The Lie Spinners (The Deception Dance) (17 page)

I
close my eyes, just wanting to block out the world. I try to get
comfortable by nuzzling back… into a chest…into Jones’
chest.

My
eyes snap open. I turn my head to look up and look at Stupid Jerk
Face and feel a severe cramp in my neck. He looks completely
unflustered. The only acknowledgement he gives me is a blink-quick
look, and then he continues to stare ahead at where he’s
walking.

“
Put
me down,” I say.

No
response.

“
Put
me down, right now, or I’ll scream.”

No
response.

I
scream.

This…
does not get the reaction I anticipated… at all. Besides a few
shocked looks, no one even stops.

Jones
doesn’t even look concerned, he just keeps walking forward.

Anger
blasts heat into my cheeks (at least I hope it’s anger), but I
don’t scream again. The lights stream across my vision. The
surrounding crowd blends together into one continuously morphing
face. And I’m just so over this night.

Soon
I will have to face the writing on my arm, the new demon mark, the
new piece of my soul that I sold off for a life I failed to save.

Soon
I will have to face Madeline without delivering her
her
Stephen.

Soon
I will have to look into my sister’s face after she wakes from
the drugged sleep I put her in.

But
right now, I’m just floating along in a sea of foreign faces
and neon brand names. I rest my head back on Jones’ shoulder
deciding that if he wants to act like he’s unable to interact
with me, I’ll treat him like a car.

Conflicting
techno and ‘club-mixed’ pop songs blare from different
sides and the smell of beer drowns out the oily food smells. I hear
some British-sounding guys yell out, possibly at us, something like,
“you got one for me?”

But
Jones doesn’t look and I decide to not bother either.

Jones
turns and crosses to the side of the street stepping onto the
sidewalk and walks through an open doorway and up a carpeted
staircase. The sign above the door is in English, “B&B
Hotel.” Jones carries me all the way up the staircase and
continues to hold me as he stops in front of a desk with a small
beautifully dainty woman standing behind a computer.

“
We
need a room,” Jones says.

I
kick up my legs and say, “We just got married!” I’m
not sure what makes me say it (except perhaps that my brain has
completely unhinged), but the awkward pause that follows is worth a
thousand dead-legs.

“
Congratulations
to the beautiful couple,” the receptionist says. “We only
have a couple rooms available, all in our economy size. Would you
prefer smoking or non-smoking, sir?”

Jones’
doesn’t say anything, just letting a silence drag on, and then
he clears his throat and says, “non-smoking, please. And can we
have all the keys to the room, including the housekeeping key; we
will pay any additional deposit or cost.”

The
receptionist stares for a moment, then whispers, “one moment,
please.” And she rushes off, returning a moment later with
another woman in a similar uniform, presumably her manager. After
what feels like an hour of arguing, all of which I am being held like
a giant baby, Jones and I are ushered up to our room with all copies
of the key in hand.

The
room is entirely green: green wallpaper, green bed-sheets, and even
green pictures on the green walls. And when they say economy, boy, do
they mean it. Maybe it’s because the tallest Thai person I saw
today was a head shorter than my freakishly tallish-ness (Okay, only
five foot eight, but I feel like Godzilla here).

Jones
unceremoniously drops me on the green bed then rushes to slide close
the heavy green curtain over the two foot-deep (fake) balcony. The
view was only of another building, but the brightly lit room looks
even smaller with the curtain drawn. Jones first checks every lock in
the room and the conjoined bathroom, then checks every space big
enough for a person to hide in (all two of them), and then he checks
spaces big enough for small cats to hide in,
and
then
spaces I’m pretty sure bugs would have a hard time squeezing
through. My eyes hurt from watching him bounce about the room.

“
It’s
good you’re checking, I heard dust-mites might have gone to the
dark side,” I grumble under my breath.

When
Jones finishes finger dusting, or whatever, he sits down on the bed
and picks up the room-phone.

But
truly, I’ve had enough. Even knowing the inevitability of the
dream coming, I curl up on the pillows at the top of the bed.

As
always, memories and dark thoughts bombard me the moment I close my
eyelids hoping to sleep. When I finally drift into unconsciousness,
the dream that has become my normal (though never a comforting
normal) doesn’t come… And I’m completely aware of
this fact as I stand on warm white sand. A long stretch of beach
curves around a lightly sloshing ocean lit by an enormous-looking
full moon. Dancing people pack the beach. A group of people dance
with what looks like ribbons of fire streaming around them. Behind
them a gigantic fiery sign proclaims: Full Moon Pa… the crowd
blocks out the rest of the sign. Bumping beats battle for dominance
and volume, each pulsing out from one of a long line of bars which
have no outside wall dividing them form the beach, the result: a
discordant mess of synthetic tones.

Someone
bumps me, and grabs my arm. “Oh, my apologies,” a guy,
who’s probably from Australia or New Zealand or that general
area, says. I look down to see that not only is he about ninety
percent naked, he’s painted up in swirls of body paint that has
displaced blue and red streaks onto the arm and side of my T-shirt.

