Time to leave.
Meet me in Bangkok in five days.
Khao San Rd., Banglamphu. The Hello Restaurant.
Be careful. Trust no one.
—Aurora Borealis
Attached to the back of the note was an envelope containing two plane tickets and twenty crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. I stuffed the journal down into my jeans, folded the envelope and stuck it into my back pocket.
My place resembled the aftermath of an earthquake. The furniture was overturned, and the contents of my bookcases, drawers, and cupboards covered the floor. They even sliced open my mattress, cushions, and pillows, the guts of which powdered the debris like snow. Ripped posters draped from the walls and flapped in the breeze of the swamp cooler. For weeks I had considered giving my place a good spring-cleaning, but I had been hoping for a much sexier excuse than this.
Doreen said, “I didn’t know you had so much crap, Guy.”
I stared sullenly at my smashed TV and stereo. “It’s all crap now.”
“Come on, you two,” Zeeva said, thoughtfully surveying the wreckage. “Let’s get out of here. They might be back any minute.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Doreen asked.
“These people aren’t afraid of the police.” She turned and faced me. “Grab what you need, Guy. We have to leave right away.”
Doreen and I exchanged alarmed, nervous looks. I walked over to Zeeva kicking rubble away with my boots. I pointed to the wall next to her. “See,” I said, “my picture of you and Doreen, they took it.” Then I noticed something else was missing. “Bastards. They took my favorite picture of Noriko too. The one in the powder blue jumper with the zipper down to her—perverts.”
Zeeva said, “Let’s go, Guy.”
The urgency in her voice told me to hustle now and ask questions later. I sprinted to the closet and dug out my backpack. I scurried with it through the house and grabbed stuff I thought I might need—some clothes, my Swiss Army knife, camping gear, toothbrush, and other miscellanies. I tossed in the latest journal too. I hurried over to my laundry basket to retrieve the other journals. Gone! Something stank, and it wasn’t just my laundry. I slung my pack over one shoulder. “Ready,” I announced.
“But where to?” Doreen asked. She looked at Zeeva who looked at me.
I shrugged. “Bangkok?”
Doreen rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a dickhead, Guy. You’ll stay with me. We’ll call the police. We’ll call the FBI! We have rights. This is America. People can’t just—”
Zeeva started shooing us towards the door. “You two don’t get it. We are all in trouble. Don’t even bother going home, Doreen. Someone is probably waiting for you. We all have to get out of town, now.”
“Zeeva,” Doreen said, a tremble in her voice, “you’re scaring me. What’s going on? How do you know—?”
“I can’t explain now. Trust me. I’ve seen this before. We have to split up. Take Guy’s truck and get out of here. I’ll get a message to you.”
A black sedan swung out of the alleyway beside my apartment, crunching and spitting up gravel.
“Shit!” I blurted. “It’s them!”
We were standing in the doorway, which was bordered by two overgrown and thorny pyracantha bushes. Before we could make a run for it, the car slid to a halt right in front of us blocking our escape. The passenger door flew open and a leg stepped out. Without thinking, I kicked back at the door with the bottom of my hiking boot, slamming it into the man’s shin. He screamed something foul and life-threatening.
We catapulted ourselves on top of the sedan and clambered across its hood, my backpack banging and scratching as we went. We dropped to the other side just as the driver jumped out. He pulled a gun from a holster inside his jacket.
“Go!” Zeeva commanded us.
Doreen and I sprinted toward my truck. I heaved my pack into the bed from ten feet away and had my keys out and ready before I opened the door. We jumped in and I started the truck.
“Oh my God!” Doreen cried. “He’s going to shoot her!”
I slammed the truck into reverse and floored it. Both Zeeva and the gunman leaped out of the way as I smashed my Chevy’s ass into the side of the sedan making a terrific bang, like the sound of a gunshot. My truck stalled.
