by kc dyer
The crowd cheers heartily, and the old woman gets slowly to her feet and hands the shreds of paper to one of the onlookers. After everyone bows politely, another member of the crowd steps forward, holding out a handful of cash to the woman.
“She’s not here,” I say to Dominic, scanning the crowd. “Let’s keep looking.”
“You do that side,” he says, pointing at the row of booths behind the lady with her shoe. “I’ll go this way, and I’ll meet you at the end of the block.”
I clutch at his sleeve. “What if you find her?”
“I’ll whistle,” he promises.
The protected area under the freeway is not so much a marketplace as it is a gathering place for street hawkers. It reminds me of the pavement outside Churchgate Station in Mumbai. No real booths, but lots of tarps on the ground, stacked with merchandise. Crowds gather around various street performers, including other villain-beaters.
But no sign of a teenager in a vivid blue hijab.
I scour my side of the street twice, scanning every face. Fifteen minutes later, at the far end of the street, I spot Dominic’s head over the crowd. When he turns, I recognize the anxiety in his eyes, but ask the question anyway.
“Anything?”
He shakes his head. “Let’s check up on the flyover.”
But when we run up the nearest set of stairs, not only is Sumaya nowhere in sight, but the flyover is essentially empty. Not a picnicker anywhere. It’s been at least an hour since we left the beauty salon, and a lump of panic has settled solidly right under my heart.
We’re thundering back down the stairs when I spot a pair of police officers standing outside the crowd watching the old woman, who is wielding her shoe for yet another customer.
I hurry over. “Excuse me. We’re looking for the place where the . . .” I pause, hunting for the word, when Dom pipes up behind me.
“The helpers. Where the helpers have their picnics.”
The policeman laughs and points outside. “It’s raining,” he says. “They all go off home.”
Dominic’s hand squeezes mine convulsively.
“We’ve lost our little—ah—niece,” I say. “She’s Somali. About fourteen, but pretty tall? She’s wearing a bright floral top and a . . .”
“Blue headscarf?” says the policeman, and then points toward a large crowd. “Behind the villain-beater?”
Both Dom and I whirl around. Sure enough, another large circle has formed right up against the final support pillar beside Hennessy Road. At that moment, the entire crowd bursts into laughter. We lock eyes and race over.
And with her back against the pillar, there she is.
“Thank you very much!” she calls, and there’s a spattering of spontaneous applause before the people begin to mill away. I see Melody working the crowd, passing a hat.
“What the heck, Sumaya?” I say as the crowd disperses around us. “Why did you run off?”
She looks puzzled as Melody walks up, jingling a little cloth cap. “I wasn’t running away,” she says. “I texted you.”
I pull out my phone, and sure enough, there’s a message. As I open it, Dom sweeps Sumaya up in a hug. “We’ve been worried sick,” he says, setting her back on her feet. “It’s been dark for an hour.”
Sumaya rolls her eyes at him. “Why didn’t you check your phone? I said I’d meet you here at seven.”
“She did,” I say, holding up my screen to show him.
“How would I know to look at my phone?” he says, the exasperation in his voice tempered by his obvious relief. “You don’t have a phone to text us with.”
Sumaya shrugs. “Melody does. I used hers.”
She turns to Melody, who is squatting on the street, already counting the coins. “Half for you,” Sumaya says to her new friend. “For helping me find Nena.”
“You found Nena?” Dom says.
At the same time I blurt: “Where?”
“We text her too,” says Melody, holding up her phone. “No picnic because of rain, but she e-mail me Nkruna’s e-mail address.”
“I already sent her a message,” says Sumaya proudly.
She turns to Dominic. “I’m going to Vancouver to meet her. I need to pay my way.”
Melody’s phone buzzes, and as she glances down, her eyes widen.
“Got to go,” she says. “The aunties are raging.”
Sumaya sighs. “Yeah. I remember that.”
Melody dumps all the change into Sumaya’s hands.
