Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel (37 page)

Laughing slightly at her own stupidity, and in relief that she didn’t have to confront Val immediately, she reached the edge of the dock and tried to pull herself up. Her arms shook, her body screamed in pain, and for a very long moment she thought she wouldn’t make it, but at the last second she found a reserve of strength and pulled herself over the edge and onto the dock. She lay there a long time, feeling the rolling motion of the dock underneath her. Inside the bag her phone rang again.

“Please allow me to introduce myself . . .”

She tried to ignore it, but even the sound of her mother’s ringtone nagged her to some sort of action. Slowly, carefully, centimeter by centimeter, she pulled up her shirt and felt for the spot where the pain was coming from. She put her hand down to her chest and felt the stiff fabric of the Anastasia. Remembering the Kevlar bustier encouraged her and she felt farther. There were
two holes in the bustier—one in her side and one in her chest, the edges frayed and torn—and when she pulled her fingers away there was still the faint smell of river water and cordite.

It smelled sharp and burnt like shame. Nikki wanted to curl around herself and hide. She had failed. How could she not have known that Val would betray her? Of course, Val never really liked her. Why would she? Nikki was stupid and gullible.

“I should have gone after Amein,” she said out loud, and tears leaked out of her eyes. His death was on her head, too.

Her phone rang again and with a sigh she opened the bag and took it out—giving in to the strident tones. Giving in to her mother again, adding another trivial failure to the mountainous pile.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, putting the phone to her ear. Her voice sounded funny, but she couldn’t say why.

“You answered, so I know your fingers aren’t broken.”

Nikki looked carefully at her fingers. Her nails were torn. She needed a manicure. And was that blood? That was going to hurt. Eventually.

“I think you’re right,” Nikki said. “They just look icky.” She sounded a million miles away from her own voice.

“Would it kill you to call me? You know I worry.” Her mother was ignoring her again. That was probably good.

“Yes, sorry,” Nikki said, following the usual scripted answers. She felt disconnected from everything.

“Well, just be careful. You’re so naïve. Maybe it’s my fault for sheltering you too much, but I’m just afraid everyone will take advantage of you.”

“Yes,” Nikki said, twitching as her memory put Val’s face in front of her eyes. “You’re probably right.”

“Are you all right, Nikki?” asked her mother sharply. “You
sound tired. You’re not getting sick, are you? Maybe you should come home. It’s all right if this job isn’t working out. You can find another one.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Nikki.

“Nikki!” said Nell, her voice shrill. “What’s wrong? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” said Nikki. That at least was true enough. Why had she just stood there? “I just . . . it was one of the other women at work.”

Talking was starting to hurt and other things were starting to wake up now. Her legs were clamoring for their fair share of the pain load. The breeze tickled a gash in her pants, creeping in to disturb the blood that seeped down her leg. Looking down the length of her body she saw that one shoe was missing.

Val wasn’t going to be happy about that. She had bought her those shoes. Nikki reached up to rub her temple, but immediately dropped her arm again when it set off ripples of pain along her rib cage.

“Nikki, what did you do?” demanded Nell suspiciously.

“Nothing, Mom,” Nikki replied, trying to keep the pain and tears out of her voice.

“Nikki . . ., ” said her mother in the warning tone that promised untold retribution if Nikki even thought about lying.

“It’s Val. She walked out on me. And the company. She . . . left everything for a guy who’s a total dirtbag.” She couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice, but she hoped her mom didn’t hear it.

“Well, when a woman is in love,” said Nell philosophically, “she thinks she can change—”

“Yeah, yeah, a man is a home improvement project. It’s dumb.” Nikki’s pain flashed over into bitterness, and carefully she reached up to wipe tears out of her eyes.

“I was going to say,” Nell said, irritation frosting her tone, “that a woman in love thinks she can change herself to suit him. She thinks she can make herself not care about the unchangeable bits of him. But you can’t. You’re always going to care.”

Nikki didn’t answer, aware, even in her aching state, that they were treading over very delicate emotional ground—cavernous pits of anger and bitterness were likely to open beneath her feet at any moment.

