-coloured drinks. ‘We’re headed to Nam. Flying out on Sunday. Going to start at Ho Chi Minh City and work our way up. What do you say, Vy?’
‘But what about your job at the Plaza?’
‘Waiting tables? Someone else can do that. They don’t care if I nick off for a bit. They can just get another casual in. Hey anyway, I’m twenty-seven. I’m not here to work in a bar I’m here to have an adventure. So, will you going to come?’
My head snapped up. ‘I’m invited?’
Chris chuckled. ‘Vietnam isn’t one of those invite-only countries.’
‘Oh. I have plans with Silvie.’
‘So join us on Monday. Ho Chi Minh city.’ He winked at me.
‘I’ll think about it.’
Belinda chewed her hair while her husband bought a round of drinks.
‘Did you see that bartender? In the white singlet?’ He lowered a tray of beers onto the table.
‘What about her?’ Belinda snapped.
‘For Noah or Chris, or one of his finance mates,’ Giorgio insisted.
Noah and Chris stretched their necks to get a view of the beer dolly sloshing amber liquid into steins.
‘She’s a bit horsey,’ Noah said.
Chris raised his eyebrows. ‘Not bad.’
I shifted in my seat.
‘So, Nam …’ said Noah.
I listened for half an hour as they planned routes and destinations they wanted to hit: the Củ Chi tunnel network the Viet Cong used to flummox the US troops during the Vietnam War, the citadel in Hue, Halong Bay. Belinda wanted to go clothes shopping in Hoi An and Giorgio wanted to go surfing in Nha Trang. Noah wanted to drink snake blood. He had a pocket-sized guidebook open.
‘We can do all of that,’ Chris said, marking a red path from the bottom of the country to the top.
Belinda and Giorgio began their routine of pantomime yawns that signified they wanted to go home and have sex. Noah stood up and dusted off his jeans. ‘I might turn in too.’
‘Me too, I’m beat,’ said Chris. He turned to me. ‘Want me to walk you home?’
We followed the same path past Chris’s old building to my concrete steps. He walked with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky.
‘You seem happier,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘I am. I’m looking forward to the trip. You should come.’
‘I don’t know.’ I looked at my hands. ‘I’ve just started –’
‘Vy,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You’re only young once. You’ve got to learn to be a little more impulsive.’
The word made me think of Harry. I smiled remembering his accidental infinity tattoo.
‘What’s so funny?’ Chris asked, bringing his face close to mine.
‘Nothing,’ I said, still grinning. ‘You just reminded me of something.’
‘You know, something’s changed in you since you came to Asia.’
‘No …’ I shook my head.
He pressed his mouth against mine. It lingered. Two seconds. Three. I felt warmth from inside his lips. The soft brush of his tongue. I closed my eyes. He pulled away.
‘Let me know about Nam, okay?’ he said.
‘Okay,’ I replied, breathless.
‘See ya.’ He hopped down off the stoop and walked away.
I thought of Cass spending six months in remote Papua New Guinea studying the languages for her linguistics thesis. People do far crazier things than vacationing in Vietnam for the things they want.
‘Yes, I’ll go with you,’ I called after him.
Chris turned around. I was rewarded with a smile. ‘That a girl,’ he said. ‘You won’t regret it.’
Chapter Twenty-two
‘Man Get Inn,’ I said, cringing at the bad pun that had enticed Chris to book this Ho Chi Minh rooming house.
The driver nodded, put his cigarette between his lips and waved for me to follow him. We wound between rows and rows of men idling by taxis outside Tan Son Nhat airport, before we reached my ride. He pointed.
‘I can’t get on that!’ I said, outraged, for the second time in recent memory, at the sight of a motorcycle. A rusted, skeletal one at that. He waved for me to hurry up. I tried out one of my new Vietnamese expressions.
‘Lam sow,’ I said, gesturing at my backpack. It weighed thirty kilos. I was also saddled with a daypack stuffed to bursting point with the items that would have pushed the weight of my check-in bag over the limit.
Unfazed, the driver bent his legs, hugged my backpack and heaved it onto a thin metal rack protruding from the back of his bike. He then secured it with rope and nodded, satisfied, before waving again for me to get on.
I threw my leg over the bike, then slid my arms into the backpack straps as an extra measure to prevent it from flying off and potentially causing a pile-up on the freeway.
