by Alisa Smith
I’d never heard of such a place as Sattahip. Wouldn’t she come from a major port such as Rangoon or Saigon? Could be Bill was just off his nut, and she wasn’t coming at all.
This time I was determined to wait all day if I had to. There’d be hell to pay if she did arrive and I missed her somehow. I would not be surprised if Bill sent old Shively as a backup, to catch me out. Shively would take pleasure in doing it. Of course, I had to admit I was also pretty keen to see her. It was a natural nostalgia for old times. Wasn’t it? Having been cured once of unreturned love, surely that would make me immune. Until Bill had thrown her name around, I had hardly thought of her at all for the last few years. So why did my heart have to leap up like it wanted to get out of my chest when I thought of seeing her? It must be like a doctor testing your reflexes. You can’t help reacting, but it doesn’t mean you feel anything.
Already I had inspected the crowds coming off the eight o’clock train, but I hadn’t seen her. It was difficult with so many cars to watch, and so many doors. There was an Eastern Line local from Sattahip every two hours, and a first-class express in the afternoon. My eyeballs would be tired out by then from staring around at everybody. Why did this place have to be so busy?
Now that the train had unloaded, I would stake out the main exit, near the cab stand, until the next local was scheduled to come. Even if I had missed Lena stepping off the train, she might not have left the station yet. She would have to pass through this door. From my post I could see both inside and out. I had run here and was still recovering my breath. I made a bit of a spectacle of myself—nobody runs in the tropics.
A motion at the top of the stairs leading to the British restaurant drew my attention. A woman, blond, flicking her hair from her eyes. She was luminous—like an orchid shining from the depths of the rainforest. Lena. I knew without a doubt it was her, even from this distance. I knew it in the way that Dass could tell an unusual bird from a long way off, simply by the way it carried itself. And so with Lena: stately yet calm. She was a stillness in the chaotic station packed with people, brown and white, silk and rags. As she walked slowly down the stairs, still unconscious of me, I could see that her dress was different, too. Though dusty with the fine orange powder distinctive to the country earth here, I sensed it was expensive from the fabric and tailoring, and you could tell it was American somehow, too. Bolder than the European clothes. There weren’t many American women here, and they stood out.
I went to the bottom of the stairs to intercept her. I may have measured my steps—thirty inches seemed like a good length for a casual stride. I cleared my throat. I supposed the station must be dusty.
“Lena,” I said, carefully choosing a moderate volume. So she could hear me but I would not attract undue attention.
She stared at me. For a moment her face seemed blank and without understanding, she did not know who I was, Oh God, I was nothing, just like I had always been. Then her eyes lit up. “Byron?” It was the first time in my life that my name had sounded good to me.
She smiled, for me. It was a perfect moment.
Now I saw how her eyes stayed a little sad, and the softness had fallen away from her face. Bill used to pinch her full cheeks, rather too hard and without the sweet joking such a gesture should involve, I always thought. No one, not even Bill, would try to do that now. She was a woman, not a girl.
“Yes, it’s me,” I said. “Did you have a good trip? Where’s your luggage? What’s new? Did you know that I own a saloon in Sequim, Washington?” I was running at the mouth, and I stopped myself.
She gave me a hug. I hugged her back, torn between the wish to hold her tight and the fear of seeming to cling. Then I realized I had to hold on to her. She was slipping downward.
She raised her chin and said “Byron?” again, weakly, and I saw a bandage underneath, on her neck, soaked through with blood.
She needed immediate care. What I had thought luminous about her skin I saw now was pallid and sickly. And that sweet look in her eyes was simply staring into a distant land beyond the here and now, having moved beyond pain.
There was no way I was going to take her to the shabby, inconspicuous hotel where Bill had unaccountably arranged for Lena to stay while I was reconciling her to his existence. She needed a soft bed and servants. Bill could stuff his plan and hide himself out of the way if he didn’t have the nerve to face her yet. However, I wouldn’t mention it was Bill’s place in case she refused it. “I have a nice home nearby. Would you like to rest there?”
She opened her mouth as though to speak, gave it up, sighed, and nodded.
“Please, let me help you,” I said, and offered her my arm. She leaned heavily, her strength flagging. “The driver is close by,” I said into her ear. She nodded again, almost imperceptibly this time. I worried I would not be able to hold her up, but then she straightened her shoulders and continued on her own power.
Dass was where I’d left him, idling the Rolls Royce just behind where the taxis waited. I kept underneath the shady colonnade until we were at the car. I guided her in the door and shut it gently, too gently at first and the latch didn’t catch, so that I had to close it again, more manfully. I smiled encouragingly at her through the glass and hurried to the other door, closing myself in with her. She looked a little better now that she was sitting down.
Dass was eyeballing us in the rearview mirror. I was dead tired of never having any privacy, but there was nothing to be done about it.
“Well, here we go,” I said loudly. “Back to the palazzo.” I prayed that Dass would do this without any backtalk. He knew this wasn’t the plan, so I breathed a quiet sigh of relief when, after a lag, Dass pulled the Rolls out and we entered the fray of rickshaws and horse carts on the road.
