I turned to Mya. ‘Want to ride up front?’
The gecko started itching as I drove north on Third Avenue. I’d been planning to go right the way up to 125th Street and then cut across town, but I trusted the gecko, so I turned off at East 60th. A black Town Car pulled in right behind me, too clean to be a gypsy cab, too aggressive to be a limo. It tried to pass, coming right alongside like a shark. Snarling, I turned down Lex. The Town Car didn’t follow. I took another left on East 56th, and as I crossed the lights at 2nd Avenue a florist’s delivery van cut in front of me. I had to brake hard.
‘This city is full of assholes,’ I muttered. I restrained myself from a bigger display because Mya was just a kid. The gecko was still itching. I crossed First Avenue.
The black car swings in behind me.
Fuck.
I know what this is. This is a hit.
We’re now going through this canyon of big delivery vehicles parked on both sides of the street, and I can see the black Town Car behind us and I’m shitting myself, calculating where the nearest subway stations are in relation to here, wondering how fast Mya can run, or whether she’ll even listen to me and do what I say.
The van in front of me brakes for no reason and all of a sudden I’m out of time. This is it.
Here’s the thing about me. I may be crap at relationships and talking and expressing my feelings, but when it’s crunch time and you need somebody to think fast, I’m your girl. I could see what was going down like it was a math problem: a) van cuts me off, b) guy on my tail—well, c) is pretty obvious, right? They had us sandwiched between the van and the black car, so they’d probably grab Mya and throw her in the van or maybe grab us both, or maybe shoot us both. Simple, inescapable. We were fucked. I might not know the exact variation on the theme, but my money was on grab us and throw us in the van because otherwise, why have a van?
Before I’d even stepped on the brake I knew what had to be done.
The car was still jerking to a stop as I reached over and snapped Mya’s seatbelt off. Looked her straight in the eye, talked to her like she was one of my dad’s pit bulls:
‘Mya! Come!’
I ripped the keys out of the ignition and gripped them in my left hand, dragging Mya out of the car after me with my right. With my left eye I clocked Dark Suit One getting out of the Town Car as I ran along the length of the florist’s van. Under the suit he’d be rock-hard from kettlebells and creatine, and behind the dark glasses he was probably psychotic. Flower Delivery Guy was scrawny by comparison. He had opened his door and was climbing out of the van. I couldn’t see his left hand—it was on the seat of the car as he faced backward to confront me. He had to be going for a gun.
I was at full charge, Mya stumbling behind me. I let her go just long enough to transfer the keys into my right hand, where they would make my fist good and hard. Then, skipping half a step to close the gap, I threw the overhand right at his cheekbone and felt his head spin as I followed through. Goodnight, moon. He staggered and went to sleep on his way down.
I might have broken my hand, but that’s a small price to pay for being alive.
Bending, I turned to get hold of Mya again and a bullet whined as it passed over my head. I heard glass shatter. The engine of the van was still running—of course, because they’d planned to peel out of here with us in the back. Only now, we were in the front. I bundled Mya into the van and put it in gear, stepping on the accelerator even as Dark Suit One came running, shooting, and the door was flapping because Flower Delivery Guy had wrenched it fully open when he crashed. Dark Suit One shot the glass out of the driver’s window before I got the door shut and accelerated away from him. In my side mirror I could see Dark Suit Two also running after us. I saw the flash from his gun, and then the van lurched as the right rear tire blew.
I kept up a continuous stream of bad words as I drove on the rim. I turned onto Third Avenue and they weren’t following me anymore. They would go back to their car, but Khari’s Corvette would be blocking them. I’d bought us some time.
‘This could end badly,’ I said. Mya was huddled on the floor of the passenger side beside a potted office plant. ‘I’ll try to outdrive them, but if they have us on GPS they’ll just follow wherever we go.’
I turned south on Sutton Place and then west on 56th. Then we picked up a silver BMW, tailgating like an angry hornet.
‘This can’t be for real.’
Did Richard Fuller have an infinite supply of mercenaries in dark suits? Did he have them on tap? Was he flying them in from somewhere, or were they appearing like just-add-water cartoon Martians?
My gecko tattoo was itching like never before.
‘Mya, you can really disappear?’ I said in Thai. ‘Maybe you can disappear
now
.’
