Noble Lies

by Charles Benoit

  “I’m sure it’s wonderful,” Robin said, setting her bag down on the counter and pulling out her passport and wallet.

  “No, it’s a dump,” the man said, laughing as he said it.

  Mark looked around the room. “Okay. But I wouldn’t let the owner hear you say that.”

  The man laughed as he reached his arm across the counter and held it there till Mark shook his hand. “John DiMarco. Or Jason DiMarco. Whatever. Just call me JJ. And I’m not about to fire my best employee.”

  “And you’re telling us that your hotel is a dump?”

  “It’s true,” JJ said. “I’m not going to lie to you. Half the plumbing don’t work, when it rains the stairs are like little waterfalls, the mattresses are paper thin, and the rats, well they’re not as bad as they used to be before we got the dogs but now you got to put up with the howling.”

  “You’re a hell of salesman, JJ.”

  JJ waved off the compliment then pushed the rolled-up sleeves of his white cotton shirt higher on his arms. “You’re not stupid. You can see what kind of place this is. We don’t ask many questions and whatever you do up in your room is cool as long as nobody gets hurt and you don’t get the police at my door. It’s live free or die, am I right? Now I suppose you want a room…”

  “Two rooms,” Robin said, pulling a pen from her backpack to fill out the form JJ slid across the counter.

  JJ raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment. “You want them adjoining, you know, with a door?”

  Robin shook her head. “No thank you.”

  “Right,” he said, turning to scan the row of keys that hung on nails on the back wall, a long, thin finger flicking each key in the line. “Third floor rooms are two-thousand bhat a night—fifty US—ground floor rooms are four hundred bhat. About ten bucks.”

  “Is there a better view from the third floor?”

  “Nope,” JJ said, still flicking the keys. “All the rooms look out to the side of the Patong Princess Resortel.”

  “Why so much more for the third floor?”

  “Because when the tsunami hit they were the only rooms above the water.”

  Robin looked up. “Were you here that day?”

  JJ laughed as he turned around to rest his bony elbows on the counter, his thin leather necklace dangling an Italian horn amulet like a tiny golden pepper. “I had a girl that worked here, Noi, older bar-beer girl looking to settle down a bit. She had hooked up with some Brit just before Christmas, wanted to spend as much time with him as possible, maybe get him to fall in love or something, I don’t know. Anyway, it was the day after Christmas, what the Brits call Boxing Day, and Noi wants the day off in case this guy’s feeling generous. Fine. So it’s like the first thing in the morning, I haven’t even had coffee yet.” He stood up and pulled his dreads behind his head, holding them in place a moment before letting them drop; Mark watching his eyes as memory came into focus.

  “I’m just hanging out, you know? And I hear this boom, Boom, BOOM.” JJ’s eyes widened, his shoulders jerking with the sound, each one louder than the last. “I’m thinking, ah shit, terrorists. I mean it’s Christmas and this place is packed. Well not this place but the real resorts, you know? We had a lot of guests, maybe half full, Noi had a room on the first floor, some Aussie tour group took most of the top floor…”

  “The boom,” Robin said, leaning forward. “What was it?”

  “It was the wave, man,” JJ said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Smacking into the beachfront hotels. You could feel the walls shake. Then the screaming starts. The only thing I could make out is run, so like an idiot I run out into the street, I gotta see, right? Well I saw, all right.”

  Mark rocked back on his heels and looked out the picture window. “Ocean that way?” he said, pointing down the side street, past the row of dumpsters behind the Patong Princess.

  JJ nodded. “That’s Sawatdirak Road at the corner. I see these people—not many, you know, it’s Sunday morning—and they’re running that way,” he said, his thumb jerking over his shoulder and up the surrounding hills, “everybody looking back. And then like that,” he said, snapping his fingers, “the wave came, a big brown roller, fifteen feet tall easy, just pushing everything out of the way. Cars, trees, people—it’s ripping down poles and wires, whole storefronts, just snapping off, tumbling.” JJ’s hands moved as he spoke, the gestures growing in size and speed.