Lena just closed her eyes. At least she was still conscious, because she did not slide down in the seat. I wished I could find out what happened, but I could not rouse her.
Now that my surprise at seeing her beside me was fading, I was left only with the lead weight of knowing that she had come halfway around the world for this fellow Link Hughes. This was, frankly, a horrible position to be in, but Bill was in it too. If she was here for Hughes, she wasn’t here for Bill. We would sink in this swamp together.
I hoped that she had built up this man Hughes during their separation, and his reality would prove a disappointment. I would like to be there to see her face, when we found him. So I could comfort her.
We arrived at the pier, and Dass took her other arm as we left the car. I settled Lena at the prow of the longtail and the driver set off at my nod. It gave me a pang to see her there, leaned against the polished teak, the shimmering water as a backdrop while the wind tousled her hair. It echoed the memory I held of her on our journey to Vancouver Island, before the biggest heist of our career. Those were golden times. I hadn’t loved anyone since then. I had a steady girlfriend for a couple of years in Sequim, but when she pressed for marriage I ended the relationship instead. I could not get over the idea that at any time I might have to go on the run if my past was discovered. That was no way to settle down with anyone. Not when your heart felt tepid as a sink of forgotten dishwater. I had resigned myself to not being a passionate man. Passion was only for youth, for the wild roller coaster of being twenty-five. It was hard sometimes to get used to the flatness of life that followed, but maybe such things were inevitable.
I shook myself from my thoughts when I noticed Dass gesturing to me from the far end of the boat, where he stood beside the boatman, and I walked over. Even if Lena was aware of her surroundings, she would not hear anything he said with the wind and the engine noise.
“What are you doing?” Dass muttered. “He does not want to see her yet. Or her to see him.”
“I know,” I hissed back, “but look at the state she’s in. Run ahead and make sure he’s not at home, and signal me if it’s all right.”
Dass just gave me a look, which I knew from experience was his way of disagreeing.
&nbs
p; “I’ll take the blame if anything goes wrong,” I said, as the longtail bumped against the dock by the palazzo gate.
“I’ll hold you to your word.” And with that he turned his back to me and stepped off the boat. How could a man who wore pink pants manage to look so superior? He ran ahead silently while I helped Lena off the boat. She was paler by the moment, it seemed—her face was like moonlight.
“You okay?” I asked. She did not answer and just leaned harder against me.
I felt like a cad, delaying her rest, but I had to wait until I knew the coast was clear. I led her to the lawn chair where I had first parleyed with Bill, which was situated to take in the view of the river. Flowering trees framed a sculpted tower on the far shore. It was unfortunate she was in no condition to appreciate it. As I waited impatiently for Dass, the bird I thought of as the panic bird started its wailing. “Oh no oh no oh no oh no,” in a crescendo of disasters foreseen. Why did even nature conspire to plague me? No one else ever seemed to hear the panic bird. It never wailed when Dass was with me, for instance, or I would have remembered to ask him its name. Birds just had it in for me. Back in Washington, there was some yellow one always calling, “Gotta getta date, gotta getta date” spring after spring, year after year, needling me. Its wish was never answered, I guess. Mine neither. I hoped the panic bird’s nervousness was equally deluded.
Finally, I spotted Dass peering out from behind a shady column, and he waved me inside. The guest bedroom was always made up, and was in a different wing from Bill’s room, so that’s where I headed, my arm around Lena’s waist to support her. If she hadn’t seemed so unwell I would have been perfectly happy.
I settled Lena onto the cool white sheets, the fan gently turning overhead. “Just ring this bell if you need anything. Loud. This place is huge.”
I didn’t think she heard me, and resolved to call the doctor. First, I hurried to the window to make sure the shutters were locked. They had intricate designs carved in them to let in the breeze, but not direct light. In Siam, sun was the devil to be avoided. The key thing was that Lena would not see any doings in the palazzo, should Bill return. Any person passing by would be just a shadow.
Her breathing had shifted to the deeper cadence of someone asleep, and I eased myself from the room. In the hallway near the library sat the main telephone, made of white Bakelite with a crank handle. It was twenty years out of date but the best in its day, like everything else in the mansion. The operator put me through to the doctor and I told him it was an emergency. He was an Englishman, chill and snobby until I repeated Bill’s name, and then he said he’d come right away. He was one of the expats who came to Bangkok in some murky time not quite before the war was over. His morals were dubious but his training, impeccable.
Hanging up the phone, I continued through the hall, with one more urgent task to see to. I headed for a bedroom around the corner, where boxes of dresses were stacked in a wardrobe. Bill had them ready for me to take to the hotel we’d planned for Lena after she arrived. He said she was travelling light. Indeed, she had no luggage at all. It seemed unlikely Lena would find the dresses, but who knew what exploring she might do when she revived. The first instinct of any robber is to case the joint. Not to say she was still a robber, but these habits die hard. I didn’t want her to wonder whose they were, or worse, if they were meant for her, since they were in her size and taste from when she was in the gang.
