by Grace, A. E.
Standing now, on the nearly empty platform which was nothing more than bare concrete and a few rotting wooden benches, he watched her as she walked around, took a photo or two on her phone, and all with a focused look of interest on her face. The rest of the train’s passengers had long since disappeared, but she had insisted that they wait for the throng to disperse before they made their way to the border. In that time she seemed quite happy to simply explore the crappy old train station in a gentle, if a little methodical manner. With caution, too. Her steps were short, and she looked first around corners before going around.
The behavior seemed to conflict with what he had gleaned from her, personality-wise, in their short conversation aboard the train. Where there it was fire and confidence, a willingness to take the lead, here she seemed a little reserved. He was not so blind as to overlook that it might be his presence that was affecting her. He knew that he was difficult to get along with, and he knew that he generally made people feel awkward.
Liam put his hands on his hips, fingers outward with thumb on the bone, and looked, a hint of impatience slithering through his thoughts. A guard was half-asleep in his chair at one end, cigarette burning close to his fingers, and down the other end was a homeless person, wrapped in more clothing than the weather warranted, and hunched over against a pillar, likely asleep. The floor of the platform was cracked, one side of the station sinking into the wet earth beneath.
“Yeah,” he said, wiping beads of sweat from his upper lip. “Hot.”
“And humid,” Terry remarked.
“Let’s go.” He looked at her, watched as she regarded him briefly before nodding.
“You’re travelling light,” she said to him as she approached, pointing at his bag. “What’s that hold, like a pair of jeans and two t-shirts? Can you even get a bottle of water in there?”
“Clothing is cheap in Vietnam,” he replied. It was the truth. “Besides, it’s all I got.” He set off, not bothering to look back to see if she was following him or not.
“All you got? What do you mean?” she asked, jogging to catch up, and then falling into step beside him.
Liam shrugged. “What I said. It’s all I got.”
“Like everything you own?” she persisted.
“Pretty much,” he replied, looking at her. He didn’t smile or offer any expression of modesty. He simply looked at her.
“Oh,” she croaked. The discomfort was obvious in her face, and it even extended into her walk. She stiffened up, held the straps of her backpack with her hands, and looked away as though there was something more interesting to look at. But on the edge of a run down, depressed, and sad town, there was nothing else to look at.
Liam wondered if her spunk was an act. He’d met enough people like that in his lifetime. They weren’t bad, but they could be grating. But he knew himself well enough to realize that he hadn’t gone into the next carriage on the train for a reason. He couldn’t deny what he longed for, even if he wouldn’t confront the thought head-on. It was a long time ago that he had given all that up. It was not worth it. It was never worth it.
“God, it’s filthy around here,” she said.
He looked down at the pavement, saw litter scattered about, piling in the drains. “Yeah.”
“You’d think they’d do a better job when it’s such a tourist hotspot.”
“The tourists don’t bring money to this town.” He looked at her, the sun behind narrowing his eyes. “They simply walk straight through it. Transients.”
“Someone must buy something.”
“Yeah, but the guy selling drinks in his cart probably came over on the first train. This place,” he said, looking around. “There’s not much going on here. We’re on the edge of the city, too.” Silence encased them for a while. “What were you saying about your illegal job?” he asked. They had a long walk ahead of them, and it would probably best to make it as smooth as possible.
She waited for a moment before answering him. “Yeah,” she said, her voice flat, and her eyes still roaming across the boring scenery of a town that had seen better days. “My boss wanted me to print something and it could have amounted to being illegal.”
“What was your job?”
“I edited for a publishing company.”
“A publishing company?” he echoed. “For what, the web?”
“No, we were print only. You know, like, we handled some property and tech magazines, a couple of free newspapers. One hairdressing quarterly.”
“There’s an industry without much life left.”
“I disagree,” she said, and she stopped. Liam didn’t, and he kept walking. She continued: “Print publishing will never go out of fashion, no matter what all the tech-heads say.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s too ingrained.”
“So was the abacus and counting frame.”
“A digital calculator is just a modernized form of the abacus.” Liam could hear the roll of her eyes in the tone of her voice.
“Digital media is just a form of print media. The words are the same, aren’t they?”
“Do you own an e-reader? Or a tablet?”
“No,” Liam admitted. “But I don’t read the newspaper, either.”
“There’s a surprise.”
Now Liam stopped. He turned and looked at Terry who was walking a few steps behind him. He grinned at her. “Tell me more about your illegal job.”
“There was a new magazine,” she said, missing his grin, her eyes glued to a rusty shovel that was lying on the ground. “It’s a spade.”
“Yeah.”
“Why leave it out here to rust?” She looked up and down the empty street. On the road beside them were two cars stopped at a light, but otherwise the area was barren. “God, that’s weird.”
“Not really,” Liam said, shrugging. He kept walking.
