Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass (7 page)

D
an and
I were already at breakfast when Anita joined us. “You know when I woke up
this morning, at the first crack of consciousness, I thought  it was all a
dream.” Anita smiled. “But when I opened my eyes,
Blue was staring across the bed at me and I remembered what happened. Though
I’m blurry on some of the details at the end of the night.” She leaned
toward me. “Did you really offer to get Shah on a plane to France?”

I
thought for a moment about not admitting it, but
then Dan jumped in, “She did and she
can.”

“I’m
a reporter, not a spy or a vigilante.”

“A
vigilante of sorts,” I said. “You’re
exposing lapses in justice rather than correcting them but we are both hoping
for the same outcome.”

“I’m
hoping for the institutions that bind our civilization together to stand up and
do what they are supposed to do. What you’re talking about is different.”

“Not
that different. I’m just giving a helping hand. France’s institutions will get
a workout, I’m sure.”

Anita
sighed. “I’m sorry, at the moment my mind is really
blown. Ever since those men caught me I’ve been stuck in some alternative universe.
None of this seems real to me.”

“Anything
we can do?” Dan asked.

“I
need to write some notes on what happened last night.” Anita said to
herself as much as to us. “I need to get that down and out of my head. I
need to call my editor and let him know what happened. My bag is gone, those
men stole it, so I’ve got no ID and I’ll need that to get back to Ahmedabad. I
don’t have any money and…” she looked up at me, “you’re saying that
you can deliver Kalpesh Shah with a shiny bow on him into French territory. It
all just sounds absurd and not at all what I was expecting. I thought I was
going to die.”

I put my
spoon down onto the saucer of my coffee cup. “Yes,” I said.
“Doesn’t it feel wonderful to be alive?”

She
stared at me out of her bloodshot eyes. Her mouth opened and closed like a
fish. “I suppose,” she stuttered. “Yes,” a smile slipped
onto her puffed lips, “I suppose it’s very
nice.”

Monica
arrived with my pomegranate.
“Would you like one?” I asked,
gesturing towards the bowl of ruby seeds. “It’s really perfect right
now.”

Anita
nodded and Monica left to go get it. “Have some coffee,” I said. Dan
poured her a cup and Anita stared at me.

“Put
him on a plane, against his will?” Anita asked,
picking up her mug.

“Yes,
I imagine he wouldn’t come peacefully.” The thought thrilled me. I felt my
fingers itching for the fight.

“Who
are you, really?”

I took a
bite of pomegranate
and looked over at Dan. He was sipping his coffee and staring out at the river.
“My name is Sydney Rye, and I can get that disgusting piece of shit on a
plane to France.”

Dan
looked over at me and a smile crept onto his face.

Anita
sat back and licked her swollen lips. She looked almost worse this morning. The
bruises on her face had all puffed in the night. The bottle of whisky we’d
shared probably hadn’t helped. “Can I write about it?” she asked.

I shook
my head. “Absolutely not.” She frowned. I sat back. “I can’t
imagine what your
objection is here. The guy
tried to have you raped and murdered, he’s buying children to rape them. What’s
your issue?”

She
glowered across the table at me. “I don’t think it’s as simple as you make
it sound. How are you just going to ‘grab him?’”

“At
the Kite Festival.”

“You’re
going to try to kidnap him at the Kite Festival in front of how many hundreds
of people?”

“If
he can keep a dozen kids hidden what makes you think we can’t get him out of
there?”

“He
has security.”

“Which
I’m hoping you can tell me how to evade.”

She bit
her lip and then winced. “Shit,” she muttered.

“Want
some Advil?” Dan asked.

She
shook her head. “I just don’t understand.”

“What?”

“Why
would you do this?”

Dan
laughed and we both turned to look at him. “Sorry,” he said,
shaking his hand.

“After
you take him to France what will become of the children?” Anita asked.

“Sounds
like a line from a Simpsons episode,” Dan said.

“What
do you propose we do with them?” I asked Anita.

“Don’t
you understand that as soon as you take away Shah you have an entire
organization, an entire bureaucracy, the entire city, everyone who is in charge
will want those children dead. They are the key, the evidence that will bring
them all down.”

