The Day Of The Wave (3 page)

'Where are you going?' Sonthi asks, reaching for my elbow just as I'm about to slide down the same alley; just as I'm about to call out. My phone rings in my pocket. I pull it out. 

'It's Prak,' I say, pulling myself together, holding it to my ear. 'Hey man, where are you? We're ready when you are.' His English is bad in my ear. I hand the phone to Sonthi and he leads me back the way we came, jabbering in Thai, pushing past a cart of chopped up watermelon and pineapple, past a group of drunken guys spilling out of a bar that's only just closing. I force myself to follow him, clenching my fist hard around the sack, gritting my teeth. 

I'm crazy, I know I am. I don't look back.  

The Thai Chill Cook Book
isn't exactly the greatest name there's ever been for a book of Thai recipes but my hostess, the very smiley Chinda, is probably the happiest person I've ever seen. Her enthusiasm is rubbing off on me, even though I still just want to sleep. 

I spent too long at the market this morning. I've never seen so many great dresses, all for roughly five quid. I was coerced into buying two, so I had to make it three by getting one for Maria, plus a golden nodding Buddha for Amy and some neon pink fake Bobby Brown nail polish. When I finally remembered to check the time I was running late for breakfast. 

Chinda was even later. She didn't seem to notice. 'I cook for you tonight. You bring husband,' she says now, beaming at me over the polished glass table. Her short, black bob is bouncing about her pointy chin. She releases my hand. She's been squeezing it like a vice since we met here in the hotel's restaurant, like she's afraid I might disappear off the face of the earth and never write her story for the magazine. 

She flips through the pages of her book and I have to admit, even though I'm looking at it upside down, the photos make her food look amazing. 'You choose what you like, I make,' Chinda says. 'Maybe this?' She points to a heaped duck salad with spring onions and some kind of dressing.

'It looks delicious,' I tell her truthfully, lining up my knife, fork and spoon in a better position. A jolt to my stomach when I think of Colin again forces me to clench my cheeks with my teeth. 'But it's just me for dinner later. I came here on my own.' 

Her waxed brows struggle to knit together. 'Where your husband?' 

'I'm twenty-six,' I say. 

'So where your husband?'

I turn the page in front of her and tap at my notebook to distract her. 'Tell me about the
Gai Med Ma Moung
,' I say, 'chicken with cashews, right? How is yours different to other people's?'  

Chinda laughs, high-pitched and delighted. She claps her hands together before launching into an explanation complete with theatrical gestures. I scribble down what I can understand as her expensive earrings swing with her glossy hair, but my mind is back on Colin now, and that email.

I could barely bring myself to tell Amy what really happened. She thinks we made a clean break after a big fight and she thinks it was my decision. Truth be told it was easy to accept the holiday time in the end. I didn't want to come here, obviously, but being anywhere away from home means I can comfortably avoid any questions while I figure things out. I'm leaving for Bali in three days.

I force myself to stay focused as Chinda flicks through page after page. The thought crosses my mind that Farzana, my editor, and Amy only made me take this press trip to get me over here, not that I can blame them, really:
You have to go back, Izzy, you have to see what it's like now. It'll change the way you visualize it. Thailand is amazing!

I suck in a breath. My friends can sympathize and I love them for it, but their idea of Thailand in general is different to mine. They can't ever imagine the smell of rotting corpses in thirty-five degree heat. They can't know what it was like imagining someone you know under every plastic sheet in a makeshift morgue. Bodies piled onto bodies, the mangled concrete, the twisted tuk-tuks, the fishing boats on top of broken roofs and broken people. The flapping notes and photos with MISSING on all of them. The tidal wave of despair that kept on crashing. I haven't told them the half of it. I haven't really told anyone the greater details.

'You're a writer. Why can't you write about that? Turn it into a book,' Colin would say whenever I clammed up, or mentioned I was struggling for a new idea. 'Your therapist told you to, didn't she?'  

'You tired miss Iss-laa?' Chinda says now, mispronouncing my name and covering my hand with hers. I realize I've only written two lines in my notebook, when she's pretty much gone through the story behind every dish. I feel so bad. I shake my head, scribble something down about capsicums but I know I'm not fooling her. I put the pen down.

