Eleven Twenty-Three (3 page)

“I will be
so
glad when our flight
leaves,” Tara says, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Look at this
bullshit up ahead.”

Pudong Airport is crowded tonight. Unrest
builds. Since four different flights out of Shanghai were all
simultaneously postponed due to an earthquake or cyclone or some
other typical disaster to the west, visitors from Thailand and
India have gathered outside of Terminals 17 and 18 and are shouting
in various annoying languages. A young Tibetan man opens a
complimentary water bottle and splashes it across the two terrified
girls working at the terminal. An old lady of indeterminate origin
shouts in what I believe is Wu dialect since I am unable to pick
out any of the words. She is waving her shriveled and disfigured
arms about wildly as she rants. Babies cry. The room seethes and
boils with anger and body heat.

Tara is nervous as we pass the tumult and
whispers in my ear that this would never be allowed to happen back
in the States. What I do not whisper back is that in the States I
would be a twenty-seven year-old unemployed teacher waiting on
tables at Applebee’s. I would hate my life again just like I hated
it before we left and luckily only halfway hate now.

It has been a longer four months than I ever
anticipated with Tara. In typical Tara fashion, at first she was
ecstatic over the possibility of leaving the country to teach
abroad for a year. She learned terrible broken Chinese catchphrases
and memorized the history of Suzhou and Shanghai. She became a
Wikipedia zombie and came to bed every night with
pseudo-encyclopedic knowledge on practically every aspect of life
in the China, and when she finally got bored with that, she started
looking up Bhutan and Myanmar.

“Did you know that all tobacco products are
banned in Bhutan?” she asked me one evening. On another, she said,
“I’m afraid that something big is about to happen in Myanmar,
Sunshine. Have you read what’s going on over there?”

I was happy for her enthusiasm about moving,
but she was annoying me at a time in my life when I was very easily
annoyed.

Now, ever since we arrived back in August,
things have steadily declined for her. At first she found the
stares, the aromas, the language barriers and open markets and
poisonous tap water and superstitious fruit stand ladies and
fingerless street children charming. She danced in the park with
housewives practicing their Tai Chi. She sampled grilled snake in a
Cantonese-style restaurant far removed from the suave bars and
cafes of the French Concession in Shanghai. We had frantic, sweaty
sex in the back of a boat-ride down the primeval canals of Suzhou
and giggled about it for days.

Then one night when we got home from the
university, Tara complained that Chinese college students hate the
Japanese to a frightening degree. The next week, it was that
Chinese students don’t like participating or getting involved in
class, and that it was very difficult to break them from their old
habits of sitting quietly at their desk as teachers driveled on and
on about useless shit. “Nongtang of the Damned,” she called them
while stupid drunk outside of a club one night. And it got worse
and worse thereafter. The water in our shower was purportedly
making her break out all over. She was sick and goddamned tired of
the public restrooms and the pit in the floor she was expected to
levitate over to pee. The only easily accessible American food
consisted of KFC and McDonald’s, and the ice in the drinks at those
places always gave her diarrhea. I listened to spiel after spiel
about Myanmar and how the time to help those people was
now
,
even as Tara squirmed free from the weak outstretched hands right
in front of her face. Our apartment started to get cold around
November and she insisted we caulk the windows to keep the cold air
out and so I did, though I had no idea what caulking was or how it
was done or whether it required a condom. For the past three weeks,
she has been tossing and turning in bed, having bad dreams about
her mother not recognizing her when she finally returned home and
instead of hugging her, attempting to bite into the flesh of her
neck and drink her blood.

Two days ago she mentioned the marriage thing
again.

I have to admit I am almost thankful we’re
going home early. The thought has occurred to me that maybe she
will just stay back in Lilly’s End and won’t return with me on
December 29.

When we get to Terminal 23 and find out that
our flight will be boarding very shortly, Tara smiles brightly,
kisses my cheek and cuddles up haphazardly against me. She mouths
an “eat shit” to a wild-eyed Chinese scene kid who keeps raping her
with his eyes.

We do not speak for several minutes.

“Ships that pass in the night,” she
whispers.

“What about them?” I ask, feeling slightly
drunk.

