by Wicks, Becky
Don't think about it.
The last time I was here I was just like her on the inside. Dead. But on the outside I was a survivor. I was one of the lucky ones.
I'm too wound up to go back to sleep now. I have to interview the hotel manager about her cookbook over breakfast in less than three hours anyway. The only thing I want to do is sleep, but sleeping means the nightmares come back. No thanks.
My iPad sounds out with a Skype call and I jump. Colin. My stomach plummets even further. I know he's still trying to make up for what he did... what he says he only did the once with my ex sodding flat mate, of all the clichés. I ram my palms to my eyes. I'm a total idiot for what I did the night before I got on the plane. I shouldn't have done it but the thought of being here was winding me up. I needed him. Stupid.
I pull the pillow over my head. There's no way I'm picking up. I don't need to listen to any more of his niceties. The email still makes me sick to think about and he knows it:
'Thanks for last night, Colin. Really hoping we can do it again sometime when you can get away. I know what it's like to just need someone to hold you and not judge you and to just be there. I'm always here for you. Claire x'
I don't even know how many times I sat there on the sofa, reading it, trying to make it read like something innocent between two friends. They hardly knew each other. They'd only met a few times when he'd come over to the house, but as I sat there, all the pieces fell together like some hideous jigsaw puzzle; the nights I'd go to bed early, exhausted, leaving them watching science fiction movies together in the living room; the conversations they'd have about things like whether John Pertwee made a better Doctor Who than Colin Baker, while I sat there with absolutely nothing to contribute.
'You were an iceberg!' he accused me when I confronted him. 'Really, Izzy, you're so cold sometimes. It's like you're here, but you're not really here. And you're a control freak, you know you are! I feel like I'm walking on eggshells around you lately. Claire was just... there. I'm sorry!'
I force his words from my head, shove the pillow away, slam the iPad into the drawer. I came here to get away, to do something for myself, not to sit here obsessing over him on top of everything else.
I turn on the TV. Pretty Woman is playing on the pay-per-view channel. I'll watch two-thirds of it, then I'll venture out and get one of those stupidly strong coffees with condensed milk from the street vendor.
That's one good thing about Thailand that I never got to experience when I was sixteen - the coffee. Finally, a positive. That's my gratitude for today, in fact. I'm pretty sure there will be nothing else good about it whatsoever, so right now I'll just be grateful for the coffee.
BEN
'Big night last night?' I ask Sonthi. He's shoveling the fries into his mouth like they're live worms struggling to get away.
'Why you ask?' he says while he chews.
'Because you're wearing sunglasses indoors, man!' I reach across the table and swipe the Ray Bans off his face, but he grabs them back and pushes them onto his nose, throws a fry at me. I dart to the left and miss it, just as a guy in a Burger King shirt throws me a dirty look and goes to sweep it up with his shovel and brush.
It's seven a.m but the place is busy with the usual tourists who probably haven't been to bed yet. I'm pretty sure Sonthi is one of them. He said something about going to Patpong with some friends once we left the bar last night, but I made my excuses. He told me he was going to see a buddy who works on a stall at the night market, but I know what lines the streets over there and it isn't just fake bottled Smirnoff and fake Converse sneakers. I've seen ping pong balls being shot from places I never would've thought ping pong balls could fit over the years. It gets old fast. Besides, I know Kalaya has eyes everywhere in this city.
'What time we meeting this guy?' Sonthi asks me now, yawning and sitting back in his chair with his Pepsi. He has stains on the front of his black T-shirt. I have no clue what caused them and I don't want to know.
'We said seven-thirty,' I tell him, casting my eye to Khao San Road outside. Some of the vendors are already setting up across the street; the usual crap. Dresses, T-shirts, billowing fishermen pants in every color you can imagine, sunglasses, bongs and bootleg DVDs. It's tourist central right here but Prak, our scuba equipment source sounds like a multitasking pro. 'Prak's running a stall for a friend today, he'll call when he gets here with the stuff,' I explain again.