  “And there was this…this roar. But you felt it as much as you heard it. They didn’t get it in the news and you don’t hear it in those videos people made, but ask anyone who was here, they remember.”

  “So, did the water come down the street?” Robin said.

  “Oh, it came,” JJ laughed a nervous laugh. “Like I said, I’m looking up at Sawatdirak Road and the wave, it’s pushing all that shit in front of it, and there’s these people climbing on top of car roofs and trying to hold on to street signs, and they’re getting pulled under. I see this guy, Laang, did some painting work for me, he’s floating on this freakin’ deck chair from some resort, and I’m looking at him just as he falls off to the side into the water. Gone. Then I notice that the water is coming down the street at me. Not as much, sort of like a side wave, but it’s knocking through storefronts and swallowing up cars, and I still got no idea what’s going on. I mean, did you even know the word tsunami before then? So I hear the screams right behind me, and that roar. I look back, see the same thing happening on Bang-la Road. It was funny, it was like a wall of scooters—I mean everyone here’s got one, right?—well the wave’s just pushing all these scooters right at me, and I’m thinking, wow, that’s a lot of scooters; and the next thing I’m hip deep in water and I can’t stand up and it’s half dragging me, half pushing me and I’m stepping on those scooters and all this wood ramming into me and it’s like I’m getting gang tackled and I’m thinking, I’m dead.”

  JJ stopped and, tight-lipped, drew a deep, whistling breath through his nose. Mark glanced at Robin, her eyes locked on JJ’s tanned face, the pen shaking in her hand.

  “But, as you can see,” JJ said, hands out to his side as he did a wobbly pirouette, “I lived to die another day. See that utility pole, the one that sunburnt guy’s walking by? I grabbed a hold of that and started climbing, got up to that roof there. Me and about twenty others up on that little space—you can’t see from here but it slopes a lot in the back. That’s where I sat it out. Two hours later I’m ID-ing Noi’s body over at the morgue they set up at the school. Sucked her right out of the hotel room. No idea what happened to her Brit.”

  JJ stood looking out the window at the rooftop across the street and the memory that was as clear and as vivid as the afternoon sky. Mark recognized the silence that filled the room. It was the same silence that had hung in the air after he had told his friends back home what it was like to come up against a squad of Iraqi troops, the troops that were supposed to be poorly trained and too scared to fight.

  “Anyway,” JJ said, clapping his hands together like he was closing a book, “let’s get you a couple rooms. Third floor, right?”

  Chapter Five

  Straight rows of over-size umbrellas and rented lounge chairs lined the beach, filled with jet-setting university students on an early Spring Break; while beer-gutted retirees in Speedos and topless grandmothers strolled the shore looking for sea glass and shells. Standing off from the crowd, Mark stared over the low waves of the outgoing tide to a point just above the horizon, a million miles away.

  Mark remembered the shaky videos of the hundred-foot wave hitting Patong Beach, the same beach where tanning tourists now dozed in the late-afternoon sun. It was all over in one day—the first wave, the unexpected waves that followed, the retreating water—a handful of hours the survivors would replay for the rest of their lives. A year later it was almost as if the wave never happened. Almost.

  Above the wide
open doors of the beachfront shops—shops that had been drowned under tons of debris-filled dark waves—deep gouges in the concrete showed where boats had been hurled inland, fifty feet off the ground. The marks had been painted over and some had been patched, but that only made them more obvious. Along the edge of the beach, guy-ropes held dozens of newly planted palm trees in place, filling in the gaps between fat-trunk giants, rare survivors with scars high among the palm fronds. The evidence was there, if you went looking for it; something neither the tourists nor the locals seemed eager to do.

  Robin stepped down off the low wall that separated the narrow grass park from the beach and kicked off her sandals, slapping them together as she walked, knocking free the sand and letting him know he had company. She had changed into a light color tank top and khaki shorts, the bottoms rolled up to expose the top of her thighs to the sun. “You were right about the cold shower,” she said and flicked her still-wet hair behind her head. “That took care of the jet lag.”