I had the shock of my life when I entered the room. Bill was kneeling on the floor, his face buried in a dress he was clutching, and the boxes were strewn everywhere. Most of the dresses were new, but the one he held I remembered distinctly from a night we three spent at the Bergonian ballroom in Seattle thirteen years ago. He’d kept it all this time? I cleared my throat.
He leapt up and turned to face me, nimble as a boxer. “I thought I saw Lena, in the garden,” he said. “Am I crazy?”
“Dass said you weren’t here.”
“That’s no answer. You fucking with my plans?” He grabbed me round the neck with both hands and I could hardly breathe.
“She’s hurt,” I sputtered, and he let me go. I gasped. “Knifed. Needs a doctor.”
“Holy Christ. I’ll call him right now.”
“I already did.”
“He’ll get here quicker if it comes from me.” Like a madman he ran into the hall, and I heard the old phone’s crank whirring, turning faster than it ever had.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BANGKOK BELONGS TO HIM
I WOKE IN a dark room. How long had I slept? A sheet fluttered on my chest, moved by the breeze of a ceiling fan. I touched the bandage on my neck and winced. I had a vague memory of a monocled stranger with a stethoscope leaning over me and putting a cloth over my mouth, sickly sweet. I remembered the glint of a curved needle with a long thread hanging from it, and how I had stared at it with dread.
I remembered landing on a beach and taking a train that hurtled through the night. I saw a brass bell with a dark wood handle on the bedside table. Someone had told me to ring it if I needed anything. I jangled it fiercely.
A man came into the room and I tugged the sheet to my chin. A moment later, I realized it was Byron. He had a beard, which was new.
Byron, from the Clockwork Gang?
“How are you?” he asked, sitting in a rattan chair beside my bed.
“Fine,” I said. I didn’t want to admit I was muddled, or there was something important that he wouldn’t let me do. My voice had come out hoarsely. “Could I have some water, please?”
He jumped up to grab a glass pitcher on an antique side table that had a foreign look, Chinese maybe. As he fussed with the ice cubes, I decided that the beard suited him. Unlike most people, he looked more handsome now that he was older, though of course he hadn’t been a lady-killer before. His features had sharpened and the craggy lines about his eyes proved he’d seen more of life. He still looked uncomfortable in his own skin, but I was glad of it, because his vulnerability was the sweetness in him. Wherever I was, I knew that I was safe with him.
The image of a foreign man in a cap, yelling, came to me. “Is this Bangkok?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Link Hughes was the reason I was in Bangkok. He was in danger. Where were my shoes? The high-ceilinged room, sparsely decorated, yielded no clues about where they might be. The floor was bare. Getting up to look seemed too challenging.
Byron handed me the glass of water with an expression of concern. I supposed I must look terrible. “Why are you here?” I asked.
“I live here, remember?”
“Yes, of course.” I hadn’t until he told me, but things were starting to come back.
“What on earth happened to your neck?”
“Some men boarded our ship to steal our money.”
“Good lord, men who steal things on ships are called pirates. You were attacked by pirates?” His face transformed from frantic to angry—he seemed to take the whole thing personally.
Gathering my strength, I sat up, ignoring the stabbing pain in my neck as I pushed my legs off the bed and onto the floor. Time was short. Link could die of his battle injuries or the Russians could take him for some dark purpose. Byron gripped my arm.
“You will not get out of bed.” He smiled to soften his words. “That’s what the doctor said.”
“Your doctor doesn’t know me. Look, I came here to find someone and that’s what I’m going to do. I suppose if you’re here, you must know about him?”
“Mostly. Link Hughes, you mean.” Byron sounded cautious.
“So you’re in with Bill again. How could you, after all he’s done?” I tried to stand up, but my head started spinning. I put my hands over my face, hoping the world would settle. It was only my wound that made me feel this way. “After he let us think him dead for three years? Or did you always know?”
“I was as shocked as anyone. Only heard a few months back, when I was in Washington. I don’t know. When a dead man summons, don’t yo
u go?”
I stared at him silently.
“You came.”
I was amazed Byron had the nerve to say such a thing. It wasn’t like the old Byron at all, but it was true. “Only because of Link Hughes. Bill tried to ruin my life when he was in jail. He threatened to tell everything he knew about me.”
“Jesus. That’s low. Did he do it?”
“He seems to have told one person, at least. That was enough.” I lay on the pillow with my eyes closed. “Please tell me about Link.”
“Bill was working with the British in Siam right after the war, liberating the prisoners who worked on the Death Railway—”
“Oh God. Death Railway?” I felt sick. What had I done?
“I’m sorry. I thought you would know that. At least your friend lived.”
Bill probably had some plan to keep Link away from me as long as possible, so I’d have to talk to him instead. I would not do it. There were other ways. I gathered all my strength to smile at Byron sweetly, and took his hand. He flushed. Byron had always been a simple puzzle.
“Can I see him? Right away?” I asked.
He whispered something, a single syllable.
“What was that?” I prodded.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He disappeared from the POW hospital in Nakom Paton, but don’t worry. We’ve got men combing the city for him. You need to rest now.”
I couldn’t stand it. I’d come all this way and been so close. What if the Russians had him? But I could not move, or even open my eyes. Once again the world seemed to slide away.
* * *
