The air is stagnant and heavy, as though it’s been recycled by a thousand bodies already. The tape that was used to bind me has fused to my mouth. Every time I breathe, it creates a vacuum, and I panic and struggle against the metal cords that cut deep into my wrists and ankles. Screaming silently. The panic is worse than the night terrors that used to paralyze me as a kid, worse than any kind of physical pain, worse because I let myself believe for two seconds that I was safe. That I could climb in that taxi with Aubrey and fly away from all this and erase Charlie forever.
It’s black where I am. Too black to see anything, even outlines of shapes. I’m lying on cold, hard cement. I can’t stop shaking. I tense, then freeze. Footsteps are drawing close. They’re feather-light, almost soundless. Still, I detect them in the vibrations of the floor, in the rhythmic thrum just past my own desperate breathing. I widen my eyes and still I see nothing and the cement presses against my cheek and jaw and as the steps draw closer, I imagine all the ways they could kill me.
A foot to my skull. (It is exposed; there’s nothing to protect it.) A knife in my back. (My back arches away from the invisible knife.) A gun. (I press myself into the ground, begging its cement mouth to swallow me.)
The person draws closer and I sniff the air, trying to detect scents of him. Is it him? Is it Charlie, walking tiptoe like all the times he snuck up behind me and covered my eyes and kissed my neck and made me guess? All of a sudden, I know it: I’ve found Charlie, just as I had hoped to. I’ve ended the story that started three years ago. Meeting him was inevitable. Our relationship was inevitable. This moment was inevitable, I know now.
The person is next to me. I can feel his presence. I hear the creak of his knees as he squats low. I am still. My cheeks are wet with tears. I wait for the blow that will kill me. I pray for it, because waiting is too much misery.
I feel a hand on my back. My body folds in on itself. The hand moves to my back pocket. Then it’s drawing away, and my pocket is lighter, its contents gone. I am lighter and heavier all at once.
The footsteps retreat.
I am alive, for now. But I wish I were dead. I decide that being dead would be better than anticipating death.
30
Aubrey
The first few times I asked, they ignored me. Then I swore, pleaded, cried, yelled. I struggled against their arms until they had to contain me.
Finally, with my arms and legs bound by shackles, they said it:
Murder.
“No.” I shook my head. I yelled. “I had nothing to do with the plane crash,” I cried. I said all the wrong things. “I had nothing to do with Charlie’s death.”
“So what happened on the plane? Tell us exactly how he died.” Their voices were loud and insistent, full of vitriol.
“I don’t know,” I insisted. “I don’t know if he’s dead.”
“But you just said—”
“I don’t know!”
“Tell us about your association with Lena Whitney.”
Tears, buckets of them, wet on my cheeks and chest, soaking the thin tunic I’d been wearing for days. I was sweating. I could smell my own stench. It smelled like panic and fear, but a thousand times worse, coupled with the fetid odors of the bodies that are packed around me.
I’m in Bang Kwang Prison.
All I smell is filth and rot. All I hear are the Thai policemen’s words:
A body was found. A female tourist. Her throat slashed. Your credit card was on her person. Her passport read “Lena Whitney, of Boston, Massachusetts.” Tell us about Miss Whitney, Aubrey.
And so I began:
We came to search for Charlie.
Charlie Price?
That’s right. When do I get out of here? When can I go home?
Home? Your home is Bangkok now.
And around these words, the moans of the ill. The rattling of shackles. Bodies pressed upon bodies pressed upon the cold rails of the cage. It’s not a cell, where they’ve thrown me. It’s a cage, ten by twelve, packed with twenty-five bodies or more. We’re lying on top of one another. There are no toilets, just a hole in the opposite side of the room. We’re lying in our own filth. It must only be six in the morning at the latest, but no one’s asleep.
Some of the girls have open wounds. There are flies everywhere. The odor nearly makes me pass out; I struggle to breathe through my nose. I badly have to urinate. It’s been hours. I push my way to the hole. One woman elbows me; another runs her hand down my leg beyond the dark brown shorts they gave me. I jerk away from her and lurch into someone else, and then they’re both laughing until others join in, and it feels like a hundred hands are grabbing at me. There’s one other Caucasian in the cell; she’s pressed up against a wall, watching from just outside the fray. I meet her eyes, pleading desperately for help, but she turns away and smirks. They’ve taken my other clothes. They’ve dumped me here without a word. They told me Lena is dead.
But they said Lena had red hair.