by Anne Heltzel
“I’ll pay you a good tip,” I tell him, wondering how in the heck I’m going to find extra tip money. I can’t shake my increasing sense of foreboding. I push back into the bar, which has become more crowded in the last ten minutes. I make my way to the single-cell bathroom; there’s a line leading up to it. People are shifting restlessly, and one person, annoyed, knocks on the door. I shove in front of all of them. At least one person yells something in Thai, but I ignore it. I pound on the door, hard. I’m nervous, truly nervous. My heart beats wildly, and my whole body is poised to react to whatever I might find in there. I wonder if I’ve been stupid—if Lena took something other than alcohol. If she’s overdosed.
I pound more and jiggle the doorknob. The people behind me are less angry and more curious now. I’m about to try kicking down the door. I look all around for someone who might have a key and rack my brain about how I’m going to convey to them why I need to break into the bathroom—and then the doorknob moves and the door creaks open.
An angry-looking tourist steps out.
“Dude, learn to wait your turn,” he snaps. “If you weren’t a chick, I’d punch you in the face right now.” I push past him anyway, cutting the line in order to do a thorough check of the room. It’s empty. There’s no Lena. I dash back out of the room, and my heart is pounding as I scour the bar. There are so many people in here now, but there’s no sign of Lena. I find a barstool and climb on top of it, holding on to a stranger’s shoulder for support.
The guy I’m holding on to thinks I’m going to start dancing or something; he cups his hands around his mouth and whistles. A few others group around and start to wave their fists in the air like I’m some sort of sideshow act. I feel my panic rise higher. I ignore them and scan the rest of the crowd. She’s nowhere. She’s nowhere even though technically it would be easy to disappear in here. Not for her, though: with her white-blond hair, she couldn’t disappear if she tried.
Ten more minutes have passed, and one look out the window tells me my driver has already taken off. “Have you seen my friend?” I shout at the bartender, hoping he speaks English.
“Blond girl?” he says back, and I nod eagerly, my heart lifting. “Nope.” He shakes his head. “Haven’t seen her.”
It’s clear by now that Lena isn’t in the bar. It occurs to me that maybe I’ve missed her, maybe she’s on the sidewalk waiting for me; so I run back out into the night. The temperature has dropped and people mill around, bartering with beer vendors, waving glow sticks. No Lena. I sit on the sidewalk and rest my head on my knees, trying not to lose it.
I breathe. I think.
I decide to wait a while longer. I wait and wait and feel myself giving in to my terror and the stress of first searching for Charlie, then running from him. It’s hard not to feel helpless without Lena next to me; I’m so used to her knowing what to do next.
A man approaches me, and at first I recoil; but then he squats down until our eyes are level. I can’t tell how much time has passed. His face is lined with concern. “Miss? Are you okay?” I nod slowly. “Do you have anywhere to go?”
His question triggers something, the part of me that still remembers how to act in an emergency. I do have somewhere to go. The airport. I rummage through my bag and gulp a mouthful of air when my hand closes around my passport. Folded inside is my plane ticket. Lena’s got hers, wherever she is. “What time is it?” I ask the guy.
“One fifteen.”
“I’m fine.” I thank him, rising to my feet. I’m overcome by a surge of purpose. Lena may have gone straight to the airport when she didn’t see me waiting. She’s probably been there, looking for me, all this time.
Ten minutes later I’m at the airport. I still don’t see Lena; but if she came here to meet me, she’s probably at the gate. The rest of the airport is too big and too busy for us to connect. Our flight leaves in just a few hours. I have no luggage, since pretty much everything I brought with me was stolen in Kerala, so I head straight for Security.
I don’t like not being with Lena. It begins to remind me of the dreams I used to have as a kid, the ones where a friend and I were being chased by monsters; and then my friend would disappear, leaving me all alone. That feeling is worse than being chased. I want my friend back. More than that, I want to know that she’s okay.