“Anyway,” he heard her say. “There was a new magazine that we were contracted to handle. It was a bit different from our usual stuff.”
“How so?” Liam pointed toward a pothole in the ground where the concrete pavement had sunken in. He looked around, saw the dead stump of a tree not far away. It was probably a large root that had rotted, and the soil beneath had caved. “Watch out,” he added.
“Thanks. Um, well basically it was a gossip mag.”
“That sounds boring.”
“Well, it can be boring,” Terry said, and Liam nodded. “Anyway, libel laws are pretty weird back home, and I wanted to edit some stuff out that could get us in trouble, but he told me to keep it in. He being my boss, I mean.”
“So? That’s his call, right?”
“Right, but it was a lie.”
“So?”
“That’s illegal.”
“You can go to jail?” Liam asked, stopping and turning. He had walked a little ahead, and with the sun high behind Terry, he had to squint.
“You should get some sun specs.”
“Yeah.”
“You sure you don’t have one in amongst all your worldly possessions?” She nodded at his bag.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not that good at communication, are you?”
Liam chose not to respond.
“Well, anyway, yeah, I’m not sure if you can go to jail or not. I remember researching it briefly, but all that I really found out was that though technically you can go to jail, it’s archaic and no judge will do that.”
“So your main concern was being sued.”
“No, that wasn’t it,” Terry said, shaking her head. She sped up and walked past him, and Liam fell into step beside her. “It would just be the company that got sued, not me. I’d be protected from all the fallout.”
“Unless they put the blame on you. Use you as an out.”
“Yeah, there is that,” she conceded. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“No?”
“No,” she said. Liam watched her as she mulled the thought over in her mind. “They probably would have,
you know.”
He smiled. “Probably.” He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. “So?” he prompted.
“I just didn’t want to be a part of it, you know? Lying about someone just to sell a few copies of a goss magazine? It just didn’t sit right with me.”
“Well, it’s not like you wrote the lie,” Liam said, looking at her sideways. He liked her profile.
“No, but it passed through me. Anyway, I think that was more the last straw, you know. The company had changed ownership not too long ago, and things were going in a different direction than I wanted to go. Plus, with everything going on at home, it just felt right to leave.”
“Good,” he said. “Change is good.”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “No regrets.”
“Good.” Liam wasn’t entirely convinced by her, but he mirrored her nodding anyway.
“What about you? With all your worldly possessions in that tiny thing? You know, you still haven’t told me what you’re doing out here.”
“Just visiting.”
“Okay,” Terry said, and he heard annoyance in her voice.
He looked at her, and relented. He may as well be fair. “It’s nothing really that interesting,” he said. “I’ve just got a bit of savings, and so I’ve been doing some traveling. I like to travel light. I don’t care about possessions, and I go where I want.”
“You know,” she said, looking ahead. “I’m not forcing you to tell me stuff. We don’t have to talk about it. Or at all.”
“Nah, it’s not like that,” Liam murmured. He looked at her again, waited for her eyes to meet him, and then he smiled. “I’m not trying to spoil the chat.”
“If you say so,” she said, breathing out. “We’re nearly at the crossing, right?”
“Yes. Got everything ready?” He asked her the question, ignoring that she probably thought he really had spoiled the moment.
“Yes,” she said, tapping her chest. Two strings disappeared from around her neck into her top.
“Keep everything there?”
“No,” she said. She smiled, pursed-lipped, and Liam found it quite disarming. “Everything important is hidden away somewhere on my body.”
“Nice.”
“Nobody’s stealing my shit,” she said, laughing.
But Liam had already stopped listening. The border crossing was close, and he was thinking about what he was going to do. Past the small building that regulated human traffic, Liam could see a wide cement road lined on either side by a tall fence topped with barbed wire, behind which was the kind of thick sub-tropical vegetation native to the region.
“Hey, Terry,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got to use the toilet. Meet me on the other side.”
“Of what?”
“The building,” Liam said, pointing at it and already beginning to walk away. “It spits you out right onto that big road and that’s where you walk across to Vietnam.”
Terry looked at him for a moment, before agreeing. “Sure,” she said. “See you there.”
“Cool.” He turned and made for the stall of what he knew would be filthy toilets.
*
The border crossing was heavily guarded, with armed soldiers, trained dogs, and outgoing x-ray machines for baggage. Terry was queuing up with mountains of people, many of whom were travelers and backpackers. A man in the line next to hers, rake thin and tall as a basketball player, smiled toothily at her.
“Traveling alone?” he asked. He leaned over her a little.
“No,” Terry said, but she nodded her head, blinking. “I mean yes, I am.”
“You sure?” The man’s smile was mitigated by his gaunt, sunken cheeks, and jutting jowls.
