“What? Oh my God. How embarrassing. I’ll ask Deni not to come by any…”
Then I noticed she was laughing. Cracking herself up.
“I’m messing with you; they don’t care. They didn’t say a thing. They like the water, and they like to learn to swim. They told me to tell you that. Well, Bubbles did anyway. They just don’t want to disappoint you by messing up.”
This was a lot all at once.
The Deni joke.
The chastising.
The accusations (false) about my dedication to the girls.
But what she said last hit the hardest. “Disappoint me by messing up? Tell them I would never be disappointed in them. They are my heroes.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“Really! Can you imagine how you or I would be in their shoes? I know I’d be a disaster…I wouldn’t be trying to swim. Nothing happened to me personally, and when my mom died, I was depressed for years. And then again when Deni…”
She waited.
I stopped.
“Deni? Go on?”
“When he…when he left. When I left.” I looked off in the distance. “I’m just saying, the girls are amazingly brave. All three of them. Tell them I’m totally proud of them for even trying, and that they are all doing great.”
She grinned at me and it felt real.
Like we were bonding again.
Maybe she gave me crap to test my dedication? If so, it was working.
Challenge accepted.
I was dedicated and not only that, even more willing to help. I made a pact with myself then and there to not leave until all three of these girls not only knew how to swim confidently but that I would give all my focus to helping them.
Together, we led the girls on a board each, taking turns with the third, and holding on to it, guiding them around the pool so they would get comfortable kicking with the added enforcement of not tipping over. We glided back and forth across the shallow end of the pool, like little tugboats. The girls giggled a lot, which was such a nice change from the quiet of when I first started. I was shocked they could laugh at all after that they’d been through, but they chuckled together and whispered like I used to as a little girl at home with Bev. I asked Amelie about it.
“Cambodians are really good-natured in general,” Amelie explained. “I’m such a cynical grump because Hunt’s my dad,” she said as an explanation before I got a chance to make a joke about it. “Australian’s are known for their bravado.”
“Put some shrimp on the barbie and all that?” I said.
“Ew. Not that old cliché. Anyway, these girls have been through a horrific experience, but Buddha says not to hold grudges and to move on.”
“They’re trying to move on?”
“Yes. They believe the doctors and they believe the monks. They believe now that they are getting better and with each day forget the bad things.”
“That reminds me of the Indonesians I met a the pesantren. They were all so sweet and just…surprisingly non-cynical about their lives. It was inspirational.”
“Oh, I’m sure it was…” Amelie said, her eyes flickering to Deni off in the distance, where he was putting his equipment away.
“Come on, I don’t mean just Deni…” I said, but my voice hit an anxious high note like it did when I tried to disguise a truth.
“Uh-huh, sure.”
I laughed awkwardly. “Seriously though, it’s pretty amazing.”
“Well, a hard truth is a lot of these survivors come from nothing, so they are used to bad things happening to them. I mean, these girls were probably poor. Used to going to bed hungry. Used to poor sleeping conditions. They have some grit to begin with and are used to a sort of bad life. So when they are taken, it’s horrible and traumatizing yes, but when they get out of it, they are able to heal faster than someone like you or me maybe…”
“Yeah. I can’t even imagine. It makes me sick to think about it.”
“I know.”
Her eyes looked far away, but then she blinked hard and turned to me, her green eyes curious.
“What’s with you two, anyway? You and Deni? Are you together now?”
Apparently, Amelie and Deni had the blunt, determined thing in common.
I answered honestly. “No.”
“Really? Because I see the way he looks at you and the way you look at him. I saw you guys last night.”
“It’s…” I watched him gather the last of his stuff and head inside to look at his footage. “Complicated.”
“How so?”
“Well, for one thing, he doesn’t live anywhere near me. I’m in college, so is he. He couldn’t move to California even if he wanted to because of visas, etc.”
“You could move to Indonesia?”
“Eh. I don’t know. I have my little brother and school…”
I looked in the direction where Deni had walked off, but he was gone. As much as I’d like to be with him, I knew, from the last time my heart was shattered into a million pieces, that the end was near. “It’s just…too…”
“Complicated?”
“Yes.”
“You know what else is complicated?” she asked. Her black hair slicked back made her eyes shine even brighter under the gray sky.
“What?”
“Everything worth its junk.”
“Huh?”
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
“Who says that?”
“Me,” she said with a confident eye flash.
“And?”
“Confucius.” Laughing, she splashed me in the face.
“Hey!” I said and splashed her back.
Chapter Sixteen
After I dried off, dressed, and was walking back to the clinic, I felt eyes on me. At first, I was freaked out, but then I realized what it was. I spun around and found Deni filming me.
“Get out of here, you troublemaker,” I told him with a playful swing at his camera. He pointed it away from me and nudged my shoulder.
“I was filming the skyscape,” he said. “You are getting so, what is the word? Cocky?”
“Cocky is you, mister.”
“Lies.”
“You are lies!” I said with a laugh.
