by Grace, A. E.
But the only thing she could think about was Liam. What was it about him that made him so strange? Why was he was actively trying to thwart any attempt she had made to get to know him? Why did he seem like a ball of dark energy just waiting to explode, or like a coiled spring just waiting to be sprung? Not only was his body whipcord lean, but it had a tenseness to it, and seemed as though it might crack or burst at any moment. She was certain he hadn’t been completely honest about what he had told her. Of what little he had told her. He had been so deliberately vague, so guarded about himself. She couldn’t stop her mind from racing through the possibilities of why he would even have to be opaque, of what dark secrets he could possibly be harboring.
Surely he wasn’t a criminal! He didn’t seem the type. But Terry reflected, and realized that maybe she was ill-equipped to make that determination. After all, she had no idea what the criminal type actually was. Her brothers Jason and Jeffery were criminals, she supposed. She knew that they dealt marijuana and sometimes ecstasy out of the taxi that Jason drove. And that was about as deep into the underworld that Terry had ever been. Her idea of what a criminal might look like was someone with too many tattoos, a mean-looking disposition, and maybe a leather jacket. It was a stereotype, she knew, but what were stereotypes if not indications of the truth?
And Liam didn’t fit that description at all! She wondered if perhaps he had been in the military. That could be the source for his lack of communication skills, she mused. Maybe he was a scarred veteran suffering from a stress disorder, had seen too much on the battlefield, experienced hell itself, and had come back a broken shell of himself. Terry groaned. It was starting to sound like the half-ass plot of a cheap novel, and on top of that, she was dealing in stereotypes again. That was one sure-fire way to make dumb assumptions.
There was, of course, another possibility, and it was the simplest one of them all. Perhaps he was just an anti-social type, one who harbored general indifference toward anyone and anything. He could certainly be one of those kinds of people, with a closed off emotional quotient, and a self-interest instinct that outweighed everything else. But again, the shoe didn’t seem to fit.
There was something else she had noticed, too, that had lurked at first in the background, difficult to see or quantify. He had a weighted weariness to him, and it was present in his whole body. It wasn’t that he had bags of black hanging beneath his eyes, and it wasn’t that he yawned, or that he slumped, or that he shuffled. It was in his motions, his movements, the kinesthetic impression she gleaned from his walk, from his facial expression, from the way he was so efficient, and seemed like he needed to be. He didn’t emote with the cavalier freedom that she did, or that most people did, and though his body always looked ready to perform, it also suggested that he was actively trying to minimize his actions, as though storing energy for some unknown thing or event.
And his eyes, the way they looked with indifference at the world around him. The only times they changed, the only times a different message was sent that went beyond mere observation, was when he looked at her. It wasn’t a large transformation, but she had noticed that he blinked less, and that his eyes stayed fixed on her. Maybe it was just natural, the difference between the way people look at people, and everything else. Or maybe it wasn’t.
The weariness extended into his ochre orbs as well. When she looked at them, she often felt like she was looking at a magazine cover whereon depicted was a person who had spent the better part of their life suffering, and as a result looked far, far older than they actually were. But Liam didn’t look old at all. In fact, he had pretty damn good skin, lacked any creases around his eyes or lips, and could probably pass for someone ten years younger if he shaved off the shadow and didn’t look so serious all the time.
Terry decided she’d spent too much time mulling over the possibilities of Liam and the secret past he appeared determined not to reveal. Wiping her upper lip with the back of her hand, she set off in the direction the traffic was going. That way was the city center, and what better thing to do on her first morning in Vietnam than to have a traditional Vietnamese breakfast, which was basically a bowl of rice noodles and thin slices of raw beef that cooked in the broth. She found it odd that there was no clear distinction between foods eaten at breakfast and lunch, and thought how polar opposite it was to back home where breakfast was cereal and toast, and lunch was simply not, unless you were a broke university student, or something of an eccentric.
Another breakfast food commonly eaten were the freshly baked baguettes, one of those odd cultural left-overs from the brief French occupation. She would definitely have to try one of those. It seemed like the day was starting to revolve around food, and coming from the nine-to-five where she ate tuna, ham, or egg salad sandwiches pretty much every day, that didn’t seem like such a bad idea at all.
Though the road beside her, was heaving with mopeds, the pavement was relatively devoid of people. It was the complete opposite of how it had been in the brief time she spent in Hong Kong, where it was often pavement warfare. Crammed uncomfortably close with others, there was no amount of shoulder-weaving, dipping, side-stepping, or opportune darting that could protect you against rubbing shoulders with at least a few strangers. Not that she really minded, or wasn’t used to it. Some parts of London were just the same. Just that stray thought of home, a bit like a mosquito that flits in and out of vision, was enough to illicit both irritation and relief from Terry. She was glad that she was not working at her old job, or not dealing with her family that were pretty much the model of dysfunction. Two drug-dealing brothers, both older than her, and both still living at home like she was. She frowned. She knew it was a little unusual at her age, but she simply couldn’t afford to live on her own on her salary, and she wasn’t going to be a commuter. Back then, she hadn’t been the compromising sort. Though now, she was willing to accept that things had already changed in just a few days. Now, compromises were almost always necessary.