“Yeah,” Terry replied, nodding. She looked away from him, thinking that he definitely had the appearance of a seasoned backpacker. Long shorts that looked like they were once upon a time baggy cargo trousers; they had definitely been through better times. A black t-shirt with a stretched neckline and fraying edges that hung off his sunburned collar bones completed the look. Despite herself, Terry couldn’t help but roll her eyes a little (mentally, of course). She understood the allure of backpacking, in theory anyway, but she’d never get so careless with her appearance. It wasn’t a vanity thing, it was a pride and respect thing. If she was going to be traveling through foreign countries, she was damn sure going to represent herself, and by extension where she had come from, well, rather than leave a trail of onlookers gawking in disbelief.
He also wasn’t getting her signals. “Where are you from?”
“Um, that’s complicated,” Terry said, giving him a ‘sorry’ smile. She wasn’t going to get into that with a stranger. “But if it matters, I started off in London.”
“Ah, London. Love London. Miss London.” He looked away, as though lost in reverie. “Was there last month.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure is. Went to a sick party.”
“Sounds fun.”
“You have no idea,” he blurted through a laugh.
“How about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. Where are you from?”
“Oh, I’m from everywhere. A citizen of the world, you could say.”
Terry wanted to groan. “Cool,” she said through a forced smile. A large family at the front of her queue all went through at once, and she was glad to move forward enough to make conversation awkward, and therefore to put an end to it.
“Well, enjoy your travels, citizen,” she said, putting on a serious face.
“Like you know it.” He clicked two fingers together.
She shook her head, and looked up the other side of her line to see where Liam was. He was still nowhere in sight, and she wondered – no she hoped – that he hadn’t just bailed. He didn’t really seem like the type, but it’s not like she knew him.
Oh well, she thought. Another one gets away. It’s not as if she hadn’t watched them come and go as they lost interest before, or as her job kept her schedule packed with work time, and totally devoid of free time.
Her queue began to move quickly, and the radio attached the guard’s hip at the front of her line went haywire with overlapping shouting voices. He rushed out, and the lone officer left at the desk began to let people through with more haste. Terry looked behind her, and saw two guards shutting the doors to the border crossing building, firing off Mandarin at each other that she couldn’t understand, but she could certainly tell from their tone that something wrong was going on.
“This way, please,” she heard, and she turned around to see that the five or so people in front of her had been let through surprisingly quickly. The skinny tall man was already at the neighboring desk. She stepped up and gave the officer her passport. He gestured for her to turn around, to get a look at her backpack, and she turned to her side, beginning to take it off.
“No need,” the officer said. “Okay. Go.” Two quick stamps on her passport, one on the visa, and she was through. She had officially left China, and in a hurry, too.
“Is something going on?” she asked the officer, but with nobody left in his line, he was already getting up off his chair. Ignoring her, he darted outside, speaking frantically into his radio. “Great,” Terry said to herself, following him out of the building and back into the sunlight. She hadn’t noticed that the building was air-conditioned – it certainly hadn’t felt that way on the inside, but now that she was outside again, the heat was close and clammy.
“Over here.”
Terry turned and saw Liam standing with his hands in his pockets. “How did you get through so fast?”
“I was in the line next to you,” he said. “You didn’t see me? I walked right past you when they started letting us through quickly.”
“No.”
“Oh. I saw you.”
“Do you know what’s going on? They’ve closed the crossing. I saw them shutting the doors.”
“Not sure. They’re all
over there now,” he said, and he pointed. She turned and followed his finger, and she saw a gap where the crisscrossing mesh didn’t distort her view of the shrubbery behind it. There was a pretty big hole.
“See that?”
“Wow. Somebody cut through?”
“Who knows? Could be. It looks rusty as hell to me. Probably would be pretty easy. You could do it with a pocket knife with enough dedication.”
“Yeah, but why? If they came back out onto this path, they’d just have another border check at the other end in Vietnam.”
“It’s probably the other way around,” Liam said. She noticed that he had stepped beside her. “Someone got through Vietnam’s end, but couldn’t get through this end, and so somehow managed to cut a hole in the fence and sneak in without being seen.”
“In broad daylight?”
“It’s pretty dark over there. Lots of shade from the trees. Plus, the guard tower is over there, right?” He gestured with his head. “I’d bet he can’t really see where the hole is. It’s not high enough that his line of vision can clear the roof of the building.”
“Oh.” Terry looked from the guard tower to where the guards were surrounding the fence, their radios buzzing and hissing with chatter. “Yeah.”
“Anyways, these guards are half-assing it, anyway.”
“You can tell?” Terry asked, smirking at him.
“Don’t they look bored to you?”
“I would be bored”
“Would you half-ass it?”
“Probably.”
“Well, then there you go. Anyway, come on, let’s go. This sort of shit happens all the time, I bet.”
“Yeah.” Terry walked up beside him. “So right now we’re not in any country. That’s kind of weird.”