The steam on the windows of the internet cafe and the smell of rain on damp clothes and matted beards feels oppressive in Maya’s throat.
I can’t breathe.
She pushes back her chair, picks up her can of Coke, and leaves a 20,000 kip note on the counter for the boy with the big ears, before grabbing the umbrella and escaping out into the rain.
It’s now coming down heavily, even thicker than before, and Maya realises there’s little point shielding herself now – she’s already soaked. Her midnight-blue jersey halterneck clings to every curve of her tired body and her Havaianas slip as she struggles to get a good grip in the floodwater. She closes the umbrella and lets the fat drops drum into her skull as she walks determinedly through the emptying streets with difficulty. Maya’s hair has turned its waviest, as she marches back through a town she doesn’t really know, towards the now-deserted night market. Still scouring left and right as she looks for his tall frame, his comforting neck, his olive skin. But there isn’t a single man looking through the lens of his camera; there isn’t a sight worth photographing.
Did James see me holding his fucking hand?
Maya turns right and diverts to the bar, where Jon is still sitting under the white awning on the veranda, nursing a Beerlao now, reading Bukowski. He looks up and sees her. His eyes light up and he stands.
Maya flies up the short wooden stairway to the decking, to the table. To her utter surprise, she lifts the umbrella as if it were a rifle and pushes the tip into Jon’s chest, pinning him down to the seatback of his chair.
‘How did you find me?’
Her shoulders are tanned and goosebumped; her eyes are fiery and fierce.
‘HOW?’ she shouts louder.
A couple at the end of the decking, the only other occupied table now, stop their hushed longings and look up.
Jon’s face turns tomato red.
Maya lowers the tip of the umbrella, from his torso to his belly button, and leans in a bit harder, more threateningly. Jon winces, and raises his arms in submission.
‘How?’ she says, more quietly and composed this time. Maya is surprised by the fear on Jon’s face, but she can’t see the rage on her own.
Jon thrusts his palms forward, to assert his compliance. ‘Please, Maya—’
‘How?’
‘Let me explain…’
The penny drops and they say it together.
‘The column.’
The column. Maya’s jolly, glossy throwaway account of her travels with Train Man, without going into any real detail of their relationship other than their journey, their route, their plans. Her baby pangs.
He found my weak spot and exploited it.
‘You motherfucker.’
Jon looks down at his deck shoes on the veranda, palms still in the air, wondering why Maya is still pressing the sharp end of a hefty umbrella tip into his navel. He looks back up, his eyes dulled by the fear that he has failed. He tries harder. This is his one shot. He really has to dig deep into the intensity of his craft if he’s to convince Maya now.
‘I read your column one Sunday, about how you were going travelling. I wanted to know where you were and how I could find you. To go to the ends of the earth to tell you that I loved you.’
Did I ever mention Velma’s inheritance?
‘The actor thing is bullshit, right?’
Jon looks ashamed.
‘Look, Maya, it was the biggest mistake of my life. Can’t you see the lengths I’ve gone to – the lengths I will go to – to put it right?’
‘What was the biggest mistake of your life, Jon? What – cheating on me? Dumping me cold-heartedly? Clearing me out? Or doing it to your wife and baby?’
Jon’s gaze turns steely.
‘Or perhaps it was stalking me at The Haven? Doing a runner without paying? It was you who fled that morning, wasn’t it? You were no friend of Moon – he’d never seen you before in his life.’
Maya leans on the umbrella and presses it further into Jon’s belly button. He winces and sweats, looking less comfortable on his perch now.
‘You knew I had money, didn’t you? Did I mention my inheritance in the column too?’ Maya rolls her eyes and calls herself an idiot. She tries to think but can’t remember, there’s too much swirling in her brain, all underpinned by the despair of having lost James.
Did I say I had money?
‘What were you going to do to “put it right”?’ She drives the umbrella in further. ‘Because that sounds like a lot of mistakes to me. Which of those was your biggest mistake? Because they all seem pretty fucking epic.’
Jon can’t think of an answer – he knows he has lost – so he stares out to the rain beyond Maya’s shoulder. To the lofty green valleys above the now blood-brown river. He says nothing. He has stage fright.
‘What was your best-case scenario? That I’d go with you and you’d clean me out and leave me at the airport? Or wait until I had a baby before you emptied my bank account? What was your plan, Jon?’
The charming man is undone, and his smile has a hint of menace at the corners of his mouth now.
‘You following me around, making these gross promises, might have just ruined the best thing that ever happened to me.’
Jon hears the wobble in Maya’s voice, sees that she’s about to crumble, and swipes a hand to grab the umbrella, to free himself from her interrogation. But Maya is too wired, too enraged, too heartbroken. Too quick. She lifts the umbrella away from him, as quick as the rising cobra at their table in Hanoi. She holds it like a baseball bat over her shoulder.
‘You’re a failed actor and a lowlife.’
She thwacks the umbrella and hits Jon in the side of his ribs.
‘Argh!’
He takes the blow with a cry and pants heavily as he clutches his stomach.
‘That’s from me.’
Jon stands, trying to get out of the way, but Maya strikes twice more. He falls back into the chair with a high squeal.
‘And that’s for your wife and baby.’
The couple at the end table try not to laugh. The waitress with the beautiful face and the knowing smile comes out of the bar to shoo her away.
‘Go! Not here!’ she says, as if Maya is the rat.
Maya turns around, striding not scurrying, while Jon whimpers in his chair. She walks down the steps, umbrella under her arm. She walks the deserted streets back to the hotel room, where she lets herself in, locks the door behind her, goes to the bathroom and puts the largest towel around her like a shroud. Even under the towel she can hear the fizz of James’ contact lens solution bubbling as it cleanses them in a little pot, as it has since they got back from kayaking. From the open bathroom door, Maya sees the note is still there, unread and untouched. She walks over to it and falls through the voile net into the middle of the bed and sobs.