SEASICK

‘I hear you did a good show,’ Charles says into the bowl as he sucks in a mouthful of noodles from his soup.

‘Yes, it seemed to do the trick.’ I decide his way of eating is better than mine, as I have splatters of sauce over the front of my T-shirt. Trying to eat noodles with dignity doesn’t work. I bend my head low down over my bowl and slurp up too. Inelegant, but it isn’t a social issue here. Get those noodles in no matter what noise you make. And why not?

‘So now you must do your part of the deal.’

Cars crawl past outside the window. I squint as white sunlight reflects off them.

‘But your men didn’t do anything.’

‘Exactly what I told them. Only if you were being killed would they step in. I am an excellent judge of people, and there is something in you, or perhaps not in you, that I knew would deal with the problem without too much help.’

‘I’m a coward, so I don’t know what you saw.’

‘It’s what I didn’t see. Something is missing in you, and when people aren’t whole, they get on and do what they must without worry for themselves.’

‘Like you.’

Charles nods, then slurps up the last of the noodles. He dabs his mouth with a fine handkerchief he pulls from the inside of his jacket, then his hand goes to the pocket on the other side and he pulls out a small, worn, black book. He flicks through some pages, eyes squinting, until he finds what he is looking for.

‘On Tuesday you must be in Lampuuk near Banda Aceh. Teddy will meet you at the next cove north from Lampuuk beach during the afternoon. You will do everything he says.’ He closes the black book and puts it on the table next to his coffee.

‘Why?’ I dig around under the thick black coffee with a teaspoon, looking for condensed milk. I manage to recover some. This is the taste of Indonesia. Strong thick coffee and sweet milk.

‘Because he will help you replace the missing bit of you.’

‘If you’re so sure, why don’t you use him? Use him to help you and Su-Chin sort out your problems.’

‘Because Su-Chin does not want to be helped. She does not want me.’ He lights a cigarette and rubs his eyes. ‘And I respect her for that. I am not good for her.’

‘Well, I think—’

‘I do not care what you think. It is not your business, so do not talk about her again.’

My mouth opens to tell him that I’m not his business either, but I yank the words back down from the top of my throat. He can’t help his wife, so he wants to help me. Although why me, I’m not sure. Maybe he just wants to help anyone.

‘Neither you nor Teddy know my problems. I’ll do what you want, but you can’t help me either. It’s impossible.’ I move my packet of cigarettes on the table around like I’m thinking chess moves, then I take one out and light it. I draw in the smoke and hold it, let it burn my lungs, get in my veins, do its business, before blowing it from my nose in two long straight grey lines.

‘Teddy sees you have problems. You are like a glass man to him; you can’t hide anything from him.’

I study him for once, stare at him like he stares at people. Look at the straightness of his mouth, into the lines around his eyes and the darkness within them. He looks back and for the first time we hold each other’s gaze as equals. His pupils seem to quiver for a moment and then they break away from me. They scan the room as if searching for something.

‘Excuse me.’ He gets up and heads to the toilets.

I blink, move the cigarette pack around the table with index finger again, until it nudges Charles’s notebook. The notebook that holds the details of my future appointment and, as he normally keeps it close to his chest, probably details of many of his appointments, meetings and, perhaps, contacts.

I look over my shoulder: waiter scribbling a couple’s order, people dotted around the high-class restaurant slurping noodles, a corridor leading to toilets. No one paying bule any attention; that’s one thing about expensive places, the Westerner is left alone.

I flip the book around to face me and flick through its pages. Chinese characters everywhere and no order or headings to pages. But at the back, just as I am about to replace it as I found it, a page of numbers, each one preceded by characters. The numbers look like phone numbers, and some have international prefixes. Quickly checking behind me again, I reach into my school bag and pull out a scrap of paper and a pen and scrawl any number that starts with 00. I scrawl quickly and copy ten numbers. I fold the paper and slide it into my shirt pocket with the pen and then return the notebook to where it was. Five seconds later Charles returns and sits. His hand goes to the book and puts it back in his jacket.

‘You have been running while I was in the bathroom?’

My eyes can’t meet his. I force a laugh.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You have sweat on your face.’

‘It’s hot.’

‘There is air conditioning.’

‘Perhaps it’s the thought of Teddy and his voodoo.’

‘You will see it is not voodoo. But you will see. You have no excuse for not going.’

‘But Tuesday is only three days away. My teach—’

‘I must see Pak Andy later today. I will tell him you must have time off. Do not worry about him. His debt has made him my bitch.’ He manages one of his almost-smiles at this. I manage a whole one.

‘Your American English is really good.’

‘I thought this phrase was universal English.’

‘It probably is, but it started in the States, I’m sure.’