Once I was astride, we were off. We shot like a bottle-rocket thought queues of taxies and cars, then out onto the freeway into the city. We weaved in and out of buses and overtook large trucks carrying livestock. In town, the traffic thickened. It was almost exclusively motorcycles. At red lights, gangs of thirty to forty bikers sat and waited, revving their sooty engines. Tail pipes touched front wheels and more than once my leg grazed the knee of a rider on a neighbouring bike. Swarms of bikes arrived at each intersection in great waves, buzzing like biblical locusts. I pulled out my phone and took some shots. The light changed and we were swept along.
The drivers honked and yelled as they whizzed past. I arrived at the guesthouse shaken and sweaty and very pleased to not be dead. The driver deposited me at a set of large iron gates, and accepted my fare with a delighted look that told me I’d once again miscalculated the exchange rate.
‘Man Get Inn,’ a sign said bossily and smaller text below informed me that to do so, I needed to ring a bell. I pressed a buzzer and waited for someone to appear.
Ho Chi Minh City was less than a three-hour flight from Hong Kong, but it felt like a world away. I preferred to think of the city by its old name of Saigon, which conjured up pictures of an antipodean paradise that was part Asian, part French; where ladies carried red paper parasols and shady characters dwelled in wooded opium dens, where breakfast was a croissant and lunch was dumplings and fistfuls of coriander.
I pulled out my phone and messaged Chris. I’m here! Then I shot Cass a photo of the bike hordes.
Getting the hang of this travelling stuff. Wish you were here.
I also sent it to Silvie, Kym and Harry.
My phone buzzed. But it was Cass, not Chris. Now where are you?
Ho Chi Minh City.
I am sooooo jealous. I’ve spent this week correcting essays on onomatopoeic words across different language groups.
How are things going with Adnan?
Nope. Not telling. Go and be a traveller.
I pressed the buzzer again, leaning into it with all my weight. The sun was brighter here than in Hong Kong, and the air was drier. After waiting five minutes the anxious yearn had arrived in my stomach. I checked my phone again and stabbed the buzzer with my finger.
A young woman arrived to let me through the gate. ‘Welcome Man Get Inn.’
As I followed her to the guesthouse I asked if Chris and the others were inside.
She giggled. ‘No, Miss, Mr Campbell check in, but they leave for a tour.’
I scowled.
‘I can arrange a taxi if you want to look around.’
On the way in I’d seen bikes congregated at the end of the
street.
‘I can flag down a ride,’ I said, forming a plan to head to the War Remnants Museum. I made sure I took a business card with the address on it.
The sunbaked courtyard of the War Remnants Museum, formerly known as the Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes, was filled with decaying tanks. It was like a sculpture garden, but instead of naked women and stones shaved into an abstract shapes, it was decorated with machines of death. Fighter jets and helicopters grounded forever. They had rusted and atrophied and looked about as dangerous as a swing set.
Inside the picture was nastier. A gallery of blurry photos showed babies’ features distorted by Napalm. Torture devices. Misery. Bloated, shredded humans. Bodies missing limbs. A man who was little more than a torso and head, who should have been dead, had a fearful and slick face distorted in pain. Tourists exploring two-by-two pointed and whispered, and drew close to each other as they faced the horror. I hurried outside to the river of traffic, keen for a driver to whisk me away.
Traffic in India was made up of an odd mix that was half rickshaw convoy, half circus parade. In Ho Chi Ming City it was motorcycles, motorcycles and more motorcycles. They were xe om taxis. Xe, meaning ‘motorbike’, and om, meaning ‘hug’.
I touched my leg. The blisters had healed but there were still large white marks of fresh skin where the burns had been. I wondered what Harry was doing.
A driver in a ‘Same Same but Different’ T-shirt beckoned me onto his bike.
My next stop was a pagoda nestled within tropical gardens; its wood beams softened by the moist air. It had to be guarded against rot by glossy red paint. The dark rooms contained hazy air from the incense sticks left as offering to the carved faces. I breathed in the musky scent and thought of India.
Harry would love this place, I thought, and snapped a photo for him.
I bought some incense and matches from a little girl. When I opened my bag to pay I saw my phone was flashing with a message. I figured it would be Harry and clicked on it, eager to hear what he had to say. But it wasn’t Harry, it was Chris.
Babe, come meet us at the Mudhouse.
Chasing Chris Campbell Page 21