“No—no,” Sumaya says. “You need to take your half.”
Melody shakes her head. “You’re going to need a lot more than that to make it to Vancouver,” she says sensibly.
“But—it might make things better with Le,” Sumaya adds.
“Okay. I take five bucks. And don’t forget to DM me, hey?”
The two girls hug, and Melody disappears in the direction of the subway station.
Dom helps Sumaya gather up all the change into her bag.
“You did pretty well for yourself,” he says admiringly. “There’s got to be forty or fifty Hong Kong dollars here.”
Sumaya looks pleased. “I use my regular English material,” she says. “But on the way over, Melody teach me to say “silly tourist” in Cantonese, and that got the biggest laugh of the night.”
I check my phone, then look up at Dominic.
“It’s only just after seven. If you go now, you can still make the San Francisco connection.”
Sumaya steps into the space between us.
“You both have done more than enough for me,” she insists bravely. “I should make my own way from here.” She thrusts her bag at me. “This is for you. For all the money you have spent on me.”
Above her head, I see Dominic’s eyes fill with tears. But I’m so wrung out from all the excess emotion of the day, all I can do is laugh.
“Listen, you,” I say, stuffing the bag back in her hands. “I know that every kid wants to run away and join the circus, but I’m too invested in your success as a future stand-up comedian-slash-pilot to stop now. We’ll say goodbye when you’re safely under the care of your auntie, okay?”
“Okay,” she says agreeably. She swings her bag over one shoulder and links an arm through each of ours.
Dominic swipes at one eye with the heel of his hand. “When does the other ship leave, again?”
“Midnight, if we can still get tickets.”
“Good,” he says. “That means we have time to eat, first. I’m starving.”
Now the panic over losing Sumaya has faded, I’m suddenly starving too.
She looks up at Dom. “Melody told me about this thing called dim sum that sounds really good.”
“Sounds good to me too,” he says. “And since you’re the one with all the cash, dinner’s on you.”
chapter forty-eight
IMAGE: Victoria Harbour at Night
IG: Romy_K [Hong Kong, April 17]
#HongKongNeon #ObjectsMayBeSmaller . . .
6903
The problem, I have learned, with the internet, is that Things Are Not Always As They Appear Online. Case in point: the ship awaiting us at dock in Victoria Harbour.
We pass through customs and immigration without a hitch, and before us, the harbor is awash in neon as we hurry down the pier. The nightly light show that illuminates the waterfront is long over, but both sides of the harbor are lined with tall buildings flashing lights that bounce off the water, giving the entire area a futuristic glow.
As the three of us stride out the doors for what surely must be the final sea journey of the trip, the vessel is not exactly what I expected. When Dom had shown me the listing for a ship willing to take passengers across the Pacific and leaving today, I don’t think either one of us had even looked at the size.
The Arctic Bj
örn is a Greenpeace expedition ship, scheduled to depart tonight for the Port of Vancouver, after standing down from a whaling protest in Russian waters. The accommodation available is not private, but the ship is crewed by both men and women, and they agree to take us.
Sumaya pauses at the spot where the pier meets the gangway leading to the ship.
“Is this our boat?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder at me. “It is much smaller than the Wahash Mahat.”
It is.
“It’s not a transport vessel,” I say, but I can’t keep the note of uncertainty out of my voice. “It’s only carrying a small crew across to Vancouver.”
“It looked bigger online,” Dom hisses in my ear.
It did.
Since I did most of the research in the metro on our way over here, there wasn’t a lot of time to look into the details. Nevertheless, from what I could read on their site, I learned that normally, signing on as crew to a Greenpeace vessel is kind of a big deal. They ask for marine qualifications, diving licenses—the lot. However, in this case, the ship is returning to port in Vancouver, where a retrofit is scheduled to upgrade the engine. Since a number of their crew have flown off to other assignments, and as no further eco-actions are planned, they have space for us.