‘Most things do these days. Most things do.’ He stands up and looks down at me. ‘Go there. Lampuuk. That is almost the last thing I want you to do.’

‘Almost? What else?’ I prepare for the drug-dealing bit, or the smuggling, or whatever strange something this man is going to ask of me.

‘Pay the bill. It is your turn.’ He leaves without another word, steps out into the heat in his black suit, sun reflecting off slicked-back hair. I watch through the window as a car pulls up beside him. He climbs in and is gone.

I ask for the bill, wondering if I have enough cash on me.

‘No bill,’ says the waiter, stern-faced and polite. ‘Always free here for Mr Charles.’

I put a generous tip on the table and leave, confused, guilty for looking at his book. There is a grumbling in my stomach. I feel something else. Excitement? No, but something. Tingling. Perhaps about this meeting with Teddy, maybe about travelling to Banda Aceh, or maybe about the numbers in my pocket.

Or is it about Laura? This is all to do with Laura. Everything: my confusion, my situation, my unhappiness, my anger. My anger at myself for hoping again, for letting her in when she doesn’t exist. For the other night I spent with her in the storm. And why does she only come when she feels like it?

Yes, why does she only come when I don’t expect her? The selfish, selfish bitch. I wince at the word and for using it for her, but fuck, she’s ruined me. I don’t know who I am now. One minute strong and confident and somehow sort of happy, and the next miserable and alone. She has made me mad. Clinically mad. Bitch.

I don’t believe it’s possible, but I hope Teddy will sort me out, rid me of her. Give me a reason to carry on and maybe enjoy life again. I am suddenly feeling empty, gut-twisting empty; I haven’t even got Old Me or New Me down there; I’m not sure who or what I am anymore. I’m rubbing my head, aware that a dull throb is behind my eyes. I walk down the street, the busy, hot, stinking street where dust sticks to me and everyone watches me. Watches the foreigner. The strange man who is so big and awkward-looking. Out of place like an elephant in a field of sheep.

She just fucks with me. Plays with me. She died and now all she does is mess with my head. And that is not what Laura was. Laura was understanding, wise, kind. Alive. Whoever it is that comes to me now, it is not the Laura I know. It is a Laura changed by death, made bitter and hurtful.

Fuck, it’s so hot today. The traffic is so noisy and the smell of rotting rubbish burns my nose. Getting so deep up my nostrils I won’t be able to get rid of it. It will stick like the stench of vomit. And the throbbing behind my eyes has started to spread through my head.

‘Well, fuck you, Laura. If you don’t come now to discuss this, fuck you.’

I wait for a response.

‘Exactly. Point made. I fucking miss you, and when I really want to see you, you don’t come.’ Bule, big, awkward, talking to himself. What do I care?

Ah, is that her next to me? I sense her as I walk along the pavement. But when I look, she isn’t there.

I miss my old girlfriend. ‘My solid, funny, annoying girlfriend.’ My lips are moving while I walk. I’m willing her to come to me, but with each step I take, she still doesn’t appear, and I grow angrier.

‘Don’t give a shit. Don’t give a shit. Don’t give a shit.’ Each time louder. I shout the last and people around me stare. ‘Don’t give a shit.’ Suddenly I run into the road, forcing a motor becak to stop. Sunlight is scalding my eyes, giving strength to the fire that now burns in my head.

‘Crazy bule,’ the driver yells and before he has time to do or say anything else, while taxis and yellow buses beep horns behind him, I jump in his sidecar with such a force that it nearly overbalances him and the bike.

‘Hotel Garuda,’ I tell him. It’s the only place I can think of to dull my head, to dampen the burn in my skull and to get pissed up in the afternoon. And I want to get pissed up.

I am pissed up. The skull pain has been numbed by drinks at Garuda. But I’ve moved on from there. I stumble through the doors at Memphis into a world of spinning lights and forced deafness. A thumping, repetitive drumming hits my ears like a boxer punching and punching them. It’s a different assault to the headache. This repetition aids the numbness. It feels good. I’m looking at everything as though through coloured sweet-wrappers. Everything is crinkly and unclear and yet vivid. And I’m angry. The bitch still hasn’t made an appearance. One day she’s all over me like life was never whacked out of her and the next she’s roadkill, dead and empty and rotting.

Well what about me, you cow? Getting my hopes up for something that’s impossible. Pretending you never died, just so that you can break me apart again when you want. Make me crazy and force me to run away and live in this other world just to get over you. And then you follow me here and mess with me so I can’t move on. I can’t change.

You fucking BITCH.

