The Red Lotus

by Chris Bohjalian

  “Have you all eaten anything?” Talia asked.

  Alexis shook her head.

  “You must be famished.”

  “I’m really not,” she said.

  “You should eat something,” Alan told her. “You all should. I know the chef is still here. He can whip something up.”

  “Sure,” she agreed. “Fine.” She thought of the energy gels in the emergency kit. When she had the strength, maybe she would go upstairs and grab another one from Austin’s suitcase to hold her over. And then she would retrieve the ones that might have his DNA and fingerprints from the van.

  No, she wouldn’t have a Psych gel right now. She was a doctor. She was a grown-up. She would wait for some real food.

  4

  The person who called back was the FBI legal attaché stationed at the United States embassy in Phnom Penh. Her name was Toril Bjornstad. She spelled it all, first and last name, before Alexis even asked. Her accent, if Alexis detected one, was vaguely midwestern. She imagined the woman was originally from Minnesota or the Dakotas, but she had a feeling that she had made this assumption because as a child she had once had a doll whose backstory was that she was a Scandinavian immigrant and had lived on the American prairie in the 1850s. For all Alexis knew, Toril was from Oslo or Los Angeles or Miami, Florida. What mattered to Alexis, however, was this: she sounded efficient and she sounded implacable. Still, a part of her was confused, because the woman had begun by saying her office was in Phnom Penh.

  “So, you’re in Cambodia?” she asked her.

  “Usually,” Toril said. “We don’t have an FBI presence in Vietnam. So I cover Vietnam out of Phnom Penh. But I’m actually in Ho Chi Minh City right now. I had a meeting here today and another tomorrow.”

  “I’d say I’m in luck, but I don’t feel that way.”

  “No. I understand.”

  “Would you mind calling all the hospitals in Hue and Hoi An and Da Nang?” Alexis asked. “We went to one in Da Nang, but he wasn’t there. At least not yet. But could you please see what patients they’ve all seen or who they have waiting in the emergency rooms?”

  “We already have. We called them before calling you,” she said, adding that no American bicyclist had turned up in a hospital in any of the cities. She said she had also reached out to the police in Da Nang, but there wasn’t much they could do at nine thirty at night. It wasn’t as if there was a crime scene to investigate. They said they would send out a couple of cars to run the roads, and Alexis was grateful, but not confident. They’d done that themselves. Alexis told her that both Austin’s father and uncle had served here during the war, and the attaché took down their names. Then she asked for Austin’s cell phone and passport numbers and said she would be at the little hotel in Hoi An by eight in the morning. Assuming that Austin hadn’t turned up, she would join Alexis while she was interviewed by local police officers. She added that she expected she’d have questions herself.

  The bike tour was supposed to check out of the hotel by eight thirty the next morning with the riders on their bikes heading south by eight forty-five. The plan was to bike toward Quang Ngai, visiting the memorial to the My Lai Massacre and the twelve-hundred-year-old citadel at Chau Sa. Then, the next day, Saturday, they’d have a short ride in the morning and a farewell brunch, and the bike tour would conclude. The accountants were going to prolong their stay in Vietnam with a few days in Ho Chi Minh City—the tour had begun with a day in Hanoi before flying to Hue to begin the cycling portion of the trip, and among the group, only Austin had ever seen Ho Chi Minh City—and the Coopers were continuing on to Hong Kong. Sheri, Talia, Austin, and Alexis were scheduled to begin the long journey back to America after that brunch.

  But the six other riders agreed they weren’t leaving Alexis. At least not until they had to. They’d remain in Hoi An the next day, hoping (along with her) that Austin would turn up. Alexis had come to realize that this library, now the wine bar, had become the little group’s sanctum sanctorum and war room: it was where they had first gathered when the crisis had begun, and it was where they would congregate now to make their decisions.

  “I’ll call his parents,” Alexis said now to no one in particular. “Austin’s. It’s late morning in the Berkshires.”

  “That’s where they live?” Sheri asked.

  “Yes. They’re semiretired. They live in Lenox. Western Massachusetts.”

  “I’d try not to alarm them,” Scott suggested.

  She understood why he would say such a thing, but still she felt a ripple of anger and snapped, “I’m pretty damn alarmed, Scott. They should be, too.” She knew her response had verged on the unreasonable, but she didn’t care.

  “How well do you know them?” Talia asked.

  “I don’t. We’ve never met. All I know about them is what Austin’s told me. And they’re not very close. That’s clear. I think Austin was hoping this trip would rebuild the family bonds. Reestablish some of the ties that have frayed.”

  “Austin said something to me about that,” said Colleen, the youngest of the tour guides. “His dad served here?”

  “Yes. His uncle, too. And his uncle died here in 1971.”

  “Are they estranged?” Scott asked. “Austin and his parents?”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” she told him. “I mean, I met Austin in the spring. I know he’s gone to the Berkshires to see them at least once since then. He spent the Labor Day weekend biking in Massachusetts because I was working.”

  “Biking,” Talia repeated, nodding. “Of course.”

  “And you’ve never met them?” Scott pressed.

  “Nope. But, then, I haven’t introduced him to my mother, either, and she lives in New Jersey and works in Manhattan.”