'It's the jet lag,' I say.

'It is more than that. I see in your eye,' she replies, squeezing my hand even harder. 'You divorce from husband? This why you alone?'

'Something like that,' I tell her. I can't help smiling in spite of myself. She closes the cookbook, pats it lovingly with a flat palm. 

'Better you taste. I cook you five thing, I surprise you. Be here seven tonight, yes?'

'OK, that would be lovely,' I say, 'thank you so much.' 

For no reason at all, Chinda stands up, loops an arm around my shoulder and pulls me against her in a half hug. Her perfume overwhelms my senses but the gesture brings tears to my eyes. I lean my head against her for a second and see the pretty young Thai lady all over again - the one who found me. I was stark naked and losing blood, shivering in shock up against a fallen supermarket sign. 

She was probably no more than twenty-six herself, that lady, and she had a newborn baby wrapped in a green sarong. She wrapped me in a blue one. Then she and an older man put me in a truck, then helped carry me to the hillside. Everyone was crying and shouting in every language under the sun. I was lapsing in and out of consciousness the whole day and night, but I remember snippets of it. 

I remember her concerned, bloody face; the tears glistening in her sad brown eyes, her fingers moving gently through my tangled hair as I lay on the ground on a wet towel. She never stopped rocking the baby at the same time, and it never cried; not like I did. I was so messed up I couldn't speak at that point. I barely recognized my own hands. I remember the sound of a guitar that night, too. I don't know where it would have come from, but someone had salvaged one and was playing melancholy songs under the moon.

The next day, when the fears of more waves had subsided, she and some other locals brought me down from the hillside and took me to the hospital. It looked like a thatched cottage and smelled of disinfectant. They were trying to mask the putrid stench of death. I found out later I was roughly eighteen miles south of where our hotel had been on the beachfront - the last place I saw my mom and dad. I never saw that Thai lady again. I never even found out her name, but I can still see her face like it was yesterday.

'Seven p.m,' Chinda says again, releasing me and wiping a tear from my cheek with her manicured finger. I swipe at my other cheek in embarrassment. I didn't even realize I was crying. 

'Gosh, I'm so sorry,' I say, feeling my cheeks start to blaze, but she brushes my apology away. 

'You beautiful girl, you go get sleep. And never mind bad husband. You get new one like Chinda did.' She winks and I can't help laughing a bit as she shuffles off in her tight skirt and heels. 

I smile at the waiter as he clears the table, take three more sips of my pineapple juice for good measure. I'm the only one in the restaurant now. I know I should go out again but I'm so tired, plus I need to type some stuff up. 

I sigh. I never usually take the lift in any building - my claustrophobia kicked in the last time I was here, along with my fear of the water - but my limbs feel like they're giving up on me and the stairwell was a sauna coming up here anyway. I head to the lift... or the elevator, as the sign says, and push the button. 

'Hold the elevator!' I dart across the lobby towards the closing doors with Sonthi close behind me. The doors shut just I get there with no one inside. I ram my elbow against the button but it's already heading upwards. 'Shit!' I lower the cardboard box I'm holding to the floor, stretch out my arms above my head. This stuff is way heavier than I thought.

Sonthi lets out a groan. He drops the sack of masks he's been carrying onto the shiny marble and doubles over against the wall, panting. I can see the sweat trickling down his cheeks and jaw and I know I must look the same. Carrying armloads of heavy scuba equipment in ninety-eight percent humidity isn't exactly the best way to spend a day, even without a hangover. At least we got it for a good price, though; better than anyone offered it for in Phuket, for sure. I press the button again. The blue neon sign says it's heading down again now, but it stops at the sixth floor. 

I unzip my backpack, unscrew my water bottle and down the entire contents. I'm so thirsty. I don't know what it is about Bangkok - all the concrete probably - but it's always fifty times hotter than anywhere else in Thailand. I guess I'm kind of spoilt really, living in a beach hut, working in a dive shop with the ocean breeze blowing over me the whole time like a free A/C unit. Even wearing a shirt right now feels a little weird. 

'Mister Ben!' I spin around. The lady who checked us in, Chinda I think, is walking towards me in crazy high heels. 'What you buy?' she asks, looking at our bags in amusement.