As I creep closer to the Security desk, the feeling of anxiety only increases. I shift from one foot to the other, staring past the line to see what’s taking so long. A family with several strollers is holding everyone up. I sigh and grind my teeth, so obviously impatient that the man in front of me turns and gives me a withering look, his white caterpillar eyebrows high on his forehead. Finally I reach a guard. Ahead of me, conveyer belts are packed with gray plastic tubs of laptops, shoes, and coats. Everywhere I look for Lena.
“Passport and ticket,” he demands in a put-upon tone. I offer him my passport, wincing slightly as he opens it up and runs one meaty thumb over the hole where Anand stabbed it. I hold my breath; I’m not sure whether a torn (or stabbed) passport is illegal.
“Left it on the cutting board,” I say lamely. He doesn’t smile. Instead he examines my ticket, turning it over a couple of times. His brow is furrowed in concentration; and behind me, several travelers clear their throats. My stomach drops. If the tickets Dana issued us are flawed—or worse, counterfeit—I could be arrested. I don’t know why it’s taken this long for it to occur to me; but now that it has, it seems obvious. Charlie could easily be working with Dana. Everything about this screams “Danger,” but it’s too late to stop it—it’s already been set in motion. This guy already has my passport and is already staring hard at my ticket.
He turns it over again, squinting. And then he stamps it. Every part of my body shudders with relief, from my toes to my ears, which are flaming from nervousness. The guard begins to hand me back my passport and ticket; but when I move to take them, his grip tightens.
“Wait,” he says. Silence. Time passes, but I don’t feel it. He retracts my passport and flips it open again. Then he takes his walkie-talkie and mutters something quickly in Thai. “Wait here,” he tells me again. Nothing in his face betrays what he’s thinking. He holds on to my passport.
Now I’m certain beyond a doubt that something is wrong. But it’s not my ticket he was mulling over, so what could it be? Was it really the hole in the passport that got his attention? A second later, two armed guards approach the line. Each takes one of my arms. Their grip is firm—even rough.
“What is this?” My voice is loud, terrified. My first instinct is to refuse to go with them, but they leave me no choice. Both men are large and muscular, and when they hustle me forward, I struggle to keep my balance. “Tell me what’s going on,” I demand, but they ignore me, pulling me past the conveyer belts into a small room lined on all sides with windows. Around us, people are staring. Given how crude they’re being, I may as well be a convict. I close my eyes, fighting tears, and allow them to shove me into a chair. They bolt the door behind them. I can’t hear anything, see anything. My panic is overwhelming. I try hard not to curl up in my chair and sleep. It’s the second best escape.
It takes a minute for my senses to right themselves.
When they do, I hear the policemen around me shouting things in Thai.
“Please, will someone tell me what’s going on?” I ask. Then louder, then two more times. Each time, I’m ignored.
Finally I lose it.
“My flight’s leaving in less than three hours,” I shout at the heavier cop, the one who held my arms behind my back until the office door was locked. “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on? I need to get home.” I’m furious; and still, my voice trembles, betraying my fear.
Another guard, the one who is bent over the desk in front of me, pauses; he’s been rifling through paperwork. He levels me with a cold glare.
“You’re not going anywhere tonight.” He looks at me like I’m something disgusting. “You’re under arrest.”
28
Charlie
It’s fucking unfathomable what Aubrey thought she could do. She thought she could sneak around behind your back and get away with it, then break up with you on top of it. Too bad she was weak. Too bad she revealed her Achilles heel. She thought she could control you.
But you’re in control.
You’re still in control. No matter how hard it gets.
The fear in her eyes when you told her you’d stay with her. It made you want to show her she can’t dick you over and get away with it. She won’t get away.
For a while, she’ll think she’s free. She’ll feel safe. It’ll all be a mistake.
You’ve made simple plans for Lena. She was a burden to be discarded. But Aubrey is going to suffer.
For Aubrey, you’ve planned a fate far worse than death.