“
It’s
fine,” I say, voice impatient. I take off sprinting into the
crowd, into the mess of the masses. Everyone drinks from what looks
like buckets with several straws. Bathing-suit clad, painted people
are laughing, dancing, screaming, and gyrating to the thumping
pandemonium. When the crowd grows too thick near the entrance of a
club, I start swimming through them; alcoholic breath, perfumes and
sweat thicken the air. Using my arms I breaststroke through them,
first driving my arms between bodies, then shove past and sliding
through the smashed together sweaty torsos. It’s like bodily
inching up a tightening vice; the closer I get to the epicenter, the
tighter the vice gets. I consider climbing over the remaining crowd
when I see the person I’ve been searching for. The guy isn’t
tending bar, but instead at the raised DJ station. I change course,
jamming myself through the wall of bodies I just emerged from, but as
I’m coming out, they are more yielding.

“
Pom!”
I shout, waving to the long haired Thai guy in the booth. He doesn’t
hear or acknowledge me, probably because of the large headphones over
his ears. After I maneuver through the dancing crowd, who are much
easier to navigate than the bar crowd, I climb onto the wide bench at
the side of the club that where crowds of girls dance to-be-seen.
Dodge wiggling butts, I make my way to the end. When I reach Pom’s
booth, I hang over the sidewall that encloses it.

“
Pom!”
I shout again, inches from his face.

This
time he hears me. He slides the headphones off his head. “Hello,
Stephen’s friend!” he says with a thick Thai accent and
an easy smile. Even though he’s wearing sunglasses at night,
recognition and maybe even friendship are apparent in his smile. “I
thought you were taking off this night.”

I
lean in so far that my heels rise from the floor, so close that my
face almost touches his ear. “I need to find The Spider,”
my whisper sounds frantic, “Right now!”

A
hot burning sensation on my arm startles me awake. The moment I look
down at my arm, which I can just barely see in the morning light, the
pain vanishes. But it was my new mark, without a doubt, that hurt me
and woke me.

The
world comes in a bleary mess of shades of pickle. Looking back down,
I notice an arm tightly embraces me. For a disorienting moment I
think that I’m again wrapped in Stupid-Jerk-Face’s
embrace, but then I hear the light even breathing, almost as familiar
to me as my own breathing rhythm, and I know that I’m being
hugged by my sister.

Reeling
from the dream, I just hyperventilate for a few long minutes, into
the quiet room. The room slowly rotates around me until finally my
breathing slows.

Knowing
that when Linnie wakes up she’ll at the very least be
totally-and completely-pissed at me, I thank God that my
hyperventilating fit hasn’t seemed to wake her. I just lie
there in my sister’s arms, imagining what it would be like to
let moisture drip from my eyes. People always explain it as a
release, but I would be afraid that a release of nineteen years of
built-up emotional angst would disintegrate my eyes.

“
You
okay?” Linnie’s voice says from behind me.

“
Yeah,
I guess,” I whisper, “Do you hate me?”

“
No.
Though on the suck-o-meter drugging me was like a ten …”

“
Suck-o-meter
sounds gross,” I say.

“
Yeah,
I didn’t really think that one out before I said it, but yeah.
Don’t do that again, okay, or I’ll come down on you like
some-evil-mythological-sibling-rivalry-thingy. Okay? Got me?”

“
You’ll
come down on me like Cain on Abel?” I ask.

“
Yeah.”

“…
Athena
on Ares?”

“
Sure.”

“…
Scar
on Mufasa?”

“
You
are a super nerd,” she says.

“
Yeah…
but, what do I rate on the suck-o-meter?” I ask, “Am I
suck-tastic?”

“
Completely
sucktastic,” she says.

“
If
you’re finished,” Jones’ voice comes from the other
side of the room, “I need to assess the damage of our mission’s
failure.” Jones voice isn’t accusatory or angry but it
slashes through the fragile web of happiness my sister and I were
building like a hot knife.

Linnie
gives me a tight lipped smile and climbs out of the bed, rather
clumsily. She half-waddles, half-stumbles into the small bathroom. I
sit up to turn to Jones, who found or brought in a chair and sits
with a note pad and several books neatly stacked beside him. I read
the spine of the top one, ‘The Thai/English Dictionary’,
below it sits a travel guide to Thailand, then a Thai Mythology and
Religious History book.

On
the note pad, Jones has drawn a looping script, and I recognize it
immediately- I glance back at the inside of my arm- and there it is.
The word has nine characters, with shaded swirling, sloping lines. It
stretches from one side of my arm to the other.

ซึ่งรู้ล่วงหน้า

“
What
does it mean?” I ask while tracing the word with a finger with
my gaze still fixed on the inside of my arm.

I
don’t really expect Jones to answer me, so I don’t even
blink when he ignores my question completely.

“
Let’s
start our debriefing at the point where we were first separated.
Please give as much detail as you possibly can.” Jones is
talking to me, I guess that is a small victory of a sort. I’ve
been debriefed before. I know basically what he wants, but I,
honestly, don’t really feel like rolling over and submitting.

I
stare Jones straight in the eyes. I’m challenging him and from
the set of his expression he knows it. He doesn’t drop my gaze
but from the ever increasing scowl on his face, I could tell he wants
nothing more than to look away.

“
Two
conditions,” I say.

His
eyes narrow.

“
First,
coffee, lots of coffee,” I say, “Second, you have to show
me all your notes, whenever I want to see them. And you tell me what
you’re thinking.”

“
That’s
three,” Jones says, not amused.

“
Three
then,” I say, “In return I will swear that I will not
fall in love with you. In fact, that’s just a given, the idea
of falling in love with you is,” I pause, mostly for effect,
“
abhorrent
to me. You’re pretty and all, but I’d rather-”

“
I
get your point,” Jones snaps, I see a flash of emotion from
him, annoyance, perhaps? But it’s gone before I can identify
it.