  “It’ll take a few days. Tomorrow will be the toughest.” He looked at her bare shoulders as she sat down in the sand. “You got sun block on?”

  “It’s okay, I don’t burn. I tan.” She smiled as she said it, closing her eyes as if willing herself bronze.

  Mark pulled a plastic bottle out of one of his deep pockets, dropping it in her lap. “We’re in Thailand, not Tampa. Put it on.”

  Rolling her eyes, Robin flicked open the lid and squeezed a white dollop onto each knee. Mark watched as she rubbed the lotion into her legs. She had dancer’s legs, muscular but with the right shape. She finished with her legs, wiping the excess off on her forearms. “Put some on my back.” She held up the plastic bottle and he squatted down behind her and squeezed some lotion between his sandy hands.

  “So what’s the plan?” she said, bunching her wet hair into a ponytail that she held out of the way.

  “We start with the dive shops, see if any of them know anything. After that we work our way down the beach, hit the bigger hotels, then the shops, then the bars.”

  “You think we’ll find him here?”

  “No.”

  She turned her head to look at him, letting her hair fall to one side. “That’s not very positive thinking.”

  “It’s realistic thinking,” he said. He wiped the last of the lotion on the base of her neck then stood up. “This place is connected. Phone, Internet…it’s all here.”

  “So why can’t he be here too?” She reached out a hand and he helped her to her feet.

  “He could be. It’s just that if he is, we won’t find him.”

  “And that’s realistic because…?”

  “Because if he were here it would have been easy for him to contact you. But he didn’t. So he’s either someplace not as connected, or he doesn’t want to be found. Or both. But if he is here, he’ll know quick that we’re looking for him and he’ll make sure we don’t find him.”

  She looked at him as she brushed the sand off her shorts, her head nodding slightly as if noticing something she’d overlooked before. “Okay,” she said, the word coming out slow. “If he’s not here then where do you think he is?”

  “Anywhere. But just for fun, let’s assume he’s still in Thailand. He could have gone north, up to the mountains. Might not be as easy to get in touch from up there. He’s a scuba diver, maybe he took a job on one of those live-aboard dive boats. Hell, he could have joined some Buddhist monastery.”

  Robin laughed. “Shawn as a monk? I don’t think so.”

  “Fine. Then maybe he found himself a little bungalow somewhere, kicking back, spending his days on the beach, a sweet little Thai girl to keep him company, maybe one of those Norse goddess bathing beauties; there’s certainly a lot of them around. Maybe he’s been too busy to call, that kind of lifestyle can be exhausting for a guy.”

  “Shawn’s not like that,” she said, the anger rising in her voice.

  “What? Human? I’m just trying to be realistic here. Now put some of this on your face,” he said, handing her back the sun block. “You’re getting a bit red.”

  She glared at him, and for a moment he thought he had pushed too hard, that she would storm off and he’d be fired twice in the same day. Not that he’d mind. But then she sighed and flicked open the cap. “You don’t get it,” she said, squeezing the lotion onto her fingertips. “And the reason you don’t get it is that you don’t know Shawn.”

  “Come on,” Mark said and started across the beach to the row of small hotels that lined the road, “I’ve got five thousand very good reasons to meet him.”

  Chapter Six

  With a pearly-white smile and a deferential bow, the waitress set the plate on the table, backing away as she wished him a goodly breaking fast time. Mark poked at the pile of noodles, moving the tiny legs on the freakishly large prawns with the tips of his fork. Spicy pad thai shrimp at seven a.m., the chef’s special, highlighted on the breakfast menu.

  “Your friend not a morning person?” JJ said as he sipped his tea. Other than a Swedish couple, a round German retiree plowing through a second bowl of white rice, and a Thai security guard—his forehead resting on the napkin dispenser as he got an early jump on his first nap—Mark and JJ were the only people at the restaurant, the empty beach visible over JJ’s shoulder, just beyond Thawlwong Road.