“Nyai Loro Kidul,” Deni said, chuckling back. “You are scary when you are mad. I better watch out.”
He took my duffel bag out of my arms and swung it over his shoulder. His camera bag slung easily over his white-T-shirt chest.
“What does that mean?”
“What?”
“That thing you just said. Don’t make me try and pronounce it,” I said.
“Nyai Loro Kidul,” he said, wiggling his fingers in the air. “You mean that?”
“Yes, Deni,” I said with mock frustration.
Like in Jakarta, cars, motorbikes, pedestrians, and bikes looped around and around in a seemingly nonsensical matter that made perfect sense to the people of this land. The same way how Deni and I looped around and around each other in a nonsensical manner made sense to us.
We were like traffic, Deni and me.
“She’s a mermaid,” he said. “Nyai Loro Kidul. She claims to take the soul of anyone she wishes. She claims the lives of fisherman or tourists sunning their bodies, but like you she prefers handsome young men.”
“Oh?” I hopped over a piece of trash on the sidewalk. “Is that what I prefer?”
“I think so,” he said coyly. “She’s a Javanese spirit-queen and our princesses respect her beauty as well, paying homage. Guess what else she does?”
“Besides stealing the souls of handsome young men?”
“Guess.”
“She uses the handsome young men’s souls to make cake?”
Deni winced and then laughed. “No. But that is a good guess. She changes her shape several times a day.”
“Like a shape-shifter?”
“I suppose so yes. She can be a beautiful young woman during a full moon and at other time
s appear as an old woman.”
“Shape-shifting is cool. I could shape-shift.”
Deni pulled me out of the way of a foot cart careening toward us with two yelling men pushing it.
“Close one,” I said with a grateful grin.
On a roll, he continued with his story thread. “There are witches, too. Do you like to hear about witches?”
“How could I resist hearing about witches?” I asked, thoroughly enjoying myself after a not-so-great stint in the pool.
“The beautiful princess of the Pajajaran Kingdom in West Java fled to the Southern Sea after being struck by black magic. You know the dark magic?”
“Yes. I mean, not personally but it means bad magic.”
“Yes. Bad. The black magic was cast by a witch under the order of a jealous rival in the palace and caused the beautiful princess to suffer a disgusting skin disease. You know skin disease?”
“Not personally,” I teased, and he wagged his finger at me with a warning grin.
“She jumped into the violent waves of the ocean where she was finally cured and regained her beauty, and the spirits and demons crowned the girl as the legendary Spirit-Queen of the South Sea.”
“I would totally jump in the violent waves to cure a skin disease. I once did that for a pimple, in fact.”
He eyed me. I could see his brain churning, first interpreting the language then interpreting my tone to see how full of crap I was. “You don’t have skin disease. You have nice skin.”
“Why thank you. And I’m teasing you, of course.”
“Of course,” he said. “But you do have the jealous rival in the palace.”
“I do?”
“Of course. The Spider bug.”
I snorted. “Deni! Stop calling him that.”
“He is a Spider bug, is that his name or no?” Laughing, he dodged my smack in the shoulder as we passed a bar so loud—Midday! Who parties like this?—the noise spilled out onto the busy sidewalk.
“And also, maybe the girl. Amelie.”
“Oh?” You have my attention now, my friend.
“Maybe,” he said with a casual shrug, leaving me to fill in the blanks. “There’s another thing. This is one scarier thing.”
“Scarier than witches and shape-shifters and jealous revenge?” I asked.
“Much.”
“Okay.”
“You can handle this?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “Confirmation I can handle this.”
Deni’s smile faded, and I wondered if he was seriously asking if I could handle it. “What?”
“Nyai Loro Kidul is in control of the violent waves in the Indian Ocean from where she lives in the heart of the sea. Many think she caused the great earthquake to punish people on the shore with her big wave.”
My mouth dropped open. “Yet you’re calling me this killer mermaid’s name? Deni! This is not a compliment.”
“I asked if you could handle it,” he said nonchalantly. “You said yes.”
“I didn’t know you were going to call me a killer mermaid.”
“Do you want to hear the remainder of the story?”
“You can just say ‘the rest,’ Deni.”
“Remainder is a longer, therefore, better, word.”
I laughed. “Sure. Why not. What else did I do in this fairy-tale fantasy of yours?”
“People in Java are not allowed to wear gadhung m’lathi, do you know why?”
“I don’t even know what that means, so of course not.”
“It’s aqua green,” he said, stopping on the sidewalk and spinning me toward him dramatically. “The color of your eyes.”
When he gently tipped up my chin to look at him, I got the chills all over. “That’s freaky, Deni. You’re freaking me out now.”
He shrugged. “It is a weird, how do you say it? Coincidence?”
“Co-in-ci-dence.”
“Yes. That.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this story before?” I asked. “In Aceh?”
He didn’t say anything. Instead, he glanced past me, down the crowded streets, over the city skyline thick with smog and noise and zipping with lights and too much stimulation.
He shrugged. “I was afraid you would eat me,” he said with a laugh, before pointing up at the rising moon. “Uh-oh,” he said.