We stand dockside, eyeing the Arctic Björn as it bobs in the water. Unlike the Guernsey Isle, which sat solid, as if rooted to the ocean floor, when at anchor, or even the Wahash Mahat, with her shallow draft but enormous length, this Greenpeace ship looks positively wee.
She’s a little more than fifty meters long, and is apparently classed as an icebreaker. As I try not to think about Kate Winslet unable to find room for Leo on her floating door after their iceberg, a tall, smiling man strides down the gangplank toward us.
He introduces himself as Captain Jack Kapena, and holds out a hand for our passports. He raises an eyebrow when Sumaya passes over her refugee document. “Lucky we’re heading for Canada,” he mutters, before handing it back.
However, when he flips open Dom’s passport, his eyes widen in surprise.
“Makana?” he says. “Whaaa—Dominic Makana Madison? You Hawaiian, brah?”
“My mom’s from Waimea,” Dom says cautiously.
The captain slaps a hand on his broad chest. “Hilo born and bred,” he says, clapping Dom on the shoulder. “One look at you and I knew you were an island boy. We talk later, eh?”
He turns back to the ship and yells, “Margot? Hey—MARGOT!”
A woman carrying two storage bins staggers out onto the deck. She drops the bins, and then straightens with an audible sigh. “Uh—hands full?” she says irritably, pointing at the bins.
Captain Kapena grins up at her. “I need you to handle this cargo first, okay?” he says, and then turns back to us. “This is my first officer, Margot Gulama.”
Her expression unclouds a little at the sight of us. “Long as I don’t have to carry ’em anywhere, we’re good,” she says, and deserting the bins, clomps down to meet us.
“Cookie needs that stuff ASAP,” she says to Kapena in a gentle French accent. Surprisingly, he gives us a wave and then heads up to collect the bins himself.
“You order the captain?” breathes Sumaya admiringly, but Margot shrugs.
“We all have to pitch in, eh? Anyway, it’s good for him.” She gives us a brilliant widemouthed smile. “He’s got a strong back—let him use it.”
She eyes Sumaya from head to toe. “You Somali girl?”
Sumaya’s eyes light up with pleasure. “Yes! How did you know?”
Margot chuckles. “Oh, I’m one very smart lady,” she says. “You will soon see.”
Tucking one of her strong brown arms through Sumaya’s, she heads back up the ramp. Dom and I follow behind.
“What an adventure you are having!” Margot says to Sumaya as she leads us along the iron deck and then down a narrow staircase. “You must tell me all about it.”
She points Dom to a dormitory room, and then directs Sumaya and me to a pair of bunks inside a much smaller room a little further down the passageway.
“Women’s quarters,” she says. “Make yourselves comfortable. Once you are settled, there’s snacks in the galley at the end of the corridor, eh?”
Sumaya, always delighted to find a willing audience, barely drops her small roll bag of possessions on the top bunk before heading off to test out some of her new Hong Kong material on the crew.
“I can try out my English jokes on them,” she says to me eagerly. “That way, you don’t have to be stuck with me again.”
I grin, still filled with relief that we managed to find her. “I don’t mind listening to the same jokes again.”
She raises an eyebrow. “They’re not the same, Romy. I picked up a ton of new material in Hong Kong. Besides—some of it might be a bit too risqué for you. You turn red so easily.”
And I, of course, can feel my face heating up as I insist this is entirely untrue.
Laughing, she steps over the door sill. “I’ll be in the galley,” she says and disappears.
After worrying for a while over what a fourteen-year-old might think is too risqué, I decide to leave well enough alone, and turn my attention to posting my latest photo to Instagram.
It’s not until I get the picture loaded that I notice my number of followers has taken a massive leap. I’ve been picking up followers at a steady rate throughout the trip, but to shoot from the hundreds up to well over three thousand seems like a little miracle. It certainly puts me in contention with Dominic, for the first time. But my surge of elation falls away when I flip open Dominic’s account only to see his numbers have soared too. Nearly four thousand followers looks a lot less impressive up against almost twenty thousand.
