And then we were talking, all in a group, and I was being the kind of charming I can be with the help of vodka; and he said something and I rolled my eyes and he said, “She just rolled her eyes at me!” and seemed to like it, and I said: “Well, what did you say? I’m sure you deserved it,” and he said, “Let me show you the view from the other side of the roof,” and we went over there and he kissed me, cutting me off in midsentence with his lips and his tongue. Just like I knew he would.
For much of the night, we walked around the city. We got pizza a few blocks down at a place called Merv’s. We picked up his rental car at a parking garage, but first we stopped on the corner where there was this huge, cement egg-shaped chair. Charlie grabbed my hand and pulled me into the chair next to him and we kissed for an hour.
“I must be having fun,” he told me when we finally stopped and my head was resting on his shoulder. “Because it’s been an hour and fifteen minutes and I’m paying for this car by the hour.”
“I must be having fun too,” I said back, “because I have to get up at seven and it’s already three.” We went on like that for two more hours: kissing on the corners, in the car, against the exteriors of buildings, the grit of their filthy brick walls leaving trails on my shoulders and back. Charlie’s hand on my waist with me in front of him. Later we packed the rest of his apartment into the car, we talked on and on about stuff I don’t remember anymore, not that it matters other than in the sense that it kept us happy. Finally at five a.m. I got in a cab and headed back to my dorm room. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said. I knew he wouldn’t, and he didn’t. After all, he was leaving. But I also knew it wasn’t the last I’d hear of Charlie.
The boat in Kerala is different from what I expected. So’s Anand. He’s older than we are, first of all—maybe in his midtwenties. And Aubrey, she’s quaking in her prissy ballet flats. I plan to keep her quaking. She deserves it. I paid fifty dollars for the use of Anand’s boat for eighteen hours. Around the time we were looking for a boat, the sun was high. The water looked clean and inviting, but the paths to the boats were mostly just mud with a few plywood boards thrown over it. We trudged up and down maybe seven of those paths, and it was all a show. I made this big deal out of checking out five of Anand’s boats before settling on the one Anand himself is sailing, partly to torture Aubrey, but also because it would be too much of a giveaway to choose his right away, even though hundreds of tourists must come through here. I don’t want Anand to know how we found him, that we know Charlie. We’ll find out more if we’re covert. I like the word covert. It makes me feel like we’re protagonists in a spy movie.
Aubrey’s looking for her stupid journal and I’m looking for Charlie. Still looking, still believing he’s alive, even though it’s been more than two weeks since his alleged death. Still thinking we’ll find him, if only we search under the right rocks. Like he’s a lost puppy. Am I crazy for thinking this way? Aubrey thinks I want answers; and I do, but I want them from Charlie. I’d feel bad for her if I weren’t so angry with her; but anger has pretty much filled every fiber of my being, until I almost ooze it. I woke up furious this morning in our hotel. My whole body was coiled and so tense that my muscles were sore, almost like I’d spent all night working out.
It got me thinking about all the things that are put on for show. Charlie and me, for one. His heart was apparently half elsewhere. Aubrey and me . . . sometimes it feels like a screwed-up fledgling friendship with her. I’ve always been popular, moved around a lot, had groups of friends wherever I’ve gone. But I’ve never had just one friend who was mine, precisely for the reason that I do move around a lot. That’s what it’s started to feel like with Aubrey. Then I stop to think about how messed up it is, how much we’ve already lied to each other. And now, finding this boat, weaving more lies, and a true friendship—the kind I’ve always craved—feels impossible. Sometimes it feels like my whole life lately is one huge lying mess. Sometimes I wonder if I would have thrown my whole self into Charlie the way I did, if only I’d had closer friends.