‘Whisky and Coke.’ The wallop with which my chest hits the bar as I fall against it knocks the words out. I reach between my legs, fumble behind me and pull a stool up while the barman does as he’s told. He places the drink on the bar and I throw a note next to it. Spinning around on my stool I scan the room like a broken CCTV camera. The image is shaky and nothing is in focus but the camera manages to go from left to right without falling off its mount.

Is that Charles? Come on, turn around. Black suit, black hair. Nope. Not Charles. Your club, but you wouldn’t be seen dead here of a night. Not your thing, eh Charlie boy?

I move from the stool and collapse onto a chair by the dance floor, being oh so careful with my glass as I put it on the table. There are only a few people shimmering around the place at various tables and in darkened corners and only one person swirling in their psychedelic secret garden on the dance floor. She is bule. Light-brown hair flops over her face and she moves like some hippy chick from Woodstock. Her dancing seems familiar.

‘Still not coming for me then, ickle Laura?’ I ask the room, not caring if anyone sees me talking. They can’t hear me above this hammering wall of sound that’s wrapped around me. ‘Eh, I said not coming then?’

Silence in the thunder. Is that an oxymoron? Who knows? Who cares?

Closing my eyes I sip on my whisky and amuse myself with the slight dizzying of my mind. There is a hand on my neck and a warm breath of unheard words next to my ear.

‘Ah, you couldn’t resist, could you?’

I open my eyes to see Laura. But it isn’t her. This face is familiar but too close for me to see all its features and complete the jigsaw. I put my hand just below her neck and push back. The face falls together under the mess of brown hair.

‘Ha. Julie.’

‘Ha. Newbie.’ She pulls a chair up next to mine and leans in close again, mouth millimetres from enveloping my ear. She smells of sweat and coconut.

‘Didn’t recognise you swirling around out there.’

‘What you doing here, hero man?’

‘Getting fuck-faced mostly.’ I wave my glass at her.

‘Feeling down? What is it with you? What’s your story? Tell me for once.’

‘Nah. It’d make your brain explode.’

‘I think that’s already happening.’ She laughs and shakes her head around to prove it. ‘Go on.’

‘Nope.’ I’m not sure why I don’t want to tell her. Scared? Not sure what will happen once the weight of it falls from my mouth again? Just too drunk to get my tongue around it? Anyway, ‘Nope, nope, nope.’

‘Well how about some medicine then? It’s got to be about nine. And it’s Saturday night. And I, too, wish to get fuck-faced.’

‘Why? What’s your story then? Marty been too much?’

She touches her nose with her index finger, then points it at me.

‘Spot on. Marty’s a fucking pillow on my face, suffocating me. I wish he’d give me a fucking break. Know what I mean?’

‘Oh. Is that my fault? Leaving you two alone together at Toba?’

‘Nah. Would have happened eventually. You obviously weren’t going to shag me, so he was the next choice.’ She punches my arm and sniggers. ‘Not really. Like I said, you’re too fucking skinny, man. Too delicate.’

‘Let’s get medicine.’

‘Well, alrighty then.’ She puts her hand up and calls over a waiter. Five minutes later he’s handing us little blue pills from under his apron.

‘These look different,’ Julie says as she turns one over in her hand.

The waiter leans down to talk to her. Green laser lights descend in lines through foggy dry ice to the floor. She nods and gets close enough to eat my ear.

‘Says they’re the same obat to the usual, but changed the colour. Do the same shit.’

‘Whatever,’ I say and throw the pill to the back of my throat.

‘Let’s dance these bastards up.’ Julie pulls me by the arm to a stormy ship’s deck of a dance floor where we sway from side to side and a strange seasickness starts to work its way up my legs.

I try to stamp it away. Banging feet on the floor. One of them clicks like wood on wood. Ha, a wooden leg. I am Long John Silver. She is my first mate. I salute her. We dance a shanty. The ship pitches on a swell. I stumble across the deck and hold on to the rails. The ship rights herself. The lights are flashing all around. We’re in a storm, me hearties. I hang on to my first mate and shout in her ear over the clap of thunder, ‘No frigging in the rigging.’ She looks at me, eyes wide, and then laughs a hearty sailor’s laugh.

‘Aye aye, Cap’n.’’

What’s that coming through the wind and rain and lightning? A dark and dusky girl. She is a beauty. Must be from a nearby island. She talks to my first mate and first mate nods. First mate hands me over. Dusky beauty leads me to a seat below decks. Out of the storm.

‘What you do, Crazy?’

Ah, native girl knows the lingo. And a familiar voice. A soft hand strokes my cheek. Familiar touch too.

‘Aha, Princess Eka. What are ye doing on my ship?’

‘So now you crazy pirate. I think you take very strong obat. I get you water.’

‘Water? There be nothing here but water.’ I laugh as I look to the sea and don’t find it.

