Читать книгу Time to Fall - Austin C. Beal - Страница 7

II

Thailand

Bruce

A knock at the door rushed me to my feet. Unintelligible Thai chattered from the other side, from the mouth of an obviously angry master of the house.

“It’s alright, dear,” the woman reassured me.

“‘Dear’?” I thought.

I shouted something back at the man outside, in broken Thai of course, and after a moment’s silence, footsteps were heard moving down the stairs.

“We might have outstayed our welcome, Jack,” she said sweetly.

“‘Jack,’” I thought. “May-be,” I replied.

“What’s say we fly this place and have some real fun, in the city,” she said, beaming.

There was no saying no to that face, to those eyes, which seemed to have life in them for a nation.

“Alright,” I said with an ease and a contentment then foreign to me. “Nothing for me here, anyway. Seems the landlord has it in his mind to throw me out already.”

“Nothing for ‘us’ here, indeed,” the woman said coyly as she, with some effort, pulled up a pair of jeans I hadn’t noticed lying on the floor, and with no apparent effort, completed the look, put up her hair and, upon her wrists, a watch and bracelets, and finally, rings on her fingers.

“Here,” she said, tossing me my shirt. “Put this on, Rambo. Don’t want you causing any more locals to stumble, now do we?”

“‘We’? . . . ‘Us’?” I pondered inwardly, confused at the presumptuous possessives.

“Very well, then. Topless no longer,” I answered, staring at her back as she sat before the tiny, rusted, and faded mirror which leaned precariously atop an otherwise tiny dresser that she must have drawn closer to the end of her bunk the night previous, putting on what makeup she didn’t need. “Does she realize I’ll be gone by sundown?” I thought to myself. “Still . . .”

I didn’t at first notice the glance she gave out of the corner of that spotted mirror as she brushed her eyelash, a look as though she knew otherwise, like she knew my scheme and her counter to it, as if she were a step—or ten—ahead of my planned departure. She told me of it later, you see, of all the glances in all the worlds she gave to me. She kept none for herself.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I interrupted. “What do you mean, ‘She told me later’? I thought . . .”

“Quiet, son! I’m only liable to get through this once. And you’re lucky if that!”

“Alright, alright . . . go on.”

“Yes, where was I?”

“You’ve got a shirt on now, I think . . .”

“Indeed . . .”

We, I, I mean, I packed my single shoulder bag, she grabbed her purse, and we were off: down the creaking stairs—worse than the floor, if you can imagine it—through the tavern, and out into that muggy street. The sun had moved behind the clouds now, though. What was blinding through the open window was now tamed and shut up outside. But nothing could tame that Oriental humidity.

I hadn’t any idea of any named “city” near that tavern, but she seemed to know the way. I only followed my nose in these parts, at these times, and wherever we were heading was the obvious choice for what interested me most at that moment: food, street food.

“Hungry?” she asked with her omniscient air, which would’ve annoyed me more if she weren’t so stunning carrying it.

“She’ll be a hard one to escape,” I thought, I was sure of it. “Yes, quite so,” I answered. We turned a corner, down a market street where the smells overwhelmed the senses: Oyster Mee Sua, Oyster Omelette, Lu Rou Fan, Beef Noodles, the gambit in this grotto. She made for anything oyster, and I, for the Beef Noodles, where I felt safest.

We carried our delicacies, mine in my left hand, hers in her right. The whole time she walked just behind me, I noticed, her left hand looking all the while like it was trying not to rise up and grab my arm, caress my back, or simply and shyly take my hand. I felt nervous, uncomfortable, and the feeling made me remember that I carried something else in every city and in every town: the sky, the memory of what I wanted to forget. “Spirits in the head,” I think they’ve been called.

She stopped at a vendor’s cart to browse what woodworks, scarfs, and trinkets were on display, the same junk in every city it seemed. I drifted as casually as I could to the other side of the street, pretending to shop as well—easy enough—then I slipped into a corner alley and made my escape.

I didn’t realize she was watching over her shoulder. What was it I heard her say through the chatter of that street?

“Time to fall, Bruce . . .”

But I was already gone, alighting from alley to alley, street to street, then at a corner, mounting a rickshaw to the airfield, and I didn’t even ask her name.