The Lie Spinners (The Deception Dance) (21 page)

Now
my shirt has window dirt and Nicholas’ blood on it. Oh, well.

We
pull into the road leading to the front of the station; in a
landscape of run of the mill, multistoried city buildings, the
imperial-looking station looks like a confused mix of western and
eastern architecture. Lines and curves and peaks of white and gold
make up the facade. While the arches and columns of station look
almost Greco-Roman, the giant portrait with a golden spire above it
looks Thai. My art education this past year was entirely western art,
I really regret that now. I don’t know anything more than this
station’s name, which I memorized from the guide book; I don’t
even know whose giant portrait on the front of the station is. Best
guess: Thailand’s King.

We
wait for the herd of taxis to disperse and the driver pulls in front
of the curb. The meter reads ‘72 BHT’.

I
fish a twenty out of my pocket, hoping it will be enough. I could
kick myself for not looking up the conversion rate.

When
I hand the driver the twenty, he says something in Thai, points to
the meter and hands me back my money. As I pull out another twenty,
and the taxi driver shakes his open hand back and forth; gesturing
‘no’ I’m pretty sure.

“
Too
much?” I ask.

He
responds something in Thai.

“
It’s
ok, keep the change,” I say, gesturing for him to keep the
twenty with two open hands.

The
taxi driver smiles so widely, and kindly, that I’m positive I
just gave him a big tip.

I
step onto the curb.

The
taxi driver gets out of the driver side of the taxi, the right side,
his smile stretches almost as big as Hualamphong Station; he gives me
two a thumbs up, and says, “khob-kun-krub! khob-kun-krub!”

Yeah
.
First stop, the currency exchange.

****

“
I
gave my taxi driver a seventeen dollar tip on a three dollar fare,”
I say loud enough to be heard over the approaching train, in lieu of
a hello, when Linnie finally finds me at the terminal. Hualamphong
station is a giant echoing half cylinder, enormous, with an expansive
marble floor filled with people coming and going. A couple trains
venture into the enormous space; further on, where I wait, the area
opens into a large outdoor station with over a dozen tracks and
trains.

“
Didn’t
you convert your money?” My sister says as she drops two
backpacks I’ve never seen before onto the ground.

“
Yeah,
after the taxi driver tried to marry me to his first born son, I
did,” I say.

“
Hardy
har,” Linnie says dryly, as she stands up. She hooks a blue and
white baseball cap onto my head, and says, “There, disguised.”

I
glance up at the bill of the hat, feeling a twinge in my eyes.
“That’s the disguise you got?”

“
Just
the beginning, my dear sister,” Linnie says, “But I doubt
you want to change out here.”

“
Did
you get the tickets?” I ask, gesturing to the train, our train,
which we should probably board sooner rather than later.

“
Yep!”
Linnie stands straight, smiling and looking very pleased with
herself. “I got us the nicer, second class seats since it’s
going to take forever to get there. We can only take the train to
Surat Thani, and then we take a bus, then a boat from there.”

I
refrain from pointing out that since I’m standing at the
platform for Surat Thani, I already figured that out.

Linnie
picks up a red backpack and points to a blue one. “That one is
for you. I got you clothes and snacks and, everything, just
everything. You’re so lucky to have me.”

“
Yeah,”
I say, grumpily, then immediately feel bad. “I mean, thank you
Linnie, you did great.” I sling the blue backpack over my
shoulder and turn to the train. “We should…”

“
This
way,” Linnie chirps, and then she heads further down the length
of the train.

Our
seats are cushy and decent enough. We sit facing a couple of girls,
Amy and Sandra, blondes from New Zealand; both of whom my sister
befriends even before the train starts moving. They have inside jokes
and nicknames for each other by the time the train starts to jolt
around in preparation for taking us out of this place and hopefully,
out of Jones reach.

A
Thai woman walks through, one of many people with baskets of nuts and
fruit and cooked meat. She holds out a bag of cashews with a grin.
Though I can’t imagine being hungry, I buy a couple bags and
several bananas from a man who seems determined to rush through even
as the train slides forward slowly. I shove the food into my backpack
and clutch my fingers into the canvas material.

When
the train finally ambles out of the station I loosen the strangle
hold I didn’t know I was inflicting on my new backpack. My
hands for some reason shake.

I
undo the zipper and paw through the backpack, just to keep them busy.
Besides food, several shirts wedge into the bottom of the bag while
at least three pairs of shorts are folded and stuffed in. Linnie also
got me a toothbrush, which I am going to use at the earliest
opportunity to kill the salty dragon that has taken up residency in
my mouth. Two more hats, a big bottle of sunscreen and a…
“Linnie, you bought CDs?” I say, incredulously.

Linnie
halts whatever she was saying to the New Zealand girls and turns to
smile. “Yeah, I got ‘Mumford and Sons’ for you and
‘Katy Perry’ for me! They were a little outdated but
super cheap.”

“
Because
they’re pirated…” I say, remembering the tables
with CD cases among the booths on Khoasan Road.

“
No,”
Linnie says, wrinkling her nose as if the idea is ridiculous. “I
bought them in a booth.”

I
don’t feel like arguing, but I can’t help but point out,
“We don’t even have a CD player.”

“
It’s
in there,” She says, cheerily. She turns back to chat more with
the girls I can’t find the energy to make friends with.