Sonthi nods, yawns for even longer and rubs his eyes under his shades. He was too drunk last night to remember anything. I'm just thankful he showed up. He reeks of booze but he's going to have to help me carry thirty scuba masks and some waterproof packs back to the hotel, whether he's a zombie or not.
He fishes his phone out of his pocket, taps at the screen. My eyes flit back to the street. A girl's walking past the window in a bright blue sundress and my eyes move on her lean legs, her white feet in her flip flops; even whiter against red nail polish. So white.
I smile to myself. Some of these tourists are so pale they're practically translucent when they arrive. I see them every day in Khao Lak, sprawled on the beaches, soaking up the sun and then inevitably cancelling their dives because they're redder than the expensive lobsters they order from the dinner shacks at night. They do everything to excess and then they leave.
Something about this girl is eerily familiar though. I watch her cross the street; the way she runs a little to avoid the speeding yellow and green taxi coming at her. She heads for the coffee guy and I watch as she orders her drink, runs her hand through her long brown hair in the sunshine. Something about the way she's moving makes me lean even closer to the window in my seat.
She turns her head to the side, smiles, says something to the vendor and I see it - the slightly upturned nose that was spattered up close with light brown freckles. It wrinkled when she frowned at me, or laughed at me and mocked my American accent. My heart lurches. I force my eyes away. Idiot. It can't be her.
I'm so hot now the sun's shifted. It's streaming through the glass. I pull out my cell. It's only seven-fifteen. 'You getting breakfast, man?' Sonthi asks me. I shake my head. I'm not hungry anymore. He pushes his phone towards me on the greasy table. 'See this girl from last night. Belgian,' he says, grinning like the cat that got the cream. Something tells me he got more than that but I'm scared to ask. I feel like Kalaya's psychic sometimes, reporting everything she so much as suspects back to Sasi and I'm done covering up for his shit.
He flicks through several photos in front of me but my mind is playing on her now, Izzy, all over again. I cast my eyes outside. The girl is still there, sipping from a giant plastic cup of iced coffee, considering a rail of clothing just being set up. The way she's standing... it could almost be her. Older of course. The way she could have been.
Sunglasses are perched on her nose. I catch sight of them before she turns away. The seller's hooking her in the way they do, picking out dresses, holding them up at her and she's fending him off with the damn sunlight still playing in her hair. My heart's contracting and expanding in my chest; my palms are getting wetter by the second.
Is it her?
No. Izzy's dead. And anyway, what the hell would she be doing here? It was that fucking kid on the beach the other week, throwing her back into my brain like some kind of boomerang. It hits me from time to time, from out of nowhere, course it does, but I don't let it get to me if I can help it, what's the point?
I ball a ketchup sachet in my fist as Sonthi flicks through yet more photos. I can't take in a word of what he's telling me about last night. It's pointless, yes, but it's getting to me.
I remember the way her hair was shining when I spotted her talking to Toby on the beach. He was collecting shells again, I think, to add to the zillion he had already and she gave him one she'd picked up earlier from the ocean floor. I'd never noticed any girl's hair before Izzy's. Back in D.C all the girls looked the same, but in Thailand, everything about this English girl with her crazy cool accent and snappy
comebacks was sexy as hell. British Izzy. Bizzy I called her later. I was sixteen and dumb but after eight days I wrote it in the sand in a heart for the ocean to wash away. The ocean washed everything away after that.
'Let's go,' I say, standing up and picking up the giant sack I had to bring all the way here in a tuk-tuk after the taxi drivers tried to rip me off. Even with my basic Thai they still try it on in Bangkok.
'Did he call you?' Sonthi asks in confusion, getting wearily to his feet.
'Not yet but I need air, let's take a walk.' I walk to the door, push it open. A blast of heat smacks me in the face and curls around me like a fog. It's vicious this time of year, before the rains come. I motion at him to follow me across the street. I can see the girl still, just ahead of me now by roughly ten meters. She's moving to the next stall, slipping through a side alley towards the row of stores behind the market. I start to follow on autopilot. The voice in my head is screaming at me, you're crazy!