29
Lena
The air is stagnant and heavy, as though it’s been recycled by a thousand bodies already. The tape that was used to bind me has fused to my mouth. Every time I breathe, it creates a vacuum, and I panic and struggle against the metal cords that cut deep into my wrists and ankles. Screaming silently. The panic is worse than the night terrors that used to paralyze me as a kid, worse than any kind of physical pain, worse because I let myself believe for two seconds that I was safe. That I could climb in that taxi with Aubrey and fly away from all this and erase Charlie forever.
It’s black where I am. Too black to see anything, even outlines of shapes. I’m lying on cold, hard cement. I can’t stop shaking. I tense, then freeze. Footsteps are drawing close. They’re feather-light, almost soundless. Still, I detect them in the vibrations of the floor, in the rhythmic thrum just past my own desperate breathing. I widen my eyes and still I see nothing and the cement presses against my cheek and jaw and as the steps draw closer, I imagine all the ways they could kill me.
A foot to my skull. (It is exposed; there’s nothing to protect it.) A knife in my back. (My back arches away from the invisible knife.) A gun. (I press myself into the ground, begging its cement mouth to swallow me.)
The person draws closer and I sniff the air, trying to detect scents of him. Is it him? Is it Charlie, walking tiptoe like all the times he snuck up behind me and covered my eyes and kissed my neck and made me guess? All of a sudden, I know it: I’ve found Charlie, just as I had hoped to. I’ve ended the story that started three years ago. Meeting him was inevitable. Our relationship was inevitable. This moment was inevitable, I know now.
The person is next to me. I can feel his presence. I hear the creak of his knees as he squats low. I am still. My cheeks are wet with tears. I wait for the blow that will kill me. I pray for it, because waiting is too much misery.
I feel a hand on my back. My body folds in on itself. The hand moves to my back pocket. Then it’s drawing away, and my pocket is lighter, its contents gone. I am lighter and heavier all at once.
The footsteps retreat.
I am alive, for now. But I wish I were dead. I decide that being dead would be better than anticipating death.
30
Aubrey
The first few times I asked, they ignored me. Then I swore, pleaded, cried, yelled. I struggled against their arms until they had to contain me.
Finally, with my arms and legs bound by shackles, they said it:
Murder.
“No.” I shook my head. I yelled. “I had nothing to do with the plane crash,” I cried. I said all the wrong things. “I had nothing to do with Charlie’s death.”
“So what happened on the plane? Tell us exactly how he died.” Their voices were loud and insistent, full of vitriol.
“I don’t know,” I insisted. “I don’t know if he’s dead.”
“But you just said—”
“I don’t know!”
“Tell us about your association with Lena Whitney.”
Tears, buckets of them, wet on my cheeks and chest, soaking the thin tunic I’d been wearing for days. I was sweating. I could smell my own stench. It smelled like panic and fear, but a thousand times worse, coupled with the fetid odors of the bodies that are packed around me.
I’m in Bang Kwang Prison.
All I smell is filth and rot. All I hear are the Thai policemen’s words:
A body was found. A female tourist. Her throat slashed. Your credit card was on her person. Her passport read “Lena Whitney, of Boston, Massachusetts.” Tell us about Miss Whitney, Aubrey.
And so I began:
We came to search for Charlie.
Charlie Price?
That’s right. When do I get out of here? When can I go home?
Home? Your home is Bangkok now.
And around these words, the moans of the ill. The rattling of shackles. Bodies pressed upon bodies pressed upon the cold rails of the cage. It’s not a cell, where they’ve thrown me. It’s a cage, ten by twelve, packed with twenty-five bodies or more. We’re lying on top of one another. There are no toilets, just a hole in the opposite side of the room. We’re lying in our own filth. It must only be six in the morning at the latest, but no one’s asleep.