“Where are they?” I said, cranking furiously on the ignition. In my rearview mirror I saw one of the men pinned between the sedan and the pyracantha, writhing in fury in its thorny clutches. It was Scarface. I pleaded with my truck to start.
“Hurry, Guy!” Doreen cried. And then she shrieked, “Zeeva!”
The truck started and I shot away. I swung it around and slid to a halt, its big grilled muzzle pointing down the alley. Doreen was on her knees, her head out the sliding cab window. “Guy, do something!”
Zeeva and the gunman were wrestling on the ground. He was on top of her, and she was trying to stave off his gun. I reached into the glove compartment, grabbed a four-inch-long Phillips screwdriver, and bounded out of my truck.
My heart pounding, I stood over the man, the screwdriver in my hand like a dagger, ready to plunge it into his back. Curly craned his head to look at me. Our eyes met. He smirked unafraid.
I launched my size eleven, steel-toed Christmas present into his jaw and sent him sprawling. The gun flew from his hand. Zeeva sprang to her feet. The man squirmed on the ground, groaning and cursing and holding his jaw.
I heard a horrible growl.
“Watch out!” Zeeva cried. She grabbed my arm and yanked me aside. Scarface had extricated himself from the thorny pyracantha and vaulted over the sedan into our midst. His clothes were in tatters and his face and hands were covered in small, razor-like cuts. He looked as if he had been juggling kittens.
“You’re dead!” he hollered. His eyes flashed wildly and blood flowed from his torn lips. He was convincing.
Doreen laid on the horn. Startled, I turned to look. A hand clamped down on my wrist like a vise. I was spun around and my arm was cranked behind my back. The screwdriver dropped to the ground. The horn continued to blast.
“Get in the car now, bitch, or I’ll break his fucking arm!”
Zeeva was amazingly, disturbingly, cool. She began to lecture him. “Nobody likes a bully,” she began.
Bully cranked my arm up another few inches. I yelped in pain. The horn blasted. I saw my neighbor across the street, an old woman still in her bathrobe, step out onto her porch. She put her hand to her mouth, turned, and scurried back inside.
“Bulldog!” Scarface shouted to his partner. “Get over here! Hurry, before the cops come!”
Bulldog staggered to his feet holding his jaw.
“Get your gun!” Scarface ordered.
I thrust the edge of my boot down Scarface’s shin. Zeeva stepped in and smacked him in the jaw with the heel of her hand. Scarface reeled and crashed against the sedan. I leaped away.
Scarface sprang back and rushed at Zeeva. She grabbed his arm, sidestepped and threw him head over heels into the ground with some kind of judo move. She spun and spotted Bulldog about to pick up his gun by the back tire of the car. Zeeva side-kicked him in the ass, sending him headfirst into the hubcap. He bellyflopped to the ground.
Scarface got up and charged at Zeeva again. I threw out my foot and tripped him. He stumbled and bashed his face against a car window, smearing it with blood. He pushed away and stood up snorting and snarling. He took a wild swing at me, just missing. I ran. Instead of chasing after me, he turned and lunged again at Zeeva. She kicked him in the nuts, grabbed his ears, and slammed her knee into his face. Then she snatched his arm, twisted, and flipped him hard onto his back.
“Get out of here, Guy!” she yelled over the blasting horn. I saw that Doreen was in the driver’s seat waving us over.
“You too,” I yelled back. Then I heard sirens. “Zeeva, come on!”
“Go, I’ll find you!” She took off running.
I threw myself into the bed of the truck and Doreen tore off down t
he alley.
I thought: Whatever happens, I’m wearing these boots. I thought, Aurora Borealis…?
Part Two
The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.
—Marcus Aurelius
Squiggly-Wigglies
I pinched my thumb and forefinger together. “This close, Doreen. I was this close.”
“I know, Guy. I believe you. Now let me get some sleep, okay?”
“Did you inform mom and dad?”
“Yes.”
“‘Good. They trust you. You’re sensible. They know you’d never do anything stupid.”