  “Why?” Talia asked, frowning ever so slightly.

  “Time. Distance. Work.”

  “Sounds like a physics equation.”

  “Oh, if you knew my mother? Introducing my boyfriend to her? Infinitely more complex than physics, in my opinion,” Alexis said, her tone more sheepish than declaratory. “Our relationship is…fraught.”

  “How so? You said she works in the city.”

  “She’s based there. But she’s an investment banker, and so she travels a lot,” Alexis replied evasively, an excuse to migrate her response from rapport to logistics. Discussing the afflictive and wearisome realities of her relationship with her mother was just too long a conversation to have right here and right now. Then she rose and left the library to call Austin’s parents from the privacy and the dark of the terrace that looked out upon the infinity pool. It had underwater lights and looked strangely sacred at this hour, especially the way the branches and great leaves from the tropical plants around it undulated in the evening breeze. She got the number from information. The answering machine picked up after the fourth ring. She imagined Austin’s father outside raking leaves and his mother putting one of their gardens to bed. She saw phantasmagorically beautiful piles of red and yellow and orange leaves, a pumpkin on the porch steps of a white clapboard colonial. For all she knew, however, his parents were at a grocery store or even still in bed, ignoring the phone because they were sleeping late or having sex. She realized that she had no idea how a couple their age spent their days when they were alone. According to Austin, his father had married late and had his one child late: he was the Coopers’ age, and apparently not in nearly as good shape. He walked with a slight limp, Austin said once when he had had a lot to drink, and had endured a variety of large and small illnesses over the years, many of which he attributed to his time in country. To his time right here. His mother, who was eight years younger than her husband, was a dynamo and took spectacular care of his father as the aches and pains of old age grew more frequent and more pronounced. She had only recently retired from the middle school in Pittsfield where she’d been the principal for a decade and a half.


  Alexis hung up when the answering machine kicked in. She was about to say their son was missing, but couldn’t bring herself to panic them. Not just yet. God, did they even know she existed in their son’s life? They had to. But she realized that she couldn’t be sure. So, she stared at her phone and wondered whether she should take a breath and call back. Leave a lengthy message introducing herself and telling them exactly what she knew and what she didn’t, speaking with the authority she used when she was speaking to family members or friends who were waiting outside the ER cubicles where she had just finished sewing or intubating or resuscitating someone, or after a patient had been admitted and was either in a bed upstairs or on a gurney in a corridor awaiting a room.

  Or, yes, after a patient died. That happened, too. It was an emergency room in a hospital, after all. People arrived dead and they couldn’t be saved, or they arrived so close to death that there was no pulling them back from the brink.

  In the end, she did call back. She said simply who she was—a friend of Austin’s, she decided upon at the last moment, fearing that if she said “girlfriend” and he hadn’t told them about her, their feelings would be hurt—and to please give her a call when they had a moment. When she was done, she realized they would see that it was late at night here in Vietnam, and they might wait until the morning. A lot would depend on what they heard in her tone.

  She considered calling her own mother. But she wasn’t prepared yet to have that conversation. Maybe if her mother were a different sort of person—the sort of mom some other girls had, a Marmie from Little Women, or an individual as gentle as her father—she might have called. But her mother made tiger moms look like laid-back hippies, especially after her husband died when Alexis was in the third grade. Her mother was loving without being compassionate, caring without being kind. In all fairness, she was also one of the reasons why Alexis had gone to med school. Her mother had driven her: compelled her, pushed her, pressed her. She saw her potential. Dina Remnick was a human prod, importunate and intense. A moment ago, Alexis had told Talia that her mother was an investment banker. She was, in fact, a senior partner—and a senior partner at a large bank on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan.

  Moreover, as she had just confessed (and it had felt like a confession), her mother hadn’t even met Austin. They’d toyed with different dates for a dinner in New York City, and twice had actually gotten one on the calendar—no small accomplishment, given how much her mother and her boyfriend traveled, and her own schedule at the ER. And both times, Austin had had to cancel, once because he had to help entertain a hospital donor and once because he was asked to fill in at a conference in Chicago. Her mother had felt slighted and scorned because, in her opinion, neither her interest in meeting this new beau nor her own time, which was pretty damn valuable, had been taken seriously by this suitor. (And both times, Alexis herself had been frustrated and furious, but Austin had managed to dial down her anger with apologies that were sincere and with flowers that were lavish and lush.)

  In any event, that phone call to her mother? It could definitely wait until the morning.

  * * *

  . . .

  But she did call Eleanor Thomas, her closest friend since she had moved to Manhattan. She felt an acute need to talk to someone she knew and who really knew her. Eleanor—who went by Ellie—was a veterinarian a few years her senior who worked at an animal hospital on the Upper East Side and still described herself as a southern girl. She’d grown up in South Carolina. They each had a small apartment in the same rent-controlled building in the East Village, a soulless fifteen-story concrete rectangle built in the 1960s, the apartments lacking balconies or views or windows in the kitchens. Most of the world thought it was an NYU dorm when they passed it. The two of them had met in the elevator, a pair of women from different floors who, it was clear, were single and didn’t wear heels at work. Since then, Ellie had met Austin a couple of times, and it was clear to Alexis (and reassuring) that Ellie liked him, too.

