“No thanks.” Mark stood and slapped the sand off his shorts.
Shawn looked up at him. “You don’t really have a lot of choice here.”
Mark pulled his still-wet tee shirt over his head. “That so?”
“I made some calls last night—”
“Yeah, you said that already. You found out I was a Marine, so what?”
Shawn rose and stood next to him. He was taller than Mark but not by much, with shoulders that were just as wide. “I also found out that two of Jarin’s men were killed up in Phuket. Oh, it wasn’t in the papers, the police probably don’t know too much about it either. Yet. But word gets out, you know how it is.”
“I wasn’t there,” he lied, knowing that the place was covered in his prints.
“Mark, come on, you should know by now that that doesn’t mean a thing here.”
Hands on his hips, Mark watched the waves break on the sand.
“I don’t want to be a bastard,” Shawn said, “but I’ve got a job to do. And now,” he said as he smiled at Mark, “so do you.”
Chapter Twenty three
Robin sat cross-legged on the beach towel and watched as Ngern built a sandcastle just beyond reach of the low-rolling surf. She could hear him talking to himself as he excavated tunnels and mounded up sloping walls, his voice dropping down as the imaginary foreman dictated last-second design changes, calling for more scoops of the wet stuff. She was too far away to hear clearly and it was all in Thai, but he was a kid playing in the sand. She didn’t need it translated to know what he said. Ten yards out, with his baggy trousers rolled up to his knees, the grandfather poked around in the exposed rock with a stick, pulling out the occasional crab and dropping it in the plastic bag he had tied to a belt loop. Out of the corner of her eye Robin could see Pim walking toward her and pretended not to notice.
“Excuse me? Miss Robin?” Pim said, edging forward.
Robin turned and looked up at her.
“I want to thank you again for the clothings,” Pim said, touching first the white DKNY tee shirt, then the blue shorts that hung below.
Robin shrugged. “Yeah, no big deal.” She turned to look back at the water.
“The short pants fit very good, but the shirt is loose. I think you have much bigger titties than me.”
Robin laughed. She didn’t want to but couldn’t help herself. Pim looked at her nervously. “What the hell, have a seat,” Robin said, making room on the oversized towel.
Pim hesitated, then sat on the corner of the towel, making herself as small as possible. For ten minutes they said nothing and watched the construction site and the pointy-stick fisherman beyond. Pim sat with her arms wrapped around her legs, her heels tight against her ass, and Robin noticed that she rocked back and forth as slow as the waves. “He’s a cute kid,” Robin said, surprised by the sound of her own voice.
“Yes,” Pim said. “He looks much like my sister.”
“He plays well by himself, too. Keeps himself entertained.”
Pim nodded—quick little head bobs that made her long hair bounce. “It has been a long time since he has had anyone to play with. I hope he will know how to make friends again.” She paused and wet her lips. “They would let me visit him on Sundays after I went to church, but he did not want to play then. We would lie together on his sleeping mat and he would hold on to me. I would listen to him breathing and rub his back. He would fall asleep and I would watch him as he slept. Then they would make me go back to town.” She watched the boy add a ring of shells to the seawall.
“He’s a tough kid. He’ll do all right.” Robin leaned forward and brushed the sand off her hands. “Look, I gotta ask you something. And I don’t want any bullshit, either. You know what that means, bullshit?”
“Yes. You want me to tell you the truth.”
Robin took in a deep breath. “Yeah, that’s it. I want to hear the truth.” Elbows on her knees, she ran her fingers up under her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes, then propped her chin up in her hands. “Do you love Shawn?”
Pim stopped rocking and tilted her head to the side. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”
Robin looked over at her. “You will? What the hell does that mean? Do you love him or not?”
“We had only been married a short while before the tsunami, and then he was gone. I think that if we had been together all this time that I would by now perhaps come to love him.”
“Whoa, hold on,” Robin said, sitting up. “You saying you don’t love him right now?”
Pim wrinkled her nose. “It is hard to say. I do not really know him.”
“You don’t know him? You’re frickin’ married to him.”
“Of course,” Pim said, “how else would I get to know him?”
Robin looked at her wide-eyed. “You date him; you don’t go and marry him.”
“We dated for two months,” Pim said, holding up her fingers. “He bought me many things, so I knew that I should marry him.”
“What?”
“He bought a TV and a DVD player for my parents and he bought my sister a stereo and he bought me many nice things all the time. He bought a laptop computer for my father’s pharmacy even though my father did not need one. He showed great náam-jai. This is how I knew that he liked me.”
“That ‘juice of the heart’ shit again? Listen.” Robin moved closer. “You don’t show someone you love them by buying them things.”
Pim blinked. “Yes,” she said. “If you love someone and you have money, you buy them things.”
“No, no, you don’t,” Robin said, the frustration building in her voice. “If you love someone you don’t have to buy them anything, okay? You just tell them you love them and that’s enough. Buying them shit doesn’t prove a thing.”
“Yes, it shows that you want to support them. Anyone can say words, but buying nice things…” She waved her hands as she let the sentence trail off.
