“This better be good,” I yelled loud enough for him to hear me over the Hebrew children’s song he belted out. “Because I’m not worried about lions, just malaria causing mosquitos.”
“I’ll do this fast,” he replied.
The singing started back up, and I realized it was a lame attempt to drown out the clattering and thumping noises coming from inside.
The fragrance of tropical flowers infused the air, rendering breathing comparable to swimming in a very expensive perfume bottle. The songs of crickets, cicadas, and bugs unknown blended together in an over-amplified concert. And virus carrying mosquitos buzzed around my ears. “Hurry up or toss out the bug repellant,” I yelled, smacking a giant one that landed on my thigh. “These bugs think I’m dinner.”
“Okay, you can come in.”
I pulled open the flap.
“My dear, our real dinner is served.” He hinged forward, swinging his arm in front of his body.
He had moved the desk out of the corner and used a towel for a tablecloth. On the makeshift table sat one lit candle, a jar of Nutella, a box of crackers, a small box of Froot Loops, a bowl of gummy bears, and a bottle of wine. I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks.
“Jungle survival food,” he said, wrapping me in his arms.
I didn’t know what to say. It was, without question, the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me. His arms still wrapped my waist, his eyes fixated on my face. I couldn’t break the gaze, and I couldn’t tell him what I was really thinking. I want to crawl inside you and live there forever.
My mother used to tell me, “You’ll know when you’re in love. You’ll feel it in your heart, your mind, and your body. Love leaves no place for doubt.”
My heart whispered, to my mother, “I get it, now.”
“I have one question,” he said. “Do we keep our clothes on, or can we eat this stuff naked?”
“Clothed, and hand me that bowl of gummy bears.” I planted a peck on his cheek before plopping onto the floor. For the next half hour, we gorged like little kids after trick-or-treating.
“You do realize that most people would find this meal disgusting.” I chomped down on a cracker hiding under a blanket of Nutella.
“Yep. Most of my friends eat organic, vegan, cardboard tasting food. I swear half of them are on a mission to remove carbs from the planet. Me, I could live on pizza, falafel, and candy. Oh, French fries, life would have no meaning without French fries.”
“Your friends sound like my brother. We were such opposites,” I replied.
“Tell me about him. What did you two like to do together?”
“That’s an interesting question. I’ve always been the practical one--you know, save money for a rainy day, don’t overspend the budget, and pay the bills on time type. Jack was a free spirit. He majored in biology and chemistry at Pitt, but his two passions were sports and art history. He adored New York and dragged me to every museum in town. He would point and say things like, “This is a perfect example of post-modernism,’” I said trying to sound artsy. “Me,” I shrugged. “I’d look at the painting and try to calculate how much it would sell for at auction--totally different minds.”
After a year and a half, I still couldn’t talk about Jack without tearing up. But, this time, I didn’t try to hide them or control my emotions. “Besides being twins, I think we got along so well because we were two halves of the same person.”
“And now, you feel half of you is missing,” he said, stroking my hair.
“The better half.”
“Stop it.” He pulled me back against his chest. “Please, I don’t like hearing that.” He rubbed his cheek along the back of my head. “Do you mind me asking about him?”
I shook my head, feeling his heart beat against my back and snuggled even tighter into his arms. “No, I like talking about him. Most people don’t want to listen. They think that once the Jewish year of mourning is over, all is back to normal. When you lose someone you love, there’s no normal to go back to. What I’m trying to do is figure out how to live with this giant vacuum in my life.”
“New people can help fill it.” He kissed my cheek.
“That’s just it, they can’t. Imagine your life as a jigsaw puzzle and each person is a piece of your life’s puzzle. Every person fits into their specifically designated space. There’s a space for your mother, your father, a friend, a lover, a sibling. Losing one is like losing a puzzle piece. No other piece is the exact shape of the one you lost. You just keep building the puzzle around that missing piece. There’s always a hole.”