A bottle is put in my hands.

‘Drink.’

I drink. I drink it all. Feel it flowing down and down inside, cooling. It feels like a long time since something so pure passed my lips. I blink at the lightning in the night sky. It flashes a few more times until it turns back into spinning wheels of bulbs and strobes and lasers.

‘I’m fucked.’

‘Yes, you are. And you look very bad. You should go home.’

‘I like fucked.’ Suddenly my stomach burns. I cradle it with both arms. Sweat drips off my head onto my trouser legs.

‘I think you sick.’

‘Just fucked…’ I get up and stagger to the toilets. Where are the toilets? Everything is suddenly banging at my back door to be let out. But toilets? I don’t know where they are. Can’t see the signs for the lights. I stagger and bounce from table to wall to table. Another hand is on my arm, strong and guiding. It is a man. From where? Where do I know him from? ‘Where do I know you from?’

He doesn’t answer but suddenly I am pushed into a small room and there, oh yes, there is a toilet. A sit-on one. God bless progress. Trousers just make it to thighs and bum to seat and the trapdoor bursts open to a raucous cheer and clapping and a sigh.

When it’s all over, I walk back to Eka, who is talking with Julie. Sweat stings in my eyes.

I sit and the room moves around me.

‘How you doing?’ Julie asks, wide eyes unblinking at me.

‘Want more fucked.’

‘No,’ says Eka.

‘Yes,’ says I.

‘I’m up for it,’ says Julie and raises an arm at the waiter.

Eka tuts and crosses her arms under her breasts.

‘You have beautiful breasts.’

She tuts again and wiggles her arms under them.

‘You sick. You need bed.’

‘No. A sick man needs medicine and here comes mine now.’

The waiter slides another blue pill out from his apron and Julie and I tilt our heads back. I want to be on my boat again or to be some other strange place. Sick or not. I want out of reality.

Kiss Eka on the head. Here’s the hand waving, hip gyrating again. Julie’s hair thrown around. Things are coursing through me, a thick viscous fluid through my veins. Under my skin. Burning under the surface. I shake my head, my body, not sure if I want to make it more or less. I don’t care. My face is liquid, flowing off my skull, leaving bone bare. Laser lights reflect off my bone. Dancing crazy skeleton. I feel my face and bone so cold. Rub it. Feels weird. Weird cold wet bone.

—OK. Enough.

Ah, at last the bitch.

Her voice inside my head, above the thundering music.

I spin around to see her, but here is Eka. Hands on my hands, pulling them away from my face. Her lips move and head shakes.

‘What?’ I ask. Trying to pull my hands free to touch my face again.

—Enough. Come away from here. You need sleep, Ice-Cream Boy.

Eka’s mouth says the words, but it’s not Eka.

‘How? What?’

I lean in close to her, stare deep in to her eyes.

‘Eh, Crazy. Come. You wet everywhere. Come.’

I blink and it’s Laura staring into my eyes.

‘Come. I give massage to help sleep.’ Eka’s voice. Laura’s lips.

‘Fuck going on?’ I grab Laura by the top of her arms. ‘Fuck you doing?’

‘Ado. Ado. Hurt me. Stop.’ Laura’s face is creased. I let go. Eka again.

—You tripping, boy. Laura behind me.

I spin to see Julie there smiling wide-eyed.

—Go on. Go off with your little girlie.

—Laura, just be you, damn it. Don’t fuck with me.

—You’re fucking with you.

Behind me again, I spin and only Laura is there, lights dancing over her white linen top, her jeans, her black eyelashes, her beautiful nose and pale skin and darker than black eyebrows and she is there and she says,

—I love you, idiot. Don’t kill yourself. It sucks here in my world. Stop tripping and wandering and messing about and start living.

I hug her. Hold her close. Her cool skin on my hot. So cool. But she feels wrong. Her breasts too large against me, hair too thick. I pull away and Eka is there.

‘Come,’ she says and new water flows down my face. Salt water everywhere. I taste the sea again. I’m all at sea.

‘Susu. Sweet milk. Drink. Susu.’

Warm glass against my lips and sweetness almost washes the bitterness away. I keep my eyes closed. So much easier with them closed.

—Come on, drink the milk. Poor sick numbnuts.

I wish I could block my ears. My hot ears. Or is it her voice in my head? My thumping, full head. They can’t both be here, Old Me and her. Are they best friends now? So hot. Is this what dying feels like?

—It hurts more than this. A fast, sweet pain that cuts through like blades.

‘Come, Crazy. You not die. Just fever. Sleep.’

Softness of skin on cheek. Soft-skinned pillows. A hand stroking my hair.

—Sleep, baby. Sleep.

‘Sleep.’

—Sleep.