Robin rubbed her temples. “All right. Let’s go back to Shawn. Does he know he got married to you or is this some secret Thai thing you spring on him later?”
“Of course he knows,” Pim said and laughed, bringing her hand up to cover her perfect smile. “He had promised to pay my parents four hundred thousand bhat dowry. That is ten thousand American dollars.”
“He bought you?”
“No, Miss,” Pim said, shocked. “That is what he and my parents decided on. It showed great náam-jai.”
“Oh I’m sure it did.”
“Yes, my father told everyone at the wedding. He was very proud and I was proud of Shawn, too. He showed how much he cared.”
“By paying your father money to marry you?”
“Yes, of course, Miss.”
Robin leaned back. “I don’t frickin’ believe it.”
“But it is true, Miss.”
They sat silent for several minutes, then Robin said, “Why do you want to find him?”
“Miss?”
“Shawn. Why do you want to find him?”
“Miss, I don’t understand…”
“He ran off on you, Pim. He left you behind for that Jarin guy. He’s been gone a year. Trust me, him buying you shit doesn’t mean he loves you. And you just said yourself that you don’t even love him.”
“Maybe, Miss. I do not know.”
“Then what the hell do you want to find him for?” Robin said, her voice hot and harsh.
Pim looked at Robin and swallowed, then looked away, hugging her legs, staring at her toes. Robin sat quietly and watched as a fat tear rolled down Pim’s cheek and dropped into the folds of the baggy white tee shirt.
In a voice tiny and muffled, Pim said, “He is my husband.”
***
Mark sprinted the las
t fifty yards, crossing an imaginary line in the sand that ran from the first bar stool of the He She Drink bar to the water’s edge. He slowed to a jog, then a walk. Off to his left the old man poked around in the exposed reef while straight ahead, Ngern watched as the sea reclaimed all that he had built. Further up the beach, in the shadow cast by a trio of palm trees, Pim sat on a beach towel, her chin resting on her bent knees. He stretched his arms above his head and pulled in deep gulps of humid air and watched Robin walk toward him. The blonde hair, the tan, the low-rise bikini—Mark felt familiar stirrings and wondered what had taken so long.
“How was your run?” Robin said, stopping in front of him.
“Good,” Mark panted. “You two have a nice chat?”
Robin looked back over her shoulder. “Who was it that said that it’d take a lifetime to figure out Thais?”
“You mean JJ? The guy at the hotel?”
“Well he underestimated it.” She watched Pim a moment longer then turned back to face him, crossing her arms. “The cook said that last night he was in town and there were some guys asking about an American couple traveling with a Thai family. The cook said the guys weren’t from here so he didn’t say anything.”
“He told you this?”
“No, he told Pim.” She paused. “At least that’s what she says he said.”
Mark stepped into the surf. He knelt down and splashed water over his head.
“I was thinking that today we should catch a ride across the island and check out Lanta Town,” Robin said. “There’s a post office there and maybe Shawn has a mail box or something.”
Mark cupped water in his hands and poured it down the back of his neck, running his hands through his hair. “We’re going to stay right here for now. After lunch we send Pim, the old man and the kid up to the pier and have them wait for us there. We’ll follow about an hour later. Then we’ll catch a ferry to Langkawi.”
“Ferry?” Robin said.
“We’ve got to get to Langkawi by tonight.”
Robin stepped toward him, her hands on her hips. “What the hell are you talking about? I thought you said we had to stay here for a week?”
“We need to go today.” He stood up and wiped the salt water from his eyes with the sleeve of his tee shirt.
“Oh really?” she said, her foot tapping in the sand as she spoke. “When did you decide this?”
“I didn’t,” Mark said. “It was decided for me.”
“It was decided for you? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Mark looked into her eyes. “Can you just trust me on this?”
“No,” she said, leaning forward as she said it. “I’m sick of this. You have me buying tickets and renting boats and paying for hotels and what have I got for it? A chick who says she’s married to Shawn and some bullshit stories that people tell you when I’m conveniently not around. And now you want to go to some other island—what’s the matter, you don’t like the view from your hut—the hut that I’m paying for?” Robin paused, looked at him and shook her head. “No, it’s over. We’re done here. You can take Pim and the kid and the old man and go where you want, I’m done with you. You haven’t found shit since we’ve been here and now you want me to run off to the next stop on your little tour. Well let’s see how far you get when I’m not paying the bills.” She gave a disgusted laugh. “You know, I actually believed that bartender. Mark’s a hell of guy,” she said, dropping her voice and imitating Frankie’s easy cadence, “he won’t let you down. Well fuck you, Mark Rohr.” She turned and strode off. Mark waited until she had taken a few steps before he spoke.
“Afghanistan bananastand.”
Robin froze in mid-stride, one foot hovering inches above the sand. She set her foot down and turned slowly to look at him, her mouth open, a strange look in her eyes. “What did you say?”
Mark took a step toward her and smiled. Shawn had been right. “Afghanistan bananastand,” he said, hitting every rhythmic syllable.