“But life can be good, even if there’s a hole, right?”
I shrugged against him. “The hardest part is accepting the hole exists. Honestly, you’ll do everything you can to try and find that missing piece.” I pulled back and twisted to look at his face. “When the police knocked on my door to tell me Jack died, I refused to believe them and convinced myself it was a case of mistaken identity. It took a long time to get his body to Pittsburgh. I denied it until I identified him at the morgue. Step one, you have to accept the person is gone and the missing puzzle piece is never coming back.”
“Then?” he asked.
“That’s the part I can’t answer. I’ve barely accepted his death.”
“Junk food blitz is over.” He reached for my hand and pulled me to my feet. The last time he undressed me, hunger radiated from his entire body. This time, tenderness filled his eyes when he reached behind my knees, lifted me into his arms, and carried me the way I’d seen fireman on television hold people being rescued from burning buildings. He placed me on the bed, pulling the fluffy white down comforter to my chin. Then he kissed my forehead, turned, and poured the rest of the wine in my glass. “We can share,” he said, setting it on the nightstand.
I watched him pull off his clothes, admiring his strong body, and the warmth in his eyes. He climbed in next to me, and once again, held me as I cried.
This time the tears didn’t last long. I spooned myself against him, running my arm the length of his torso.
“Mmmm, feels so good,” he murmured, rolling over and pulling me to him.
***
When we finished, I rested against his chest, content in the moment, pushing all thoughts from my mind.
“I almost forgot.” He hopped out of bed and walked to his backpack. “I’ll trade you, The Source for The Drifters.”
“I haven’t finished it yet.” The thought of reading The Source frightened me. I read it in college. It’s about the birth of monotheism, Judaism, and Israel. He cocked his head in doubt, you haven’t finished The Drifters?”
“I have fifty more pages.”
“How many times have you read it?” He picked up my hand and entwined his fingers with mine.
I bit my bottom lip and with my other hand, fiddled with the pillowcase.
“I bet at least three times,” he answered the question for me.
“What makes you think that? It could be my first time reading it,” I said, trying to sound convincing.
“It’s not. Michener is literary comfort food. When I first saw you, sitting alone at Chabad, I wondered why such a beautiful woman was sitting alone. Then I noticed the book and wondered what could have happened to you to make you travel alone to Thailand and hide inside that novel. What did you want to escape from?”
“Now you know what I wanted to escape from.”
He held out his hand. “Answer the question. How many times have you read it?”
“This is the fourth time.”
“Hand it over.” He stuck out his palm. “How many times have you read The Source?”
“Once.”
“And you don’t want to read it again because it’s about finding God?”
I nod. “I’m not ready for that.”
He sat down on the bed, picked up a strand of my hair and let it slide over his hand. “He says that we seek God so earnestly, not to find Him, but discover ourselves,” he said paraphrasing the
book. “Maybe it’s time for you to discover both?”
Chapter 8
The tour van pulled away from the camp at promptly eight a.m., with both of us a bit bleary eyed, from lack of sleep.
“Coffee,” Avi said, crushing his face into my shoulder. “Please.”
“Maybe if you beg in Thai, the driver will stop at the first Starbucks we pass.”
“There are no Starbucks in the jungle, just the city. It’s my fault. I took your clothes off. Jungle Lesson Number One: if you want to sleep, do not drink wine and crawl into bed next to a naked auburn-haired, green-eyed girl named Julie.”
“Would you have preferred we spent the night sleeping?” I asked, patting his head like a child.
“No freakin’ way. But, the idea of riding on an elephant right now doesn’t sound appealing.”
“We’ll find coffee. Don’t be a wimp. We’re riding elephants whether you like it or not.”
***
Fortunately, the driver stopped at a gas station that sold coffee. It took an hour to reach the elephant ranch. The place didn’t look very impressive or smell very impressive. We walked from the parking lot down a well-worn dirt path, passing a few elephants tied to fences, munching on palm fronds. A few palm trees and rubber trees speckled the flat landscape. In the distance, I saw a stream with elephants lumbering through the water bearing people on their backs.