'Just some stuff to take back to Khao Lak,' I tell her. She folds her arms in front of me. 'Scuba stuff,' I explain.

'You get good price?' She raises an eyebrow and I laugh.

'We got a
very
good price.'

'You should have ask me. I ask my husband, he get cheaper,' she says, shaking her head and doing a double take at Sonthi now. He's still breathing deeply with his eyes closed. I pray he doesn't vomit on her marble floor.

'I think we're good, thanks,' I tell her as the elevator finally arrives and the doors open. It's empty. I move the heavy box inside with my foot, jamming the door while I pick up the sack. Sonthi walks ahead of me and leans against the mirror inside. 

'He look sick,' Chinda tells me, still shaking her head. She says something else to him in Thai and he shakes his head, holds up a hand at her.

'I think he just needs to sleep, we're checking out early in the morning, remember?' I say.

Chinda nods but she's still frowning. 'He needs rest. Mister Ben, you have plan for dinner?'

'Tonight?' I kick the box the rest of the way into the elevator but Chinda holds the door open with a manicured hand, looks at me with excited eyes.

'Tonight, yes! I make special dinner in restaurant. You come.'

'I don't know,' I say, studying her angular hair swaying about her chin. It looks perfect, like something from
The Matrix
. 'I think Sonthi will probably be sleeping, he just had a big breakfast...'

'No, you come, just you. Seven p.m. You have a wife?'

I laugh again now. 'No, I don't have a wife, it's just us here...'

'OK, you come seven,' she says resolutely, before moving her hand and letting the door shut, finally. I turn to Sonthi as the elevator starts its slow climb. 

'Does she want a second husband or something?' 

He grimaces. Last night is catching up with him more by the minute. 'She has a husband though, right? Why the hell does she want to have dinner with me?' 

'Who cares, man? Free food,' Sonthi says with a sigh, swiping a hand over his face. He picks up the sack as the doors open at our floor. 'And maybe sex. Don't worry, I won't tell Kalaya.'

'She has this new cookbook, maybe that's why,' I say, gesturing quickly to the poster on the elevator wall. It's a photo of Chinda herself, holding up the book. She's even been airbrushed. 'She's put some serious cash into this, did you see the stack of them in reception?' 

'No.' He holds the button for me while I turn sideways to get the box out and into the sunlit corridor. 

'You're useless today!' I laugh, pushing it along the floor again with my flip flop. 'She was talking about it when we checked in. I think we should probably buy one.' 

But Sonthi's switched off again now. He's following me down the corridor, struggling with the sack more than ever. He trips over his flip flop for a second and I try not to smile as he curses. I know better than to push him when he's feeling like shit. 

'I need sleep,' he announces, needlessly. 

'Fine, sleep,' I say. I know he could sleep all day. I also know he'll text Sasi first, not the Belgian girl. I saw him get a text from her earlier. Even when they're arguing they're in touch twenty-four-seven. It's been months since she broke up with him and found herself a new boyfriend and he's done everything in his power to make her jealous of his steady stream of
farangs
without ever appearing jealous himself. It's kind of exhausting to witness.

I stop outside my room, fish for the key in my board shorts. I swipe the door and kick the box inside but when I turn back, Sonthi's abandoned the sack and I can hear the door to his room closing down the hall. 'Goodnight then!' I yell at him. It's not even eleven-thirty a.m. 

I drag the sack inside and fling myself on the bed, reach beside me for the TV remote but my phone buzzes in my other pocket. I know without even looking at it that it's Kalaya and something in my stomach lurches, killing my appetite all over again. The jolt of it flings me back to Khao San Road, following that girl this morning. I forgot about her the moment we met with Prak and had to deal with the equipment, but her gleaming hair and milky white legs, the way she walked; it all rushes back now like a... well.  

I pull out my cell, look at the yellow emoji face Kalaya's sent me on iMessage. It's blowing a kiss. I think of her smart mouth on mine, her hair billowing out under the fan like a waterfall in reverse, her legs wrapped around my waist. I think of my lips on her sweat-soaked skin as she pushes down on me with one hand clawing at the mosquito nets.