Ai Ling raised her hands to indicate that she did not have any money with her and the boy frowned. Then, with a series of hand gestures, Ai Ling pointed to her hotel across the two-way street, indicating that she would run up to her room and grab some money, and the boy, following her gestures, smiled and handed over the bottle. Ai Ling thanked him and spoke a few short phrases in English, but the boy shook his head, waving his small hands. He sat down on the sand and opened the dirty bag, which held bottles of water and juices, and Ai Ling noted that the bag was nearly the same size as the boy. She lifted her arms in a gesture to tell the boy that he was strong, and he burst into laughter, his face brightening instantly. They sat for a while in silence, looking out at the sea.
When Ai Ling finished her water, the boy asked for the empty bottle. He put it into his bag, preparing to leave. Rising with her, Ai Ling told the boy to follow her to the hotel. When she offered to carry the heavy bag of drinks, the boy politely shook his head and hunched forward to counter the weight. At the entrance of the hotel, the boy stopped, his eyes on the staff inside, looking wary of trespassing into a place where he did not belong.
“Wait here,” Ai Ling said. The boy nodded.
Though it took only a couple of minutes for Ai Ling to dash up to her room to get the money, by the time she returned to the hotel entrance, the boy had disappeared. Ai Ling examined the street in both directions and then at the beach, hoping to catch sight of the boy, but he was not there.
Thoughts of the boy stayed with Ai Ling as she went about her day. At breakfast, she expected to see Daniel once again, and just as she was about to grab a plate at the buffet table, he was right beside her with a morning greeting. His hair was damp from a shower, his face scrubbed pink, his cheeks unshaven. In his sleeveless shirt, he looked younger than his age, more rugged. This time, he sat at Ai Ling’s table without asking. As they ate, Ai Ling brought up her encounter with the boy on the beach.
“I see those kids in the street here all the time,” Daniel said, slicing a wedge out of his pancake, dripping with syrup, and forking it into his mouth. “Their earnings go back to their parents or relatives or whoever hires them, you know. I heard that some of them have been kidnapped from elsewhere and brought here to work from morning to night, sometimes surviving only on scraps.”
“How come nobody is doing anything about this?” Ai Ling said.
“Maybe it’s not their business to interfere. It’s much easier to close your eyes to what is happening, to pretend nothing is wrong. Maybe it’s just too much trouble.”
“I wish more could be done for these kids somehow. To help them out of their situation.”
“And then what? What happens after you’ve saved them? Who’s going to take care of them, give them a shelter, feed them? It’s not so easy.”
Ai Ling said nothing; perhaps Daniel was right. She was a tourist, an outsider, after all. In two days’ time, she would leave, go back to her life in Singapore, and things would remain the same here, the kids continuing to hawk their wares—drinks, cigarettes, mineral water, cut fruits—and living the only life they knew. It was foolish to think that she could befriend a boy, make him laugh, and that would be all to fix things.
“So what are your plans today?” Daniel said, changing the subject. He eyed her with interest.
“I think I’ll do some reading, and perhaps shop around later. Maybe go for a swim if it’s not too hot.”
“If you want, I could rent a motorbike or a car and we can head somewhere. There’s a forest park a short ride away, with limestone hills and caves we can explore. It’ll be fun.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I appreciate your offer though.”
“Sure, anytime.” Daniel shrugged, the intensity gone out of his smile.
Back in her room, Ai Ling willed herself not to think about Daniel or the boy, but her mind kept returning to them. She smiled to herself at Daniel’s flirtation, at how he was trying to get her to go out with him. If she had been a different kind of woman, living a different life, she might have taken him up on his offer. In her seven years of marriage to Wei Xiang, Ai Ling might have felt unhappy at times, but she had never questioned her love for him, even as she sometimes felt drained by his dependence on her, which often left her weary.
She had to be mindful of avoiding Daniel for the next two days.
Ai Ling picked up Beloved and attempted to read. She had not been able to get through two pages since arriving in Cha Am, and her failure to do so again did not surprise her. It might have been the wrong book to bring along. Creeping into the bed and lying on the cool bedsheet, Ai Ling imagined herself floating on the surface of a river, gliding away. She closed her eyes; the image of the young boy surfaced, along with the memory of the infant shoes sinking into the darkness of a pond. It had been many years since her miscarriage, but the sudden memory gripped her hard. She did not suppress it; instead she allowed it to pull others out of the pit of her subconscious. She saw herself at the hospital, standing by the roadside vomiting, the blood coming out of her that never seemed to stop. Her stomach ached now as if it, too, were recollecting the past, and she cringed with the imaginary pain.
If she’d had the child that she actually lost, would it be the same age as the boy she saw that morning? Ai Ling shook her head roughly, wanting to dislodge herself from the path that the thought was leading her towards, unwilling to know what was at the end of it. She opened her eyes and looked out the windows; the sky had changed to a dark sheet of grey, a thunderstorm breaking out in the distance, moving inland.
The heavy rain did not let up till the early evening. Ai Ling stayed in her room, dozing in and out of sleep, her mind groggy with half-remembered dreams. Her body felt dull, sluggish, as if she were swathed with several layers of heavy clothes. Beloved lay beside her, its pages curled from the humidity, the spine loosely holding the novel together, although one of the pages had escaped its grasp. She got up to drink from the tap in the toilet a few times, and to brush her hair. In the harsh light, her face looked tired, the lines around her eyes and mouth more pronounced. She put on another application of moisturiser.
Standing at the windows, Ai Ling watched the progress of the rain, from the initial roars of the thunder to the riotous downpour, a gleaming curtain of silver needles. The sea had come to life with the arrival of the storm, roused by its own rage, the waves whipped into a frenzy, spiky white crests that pierced the surface of the water. The streets were empty. Nothing moved except for the rain and the sea.
During one of her naps, Ai Ling heard a soft knock on the door, which, in her semi-conscious state, she had thought was the pelting of rain on the windows. She did not move to answer it. It could be the hotel concierge or Daniel, but Ai Ling did not care. She waited for the person behind the door to move away, for silence to return to the room.
She got out of bed when she could sleep no more. She showered, put on a loose dress, and stepped out of the room. The rain had died down to a ghostly drizzle, so faint that, as she stood under the hotel’s front awning, she barely felt it on her skin, only a light tingling. The sky was a deep blue that softened in degrees as it met the horizon. The street lights stood against the dusk like solitary figures, beaming out their islands of yellow rays. Ai Ling had only taken a few steps when she felt a shadow looming over her. She turned to see Daniel, holding an umbrella.