“What a weird thing to say, is all.”

“It was certainly different,” I agree. “I’ve
heard that expression before though. In college one of my
professors said it in reference to his wife cheating on him, I
think. It was one of those bizarre lecture moments that tend to
happen every so often.”

“Sunshine, I’ll tell you what’s bizarre: that
man Mr. Scott. That guy totally creeped me out.”

“He’s a courier with a briefcase on his
wrist, Tara. I imagine they’re quite a unique breed. I’ve
personally never met one. He was probably just lonely and looking
to impress us.”

“I hope we’re not seated near him on the
plane. What if he has Semtex or something in that case and he’s
actually a potential suicide bomber?”

“That’s impossible, sweetie. First of all,
one might argue that he’s definitely the wrong skin color for that.
Second, if it was anything even remotely dangerous in there, do you
think he would be traipsing around one of the largest airports in
the world right now? From what Fox News tells me, they’re making it
pretty tough on those darned terrorists nowadays.”

“I guess not,” she agrees, obviously
relieved. “Will you hand me my bag? I want to take a Xanax before
the flight.”

“May I have one?” I ask. “I can’t sleep in
recycled air.”

I hand Tara her bag from underneath my seat.
She rummages around and produces a prescription bottle full of
different kinds of pills—Xanax, Valium, Adderall, Percocet—and not
a single one prescribed to her. We both take a bar apiece and
swallow it down with our bottled water, which we seem to
perpetually hold with one free hand every second we are awake in
this country.

Despite the rising vociferations and tirades
from Terminals 17 and 18, everything around us numbs and goes
quiet. I let my head slump on the leather seat. There are not many
people milling about our terminal, and I grow hopeful that our
flight is half-empty and that we will be able to stretch our legs
and fart undetected and maybe even fool around underneath the thin
airline blankets they hand you upon boarding a red-eye.

It occurs to me that the Xanax may not have
been so great an idea after three bottles of beer back in the
lounge just as I drift off to sleep.

In my five-minute dream, Mitsuko is on top of
me, peeling off slivers of her own flesh with razor-sharp
fingernails. She foams at the mouth, and I try to push her naked
bleeding body off of me, but she won’t stop. She’s gyrating back
and forth, pouring blue-white spit from her mouth, roaring
incoherent nonsense. When I look away and peer out into Hajime’s
old hallway outside of his bedroom, the corridor protracts,
becoming miles in distance. Yet I can still see clearly when my
best friend guzzles Tara’s blood as it pours down from her severed
head. I can see every detail of my father’s clean-shaven face and
that impeccable business smile as he comes toward Mitsuko and me
from the hallway. I peer through a fog that shrouds all hope. I can
see my father approaching us, approaching
me
, trying to say
how sorry he is for everything through gritted teeth covered in
ripped skin and gore. I see myself screaming, see the grandfather
clock above my head as the minute hand passes and the evil within
us suddenly washes away like a retreating tide, and we are left
paralyzed on the beach waiting for it to start again.

I awake.

When I come to, some onomatopoeia-like noise
escapes me and Tara shudders into consciousness as well. For a
couple of minutes we try to collect ourselves, and shortly after,
they begin the boarding of our flight out of China and Tara and I
can barely keep ourselves together long enough to find our
passports.

We’re in the coach bulkhead right behind the
bathrooms on a 747 jet. Tara fully extends her legs and immediately
leans back in her seat, to which a passing flight attendant
explains in broken English is against the rules and that her seat
must be in the upright position for take-off. Tara rolls her eyes
and sits up.

“I’m glad to be going home,” she says
quietly.

“Are you?” I ask her, looking up and down the
aisles to see how full the plane is. It’s quiet and vacuous all
around me, a good sign.

“I really, really am. It will be great to be
with everyone for Christmas. I miss my mom and dad and Hajime and
Mark and Julie and Jasmine—Mitsuko not so much, but that’s
okay.”

Tara has never been a huge fan of Mitsuko.
Mitsuko never thought much of Tara either, now that I think about
it. They’ve just always managed to tolerate each other for the
greater good of the group.