  She phoned the animal hospital, hoping to catch her between cats and dogs, and she got lucky: the vet was finishing up with an animal and would be available in a minute or two. And so, despite the cost of waiting, Alexis did wait. She listened to the recorded admonitions to vaccinate one’s pets and the ads for dog walkers and groomers, and paced amidst the small gardens surrounding the pool, eventually sitting down on a chaise near the very one where earlier that day she had hoped to hear her phone ping with a text from her boyfriend. Finally, Ellie came on the line, and Alexis could hear the trepidation in her friend’s voice. She knew that no one called this late at night from Vietnam unless something had gone horribly wrong.

  “You’re right, I am calling with bad news,” Alexis said, and then she told her the little she knew.

  “This sounds pretty disturbing on the surface. But maybe just on the surface. Want some platitudes?” Ellie asked her when she was done.

  “Yeah, I do,” Alexis said. “I really do. Lie to me.”

  And so Ellie did, telling the woman whose father had died when she was a girl and who hadn’t a sibling to talk to that Austin was fine and would appear momentarily with a perfectly logical explanation. She told Alexis stories that were obvious and stories that suggested a fertile imagination, tales that included incredible, unfathomable coincidences—meeting long-lost friends from college on the road and getting hammered on Bia Saigon—and hypotheses that Alexis had certainly considered but found comforting to hear voiced by her friend: Austin had been hit by a car and taken to a hospital, where he was still unconscious but was going to be fine. The FBI attaché didn’t have this information because Austin hadn’t been brought in on a bike and whoever she had spoken with at the hospital hadn’t made the connection. Austin had been robbed of his wallet and his bike and his phone, and was now walking and hitchhiking his way back. All of the stories, whether they involved an accident or alcohol, shared one thing: a happy ending. In all of them, either Austin was going to return to the elegant little hotel in Hoi An any moment now or she was going to get a phone call from a hospital telling her that they had an American named Austin Harper and he was asking about her and he was going to be discharged in the morning.

  “Thank you,” Alexis said when Ellie eventually ran out of stories. Even Scheherazade had had a finite supply.

  “This may still turn out okay, Lexi,” Ellie told her, but it was apparent that the optimism in her tone was forced. Ellie was the only person in the world who called her Lexi. She’d started calling her that one night in a bar soon after they met, teasing her about something, and the moniker had stuck.

  “I know,” Alexis agreed, even though in her heart she didn’t believe that. But, still, she had been buoyed, if only slightly, by Ellie’s encouragement. After they hung up, she stood and felt the cool, sepulchral night winds against her face.

  * * *

  . . .

  Alexis watched Scott and Giang devour the scallops and the duck the chef had prepared for them, but now she was more tired and wrung out than hungry, and so she only ate a little of the tofu and lemongrass, and she ate that mostly because she knew that she should. A bellman brought her the clothing that she and Austin had bought yesterday—his suit, her cheongsam—and then she went up to bed. She took another tranquilizer and pulled on a crimson sleep shirt. Outside her window, a smile of a moon sat in the sky, yellow and crooked and sharp.

  She wondered if she would have called home if her father hadn’t died almost a quarter of a century ago. In her memory, her father was the one who would have said the right things now, but she knew in her heart that she gave him attributes that may have been more imagined than real. Were it not for the photos she had of him, including the one of him someone had taken at her dance recital when she was in the second grade, she wouldn’t even recall what he looked like. His voice had long grown vaporous and faint, because it existed now only on those VHS cassette tapes that s
he could no longer play and neither she nor her mother had taken the time to have converted into digital files. These days, those tapes were drowning in mouse shit and dust somewhere in her mother’s attic.

  He’d died in a car accident. Skidded on black ice into the concrete stanchion of a bridge on a cold night in March and passed away in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, despite the ministrations of the EMTs. She knew now the sorts of things they had probably done to keep his heart beating until they reached the ER, but from the little she had learned of the accident, it was clear that his injuries had never been survivable. Not even an open coffin at the funeral. People, including Austin, liked to suggest that his death was the real reason she had become an ER doctor, but she thought that sort of psychoanalysis was both simplistic and wrong. There were too many other reasons. Still, there were moments when paramedics would be telling her about the patient they were wheeling into the cubicle, barking out background and vitals, when briefly she would imagine the EMTs trying to keep her father from bleeding out and then simply trying to keep him breathing. And, of course, she thought of him almost always when they brought a car crash into the ER. (She hated to reduce people to their accidents or ailments—There’s a stroke in cubicle eight, or There’s that OD in three—but she knew that she did, if only because shorthand saved time and saving time could save lives, and car crash was a pretty efficient two-syllable descriptor.)

  Her father, before he had died, had been a literary agent. He had read to her four picture books every night before bed when she was little, and then—even when she was old enough to read to herself—for easily forty minutes a night from chapter books. He was coming home from the train station after a dinner with an author, one of those rare evenings when she was home alone with her mother, when his car had hit the black ice and spun into the buttress of a bridge.