That improved the odds. I’d been trying to think of a way to get past him, but all the likely strategies – taking a room, hiring a girl as camouflage – would cost money. And I didn’t have a single kyat between me and starvation.
A handful of gravel against Katya’s window might have worked, but her window was two flights above ground level, and there wasn’t a whole lot of gravel around, anyway. Besides, she had a front room, and I figured I’d attract more attention standing on the pavement chucking stones at a window than I would just walking right past the clerk as if I owned the place.
Which is what I did.
It worked, too. It would have been trickier if the clerk had seen me before. And it would have been dicier still if I hadn’t had shoes.
“Evan!” She flung the door open. “Come in. I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.”
For my part, I hadn’t known if she would remember my name. What a nice surprise for both of us.
“I woke up,” she said, “and you were gone. I do not even remember when you left.”
“You were sleeping.”
“This is embarrassing, but I must ask you. Did we-?”
“We didn’t.”
“I don’t know if I am glad or sorry. I wanted it to happen, but if I do not remember it, then perhaps it is better that it did not happen. It is a puzzle.”
“Like the tree,” I said.
“What tree?”
“Berkeley’s tree,” I said. “The one that didn’t fall in the forest. Don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense. I just got out of jail and I’m a little confused.”
“Jail! What happened?”
“That’s not going to make much sense, either,” I said. “But I’ll tell you.”
“I didn’t really think they were going to hang me,” I said. “If they wanted me dead, all they had to do was put a bullet in the back of my head and toss me into an unmarked grave. I figured they were going to deport me and just wanted to wait until they decided what kind of spin to put on it.”
“But they let you escape.”
“Well, someone did,” I said. “Either the guard was acting on instructions or somebody bribed him to leave the door unlocked and desert his post. Or there’s a slim chance he actually forgot, and he was around the corner squatting over a hole in the floor while I made my getaway. To tell you the truth, I don’t much care which it was. I was in jail and now I’m out, and out is better.”
“Where did you get the shoes?”
I looked at my feet, newly shod in a pair of stout brown wingtips. “I got them at a pagoda,” I told her, “but don’t ask me which one. At the entrance there was a whole row of them, and people taking shoes off and putting shoes on, and I picked out a likely pair and walked off with them. Walked off in them, I should say.”
“Do they fit?”
“Not terribly well. Even with the socks that came with them, they’re going to raise blisters before long. But I didn’t have money to buy shoes, and I couldn’t walk around barefoot.”
“So you stole some tourist’s shoes,” she said, and giggled. “Imagine the look on his face!”
“It’ll cost him the price of a pair of shoes,” I said, “and he’ll dine out on the story. These were ready for new heels, anyway.”
“Oh, I am not worried about the man,” she said. “But I am worried about you, Evan. What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to get out of Burma.”
“And you came here.” Her eyes lit up. “You are going to take me with you!”
“Uh,” I said.
“Say yes, Evan! Please?”
“I don’t even know how I’m going to get out,” I said. “I don’t have any papers and they’ll be looking for me at the airport. I’ll have to go across the border into Thailand or Laos. It’ll be dangerous, and it won’t be comfortable.”
“I don’t care about danger. And I am already uncomfortable. Evan, take me with you.”
I’d expected the request. Truth to tell, I had been counting on it.
“Well, all right,” I said. “I’ll give it a try. If you can accept the dangers and the hardships-”
“I welcome them!”
“And if you can do something for me first.”
The sun was setting by the time she got back. The door burst open and she came in, her face flushed. “That was exciting,” she said. “Vanya, I have not had such excitement in ages!”
“Did you have good luck?”
She opened her handbag, drew out first the foil-wrapped brick, then the oilskin packet I’d removed from the man I’d found in my bed.
“I was very good,” she said, pleased with herself. “I thought my clothes might be too shabby, but the dress was Western, and that helped. And my grandmother was an actress in Hanoi. Maybe I inherited some of her talent.”
She told me all about it. She’d gone to the Strand, and she was able to see that there was no key in the pigeonhole for 514, so it was probably occupied. She took a chair in the lobby, and watched as a well-dressed man picked up his key at the desk and headed for the elevators.
Smiling, she fell into step beside him, chatting like an old friend. Wasn’t it a hot day? But an exciting city all the same, no?
In the elevator, he pushed 4 and she pushed 5. As the car rose, he said, “You’re not getting off at the fourth floor, are you.” She agreed that she wasn’t. “Then I don’t suppose you’re coming to my room.” Alas, she said, she was not. “That’s probably just as well,” he said, “because I was wondering how I could possibly explain you to my wife. Still, I have to say I’m disappointed.”
He got off at 4. She ascended to 5 and found Room 514. If no one was there she would have to find a chambermaid and talk her into opening the door with her passkey, and she didn’t know how hard that might be. A bribe might work, but it might not.
She knocked, and a man opened the door. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie loosened. Please, she said, could she come in? There was a man following her, and she was afraid he was going to kill her.
He let her in and she sagged with relief. The man was her husband, she explained. Two days ago in Mandalay she had finally got up the courage to leave him. And now he was here in Rangoon! She had ducked into the Strand when she realized he was following her, and she didn’t know if she’d shaken him, and she was afraid to look. Could he possibly check the lobby and see if her swinish husband was there? She described the mythical husband – tall, fat, balding, with a scar on one cheek, even told how he was dressed. Could he be an angel and see if he was downstairs, or even lurking on the street outside? And could she wait in his room while he looked?
When he hesitated, she said, “But you do not know me. I could be a thief! Please, take with you anything that is valuable. Do not worry that you will hurt my feelings! And please, take this with you.” And she twisted the ring off her finger and insisted that he take it in pawn.
Once he was out the door, she swung into action. With the chain belt securing the door against a sudden return, she stripped his bed and felt along the top seam at the end of the mattress until she found where I’d cut it open, my knife making a foot-long slash running alongside the seam. She reached in and felt around and drew out the brick wrapped in foil and the smaller parcel done up in oilskin.
They went in her purse, and no harm if he asked for a look through her bag when he returned, as they were nothing he’d ever seen before. But of course he did no such thing. There was plenty of time to get the bed back as it was, plenty of time to catch her breath before he returned to tell her the coast was clear; there was no sign of her future ex-husband, not in the lobby, not in the wood-paneled bar, not in the street outside. And, speaking of that bar, it was the best place in town for a cool drink, and did she have a minute to spare?
“So I let him buy me a drink,” she said. “That was all right, wasn’t it, Evan?”
“It was only gracious of you.”