“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.”
“That is what I thought. It was very elegant. There was a piano, with a Chinese man playing Cole Porter songs. He bought me a large gin and tonic and asked me to join him for dinner.”
“You must have been tempted.”
“No,” she said. “It could have been a pleasant evening, with good food and plenty to drink. And he was an attractive man, Evan. He was English.”
“With black hair,” I said, as a sinking feeling came over me. “Except at the temples, where it had turned as white as snow.”
“Why do you say that, Evan?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” she said. “His hair was blond like mine, only a little darker. Receding in front, and thin on top.”
“Oh.”
“What made you think-”
“Never mind,” I said. “Anyway, you found him attractive.”
“Moderately so. I could have spent a pleasant evening with him. But when I woke up I would still be in Burma.”
“You’ll still be in Burma tomorrow no matter what,” I said. “And for quite a few mornings after that.”
“But you will take me with you, my little Vanya?”
“I’ll try.”
“And these will help us, this treasure from inside the mattress? What is inside these?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m afraid I can guess what’s in the brick. I don’t know about the other.”
“Aren’t you going to open them?”
I opened the brick first, and I can’t say I was surprised by what I found. It was indeed a brick, white in color, with the slightest yellowish tint to it. I scratched it with my fingernail, raising a bit of white powder. I put a few grains on my tongue.
“Bitter,” I said. “Must be Lariam.”
“You are joking.”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “Although I may be closer to the truth than you would think. I have to assume this is heroin, but I have no idea how pure it is. Somebody may have stepped on it.”
“Stepped on it?”
“With or without shoes,” I said. “Stepping on it means cutting it. They process a lot of opium into heroin in the Golden Triangle, part of which is in northeast Burma. And they don’t cut it there because it’s simpler to ship it in pure form. But they’re not shipping it through Rangoon, so who knows what the source of this particular brick is, or how close to pure it is?”
“What does that have to do with Lariam?”
“If they cut it,” I said, “they might have used milk sugar. That’s a popular staple in the drug trade. I wonder what effect it has on a junkie who happens to be lactose-intolerant?” I shrugged. “Probably the least of his problems. The point is, they also commonly add some quinine, which is a component of Lariam. In fact, for all I know, this brick could be all milk sugar and quinine, because why waste good heroin just to frame me for drug trafficking?”
“So you don’t think it’s heroin after all?”