The tour guide directed us to a wooden platform lofted on stilts crafted from thick logs. He pointed to the stairs where at least twenty tourists already stood in line.
“That’s a lot of people,” I said to Avi, wondering how much an elephant could hold on his back.
“Yeah, it’s actually kind of sad. A lot of these places don’t treat the animals very well. The staff works them too hard, and some places don’t feed the poor elephants enough. What’s really sad is the babies are often separated from the mother too soon.”
I gazed back at the munching elephants, trying to find evidence of abuse. I didn’t see any, but they all looked depressed. “Do elephants always look so sad?”
He shrugged. “I’m not up on elephant facial expressions.”
I grabbed his hand and pulled him from the line. “I don’t want to do this. Let’s buy some elephant food.” I pointed to a small hut selling bananas and cuts of sugar cane. “Those two over there--” I turned and pointed at two large elephants in a fenced enclosure. “--look like they’d enjoy an afternoon snack.”
We bought two baskets of bananas and one of sugar cane before walking over to a large female. I held out the banana. She extended her trunk, pulled it from my grip, and popped it into her mouth. Before I could pull another banana from the basket, she stuck her trunk into the basket and grabbed more. “She wants all of them!”
“Of course, she does. If you needed to eat over three hundred pounds of food a day, you’d go after the whole basket too.”
I laughed as we continued feeding the elephant we nicknamed Daisy. “I can’t wait to tell Ja...” A wave of sadness gripped my heart the moment I realized I’d never tell Jack about this place. He would have adored it here. I imagined him standing in Avi’s spot, telling me to smile for the camera. Everywhere he went, Jack took copious amounts of pictures, but never developed them.
“What did you say?” Avi asked.
“Nothing.” I bit my lower lip and tried to will away the sadness, because once again, it wasn’t fair. I was having the time of my life, and Jack had no life.
Avi must have noticed the change in my demeanor, because suddenly I was wrapped in his arms. His lips brushed my ear. “From what you’ve told me about him, he would have loved this place. Now, you have to love it for him.”
I squeezed him tight, but my heart pounded out the words, No, no, no. Jack wouldn’t want me to love it. He’d want me to sit on his grave and talk to him, telling him how much I missed him and how unfair life is.
I wiggled from his arms, stepped to the fence, and leaned against the wooden railing separating me from Daisy. Alarm rang out in my head when she lifted her trunk and extended it toward me. I turned to look at Avi, but, within a breath, she snaked it around my neck, like a boa constrictor suffocating its prey. Panic hit like a bullet--the elephant was strangling me. Try to peel the trunk off my neck or stand still? I wanted to call out, but the words didn’t move from my head to my lips. The tip of her trunk brushed my ear as she moved it toward my cheek. The trunk tightened, and a loud sneezing sound caused my body to freeze--yuk. She soaked my face in elephant snot, unfurled her trunk from my neck, and stepped backward. Daisy gave me the elephant equivalent of a raspberry on the left side of my face.
“Yuk--elephant goop,” I said, pulling my snot splattered sunglasses from my face. “Get me a napkin or something, please.”
Her mahout, who had been sitting on the fence watching us, said something in Thai and laughed.
“He said she must like you because she doesn’t kiss many people. Hey, Daisy,” Avi yelled. “She’s mine. Find your own girlfriend.” He laughed and walked off to the banana stand. The shack stood at least twenty-five yards away, but his hand gestures conveyed that he was asking for something to wipe my face.
I turned my attention back to Daisy, who had returned to chomping palm fronds, and thought about Avi’s words. He’d said “mine” and “girlfriend.” Was I his or even his girlfriend? Those words didn’t imply beach-side fling.