Some of the girls have open wounds. There are flies everywhere. The odor nearly makes me pass out; I struggle to breathe through my nose. I badly have to urinate. It’s been hours. I push my way to the hole. One woman elbows me; another runs her hand down my leg beyond the dark brown shorts they gave me. I jerk away from her and lurch into someone else, and then they’re both laughing until others join in, and it feels like a hundred hands are grabbing at me. There’s one other Caucasian in the cell; she’s pressed up against a wall, watching from just outside the fray. I meet her eyes, pleading desperately for help, but she turns away and smirks. They’ve taken my other clothes. They’ve dumped me here without a word. They told me Lena is dead.
But they said Lena had red hair.
I said:
How can you be sure it was her?
They said:
Her passport photo matched perfectly.
In her passport photo, Lena had red hair, which makes sense since according to her, she used to dye it all the time. What’s strange is that when I last saw her, just hours before the body turned up, her hair was blond. It’s not much, but it gives me hope.
I move from the hole back to the front of the cell. I’ll wait.
The problem is, I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get out of this cell, or if they’ll let us out to eat, or why everyone else seems to want to press up around these cold, metal bars as much as I do. Guards walk by us every few minutes but most of them don’t turn, other than to spit or sneer. Mostly, I’m afraid. There are too many people in here, and I have the feeling that if violence broke out, no one would be very interested in stopping it. I can feel the others around me sizing me up, putting me into little boxes. I don’t want to know which boxes. I have to believe the policemen will come for me—realize their mistake—but they dumped me in here to begin with. They threw me into this cell, into the waiting arms of these other women, without even letting me contact my parents.
I wait until I can’t any longer, and I push my way back to the hole. It almost doesn’t matter, because I can see that the walls are lined with filth, and many of the women have stains on the backs of their clothing. This place isn’t a prison; it’s hell. My face burns with shame as I pull down my regulation shorts, tug my tunic as far over my thighs as it will go, and squat. The hole is poised just over a plastic bucket; I almost vomit for the second time when I see its contents. I try to focus on my knees, not on the leering faces around me or what’s below. When I do glance up, one girl in particular, young and pretty aside from a jagged scar running the length of her neck, meets my eyes. Hers harden; and before I can straighten up, she moves toward me and gives me a shove.
The hole isn’t big, but it’s big enough for a foot to slide down into the excrement below. I claw at the wall next to me, trying to right myself; and I’m just inches from slipping in when a strong hand close
s around my wrist and pulls me away from the hole and to safety. Around me, the other inmates are laughing. I pull my shorts the rest of the way up, my ears burning. Tears push their way to the fronts of my eyes and threaten to spill over; but I blink them back, because even I know it would be suicide to establish myself as weak in a place like this. I try to tell myself that Lena isn’t the only one with strength. Lena, if she is alive. Strength, willpower . . . they’re not things some people are born with. They’re entities separate from ourselves, there for the conjuring. You can conjure anything, make your mind believe anything about yourself if you try.
“Thanks,” I whisper, even though I’m certain she won’t understand me. The girl who helped me is standing across from me; but in this place, “across” means so close I can feel her breath on my cheek.
“You were asking for it,” she whispers back in clear, perfect English. The relief on my face must be obvious, but it just makes her scowl harder. “No, bitch. We’re not friends. I did you one favor. I talk to you any more, I’m dead. That’s the way things are around here. You want food, you want to stay alive, then you gotta be on the inside. You gotta pay your dues.” She turns from me and rattles off a string of Thai to another girl who has wedged herself in close. I try to reclaim my spot near the front of the cell, as far away from the toilet hole as possible, but I meet resistance in the form of arms, legs, and backs that rearrange themselves in front of me no matter which way I move. I get it: I’m the new girl. I’m the one who has to stand in the back. For a second I wonder how long it will take me not to be the new girl; and then I’m overwhelmed by panic. I don’t want not to be the new girl. I want to get out of here before I become that. But how can I, without anyone to talk to? To explain that this is all a horrible mistake?