'Where are you going?' Sonthi asks, reaching for my elbow just as I'm about to slide down the same alley; just as I'm about to call out. My phone rings in my pocket. I pull it out.
'It's Prak,' I say, pulling myself together, holding it to my ear. 'Hey man, where are you? We're ready when you are.' His English is bad in my ear. I hand the phone to Sonthi and he leads me back the way we came, jabbering in Thai, pushing past a cart of chopped up watermelon and pineapple, past a group of drunken guys spilling out of a bar that's only just closing. I force myself to follow him, clenching my fist hard around the sack, gritting my teeth.
I'm crazy, I know I am. I don't look back.
ISLA
The Thai Chill Cook Book isn't exactly the greatest name there's ever been for a book of Thai recipes but my hostess, the very smiley Chinda, is probably the happiest person I've ever seen. Her enthusiasm is rubbing off on me, even though I still just want to sleep.
I spent too long at the market this morning. I've never seen so many great dresses, all for roughly five quid. I was coerced into buying two, so I had to make it three by getting one for Maria, plus a golden nodding Buddha for Amy and some neon pink fake Bobby Brown nail polish. When I finally remembered to check the time I was running late for breakfast.
Chinda was even later. She didn't seem to notice. 'I cook for you tonight. You bring husband,' she says now, beaming at me over the polished glass table. Her short, black bob is bouncing about her pointy chin. She releases my hand. She's been squeezing it like a vice since we met here in the hotel's restaurant, like she's afraid I might disappear off the face of the earth and never write her story for the magazine.
She flips through the pages of her book and I have to admit, even though I'm looking at it upside down, the photos make her food look amazing. 'You choose what you like, I make,' Chinda says. 'Maybe this?' She points to a heaped duck salad with spring onions and some kind of dressing.
'It looks delicious,' I tell her truthfully, lining up my knife, fork and spoon in a better position. A jolt to my stomach when I think of Colin again forces me to clench my cheeks with my teeth. 'But it's just me for dinner later. I came here on my own.'
Her waxed brows struggle to knit together. 'Where your husband?'
'I'm twenty-six,' I say.
'So where your husband?'
I turn the page in front of her and tap at my notebook to distract her. 'Tell me about the Gai Med Ma Moung,' I say, 'chicken with cashews, right? How is yours different to other people's?'
Chinda laughs, high-pitched and delighted. She claps her hands together before launching into an explanation complete with theatrical gestures. I scribble down what I can understand as her expensive earrings swing with her glossy hair, but my mind is back on Colin now, and that email.
I could barely bring myself to tell Amy what really happened. She thinks we made a clean break after a big fight and she thinks it was my decision. Truth be told it was easy to accept the holiday time in the end. I didn't want to come here, obviously, but being anywhere away from home means I can comfortably avoid any questions while I figure things out. I'm leaving for Bali in three days.
I force myself to stay focused as Chinda flicks through page after page. The thought crosses my mind that Farzana, my editor, and Amy only made me take this press trip to get me over here, not that I can blame them, really: You have to go back, Izzy, you have to see what it's like now. It'll change the way you visualize it. Thailand is amazing!
I suck in a breath. My friends can sympathize and I love them for it, but their idea of Thailand in general is different to mine. They can't ever imagine the smell of rotting corpses in thirty-five degree heat. They can't know what it was like imagining someone you know under every plastic sheet in a makeshift morgue. Bodies piled onto bodies, the mangled concrete, the twisted tuk-tuks, the fishing boats on top of broken roofs and broken people. The flapping notes and photos with MISSING on all of them. The tidal wave of despair that kept on crashing. I haven't told them the half of it. I haven't really told anyone the greater details.
'You're a writer. Why can't you write about that? Turn it into a book,' Colin would say whenever I clammed up, or mentioned I was struggling for a new idea. 'Your therapist told you to, didn't she?'
