The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [46]
Wait. She brushes his arm with her fingertips, and they stop, facing one another, in the middle of the street. Her eyes are open wide, her chest rising and falling. In America he did something, she says. Yes? In America he is a criminal.
No, he says. Who told you that?
I am not stupid, she says. Tears emerge from the corners of her eyes. You tell me the truth. Mr. Ford says to me, one day we can go to America. I think he is lying. Look at your face! In America he is not free.
Marcel looks over her shoulder at the ferry. Vinh, he says, he isn’t lying to you.
She takes a deep breath, and folds her arms across her chest, pursing her lips.
So what do you do now? she asks.
I don’t know, he says. I need to go home. As soon as I can.
Back to San Francisco?
Yes, he says. He thinks of his apartment, his view of the city from Pacific Heights: the enormous TV covered with a layer of dust, the kitchen with three plates and two forks, the piles of dry-cleaning bags and takeout menus. An ache begins in his chest and spreads to his fingertips. I can explain all this, he thinks. I had good reasons. I’m not a criminal. But the words echo and fade, as if he had shouted in an empty room.
This time he falls asleep sitting up, in the same plastic seat on the forward deck, balancing his empty briefcase on his knees. He dreams that he is at a college party in Williamstown, wandering down a dark hallway lit by flickering candles, with a plastic cup of beer in his hand. He opens a door, looking for the bathroom, and walks out into Candlestick Park, the wind whipping his jacket behind him like a cape. Sheets of paper are falling from the sky, drifting, swirling, like giant snowflakes, piling in drifts around the lampposts and in the gutters. He stoops and picks one up. It is a memo, or a letter, with an address printed across the top, but the words are blurred, shifting; he brings it closer to his eyes, and sees that it is written in a strange alphabet, full of slashes and curlicues. I need to call the office, he says. I need to find a translator. He gropes in his jacket for his cell phone, but it has disappeared. All his pockets are empty. He feels water trickling around his ears, down his forehead, and starts awake, opening his eyes in a panic.
It is raining. His shirt clings to his skin, and raindrops are running down his forehead and into his eyes. He stands up; his shoes are full of water, as heavy as bricks. The ferry lurches forward under full power, the engine vibrating loudly, and through the rain he can see the shimmering lights of the skyscrapers, growing larger every second. Get inside, he says to himself, you’ll ruin your shirt, those are Ferragamo shoes; are you crazy? But his feet stay rooted in place, unable, unwilling to move. The rain falling on his face is the warmest he’s ever felt, warmer than rain on a hot summer day in Yonkers. He tilts his head back and sticks his tongue out: it has a slightly salty, briny taste.
I could head south, he thinks. Toward the equator. Someplace where it’s eighty degrees and sunny every day, where there’s no TV. No basketball. He imagines himself at the ticket counter, handing over his American Express card. The first plane to Micronesia. To Malaysia. To Tahiti. If I stepped onto this ferry, and then disappeared, he wonders, would they look for me? Would they even be surprised? The boat heels sideways, and he moves away from the tilt, instinctively, reaching for the rail. The city has become a wall of light, streaking, bleeding into the churning water. He grips the rail with both hands, forcing himself to stare straight ahead, until he feels the brightness surrounding him, dissolving him, as if he’s stepped inside the sun. What a relief, he thinks, what a relief, to be invisible.
Revolutions
Merit and demerit are ever interpenetrated, like light and darkness.
—Bodhidharma
In his sleep he hears the morning sounds of Chiang Mai: motorbikes and tuk-tuks whining past Tha Pae Gate, fruit