At
the very bottom of the bag, I find the CD player and some batteries.
As ridiculous as it was that my sister would take the time to pick
out CDs while on the run, when I put the ear-bud headphones into my
ears and press play on the little player, I realize that my sister is
a genius.

Two
days of sweaty, dirty disasters, not to mention Thailand’s
constant overwhelming humidity and heat, has made me filthy, sticky
and stinky. My shirt turned a brownish color with dirt, not to
mention the fact that it’s stained with someone else’s
blood. ‘Foul,’ pretty much covers it. My hair has knotted
into a sweaty nest on the back of my head. And, my arm throbs with a
persistent low ache.

I
should take this time to clean up and get into some semblance of a
disguise. Instead, I pull the cap’s brim low, close my eyes,
and let ‘Mumford & Sons’ float me away.

His
face bulges out in a landscape of swollen purple and yellow bruises.
The bruise Richard Jones gave me was nothing to this, barely even
qualifying as a discoloration compared to the mess that is Stephen’s
face. And I know it’s Stephen’s face. My dream-self just
knows.

He
lies beside me on a small bed, something feels so familiar about
lying next to Stephen on this bed; I instinctively know that even
though the bed is so small, if I lie on my side and rest my head on
Stephen’s chest, we will fit like two halves of the same whole.

A
thought crashes through all others,
what
if The Spider changes his mind? Stephen almost died...
Grief
and a body-numbing fear wraps its death-cold fingers around my
thoughts squeezing any lucidity out of them for a few long seconds.

Stephen
hasn’t made a sound, not a grunt or moan. The only sign of life
he’s shown is those weak inhalations. His eyelids swelled to
the point where I doubt he’ll even be able to open them if…
when
he wakes.

I
whisper, “You’re safe, you’re with me, we’re
in my bungalow. You’re safe.” The words are mantra, I’ve
chanted them before.

I
tear my gaze away from his chest, forcing my mind to stop measuring
those halting, hard won breaths. There’s this physical pain in
me, this angry, sharp piercing in my stomach. I slump to the floor,
sitting with my back against the bed, knees up to my chest. My hands
clench trying to bear it, bear everything.

Images
flood my brain, a torrent of flashes, flowing so fast that my waking
self can’t make sense of them. A wrongness, a feeling that I
can’t figure out the source of, pulses through me. But stronger
that the wrongness a certainty presses on my thoughts: the demons
were right about me, I am like them: I am evil.

My
fingers cover my mouth; as if they want to physically restrain words
from escaping my irrepressible mind.

And
though I sense it’s coming, though I know something
irreversible and oh, so evil, is about to happen, I can’t stop
my thoughts.

I
know it’s wrong, so wrong. But I realize, I am a selfish, evil
person. And I can’t help it. I tried. God how I tried! But,
loving Stephen was always inevitable.

The
world is the cost. His life is the cost. But I can no more control
the ocean tides than the currents of my heart. This love is like
poison in my blood stream, pulsating out to every muscle, organ,
bone, and all the secret corners within me, too far spread for a
dream of an antidote.

I
love him. And I hate myself for it.

****

I
wake, my arm burning, as I fall out of my train seat.

Day
Four (continued)

A
couple shocked sounding cries drown out the song playing through my
headphones for a second. When they quiet, a
song continues blasting out of my earphones; I rip the
ear-buds
from my ears.

Gathering
a halting breath, I look around to see that I’m half lying,
half crouched across Linnie and the New Zealand girl’s feet and
all of our bags.

“
Raven!
Are you okay?” Linnie says, grabbing my shoulder.

I
can’t manage to say anything as I crawl over their bags and
feet and into the aisle, then stumble into a standing position. I run
forward, dodging baggage racks, nearly tripping over a guitar case
jutting into an aisle. Eyes turn to me, but I can’t stop my
course. When I find the bathroom, I all but fall into it.

I
splash handfuls of sink water into my face. Though the water feels
tepid, almost warm, it couldn’t feel better on my hot, sweaty,
sticky skin. I end up sticking my whole head in, only stopping when
my hair and face drip so much they soak my shirt.

I
stand, leaning against the bathroom door as it rattles against my
back. I have to bite my lip to stop the scream that promises to
escape. My hands rub my eyes, as if I could scrub the dream out of my
mind.

It’s
not real, it can’t be a prophecy. It can’t be.

He’s
having a baby with another girl. He’s… he’s taken.
We’re not going to fall in love. This train cannot be a bullet
whistling forward to embed in Stephen’s chest, to kill him. Not
Stephen; of anyone, I wouldn’t want to inflict my love on
him
.
I feel sick thinking about that moment of selfish helplessness, that
moment of absolute surrender to naming a death sentence on a good
person, a good guy.

And
this is it: the trap they’ve snapped closed around me, love or
rot to death, but either way, fail. Suddenly the walls of the little
metal box bathroom feel as if they are clattering closer and closer
together.

No.

No.

No.

The
word drops from my thoughts, each time becoming more real, more
plausible. And I realize this could be the curse
Räum
put on me, polluting my mind with false futures, impossible futures.
He can’t lie in words, but can he lie in visions? Just because
he marked the word on my arm doesn’t mean that my visions are
real, that they are the truth. Does it?