Chapter Thirteen #2
I followed him down a bustling street where sex workers shared the pavement with food stalls and vendors of fake designer belts.
We tried and failed to find a bar with space in the window for people watching, and then, because the evening wasn’t really taking shape, walked around Nana Plaza, where music pounded and girls danced on eight-inch heels, looking confusingly carefree and happy.
Those not performing hung in groups, laughing and cackling, seemingly without a care in the world. From all directions, men watched.
“Why are we here?” I asked eventually. Johan had barely said a word since we’d got off the Skytrain, but he kept scanning around, as if he was waiting for someone—or being followed.
There were probably just as many tourists as there would have been at the night market, but here they were mostly male and mostly disgusting.
I could not understand why he’d wanted to come, and I told him as much.
“I might be twenty-seven, but I’m embarrassingly poorly traveled,” I said.
“Really, Johan, I’m fine with the beaten path. What’s going on?”
For what seemed like a long time he looked straight at me, unsmiling. Then his eyes slid off left, as if he was trying to find the right words.
I waited, frightened now.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There has been something going on. You’re right.”
“What?”
He sighed. “So, our fixer in Myanmar called when I—”
“Hang on. What’s a fixer?”
“Oh, like a local person who sorts everything out for you when you’re doing a job in a foreign country. This guy does a lot of work with news crews, aid agencies, all sorts.”
“OK.”
“Anyway. He called last night.” He paused. “I don’t fully understand it. But it seems he bribed someone to get our diving permits. It’s standard practice, apparently; he has to do it all the time because otherwise they take months to go through and a lot of the applications just get ‘lost.’ ”
“Right…?”
“But the official he bribed has just been arrested for something. I don’t know what. But I imagine it’s a lot bigger than getting our diving permits through more quickly than usual.”
“OK…”
“And he—our fixer, I mean—he’s worried. He said the guy who’s been arrested has been throwing out names left, right, and center of people who’ve bribed him, accusing them of far more serious bribes and frauds than they actually committed.”
“Is your fixer in trouble? Are you?”
“I’d have thought that a bunch of geeky archaeological divers are of zero interest to the authorities. But I don’t know. He’s going to email an update, hopefully tonight.”
A Britney Spears track came pounding on in the bar behind Johan. The lights changed to blue and a bunch of dancers started a routine for the rash of men dotted around on bar stools. Johan didn’t seem to notice. He was staring blankly at the busy street behind me.
“You seem worried,” I said. I reached forward and held a hand on his cheek for a moment.
“I am, a bit. He just sounded…really weird. He basically said I had to ‘lie low’ while he got on top of this. Like, not hang out in the obvious places.”
“You mean, he thinks someone could be looking for you? The police?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. All I have to go on is a stressy voicemail.”
“OK. I…wow. Is that why you brought me here?”
Johan frowned. “Sort of. Although it was a bad choice. I forget these places are just as full of tourists as anywhere else.”
“It’s OK. You panicked. I’m sure I’d have come up with an even more harebrained scheme.”
He smiled gratefully.
“Is he shady too, do you think? The fixer?”
Johan shook his head. “Oh, no. I mean, you could argue he’s a bit shady if he’s paying bribes, but that’s just how it goes out there. He’s trusted by all the aid agencies. And he’s just a sound guy. I really like him.”
“So…?”
“So I’m worried that they’re threatening him, I suppose. I just didn’t like how freaked out he sounded.”
He ran a hand through his hair, watching a man negotiate with a sex worker. “And for what it’s worth, Carrie, you’re right. This area is not ‘interesting.’ It’s just sex. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“It’s OK.”
“I should have just told you everything in the first place.”
“Always tell me,” I said. I took his hands in mine. “I’m surprised you didn’t.”
Johan watched me for a while, then pulled up a weak smile. “I’m sorry. I just—it’s your first time here. Your first time traveling anywhere this far. I didn’t want to…”
“I’m not a child,” I said. “Johan, I’ve watched people’s organs shut down.
Seen them bleed out and die. I had to save the life of a man who’d done an unforgivable thing just a few weeks ago.
And yes, I’ve been too focused on my career to travel a great deal, but that does not make me unworldly. I really don’t need protecting.”
“I know.”
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said. “We can get a good sleep and start over tomorrow.”
Johan studied me for a few more seconds, then nodded. “Thank you,” he said. He leaned in and kissed me, then hugged me, hard. “I love you, Carrie.”
We went back to our room, had another shower, and checked emails before going down for food.
Mum had emailed Johan to check all was well, in the absence of any contact from me—although really, I think she had simply developed a crush on him, like everyone else, and was enjoying the contact.
Mum seldom worried about my whereabouts.
More importantly, Johan had had a text from his fixer. “It’s all OK,” he said, reading fast. “It’s all…Hang on…”
I went over and read the message over his shoulder.
Hi mate, it began. Thanks for your message and please don’t worry—I deal with this sort of thing every day.
Thankfully the guy in question has left me out of his show-and-tell, which is great.
It was all getting a bit hairy! I’ve got you all properly sorted now; you’ll be covered by new permits from Sept 17th onward, so take a few extra days enjoying Thailand with your girlfriend. And no, nothing else to worry about.
“There it is,” Johan said. I felt him relax as he read and reread the message, then tossed his phone onto the bed. “And I knew it, really. I’m just the guy hoovering the seafloor.”
I told Mum I was fine so she wouldn’t email Johan again, then changed my flights to make use of the unexpected extra few days Johan had before his new permit started.
Then we went downstairs and drank cocktails, delirious with heat and tiredness and the relief of reconnection. There was to be no rain for three days, a Czech engineer told us. He was off to Koh Tao for a few days’ diving.
“How about it?” Johan said, later on. “You could get your open water certificate. The diving’s incredible around there.”
And I said yes without hesitation, because that was the kind of person I was becoming.