'You tired miss Iss-laa?' Chinda says now, mispronouncing my name and covering my hand with hers. I realize I've only written two lines in my notebook, when she's pretty much gone through the story behind every dish. I feel so bad. I shake my head, scribble something down about capsicums but I know I'm not fooling her. I put the pen down.
'It's the jet lag,' I say.
'It is more than that. I see in your eye,' she replies, squeezing my hand even harder. 'You divorce from husband? This why you alone?'
'Something like that,' I tell her. I can't help smiling in spite of myself. She closes the cookbook, pats it lovingly with a flat palm.
'Better you taste. I cook you five thing, I surprise you. Be here seven tonight, yes?'
'OK, that would be lovely,' I say, 'thank you so much.'
For no reason at all, Chinda stands up, loops an arm around my shoulder and pulls me against her in a half hug. Her perfume overwhelms my senses but the gesture brings tears to my eyes. I lean my head against her for a second and see the pretty young Thai lady all over again - the one who found me. I was stark naked and losing blood, shivering in shock up against a fallen supermarket sign.
She was probably no more than twenty-six herself, that lady, and she had a newborn baby wrapped in a green sarong. She wrapped me in a blue one. Then she and an older man put me in a truck, then helped carry me to the hillside. Everyone was crying and shouting in every language under the sun. I was lapsing in and out of consciousness the whole day and night, but I remember snippets of it.
I remember her concerned, bloody face; the tears glistening in her sad brown eyes, her fingers moving gently through my tangled hair as I lay on the ground on a wet towel. She never stopped rocking the baby at the same time, and it never cried; not like I did. I was so messed up I couldn't speak at that point. I barely recognized my own hands. I remember the sound of a guitar that night, too. I don't know where it would have come from, but someone had salvaged one and was playing melancholy songs under the moon.
The next day, when the fears of more waves had subsided, she and some other locals brought me down from the hillside and took me to the hospital. It looked like a thatched cottage and smelled of disinfectant. They were trying to mask the putrid stench of death. I found out later I was roughly eighteen miles south of where our hotel had been on the beachfront - the last place I saw my mom and dad. I never saw that Thai lady again. I never even found out her name, but I can still see her face like it was yesterday.
'Seven p.m,' Chinda says again, releasing me and wiping a tear from my cheek with her manicured finger. I swipe at my other cheek in embarrassment. I didn't even realize I was crying.
'Gosh, I'm so sorry,' I say, feeling my cheeks start to blaze, but she brushes my apology away.
'You
beautiful girl, you go get sleep. And never mind bad husband. You get new one like Chinda did.' She winks and I can't help laughing a bit as she shuffles off in her tight skirt and heels.
I smile at the waiter as he clears the table, take three more sips of my pineapple juice for good measure. I'm the only one in the restaurant now. I know I should go out again but I'm so tired, plus I need to type some stuff up.
I sigh. I never usually take the lift in any building - my claustrophobia kicked in the last time I was here, along with my fear of the water - but my limbs feel like they're giving up on me and the stairwell was a sauna coming up here anyway. I head to the lift... or the elevator, as the sign says, and push the button.
BEN
'Hold the elevator!' I dart across the lobby towards the closing doors with Sonthi close behind me. The doors shut just I get there with no one inside. I ram my elbow against the button but it's already heading upwards. 'Shit!' I lower the cardboard box I'm holding to the floor, stretch out my arms above my head. This stuff is way heavier than I thought.
Sonthi lets out a groan. He drops the sack of masks he's been carrying onto the shiny marble and doubles over against the wall, panting. I can see the sweat trickling down his cheeks and jaw and I know I must look the same. Carrying armloads of heavy scuba equipment in ninety-eight percent humidity isn't exactly the best way to spend a day, even without a hangover. At least we got it for a good price, though; better than anyone offered it for in Phuket, for sure. I press the button again. The blue neon sign says it's heading down again now, but it stops at the sixth floor.