“God, that reminds me,” I say. “I just had a
bad dream about Mitsuko and her brother in the terminal. It scared
the hell out of me. Don’t you have any Ambien? Xanax makes me
groggy when I wake up.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, Layne.”

Tara pushes up the armrest and rests her head
on my shoulder. I fasten my seatbelt and watch as the doors close.
The passenger cabin is only about three-quarters full.

I haven’t seen the man from the bar, Mr.
Scott, on board the plane. He lied to us about the 11:23. I find
that I don’t really care why.

“Do you think everyone back at home missed us
these past few months?” Tara asks.

“Hajime said they did whenever I talked to
him. So yeah. I think so.”

“Of course he
said
that, Layne. He has
to. He’s the good friend and we’ve been gone a long time. He’s
obliged to tell us how much everyone misses us.”

“Tara, I don’t think Hajime has ever been
obliged to do anything.”

“Yeah, maybe. But still—do you think everyone
missed us? That they
really
did?”

“Probably, Sunshine,” I say, kissing Tara’s
forehead. “I’m sure everyone will be pretty glad to see you and me,
yeah.”

Tara looks past me into the black space
beyond the double-plated glass of the airplane.

“I just don’t want to be forgotten,” she
murmurs dreamily, by now the rambling product of the Xanax. “I
don’t want to be one of the ghosts of Lilly’s End, you know?”

“Sweetheart, how can you be a ghost if you’re
walking around and
living
there?” I ask.

“Believe me, Layne, it can be done. You of
all people should know that.”

I turn away from the conversation and look
out the window, my thoughts no longer capable of being
communicated.

No one else sits in our row, so Tara and I
are left with an extra seat between us. Not long after the doors
are closed and everyone is half-asleep in their full and upright
position, beautiful women with pale tan skin and well-pressed
uniforms demonstrate how to operate the oxygen masks stored above
our seats. Then they demonstrate how to use our cushion as a life
raft when we crash into the Pacific. I stare out the window and
listen as Tara whispers a useless story about her and her sister
fighting at the last two family Christmas parties in a row. Very
quickly it seems, the plane heads for the runway and the Chinese
attendants sit down in foldout seats a few feet away from us. They
buckle their safety belts. One of the moon-faced girls smiles wanly
at me.

Soon there is roaring and build-up. The
lights rush by outside the window, which is covered in little
pellets of rain. Then they dim beneath me, and are quickly gone
underneath a blanket of darkness.

Almost immediately, it is as if China doesn’t
exist, that it never did for either of us.

Tara is quickly sprawled out on her two seats
with her head burrowing into my chest, and I stare out into the
clouds and wonder if things will be okay back at home. I think
about my depressed wine-slogging mother and the pin-up girl my
father was married to when he died. I think about Hajime and the
security cameras strewn about his kitchen table. I think of
Mitsuko, of her whisper soaking into my flesh and contaminating my
blood.

I begin to fall asleep several times, but am
always quickly reminded of the nightmare from the terminal. So
instead I end up fighting to stay awake.

“You are my Sunshine,” Tara is cooing into my
ear when we begin our descent into San Francisco. “You make me
happy when skies are gray…”

“Jesus,” I manage, surveying the thin blanket
draped over me and the restless movement of the passengers sitting
around us. “Like, what time is it?”

“It’s about the same time as when we left,
actually. They just said on the intercom that it’s 10:25 local
time.”

“We’re going backwards,” I sigh.

“They also said that we’ll be landing in
about twenty minutes. Did you sleep all through the flight,
sweetie?”

I sit up in my seat and push the blanket off
of me. I’m sweating around the neckline and on my arms. The black
t-shirt I’m wearing is sticky against my skin.

“What?”

“I said: did you sleep all through the
flight?”

“No,” I cough, and continue coughing. “While
you were asleep they showed
Curse of the Golden Flower
and
fed us Lad Na, which I thought was kind of weird since it’s Thai.
Then I read about half of that zombie book by Stephen King. The
movie was great, the Lad Na was okay, but Stephen King is an
affront to the airport novel. I can’t wait to get home and read a
real
book from my shelf instead of the stray American
paperbacks in the lounge at school.”