“The joke is,” mused Nell, “that women do want to change a man. His clothes and whatever, superficial stuff, and really, all of that’s for his own good. But it’s women who change, trying to match themselves to what he wants. They try and try, but it’s a mistake. You should never try to be what you’re not.”

“I shouldn’t try to be what I’m not,” repeated Nikki, hearing the death knell of her Carrie Mae career in those words. “Maybe I should come home.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nell said sharply. “You were in training only last week, and now you’ve been given a plum assignment. This career may not be perfect for you, but clearly they think very highly of you. You can come home after you get the job done.”

“I don’t know,” Nikki said. Breathing was getting easier. She took a shallow breath, then another.

“Well, I do,” said Nell, her usual demanding tone returning. “Now, what are you going to do about this Val woman?”

“I’m not sure,” Nikki said, still at a loss.

“You should just do your little conference thingie on your own. You’ll look like a hero, and everyone will know she dropped the ball and you won’t have to say a thing.”

“Yeah,” Nikki said, trying to remember what cover story she had given her mother and what conference she was talking about.

“That’s what
I
would do,” said Nell. “I would just do it myself.”

“It’s not that easy,” Nikki said.

“Get over it,” her mother said crisply.

“I . . ., ” Nikki said. “OK.”

“Good. Now what I really called to tell you about was my week from hell with Mr. Van Der Meer. You remember me telling you about him? He’s Dutch and has wandering hands. Which fortunately I know how to deal with, but poor Cissy, at the office . . . did I tell you we hired a new girl?”

“I have to go now, Mom,” said Nikki.

“No, I’m telling you about Cissy. She wears false eyelashes and giant silver hoops . . .”

“I’ll call you when I get back to the States. Talk to you soon, love you, bye.” She hung up the phone, ignoring the irritated bleatings of “Nikki! Nikki!” and let it fall onto the dock, where it landed with an echoing thump. It was the sound of a hollow victory. She’d just hung up on her mother. Well, maybe not that hollow. She felt a slight tingle of warmth that spread up her arm from the cell phone.

“You’re going to have to move,” she told herself.

“But it will be hard,” she replied.

“It’s already hard,” she argued back. She got no reply to that one, and decided to consider the matter settled.

“Stupid momentum,” she muttered as she rolled over onto her hands and knees and began the painful, slow process of getting to her feet.

Staggering up the dock, she took stock of where she was. It was nowhere she knew. But looking along the shoreline, she guessed that she had drifted around a short bend in the river, and the fastest way to get back to anywhere was a long walk in the generally forward direction.

She had gone only a few steps when a headlight swept into view,
pinning her in its glare. She raised her hand against the light, but knew that she was toast, history, done for. Instead of the sound of a gun or Val’s angry voice, she heard a voluble stream of Thai.

“Bad men!” her tuk-tuk driver said, emerging from the vehicle. He grasped her by the arm and pushed her toward the back of the cab. “I look for you! Bad men!”

“Bad men!” he said again, and Nikki nodded her agreement. “Stupid girl!” he said, shaking his finger at her.

Nikki nodded again. “Stupid girl,” she agreed. And he frowned, as he helped her into the tuk-tuk.

“You don’t have to help me,” she said plaintively, but not wanting him to stop, as he drove toward her hotel.

“Must help,” he said, eyeing her in the rearview mirror, and then turning back to look at her as he paused at a red light. “Karma.”

Nikki wondered what he’d done in a past life that could possibly have merited her. The night air of Bangkok flowed over her. It carried a hot, torpid smell of a city at rest, layered with car exhaust and the scent of fresh jasmine that tried to remind everyone of the sweetness of life, but could never quite compete with the cacophony that was Bangkok.

Her cell phone rang. Nikki eyeballed it suspiciously, not recognizing the phone number.

“Yeah?” said Nikki.

“Nikki, it’s Jane.”

“Jane?”

“I don’t have a lot of time, but I need to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Don’t call in.”

“What?” Nikki was confused.

