“She has a gift,” Duncan said. “Leave it at that.”
It was useless talking about it. The captain had been ordered to make a clean sweep. His three guests had been loaded into a Land Cruiser and sent away.
She looked from one man to the other, each freshly showered, their whiskers scraped off. The dig had thinned them. Their clean shirts hung on their shoulders like stolen laundry. They looked like sticks of hard driftwood among the last of the Europeans at the tables around them. The package tours had all but shut down. The monsoon season was almost here, and the typhoon was circling in the South China Sea.
“It was never your brother down there anyway,” said Duncan. “We knew that from the start. You said he went missing along the border. That’s a hundred miles to the east. And this was a crash site. We were looking for a pilot, not a soldier on foot.”
“You don’t get it.” Kleat was plaintive. “They’ll never have me back again.”
The sunset trembled. Thunder, too low to hear, vibrated the window in the frame. The glass buzzed like locusts.
The typhoon qualified for a name, an Asian name for a change, Mekkhala, Thai for Angel of Thunder. It was only the coming monsoon’s daily grumble, but everyone tied to it the angel’s thunder. The restaurant owner had sheets of wood ready to protect his expensive windows. The glass vibrated again. It would come soon.
“I’m sorry,” Molly said.
Kleat wasn’t prepared for that. His eyes seemed to crouch. “Tell it to the captain.”
“I mean about your brother,” she said.
The stub of cigar flared.
“I hope you find him someday.”
“Because you know how it feels?”
“Yes.”
“Not your orphan story,” he said. “Again.”
This was a mistake. “Forget it,” she said.
“No, really. Sharing losses while you gave them haircuts? You think that made you part of the team? We came to locate soldiers.”
“I know.”
“Molly,” he said. “Your mother was just some hippie chick.”
“Enough,” Duncan muttered.
“Why?” said Kleat. “I’m curious. You make me wonder, both of you. We didn’t come together by accident. We draw up the dead for a reason. It was a rough, dirty, hot toilet of a month. You suffered for this.”
“We all suffered,” said Duncan.
“But the thing is, you didn’t have to. I need to be here. And the captain and his team, we have a duty to perform. Not you, though.”
Duncan shrugged. “Just lending a hand.”
“The boys have waited long enough.”
“Something like that.”
“You talk like it was your war.”
“Wrong address, friend.” Duncan flashed a peace sign.
“Tell me, sitting on your campus back then, were they all just fools to you?”
“Not a single one of them. I’m only saying that it wasn’t my war. I wasn’t here.”
“And yet here you are,” said Kleat.
“In the flesh.”
“Of all places.”
Duncan gestured at the glorious river. He took a deep lungful of the air, and Molly smelled it, too, the scent of bougainvillea as thick as hash smoke. “It grows on you,” he said.
“I didn’t mean the territory in general. I was talking about our little dig. Where you had no real business. Professionally speaking.”
“Professionally speaking,” Duncan agreed, “no business at all.”
“Getting right with God? The old pacifist burying old warriors?”
“That must be it,” said Duncan.
“And you?” Kleat said, turning to Molly. Duncan wouldn’t fight him, maybe she would. “Do you mind me asking?”
How could she mind? She was an inquisitor herself. “Go ahead.”
“Just to connect the dots, you know. We’ve got a soldier, my brother,” he opened one hand, then the other, “and your mother. A suicide.”
She blinked at his malice. “I never used that word.”
Kleat considered his cigar, one of the captain’s Havanas. “She parks her baby with a friend, leaves twelve bucks and a week’s worth of cat food. Then takes a hit of LSD and wanders off into a blizzard. That is what you told us.”
“Not like that, I didn’t.”
Not until it came time to fill out her college application forms had Molly learned that she was adopted. She had taken it hard. She’d actually made her parents—her stepparents—apologize. Then she’d run off to hunt for her birth mother. Over the coming years, she had changed to her mother’s maiden name, and her sleuthing skills led to journalism. That was her point in telling the soldiers on the recovery team, to identify where she came from, not to infiltrate them with a sob story.
“So you found her, and it made you whole,” Kleat said. He wanted blood.
“It took me three years to find a picture of her,” Molly said. She had it now, in her passport wallet, a Texas driver’s license issued in 1967. But no way was she going to share that with them, at least not with Kleat. “It took another two years to find her grave.” She did not describe the miner’s cemetery in Breckenridge, altitude 9,600 feet, wildflowers everywhere.
“At least she got a grave.”
Molly stared at him. From the start, he had treated her like treason waiting to happen. She’d thought it had to do with her occupation, but it was both more and less personal than that. He was one of those troubled souls in constant need of a scapegoat, and for some reason, she’d been filling the role for a month. Going along to get along, maybe. Not anymore. The story was stone cold. Let the bastard go find another punching bag.
Molly looked out the window. The river was on fire with red. Small boats ferried back and forth, the far shore going dark.
The cocktail hour was dying. Soon the waiters would bring their dinner. The evening could end.
A tiny desperation crept in. Tomorrow was almost here, and her future was in tatters. She’d banked everything on the
Kleat was making a quick escape, back to his twelve-cent beers and five-dollar wives. He’d already booked a flight out of Phnom Penh, two hours to the south, for tomorrow afternoon.
Duncan had decided his restoration work in the north could wait until the rainy season passed. He was going to the big city. Though he must have resupplied in Phnom Penh countless times over the years, he acted like Marco Polo about to enter the marvels of Xanadu. He couldn’t wait to investigate its streets and markets and temples.
In short, one of them was going, one was staying, and Molly was torn. Nothing waited for her at home, no obligations, no cat, no boyfriend, and no deadline. It had been too early to plant her herb garden on her little deck before leaving, and it would be too late by the time she returned. There was a friend’s wedding in July, a half marathon for breast cancer in August, her yoga classes at the Y, and an astronomy class up at the university. And bills to pay and work to scare up.
But she was here. Asia no longer intimidated her. After a month in the field, she was toughened and road ready, and Duncan had caught her eye. He was an islander, of sorts, solitary and curious and uncomplicated.
She was going to ask him to guide her through Angkor Wat. Not tonight, but once Kleat left, she meant to propose a short adventure before the storm. It was a whim, one that hadn’t occurred to her before an hour ago. She suspected it might lead to other things between them, other cities, maybe another life, a bend in the road.