Robin ran to him and threw her arms around his neck, jumping off the ground to wrap her legs around his hips. “Oh my God, you found him,” she shouted in his ear, and he staggered to get his balance. “He’s alive. He’s alive and you found him,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, and he could hear sobs mixed in with her words. He held her tight for a few minutes, the waves lapping at his ankles. She lowered her legs and kissed him once on the neck before stepping back, brushing the hair from her tear-streaked face.
“You going to tell me what it means?” Mark said. “Afghanistan bananastand?”
She laughed as she sniffed and ran her hand under her nose. “It’s a line from some movie—it’s stupid, just something we’d say.”
“He told me it would get your attention.”
She laughed again. “Yeah, well, it worked.” She looked down the beach, back in the direction he had run. “Where is he?”
“He’s going to meet us in Langkawi.”
“Did he say anything about me?”
“He said he wanted to see you,” Mark said, leaving off the bit about it being too dangerous right now.
“Did he say anything about her?” Robin tilted her head in Pim’s direction.
Mark looked across the beach to where Pim sat alone. With her knees pulled up to her chest she looked even smaller. “He said she should come with us. Her and the others,” Mark said, revising Shawn’s plan as he spoke. “Jarin has men looking for us here. It’s not safe.”
“Did he say anything about them being married?”
“I don’t remember,” Mark said, thinking about the question. “He just said to be sure we got them to Langkawi with us.”
Robin lowered her head and sighed. “All right.”
“Talk to the owner, ask her if she can get us a ride to the pier. Give her an extra twenty bucks so she’ll keep it quiet. And we’re going to need two trips. They’ll go early, we’ll go late. If we time it right we won’t be at the pier for long.”
She nodded. “What are you going to do?”
“Get something to eat, grab a shower,” he said. “But first I’m going to talk to Pim.”
***
Kiao leaned on his stick and watched as the man walked toward him, one leg swinging out wide with each step, catching the water at a funny angle and sending up a fantail spray. It looked awkward, maybe even painful, but the man kept a big smile on his face.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the man said, stopping twenty feet away, the water just touching his rolled-up pant legs. “How is the fishing today?”
The old man grinned. The stranger spoke Thai with a bit of a lisp but had used the respectful forms of address that many young people seemed to forget these days. He had seen this young man before, on the beach with a tall, blond foreigner, and before that, on the ferry from Krabi, he had sat at a nearby table, holding a newspaper the whole trip. He looked to be his granddaughter’s age, but he could have been younger, too. The old man knew that a hard life could make you age faster, and with a twisted leg and a fat tongue the young man’s life could not have been easy. “It is a good day for the fish and a bad day for the fisherman,” the old man said.
“The rocks around here? People tell me you can find lots of crabs in them.”
The old man patted the plastic bag at his side. “That’s what I’m finding out. I’m too slow to get the fish but the crabs are kind enough to stay put while I grab them.”
“Tomorrow night? There’s a full moon. The tides will be even further out and you’ll find even more crabs.”
“More good news for the crabs,” the old man said as he poked his stick into a crevice. “My granddaughter just told me that we are leaving for Langkawi on the afternoon ferry.”
The old man stooped down to examine a promising niche and didn’t notice the look of surprise that flashed
across the young man’s face. By the time he determined that no crabs hid in the rock, the young man’s smile had returned.
“I give the crabs to the cook at the hotel where we are staying,” the old man said, gesturing toward the shore. “The cook is Chinese but he is very good. He takes the crabs and cooks them up with some curry paste and coconut milk and a whole head of bok choy and a kilo of snow peas.”
The young man nodded his head, not hearing a word. Langkawi was in Malaysia, the first big island just south of the border. He didn’t have a passport or even an ID card. He’d have to find a way to get past the customs check at the pier. It would be tricky but he had done things that were even harder. He had planned to steal back all of the un-smoked drugs he had sold to the blond ferang as well as the ferang’s money, but if he was going to Malaysia he couldn’t risk it. He’d leave the drugs and take the money, maybe take the Walkman, too.
“My wife used to make the best steamed catfish. She made them in banana leaves with fish sauce and fresh bai makroot. When she would send me out to the morning market for banana leaves, I always knew what we would have for dinner.”
He was picturing a map. Phuket was to the west, maybe eighty kilometers. Langkawi was south, twice as far at least. The ferry? It wouldn’t be one of those open boats they had taken from Krabi. It would be bigger, all enclosed. It would cost more, too, but that wasn’t the problem. He’d have to make sure they didn’t see him again, especially this old man. He remembered that the old man had sat and stared out the window the whole ride from Krabi so maybe he’d do the same on this trip. Still, he would be sure they didn’t see him.
“…a piece of tuna steak about this big, chopped up in cubes. You put it in with the noodles and let it cook about two minutes…”
He could tell Jarin’s men where the American was, but then they would take all the credit, probably not even mention his name. No, he had come this far, he would find a way to tell Jarin himself. Besides, fate was on his side. Why else did he come out to talk to the old man? It was just something he did, no reason, but now he knew their plan. He wasn’t sure how yet, but he had been waiting his whole life for this chance and he wasn’t going to stop now.
Noble Lies Page 16