  Mark considered the little he knew about Robin before shrugging his shoulders.

  “I always liked mornings,” JJ said. “Everything seems possible in the morning. But then the next thing you know it’s noon and you start to wonder if you’ll get anything done, and before you know it it’s like five-o’clock and you’re like, fuck it, I’ll worry about it tomorrow.” He poured himself a second cup from the teapot the waitress left at the table. “Wasn’t always like that. I used to own my own business. A construction company. Not some nickel and dime thing either, a real construction company with bids and contracts and out-of-state jobs, all that shit. It’s true,” he said, reading Mark’s mind. “It was great for a while, maybe ten years. Then one night I’m watching the Travel Channel, an eight-minute piece on Phuket comes on. A month later I’m signing the whole thing away, a dime on the dollar. A month after that I’m buying a hotel.” He shrugged his shoulders, a gesture that could mean a thousand things. “That’s Phuket for you.”

  Mark wasn’t sure what he had expected to find in Phuket. What he didn’t expect was for it to look as developed as most second-tier beach towns he’d seen in the states, with souvenir shops shoulder to shoulder down the main strip, interspaced with McDonalds, KFCs, and 7-Elevens. The beach road hotels peaked at four-stories, but away from the sand twenty-story chain hotels rose up, oddly angled on oversized lots to assure every balcony a sunset vista.

  And he didn’t expect so many tourists: college kids from Europe, lugging backpacks heavier than anything he had to carry in the corps, their matted hair twisted into dirty-blond dreads; retirees from Australia with sagging folds of skin as rich-hued as the leather purses that hung on racks outside the designer knock-off shops; and bands of Japanese tourists, sticking close behind the tour director’s yellow umbrella.

  There were Thais, of course, but none looked as if they were on vacation. Their English was good—their survival depending on it—and by the time he and Robin had walked a mile they had heard ten variations of the what-is-your-name-where-are-you-from-please-come-to-my-shop monologue from the gentlemen, and the piercing, drawn-out offers of something called a Thai massage from girls not old enough to order a beer.

  But more numerous than the backpackers and the retirees and honeymooners and the souvenir shop touts and the scantily clad masseuses were the legions of single white men, nursing hangovers as they slept in deck chairs that lined the beach or, sunburnt and peeling, lounging in hotel bars, waiting for the tropical sun to set. There were some in their twenties and some pushing eighty, but most we
re what would generously be called middle-aged, with middle-aged paunches and middle-aged hairlines and middle-aged fashions, and girls young enough to be their daughters on their arms. And at night they crowded three deep into the open-front bars of Bang-la Road, packed tight with giggling Thai girls whom they ogled, and pounding techno that they pretended to like.

  He had planned on starting with the hotel Robin’s brother had worked at, checking with the dive shop to see if anyone had seen Shawn Keller since the tsunami; but although it was still marked on the tourist maps, there was only a vacant lot where the beachfront hotel had stood, a rare empty space as conspicuous as a missing tooth. He showed Shawn’s picture around the shops along the main drag, the employees glancing at the photo for a full second before launching into their sales pitches. By seven p.m. they had run out of shops and hotels and headed to Bang-la Road.

  “So if you came in on the beach end you probably started with the Free Bird,” JJ said, eyes closed, mentally building a map of the street. “The Pussy Cat bar-beer used to be there on the right hand side, but the tsunami took that out. Was the bartender’s name Nitaya? A short Thai girl with long black hair, parted in the middle, small tits but really pretty?”

  Mark raised an eyebrow. “That sort of describes every Thai woman I’ve seen since I got here.”

  “You’d remember Nitaya. Sweet kid. Great smile. A real high-pitched laugh though, like somebody cleaning glass.”

  “Like I said…”

  JJ swirled the tea in the cup, bits of tea leaves rising to the surface to cling to the white ceramic rim. “Nitaya might know where to look for your brother.”

  “It’s Robin’s brother. And I asked at the bar, passed the picture around, told the bartender I was looking for this guy. She told us I should check over by the Royal Paradise Hotel.”