I shut down the app, and open a file for my Hong Kong report. It’s only numbers. Determined to find my own way to shine, I begin to type.
chapter forty-nine
IMAGE: External Bridge, Arctic Björn
IG: Romy_K [East China Sea, April 17]
#YetAnotherSea #JapanBound #PirateVibe
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Twelve hours and one delicious sleep later, I’m once again back at my keyboard. As I feel the ship’s engines thrum beneath my feet, I look up to see Dominic’s head poke through the doorway. “Working on your report for ExLibris?” he asks.
I nod. “I didn’t get very far last night. Fell asleep listening to Sumaya practice her jokes.”
He grins. “I just heard some of it,” he says, pushing the door open and stepping over the threshold. “Her new material is fantastic. That kid is a genius for her insight into the human condition.”
“Where is she now?” I ask, sliding my computer off my lap.
He lifts a hand. “Don’t worry. She’s in the galley with Margot. When I left, they were bonding over tea and memories of Africa. I said I’d go back to collect her in an hour.”
“Africa? But Margot’s French, isn’t she?”
He shrugs, and then leans his lithe form against the door frame. “French Canadian. But, from the sound of it, her family emigrated from West Africa when she was young. Sierra Leone, maybe?”
“Ah. Well, that explains why she connected with Sumaya so easily.”
He shrugs. “I guess. We’re all from somewhere, right?” He points at my laptop. “How’s it going?” he asks.
As I stretch out my neck, he walks over to my bunk. I see he’s carrying his tablet.
“This is the women’s quarters,” I say, pointing to the sign on the door.
He smirks. “Did you read the small print? It says six p.m. to six a.m.”
I squint at the sign. “So it does.”
He kicks off his shoes and plops down beside me on my bunk. Without another word, he prods the screen to open a document. We type together in companionable silence.
“What are yo
u going to say about not heading for San Francisco?” he says after a few minutes.
I lift my fingers from the keyboard and sigh. “I’m not sure yet. I’m concentrating on giving a really glowing review to Hong Kong, at the moment.”
“Good plan,” he says.
He’s folded his lanky form so that his back is resting against the wall, and with his sock feet on the bed, his knees act as a desk for his tablet. One of his shins is resting, quite naturally, against my knee, and I’m suddenly finding it extremely hard to concentrate on my report.
Dominic is apparently not affected the same way, and resumes two-finger typing at a furious rate.
The pillow is soft behind my own back, and in spite of being worried about what I’m going to report to Teresa Cipher, I’m suddenly aware of the strangest feeling. The ship’s engine shifts and I can feel the gentle swell of the ocean beneath us. Three weeks ago, this would have set my heart hammering with anxiety, but right now? It feels comforting. Dom’s leg is warm against mine, Sumaya is safely off with Margot, and . . .
I’m not worried about a thing.
A wave of happiness surges over me at this thought, and when my brain kicks in, reminding me there’s little more than a week left in the month of April, I take a deep breath and push the thought away.
Mrs. Gupta’s words come back to me. Pick one thing, she’d said that day on the train. One thing you can see. One point of beauty, and focus on that.
The first thing I see when I look up—is Dom’s face.
What the hell, I think, and focus on him.
His eyes are locked on his screen, giving me a profile view. His hair, and the little curls forming in his beard along the jawline, are damp, leading me to think he maybe stopped on his way back from the kitchen to have a shower. I risk taking another deep breath in, and yep—there it is. The smell of soap, and clean skin, with that persistent, gentle undercurrent of cinnamon.
Still not shaven, though. I wonder idly if I can even remember what his face looks like without all that hair. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure he was clean-shaven that first morning in the bookstore. Long before he was the Evil Nephew, and when I was still Old Romy who had never been off the block. I glance at the calendar on my laptop screen and realize with a sudden shock that this distant memory took place little more than a month ago.