It was golden and full and rising.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered into my ear. “I am not scared anymore.”
He eyed me sidelong, let me go, and scooped up my hand. “I must get somewhere safe before I’m alone with you in the dark, Nyai Loro Kidul.”
Chapter Seventeen
That night, Amelie invited me to go out to another karaoke bar in Phnom Penh.
“Sure.”
“You like karaoke?”
“I love the karaoke.”
I didn’t necessarily like you flirting with Deni and dragging him onstage, but the evening out was fun.
“Good. See you after you get dressed?”
“Awesome.”
After swim lessons, she had changed into a short skirt, tank top, and strappy heels.
I glanced down at the baggy long-sleeved shirt and sweats I pulled over my wet swimsuit.
Eying me, she laughed, one short burst. “You have anything other than that to wear?”
“I have one sundress back at the hotel.”
She cocked a pierced eyebrow, dissatisfied with that answer. “You can shower at my place. And borrow some of my clothes.”
“Should I be worried?”
Tucking her sharp hair behind her ear, her green eyes flashed mischievously. “Definitely.”
“Let me go talk to Deni.”
I found him in the other room editing today’s footage. “It looks good,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“Can I see the whole thing later?”
He spun around to face me. “Maybe.”
“Ha! I’m watching it. So, Amelie asked me to go to karaoke tonight.”
“You can’t get enough of the karaoke.”
“It is fun,” I said.
He stopped what he was doing, stood up, and walked over to me, before reaching out and gently resting his hand on my shoulder. The contact sent shivers up and down my arm. I leaned into him slightly. “And later tonight?” he asked, “I’ll see you later back at the hotel?”
“Yes.” I sucked in a breath, trying not to apply any unintentional meaning to his words after the killer mermaid story. After pointing out the rising full moon. “You will.”
Amelie’s apartment was off the hook.
First off, she lived alone: no parents, no dorm room, no roommates. The building was ultramodern, sharp edges and shapes, like Ikea on speed, with a roof deck pool and workout room that overlooked the hazy city skyline.
She showed me around, amused at my expression. “What were you expecting, some hovel? Just because I’m Cambodian doesn’t mean I’m poor.”
“Sorry. Yeah. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.”
“You Westerners and your ideas,” she said. She flipped off her heels, tossing them on her bed, which was silver with orange squiggly lines like jellyfish legs. A plastic decoration shaped like a sprouting tree sat propped behind her bedframe, which was bookended by two huge built-in closets, each with over fifty drawers. The kitchen, also orange, was super clean and minimalist.
“This place is rad. You live alone? How do you pay for all this?”
“My parents are rich,” she said with a shrug.
“Hunt?”
“Not Hunt.” She laughed. “My mother. She descends from Cambodia royalty.”
“Wow. Awesome.”
She shrugged again like she was unimpressed about her royal lineage.
“Are you hungry?” she asked before I had a chance to pepper her with more questions.
“Starving.”
She eyed me up and down. “You aren’t starving. You’re hungry. Starving are those street kids.”
“Touché.”
She looked through her cabinets, pulling out a package of rice chips. “I have avocado, too. And sushi.”
“Yum.”
“Help yourself; I’m going to put makeup on.”
I leafed around her kitchen, opening and shutting drawers, dreaming of having my own place. Amelie was goals. I wondered if she had a boyfriend or girlfriend, or what her friends were like. There weren’t any photos up anywhere.
The phone rang.
An answering machine picked up the call, and a man’s rapid-fire Khmer filled the room.
“Did you hear that?”
I was so surprised to hear her voice, I almost spit out the sushi on her perfectly clean white round table.
“I don’t speak Khmer.”
Nodding sharply, she grabbed a piece of sushi off the square white plate and popped it in her mouth. Without chewing, she swallowed it, then grabbed a sip of the can of water I found in her fridge and looked at me with such intensity I think I might have confessed to a crime I never did.
“What?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“Do you really want to help fight the sex trade?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said before thinking.
“Are you positive?”
“Yes. Well, isn’t that what we’re doing? With the swim lessons?”
“What you said in the clinic to Chhim and Tom, about preventative measures? Stopping the traders in the act before they create more victims? You sounded resolute about that. And brave. You surprised me.”
“I am serious,” I said. “But what can I do?”
“A lot,” she said. “You have to look out for the signs. And then be willing to do a whole lot more than teach swim lessons in a heated pool.”
“I’m listening,” I said. Leaning in, she turned those green eyes on me. Her arm twisted, and I noted the tattoo on her arm wasn’t a flower at all.
It was a shark.
Chapter Eighteen
I’d never been anywhere like Amelie’s karaoke bar. The restaurant part was set up like a Thai restaurant back home, but the screen was huge. Khmer language scrawled over the screen, and a young Cambodian hipster man with a reverse Mohawk sang a Barry Manilow song. Trippy. I followed Amelie’s swimming shark tattoo as we slid into a high-backed pink booth.
Where the Sea Takes Me Page 11