“I took care of it, don’t worry.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them we finished our final exams and that you and I were going to Thailand for a couple of weeks for vacation.”
“But they know I don’t have any money.”
“We both have birthdays coming up. I told them it was a present from our loving sisters. I called Maureen, made up a story and convinced her to play along. She’ll take care of everything.”
I pushed back my seat to the full reclining position so that I was even with Doreen and looked out the plane window.
“This close,” I said again.
“There’s nothing you can do about it now, so just forget it.”
“Imagine. Me. Guy. Straight A’s! I never achieved a goal before.”
“Guy, would you be quiet? It doesn’t matter now.”
“Do you realize that with a mighty semester like that I could have raised my GPA to…” I did some fast math. “Huh? Hold on. That can’t be right—” I flipped my seat back up, dug my phone from my bag, opened the calculator, and did the math again. I dropped the seat back down and turned sullenly to Doreen. She was smirking. “You’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”
I had never flown before and so I gazed out the window, enchanted. I was a mile high and somewhere over the Pacific Ocean with the sun going down and the clouds all fiery orange.
I often dreamed of just dropping everything and splitting, but the most spontaneous thing I ever did was to split a class and see a movie about people doing spontaneous things. And now here I was, on my way to Thailand. Thailand of all places!
I stared at the iridescent clouds and meditated on my liberation from the paper chains that had bound me. The squiggly-wigglies overcame me—a rush of excitement that convulsed my entire body with pleasure. I had never experienced such a sensation before. I clenched my eyes and teeth and fists and toes, and quivered with delight, whispering to myself, “Cool, this is so cool!”
“Guy, are you okay?”
I let one more convulsion of excitement squiggle through me, and then turned a wiggly smile to Doreen. She was giving me the fish eye.
She said, “You’ve got the dopiest grin on your face.”
I grinned bigger and dopier. “Doreen, this is so cool. We’re off to Thailand. You and me. Brother and sister. Thailand! That’s Southeast Asia, you know. That’s the Orient, baby! Don’t you think this is cool? Don’t you think that this is so incredibly cool!”
Doreen laughed and took my hand. Her eyes were full of affection, but they were moist too.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’ve just never seen you this happy before. I wish Kathleen and the others were here to see it.”
“What do you mean?”
Doreen balked.
“Hey,” I said.
“They worry about you, Guy. They think you’re unhappy and it upsets them sometimes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What about you?”
Doreen nodded. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“Well, that sucks,” I said, aware of the mirror being held to my face again. “I don’t want you guys worrying about me like that. I don’t want to be thought of as…pathetic.”
“I’m sorry, Guy. I shouldn’t have said—”
“Don’t apologize. It just never occurred to me that you girls saw me like that.”
“Not only like that. It’s just sometimes, you know?”
I looked up at the ceiling and felt…ashamed.
Doreen squeezed my hand. “C’mon, Guy. Forget I said anything, okay? Please?”
I nodded. I could see that Doreen was angry with herself for spoiling my fun. I didn’t blame her squashing my squiggles and wrecking my wiggles. But I didn’t want to forget what she said, or my feeling of shame. It saw that self-forgetting was one of my problems. A guy should stand back once in awhile and try to see himself as others see him.
Neither of us said anything for a while. It was dark outside now so I slid closed the little plastic window. I saw the flight attendants pushing the carts up the aisles getting ready to serve dinner.
Doreen said, “I still can’t get over how Zeeva handled those big guys.”
“She impressed the hell out of me,” I said.
“But who were they? What could they possibly have wanted?”
“I’d rather know who Zeeva and Melody are.”
Doreen said, “I hope Zeeva is okay.”
“It looks like she can take care of herself.”
“I mean, I hope she’s not mixed up in anything…bad.”
“It’s all pretty weird, isn’t it?” I said.
Weird? Didn’t Melody say at the hospital that things were only going to get weirder? But surely she couldn’t have meant bad dudes with guns and last minute flights to the Orient. Or did she?