“So
I guess we get them out,” Dan said. “I don’t think we should not do
this because we don’t know what to do with a bunch of kids. There must be NGO’s
that will take them. I’ll find somewhere.”

“Right,
then, that’s settled,” I said. God he was sweet and cute. Saving children.
Jesus, what was wrong with me? Why didn’t I just fall into this man’s arms
madly, insanely, stupidly in love?

Anita’s
tongue came out and touched the swelling on her top lip. “I’ve never done
anything like this before,” she said. “I guess it could work,”
she continued. “But, I want to write about it.”

“Unacceptable,”
I said.

Anita
opened her mouth to say something, but
Monica arrived with her pomegranate. Then
the Swedish couple showed up and sat at the table next to us.

“Finish
your breakfast,” I told Anita. “We
can talk after.”

Anita
agreed and once our dishes were cleared I asked her if she’d like to take a
walk with me. When I picked up one of the walking sticks Monica had left by the
gate, Blue pranced in anticipation. Lulu came and howled at us, hoping for an
invitation. “Monica!” I called.

“Yes!”
came her muffled reply from deep inside the house.

“Want
me to take Lulu on our walk?”

“Thank
you!”

Lulu
sprinted halfway up the road and then turned back in a cloud of dust charging
us at full speed, her ears pinned to her head, her mouth open in a toothy grin.
Blue stayed by my side until I said it was OK and
then he dashed to meet her. They circled each other and us, jumping up in the
air and grabbing at one another’s legs.

I
started off down the road on my usual route. The lazy
river wound through green fields of neatly planted crops. I pointed out a
temple, pink and blue, framed by palm trees. A man wheeled slowly by us on his
bicycle, which was piled high with plastic buckets and jugs. He rang a bell and
called out his wares.

I waved
to a neighbor who hung laundry in her yard. Lulu chased a chicken out of the
road and a rooster swooped down and chased Lulu back. “I’m afraid,”
Anita said, then paused for a couple more steps.
“What I really want to do right now,” she continued, “is just
fly back to France. But at the same time I can’t just abandon those children,
this story. I have sources who have risked their lives to help. I can’t ignore
their sacrifice. I am afraid, but I want to keep going.”

“Which
direction?” I asked.

Anita
looked up at me like it was a trick question. I laughed pointing to the split
in the road. “Up the hill is steep and Blue and I were once attacked by a
pack of dogs there. But it’s quicker and a better workout. The other way is
longer, smoother, lots of houses, very safe.”

Anita
didn’t answer. “This seriously is not a question of which direction you
want your life to go in but rather how you’d like to spend the remainder of
this walk. Uphill or flat?”

“Uphill,”
she said.

We
climbed the slope, neither of us speaking, our breaths coming too
rapidly for conversation. We passed where Blue bested the alpha. Lulu sniffed
the ground, but caught up quickly. There was no sign of
the dogs.

When
we’d reached the top of the hill I asked,
“When it was happening, were you thinking about how you would write
it?”

“No,”
Anita said.

“Were
you thinking, I hope this gets exposed for the world to see;
for the monsters these men are to be brought into the light of day;
or were you just hoping that it would stop?”

“No,”
Anita shook her head. “I couldn’t believe it was happening again.”

I
stopped. “Again?”

Anita
looked up at me, her swollen eyes defiant. “Yes. Again.”

“Who?”

“Kalpesh.
When I was a kid.”

“I’m
sorry,
Anita.”

“He’s
the one who should be sorry.” Her fists were clenched. “The
monster.” Tears sprung into her eyes and she turned away from me. The sun
reached higher in the sky, shooting rays through the jungle in shafts of light
akin to lasers. Blue pushed his snout into Anita’s hand and she opened it,
reaching to pet his head. She swiped quickly at her face and then grimaced in
pain.

“I
guess that’s something that you never really get over,” I said.

She
shook her head and smiled. “Certainly spent enough
on therapy though.”

