Food poisoning. It must be. I sigh. Okay. A few hours discomfort, and then sleep. Then it will be over. It’s all about getting to the sleep.
I’m not sure of the time so I don’t know how long it takes for the sun to come up, but when it does, I haven’t even touched sleep. I’ve puked so many times the plastic wastebin is almost full. I tried, a few times, to crawl to the shared bathroom down the hall, but I couldn’t make it past my door. Now that the sun is up, the room is heating up. I can almost see the toxic fumes from the wastebin spreading out, poisoning me all over again.
I keep throwing up. There’s no respite or relief in between bouts. I puke until there’s nothing left: no food, no bile, none of me left, it seems.
That’s when the thirst hits. I’ve long since drunk the rest of the water in my bottle, and thrown that up too. I start to fantasize about mountain streams, waterfalls, rain showers, even the Dutch canal; I’d drink from those if I could. They sell bottled water downstairs. And there’s a tap in the bathroom. But I can’t sit up, let alone stand up, let alone make it to water.
Is anyone there? I call. In Dutch. In English. I try to remember the Spanish but the words get jumbled. I think I’m talking but I can’t tell and it’s noisy in the square and my weak voice stands no chance.
I listen for a knock at the door, praying for an offering of water, clean sheets, a cool compress, a soft hand on my forehead. But none comes. This is a hostel, bare bones, no housekeeping, and I prepaid two nights.
I retch again. Nothing comes out except my tears. I am twenty-one years old and I still cry when I puke.
Finally, sleep comes to rescue me. And then I wake up, and I see her, so close. And all I can think is: It was worth it if it brought you.
Who takes care of you now? she whispers. Her breath feels like a cooling breeze.
You, I whisper back. You take care of me.
I’ll be your mountain girl.
I try to reach for her, but now she’s gone and the room is full of the others: Céline and Ana Lucia and Kayla and Sara and the girl with the worm, and there’s more yet—a Franke in Riga, a Gianna in Prague, a Jossra in Tunis. They all start talking at me.
We’ll take care of you.
Go away, I want Lulu back. Tell her to come back.
Green turtles, red blood, blue sky, double happiness, lalala, they singsong.
No! That’s not how it goes. That’s not how double happiness goes.
But I can’t remember how it goes either.
She left you like this.
I’ll take care of you.
French whore.
Call me if you need anything.
Wanna share with me?
Stop it! I yell.
Take the wheel! Now it’s Kate yelling. Only I can’t see any wheel and I have the awful feeling, like in the dreams, that I’m going to crash.
No! Stop. Go away! All of you! You’re not real. None of you! Not even Lulu. I screw my eyes shut and cover my ears with the sweat-soaked pillow and curl up into a fetal ball. And finally, finally, like this, I fall asleep.
• • •
I wake up. My skin is cool. The sky is purple. I’m not sure if it’s twilight or dawn, how long I’ve been out. I’m coherent enough to know that I’m supposed to be back in Cancún soon to meet Broodje and fly back to Holland, and I need to get word to him somehow, that he might have to leave without me. I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The room teeters before my eyes, but it doesn’t totter over. I plant my feet. I pull to a stand. Like a toddler or a very old man, I take the steps, one at a time, to the lobby.
In the corner is an Internet café where you can make long-distance phone calls. I feel like I’ve been in the dark for months, the lights from all those monitors hurt my eyes so. I hand over some money and ask for a phone and am guided to a bank of computers with a telephone handset. I open my address book. Kate’s card, ruckus theater company splashed across the top in red lettering, falls out.
I start to dial. The digits swim on the page and I’m not sure if I have the country code right or if I dialed correctly.
But there’s a tinny ring. And then a voice: faraway, tunnel-like, but unmistakably hers. As soon as I hear it, my throat closes.
“Hello. Hello? Who is this?”
“Ma?” I manage to croak out.
Silence. And when she says my name I want to cry.
“Ma,” I say again.
“Willem, where are you?” Her voice is crisp, officious, businesslike as always.
“I’m lost.”
“You’re lost?”
I’ve been lost before, in new cities with no familiar landmarks to set me straight, waking up in strange beds, unsure of where I was or who was next to me. But I realize now, that wasn’t lost. It was something else. This . . . I may know exactly where I am—in a hostel, in the central square, in Mérida, Mexico—but I have never been so utterly unmoored.
There’s a long silence on the line and I’m afraid the call has dropped. But then Yael says: “Come to me. I’ll send you a ticket. Come to me.”
It’s not what I really want to hear. What I want—what I ache—to hear is come home.
But she can’t tell me to come to a place that no longer exists, any more than I can go to that place. For now, this is the best either of us can do.
Twenty-one
FEBRUARY
Mumbai, India
Emirates 148
13 Feb: Departure 14:40 Amsterdam—00:10 Dubai
Emirates 504
14 Feb: Departure 03:55 Dubai—08:20 Mumbai
Have a safe trip.
This email, containing my itinerary, comprises the bulk of the communication between Yael and me since I returned from Mexico last month. When I got back from Cancún, a friendly travel agent named Mukesh called to request a copy of my passport. A week later, I got the itinerary from Yael. I’ve heard little else since.
I try not to read too much into it. This is Yael. And this is me. The most charitable explanation is that she’s hoarding the small talk so we will have something to say to each other for the next . . . two weeks, month, six weeks? I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. Mukesh told me that the ticket was valid for three months and that if I wanted help booking flights within India, or out of India, I should contact him. I try not to read too much into that, either.
In the immigration line, I’m jangly with nerves. The bar of duty-free Toblerone (meant for Yael) that I wound up eating as the plane descended into Mumbai probably didn’t help matters. As the line lurches forward, an impatient Indian woman pushes into me with her prodigious sari-wrapped belly, as if that will make us go faster. I almost switch places with her. To stop the pushing. And to make us go slower.
When I exit into the airport arrivals hall, the scene is both space age and biblical. The airport is modern and new, but the hall is thronged with people who seem to be carrying their entire lives on metal trolleys. The minute I get out of customs, I know that Yael is not here. It’s not that I don’t see her, though I don’t. It’s that I realize, belatedly, she never specifically said she’d meet me. I just assumed. And with my mother, you never assume.