“There’s something that you’re not telling me, Guy.”
“Like what?”
“Like who gave you the tickets and money.”
“I don’t know. I showed you the note.”
“But you must have some idea who this Aurora Borealis character is.”
“I can only guess. Aurora Borealis might be Mr. A.”
“Who?”
“Anonymous Man.”
“Huh?”
The flight attendant served our dinner, and as we ate I told Doreen all about Anonymous Man. I began with Melody in the hospital when she first mentioned the guy, and finished with Mr. A stuffing the snowball down Sharc’s pants. Doreen didn’t interrupt me, and seemed as intrigued by Anonymous Man as I was.
I knew I had promised Melody that I wouldn’t mention the journals or Mr. A to anyone, but I believed that the situation had changed dramatically since then. Doreen’s life was in danger, and she had a right to know why. Besides, there were two tickets, so somebody figured on someone tagging along.
“And you say there’s a fourth journal?”
“It’s in my daypack.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” she said.
“We?”
“There were two tickets, weren’t there?”
I grabbed the journal from my pack and clued Doreen in on how to read his handwriting. “R’s and s’s look like l’s, and f’s and t’s are often indistinguishable…” Within a few minutes, she got the hang of it, and as the other passengers watched the latest superhero movie on their monitors, we read about a real superhero in the fourth journal of Anonymous Man.
Living Nightmare, Lasting Dream
The journal began with Mr. A recounting the events that had taken place over a two-week period.
Apparently, Colonel Sharc, meaning what he said, ordered a heavily armed military police detachment to fetch Anonymous Man and bring him to headquarters in France, where he was to be tried for insubordination, assaulting an officer, and numerous other offenses. What the colonel hadn’t counted on was the loyalty of the Druid Patrol. They followed the police at a safe distance and then that night, dressed in uniforms borrowed from the German prisoners, ambushed the police, wounded two MPs for authenticity’s sake, and rescued Anonymous Man. Mr. A returned to the Druid camp with his men, made his farewells, and before sunup he was a fugitive.
He scurried south along the front line dodging both Germans and Americans as he went. He didn’t know hi
s destination or what he would do when he got there. He never felt more alone. The tone in his journal, however, was Stoic. He seemed determined to face his fate wide awake, whatever it might be.
Fate met Anonymous Man in the form of a butt of a German rifle at the back of his head. While scampering through the woods to avoid an approaching American patrol, he ran right into a German one that had been waiting in ambush.
When Anonymous Man regained consciousness he was bouncing in the covered bed of a truck, his hands and feet bound. What he saw stunned him, and his jaw unhinged in disbelief. Riding with him was Hennes, the young German scholar with whom a few weeks earlier he had discussed philosophy and literature and built Hitler the snowman.
I was about to cry out his name in disbelief, but he slapped me and signaled caution with his frosty blue eyes. He spoke to me harshly, pretending that he was interrogating me. “Surprise, eh?” he said.
“What the hell is—?”
He slapped me again, harder. “Answer me only yes or no, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Your men are dead. I’m sorry. The fat colonel sent an ignorant captain to replace you. He didn’t listen to your men. They gave him many warnings and became angry. But the captain was a stubborn fool. Your men fought bravely but there were too many of us. Say something.”
“Yes.”
“Our orders are changed. We are going east. You will go to prisoner camp.”
“Yes.”
I could see in his eyes that he was sorry. I knew that he had saved my life, and that there wasn’t anything else he could do for me. He continued to pretend that he was interrogating me, asking me whether I had read this or that book, heard of this or that writer. He asked me about American baseball and American women. I continued to reply yes or no, and sometimes it was hard not to chuckle. Whenever I was about to crack a smile, he slapped me. The others in the truck were very impressed. They asked Hennes what he had learned from me. I don’t know what he told them. I didn’t care. Instead, I closed my eyes and mourned the loss of my Druids, my family.
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