I walked
over to a low mud wall that lined the road and sat looking into the trees.
Anita joined me, sniffling. “How did it happen?”

Anita
sighed. “Our families have known each other for generations. He is older
than me by about a decade and it started when I was so young.” She shook
her head and rubbed her shoe into the dusty road. “You know, I barely
remember anything before it. That’s how small I was.”

“Do
your parents know?”

She
nodded. “That’s how I ended up in England. They wanted to get me away from
him.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes,
you can imagine what that made me think.” She looked back up into the
trees. I followed her gaze and watched a black crow who cawed at another, high
in the branches.

“A
punishment?”

“Yes,
I thought I was being sent away because it was my fault.”

“You
know that’s not true now.”

She
turned to me. “Do I?” She frowned. “No, I don’t know that.”

“What
did your parents say?”

“Say?”
she laughed. “Nothing. They never said anything but they did get me
therapy.”

“Did
it help?”

She
shrugged. “I’m here. This is where it all got me. My ass kicked, almost
raped, certainly abused, sitting in the jungle chatting with a…” she
turned to me, “whatever you
are.”

“A
friend?”

She
laughed. “You don’t strike me as the type to have friends.”

I
laughed. “You might be surprised what a good friend I can be.”

“Certainly
a good person to have on your side,” she
said,
nudging me with her shoulder.

I
nodded. “I can help you.”

“Help
me what?”

“Make
sure it never happens again. At least not by him, not to anyone.”

Anita’s
eyes filled with tears as she looked out into the jungle. Lulu barked at
something that rustled in the brush. Blue glanced in her direction,
but stayed close to Anita. “You know what I’ve been most afraid of, ever
since I realized what he was, how he became like that?”

“What
do you mean?”

She
turned to me and grasped my hands. Her skin was clammy and the bruises on her
face suddenly terrifying in the bright sunlight that caught her cheek as she
leaned toward me. She swallowed. “I’ve always thought,
what if I became like him? What if it’s like an infection? He got it from his
uncle and then he infected me. What if that’s what I turn into?”

I shook
my head. “Anita, you are here, in this jungle, talking to whatever I am,
because you are nothing like him. You are fighting for these kids,
not destroying them.”

She bit
her lip and then grimaced. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

She
turned away from me and stood. I wondered about her parents. What kind of a
person would let their child believe all the things that Anita thought?
And they must have known what was happening. Why would
any parent ever let their child near a monster like that? “Anita?”
She looked back at me. “Do you have siblings?”

“Yes,
a brother and a sister.”

“Were
they…?”

“I
don’t think so.”

“You
never asked?”

“We
don’t have that kind of relationship. We don’t talk about anything real.”

“But
it’s happening to other kids now?”

“Yes,
not kids like me though.” Anita played with the hem of her shirt.
“They won’t get therapy or anything else.”

“What
do you mean?”

She
looked over at me. “He doesn’t mess with kids who have anyone who cares. I
guess the man learned to be more discreet. Now he buys the children like
livestock and uses them much worse. And everyone…”
she sneered, “everyone
pretends like it’s not happening.”

“Why?”

She
frowned. “I don’t know.”

I stared
into the trees and chewed on my lip. “They don’t see it,” I said.

“Yes,
they do.”

“People
don’t see what they don’t want to see.”  I stood up and wiped at my pants,
dusting off the red-brown dirt that clung to
everything. Lulu barked and circled me, excited to be back on the move. We
started down the road again, Blue staying close to Anita’s hip. We walked in
silence listening to the birds chirp and the rustle of creatures in the brush.

“Is
your family still in Ahmedabad?” I asked.

“My
parents and brother live there, my sister is in America.”

I looked
down at her ring finger. Seeing my glance she held it up for me. A tan line
marked where rings used to sit. “Not anymore,” she said.

“Recently?”

She
pursed her lips. “Yes, perhaps that’s why I’m here. To escape him.”

I
stopped again and she turned back to me. “Not really,” I said.
“You’re not here because of a husband who did you wrong.”

“No,
I did him wrong. I never should have married. Way too
fucked up. It wasn’t right to pretend I could love him forever, for real.”