“Don’t call in. Don’t e-mail. Dr. Hastings is going to call you back to California.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t, either. I think it’s political. I talked to Mrs. Merrivel, and I’m . . . Yes! I’ll be right there!” Jane was bellowing at someone else, but Nikki’s head jerked back at the noise. “I have to go now. Don’t call in. I’ll contact you in twelve hours.”

“Twelve hours? Jane . . .” But the line had already gone dead. “Shit,” said Nikki, staring at her phone.

THAILAND XIV

After Shot

They pulled up to the front of the hotel, and Nikki exited slowly, wincing at every movement.

“Thank you,” she said to the tuk-tuk driver. She wanted to say more, but a language barrier and pain stopped her attempts to utter anything but the most basic of emotions. The driver smiled and shrugged, and Nikki shook her head.

“Why did you come looking for me?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

“We must embrace the road,” he said, gesturing out before him to indicate the path before them all. “Just not too hard,” he added, and poked at one of her bruises. Nikki smiled painfully, and he drove off with a wave. She thought about not going inside, but realized that Val thought she was dead. The hotel was probably, the safest place to be.

Once inside her room, she stripped off her clothes, trying to keep what little momentum she had left, and examined the damage.

Her right hip had a raw gouge and a bruise that radiated out from it in a yellowish puffiness. Her back was laced with scrapes and scratches, and her legs also had their share of scrapes. But her rib cage showed the real damage, with three quarter-size welts that were already starting to spread and turn purple.

Nikki limped to the bathroom, waiting until the steam began to rise before stepping into the shower and pulling the curtain closed. Leaning against the cool tile, she felt each cut and scratch send up a painful wail as the water hit it. After a few minutes everything had settled back down again, and she began to take comfort in the steam.

The heat of the shower finally began to seem oppressive and her fingers were beginning to prune. She held out for a few more minutes, breathing in the warm, damp air and enjoying the torturous heat for the sake of the fact that the air-conditioned room would now seem cold.

She dried herself and applied Band-Aids on a need and reach basis. After spending a futile five minutes trying to reach a spot on her back, she reclassified it as “can’t reach” and gave up. She delicately fastened on a sports bra and pulled on sweats. The sweats were junkable, but she didn’t have any shirts she could afford to get blood spots on.

She was about to choose her least favorite shirt when she heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway and the click of Val’s door being unlocked. She froze for a moment and then ran to her makeup kit. Pulling out the handgun and electronic lock pick, she went out to the hall. Through a crack under the door she saw lights go on in Val’s room and a shadow pass back and forth. She quietly unlocked the door, put her hand on the knob, and took a deep breath.

Throwing open the door, she dove into the room, shoulder-
rolled, and came up with a perfect target on the occupant of the room—who happened to be a small Japanese man. He held up his hands, his eyes wide. Nikki looked around the room in confusion. She could see none of Val’s belongings.

“Very sorry,” she said, getting up and lowering the gun. She took a glance in the bathroom, hoping to see a bevy of gold butterflies, but found only men’s shaving products. “Wrong room.” She smiled awkwardly and backed toward the door. The man hadn’t moved. His hands were still up. Nikki reached for the door with one hand and waved goodbye with the other, realizing too late that she was waving with the gun hand.

“Very sorry,” she muttered again, and jumped out of the room, slamming his door shut. After a moment she heard the lock click shut on his side. She walked quickly back to her room and shut the door.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” she said to herself. Val must have cleaned out her room while Nikki was pulling herself out of the river. Nikki leaned against the door and thought about going down to the bar and getting blind, stinking drunk. It was a good plan. For one thing, it had clear, actionable steps. Pour shot, drink, repeat. Everything else seemed out of her capability. She couldn’t even begin to list the problems she had right now, let alone form a plan for how to solve them.

She had just made up her mind to go with getting drunk when there was a knock on the door behind her head. She flinched and then took a firmer grip on her gun.

She opened the door and put the .45 in Lawan’s face. Lawan didn’t move.

“What?” Nikki said.

Lawan stared her down, ignoring the gun. “I came to ask for help,” she said at last.

Nikki felt the bruises on her rib cage and the cuts on her back with a searing clarity. She couldn’t even help herself. “You may wish to reconsider that,” she said, lowering the gun.