She remembered her university years, and thinking at the time that it would be far better if she lived in a house full of girls. There was no way she was going to have a bloke in there with her, pissing all over the bathroom like a cat marking its territory, leaving sweat-soaked shorts on the sofa, and being a brutal font of body odor. It turned out that living in a house full of girls wasn’t actually any better. Piles of clothes, dirty dishes, and bathroom bins went unattended to, often for weeks at a time. Yeah, that had been a lesson learned. Living with people had the potential to be utter shit, and Terry didn’t care if she was jaded. She knew that from then on, she’d only be at home where the rules were clear and her space was, at least, hers, or on her own, where other people weren’t there to muck it all up.
Terry stopped dead on the street. Before her was a wide road by Hanoi standards, and absolutely teeming with mopeds. God, she thought. She was going to have to cross this. She looked around for someone to cross with, a local who knew how, but there was nobody around her. For a city so jam-packed with people on pseudo-motorcycles, it was annoying that there wasn’t one lone pedestrian on this road who also wanted to cross. She could have hid in his or her wake, clinging as close to them without actually touching them. But, instead, she was going to have to quash every one of her survival instincts, and simply step out into a road full of vehicles and walk, without dodging or changing direction, to the other side.
“Shit,” she murmured. Every instinct, honed by millions of years of evolution, was telling her not to do it. There, she might get hurt. It was all ‘DANGER! DANGER!’ announcements blaring in her mind, red lights flashing and bomb sirens wailing. It wasn’t like crossing at a red-man, either, where she waited for there to be a gap in the traffic before she darted across the road, hoping there wasn’t an overzealous police officer, new and looking to meet quota, walking that beat. Here, there would be no gap. She would simply step out, and let the traffic funnel around her.
“Okay.” Terry told herself to stop being a big baby
about it, and to just do what she had done with Liam the day before. In front of her, on the other side of the road, she could see a lake, and in the middle of a lake was a small island with a building on it, perhaps a temple. On the edge of the lake was a restaurant that overlooked the lake, with yellow curtains hanging over the terrace handrail, drying in the sun. She saw a few people in the restaurant, sat at small tables, being served by waitresses in long, colorful dresses: purple, blue, red, yellow, and gold. That was where she was going. She’d made up her mind. It looked lovely. She focused on the restaurant, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the road.
And nothing happened. Standing still like a deer in headlights, she watched as the mopeds funneled around her, leaving her a small enclave of road and air. She stepped forward, and the funnel adjusted with her, and step by step, she walked across, wondering how it must look like from above as the gap of mopeds that went around her shifted laterally across the road, opening and closing to her sides in the shape of an ellipse, like an eye.
“Whew,” she whispered to herself, arriving at the other side. She looked after the train of people, and none of them were looking back. Her heart was racing, and she became aware of the shaky adrenaline that was coursing through her body. That had been… fun. Being a little afraid, a little uncertain, it had been exciting. She laughed, feeling stupid. God, people here crossed the roads like that every day, all the time, but to her, it was entirely something foreign, something so, so different.
It was definitely something she was going to remember, that was absolutely certain. She’d heard friends and colleagues talk about their traveling experiences, and they always came back with nuggets of memory, bits and pieces that stand out more than anything else, and those were always the stories they told. To the listener, it would seem like a disjointed account of the whole experience, lacking in narrative or structure. And yet, Terry was going to remember the first time she crossed a road in Vietnam alone. It wouldn’t be bookended with why she had been crossing it. She wouldn’t remember why she was crossing that particular road, or even where she was going. She would simply remember being out in what felt like no man’s land, and watching, trying to hold at bay the onset of instinctual panic, as people on mopeds had come rushing toward her before neatly dividing themselves into two temporary lanes around her, and then merging back together again. That would be what she remembered, and what she would tell people.
And that brought her back around to Liam. He was also something she would remember, if only for their chance meeting on the train, or his guarded and odd behavior. No, she thought to herself, knowing that she wouldn’t fool anyone with that. She would remember him because, truthfully, he was just really hot, and she kind of liked him.
Where was he now? What was he up to? She took in the sight of the large lake as she slowly rounded it. She took off her day bag, a ratty rucksack, duck shit green that looked like it might disintegrate into tatters of frayed fabric at any moment. She reached in for her guidebook. The spine was already peeling off its binding glue. If it was any other book, she’d care.
“Lake Hoan Kiem,” she read aloud. Translated into Lake of the Returned Sword, it was situated in the historic center of Hanoi. The city had no doubt expanded asymmetrically over time. She saw a narrow red bridge that connected to a small island in the lake, and decided that she was going to go there after breakfast. But food came first, before sightseeing, and she made her way to the restaurant with colorfully-dressed waitresses. She’d had Vietnamese noodles before in Chinatown back home, but she was eager to try the real thing.
And she was keen on returning her thoughts to Liam, and to speculate as to his secret, hidden past. She knew that his story would likely turn out to be far less interesting than anything she was about to imagine. She also knew that she probably wouldn’t see him again. It would not be surprising in the least bit if she returned back to the guest house at the end of the day to find her neighboring room vacant.