He returned holding a few sheets of old newspaper. “No napkins. The lady said they only sell elephant food and elephants don’t use napkins.” He handed me a sheet for my face and with another sheet, he wiped my sunglasses until they reached a perfect smear. “Stop, I’ll find a lady’s room to clean them and scrub my face.”
After I cleaned up, we spent another hour wandering around the grounds, stopping to watch a baby elephant stretching to suckle under its mother. The mother kept moving to reach palm fronds, forcing the baby to continually reposition itself to latch on. After a few minutes, momma elephant settled down and stood still, letting junior elephant enjoy a liquid lunch.
Finally, the tour guide rounded us all up and loaded our group back into the van. Everyone chattered in their own language. Avi joined in the French couple’s conversation, and, within minutes, they looked at me, laughing.
“You told them about the elephant kiss, right?”
“Had to, your expression when she sprayed your face was priceless.” He pulled me into a deep kiss that lit my body on fire, erased the people around us and the elephants of Thailand.
***
The van stopped in front of a small bed and breakfast on the main road. The French couple said, “Au revoir,” while hoisting their packs onto their backs. The Dutch family hauled their huge backpacks into deluxe looking, six-story hotel, in the heart of Patong. By the time it reached my hostel, it was seven-thirty. Avi unloaded our backpacks, tipped the driver and the tour guide. As usual, he refused to let me pay for anything.
“We need to get something straight before Koh Samui,” I said.
“Fine, you can have the left side of the bed if it matters that much to you.” He planted a quick kiss on my cheek.
I pulled his arms, turning his body until we stood face to face. “This is serious. Unless you let me pay for half of everything, I don’t want you to come. You’re not responsible for my expenses on this trip. Fifty-fifty from now on.”
He looked down, kicking at an imaginary something, avoiding my gaze. “I’m not used to this. Isn’t the guy supposed to pay for the date?”
“Yes, in 1946. This is 2010. Women have rights, and I have the right to pay my own way.”
“Fine, fifty-fifty,” he said, with downcast eyes.
I threw my arms around his neck. “Great, now kiss me.”
He broke the kiss. “Let’s dump your stuff and grab a pizza.”
“On me.”
He grumbled something in Hebrew. I didn’t ask what.
The Israeli owner, Yossi, met us at the door. After the hugging an
d the welcoming finished, he led us to a quiet table in the back of the small restaurant. “No one will bother you here,” he said, seating Avi with his back to the door. He handed me a menu and then one to Avi. “I know you want a beer.” He turned and looked at me.
“Chardonnay,” I replied.
He nodded and walked away.
“What an odd thing to say. Why would he think someone would bother you if you sat in the front?”
“His English isn’t so great. I think what he meant to say was this spot is quiet, and we can enjoy our dinner without the noise of the street.”
Yossi’s English sounded pretty good to me. “He really goes over the top greeting you.” I lifted the menu and dropped the issue.
He shrugged. “Israelis--kind of loud and over the top. Black olives and mushrooms okay with you?”
“Sure.” I scanned the room, noticing something odd. If Israelis were “like that,” why wasn’t Yossi doting on all the Israeli customers?
“I have an early flight tomorrow. If I stay with you, I won’t get any sleep in that little bed.”
“I’ve been wondering where you’re staying. Maybe tonight’s the night I find out?”
He fiddled with a fork before leaning back into his chair, appearing uncomfortable. “I’m staying with Orrie, you know him, the security guard at Chabad and another guy, who guards the day shift. They’re slobs. I’m embarrassed to bring you there.”
“Are you all piled into one room?”
“Not exactly. There are two bedrooms. Orrie gave up his for me.”
“That’s a very generous thing to do. Most people would give you the sofa.”
He shrugged. “He’s an insomniac, and the only television is in the living room. Would you mind spending the night, even though both will be home?”
“No, Orrie is a nice guy, and I’m assuming we’ll be alone in the bedroom most of the time.”
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