“Table for one,” she said, and the pretty young waitress in a bright blue and unadorned long-sleeved and slim summer dress showered her to a table on the balcony, overlooking the lake. She sat down, could see an old couple, maybe in their eighties, jogging around the perimeter of the body of water.
“Can I get you anything?” the waitress asked, her English fluent. Terry was a little surprised, but this was, after all, the capital of Vietnam, and probably the biggest tourist spot.
“Pho Bo?” she asked, using the Vietnamese name for rice noodles with beef.
“Of course. Any coffee?”
“Yes, drip coffee?”
“Of course,” the waitress replied. She smiled, bowed a little, and then walked off.
Terry returned her gaze to the old couple exercising, wondering how many years – or decades – they had done that together for.
After several hours of exploring the city, poking around the shops and stalls, circumnavigating the potato-shaped lake, and looking at tour packages she could take out to various nearby attractions, Terry was pretty much ready to call it a day. But it wasn’t even dinner time yet, and she wasn’t about to waste what was certain to be a buzzing night life. So far her travel guide had been accurate, and there was no reason to doubt it now.
With the heat been baked into her, she decided that nothing would be more soothing than a cold gin and tonic, and so she set off back toward the district around Hoan Kiem. There was a small lane where all the hippest bars were supposed to be, and she figured why not? It was a major tourist hotspot, and she was bound to see something interesting there.
Weaving her way through mopeds and alleys alike, she found herself in a narrow street lined with small hole-in-the-walls that sat beneath low-rise blocks of guest houses. Already, at sunset, the place was heaving with what she guessed were tourists. There looked to be a number of local expatriates, too, judging by the number of mopeds that were lined up outside each bar. Most of them didn’t look like the rented sort, which were often branded with bright logos that stood out, so that tourists couldn’t easily steal them, or if there was an accident, they could be easily identified.
She walked up and down the street, wondering if she’d chance upon Liam. Did he seem like the drinking type? She couldn’t really gauge that one. At least, he didn’t seem like the fun-loving type, not on the surface, at any rate. Maybe having a drink or two loosened him up a bit. She wondered what he was so tightly wound, or why he was the way that he was. She figured that it was rare that someone as well traveled as he claimed to be would be so socially closed off. Chronic travelers were usually the outgoing sort, and Liam was completely against type.
Choosing a bar without a name, but with a big yellow banana as its logo, she sat at one of the tables directly below a ceiling fan, happy for the cooling breeze and shade. She’d chosen the place because it was quite empty, save for some people at the bar and one or two nestled snugly at a back table. She asked the waitress for a gin and tonic, using her finger and thumb, spaced about an inch apart, to signal a half-half mix. The waitress told her that it would cost more, but that was fine with Terry.
One drink turned into three, and the music started, the televisions were changed to European football matches, and everything started to fill up even more. People wandered down the street, a variety of sorts, some dressed well in suits, others more casually in typical backpacker attire. She watched from her two-stool table as groups of youngsters, no more than nineteen years old she guessed, flocked from bar to bar, drawing attention to themselves. School wasn’t out yet, and so it couldn’t be a post-graduation trip.
She was content to watch them, examine the crowded night life, and otherwise while away her own evening doing not much of anything at all.
“Hello, darlin’.” Terry looked to her side. Three men seated at the bar were looking at her. Bomb signals were already going off in her mind, but she ignored them.
“Hi,” she said, before clearing her throat. She offered them a brief smile before returning h
er gaze to the street scene outside.
“Traveler?”
“Sorry?”
“Are you a traveler?” The man who was talking to her looked to be maybe in his fifties, and he definitely looked like an unsavory character. She glanced at her watch, saw that it was already quarter to midnight. The hours had just evaporated.
“Yes,” she replied without looking at him. “What’s it to you?”
“Well, it’s my bar,” he said, and she turned to him again. He was wearing a slimy smirk, and was rising off his stool. “And mostly, the tourists know to stay outta here.”
“So what, this is a locals-only bar?”
“Something like that.” He walked over to her, the swagger in his step a little wobbly, no doubt the result of a few too many drinks. The man pulled the other stool out from under her table and sat down opposite her, grinning. She saw three gold teeth in between thick rubber-ring lips.
“Is this really your bar?”
“Yes,” he said, touching his chest and laughing. “I’m the owner. Name’s Paul. What’s yours, darling?”
She ignored the question. “So why don’t the tourists come in here?”
“’Cause we don’t want ‘em in here, that’s why.” He looked at his two friends, shared a laugh.
“Why not?” The bomb sirens in her head now were wailing louder than ever. She didn’t fancy herself a girl who was easily frightened, but a quick survey of the bar told her it was only them three and her. And that was enough to arouse her sense of caution and danger.
The guy looked like he had a real mean streak to him, someone nasty. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had a gun tucked beneath the counter of the bar. She had skipped the chapters of her guidebook over things to watch out for, and was regretting it now. Was there something she had missed? She hadn’t even given an ounce of thought to the fact that the bar had remained empty while the others had filled up. After a long and tiring day, Terry had simply been happy to find a quiet place to sit and sip on a drink.