But she stayed where she was, and at least her head was down out of range of bullets. There were green leaves in her hair. Her eyes were closed and her lips moved.
That was when I noticed a blurriness on the edges of my vision. The buildings on either side of me seemed to be shifting position in my peripheral vision.
I saw the road, the lights, the pedestrians, the headlights of the BMW right up in my wing mirror first on one side, then on the other; the driver was weaving to pass me or run me off the road. I couldn’t pay attention to anything else, even when trees started breaking out of buildings, when walls turned to air, when concrete and girders gave way to the movement of living creatures.
Then came the smell, just like the smell in my apartment. The inside of the van already smelled like flowers but now there was something else, a sharp tang of earth and wood. A green tongue of flickering motion slithered across the dashboard. Something alive; something fast. I reached behind me for the gun but Mya grabbed my arm.
‘No, Jade!’ she cried. ‘Don’t hurt the gecko!’
‘Gecko?’
But there was no time to think about the gecko. Instead I had to worry about the tree.
It was a tree just like the bodhi tree near Chiang Mai, where the bus had stopped. This one rose right out of the road ahead, too big to go around, much too close. The thing was huge, a Grandmama of a tree, decked out with ribbons and brightly colored offerings like a roadside memorial. Except it wasn’t by the roadside, it was smack in the middle of the road.
I flashed that already-too-late sensation that usually only happens in nightmares. Mya and I were about to become the kind of crash victims that these memorials are supposed to honor.
Everything went sharp and clear.
It was as if my brain was so hungry to stay conscious that it was trying to grab as many impressions as it could before the end.
The air was green, wet, and clean in a way New York can never be. It was full of insects in clouds and swirls. There was a gecko hanging from the van’s rear-view mirror like a Bangkok taxi-driver’s talisman, its eyes making tiny ultrafast movements as it took in the sight of me.
I came off the brakes. The muscles in my arms clenched hard as I tried to swerve the delivery van around the tree, turning the wheel with little jerks like my old boyfriend taught me to use when we were joyriding.
I almost made it. The van’s nose passed the obstacle, and the parked cars to the left simply vanished so that instead of hitting them we plunged into soft undergrowth. There was a bone-jarring jolt as the spinning rear end of the van sideswiped the tree. The gecko went flying out the window. With a crunch, the rear side panel collapsed, the chassis buckled, and the shock shattered the windscreen, sending a torrent of tiny pieces of glass falling on Mya and me. I shut my eyes.
When I opened them I didn’t know if I was alive or dead.
The Bodhi Tree
I
COULD HEAR
Mya breathing fast and shallow. We were both covered with flecks of glass. She was unfolding from the floor of the delivery van as if in slow motion, bits of glass dripping off her like dewdrops. She held the potted plant in her arms like a teddy bear.
We were in the woods. The enormous tree had let go of leaves on impact, and they now drifted down through the broken windscreen, afterthoughts.
The engine had died. The noise of the city was gone, leaving a kind of stillness that wasn’t silence. There were pale sounds, diffused though the air like the smell of toast fills a house. Ambient insect noises, high-pitched bird calls, faint and soft. The movement of leaves.
My heart was the loudest noise.
I opened my door and stepped out, shaking the glass off myself. The front of the van was all right. The middle of the vehicle had collided with the tree, and the impact had wrenched the back axle out of alignment. I walked around the back and opened Mya’s door. She stepped down into the ferns without looking at me.
‘Are you hurt?’
She swallowed and slowly shook her head. She was looking into the woods, and I followed the line of her gaze to a pine tree. The gecko was clinging to the side of it, perfectly at home.
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. Mya flinched and moved away from me a little, so I pulled myself together for her sake.
Why I was worried about her, I don’t know.
‘You did this,’ I said. ‘I told you to escape and you... did this. Where are we?’
Mya went around to the tree we had hit. She stood looking at it silently. I slapped at mosquitoes and looked, too.
It wasn’t the same tree that had popped up in the middle of the road in midtown. Well, obviously this wasn’t midtown. But also, it wasn’t the same tree. The image of the tree I’d swerved around was imprinted on my memory like a photograph. Or I thought it was. The night my father threw my mother across the room and broke her neck I had an image of her in shorts and a stripy tank top, flying across the room like a doll. But the clothes they showed Aunt Jennifer at the hospital had been Mom’s nurse’s uniform. They’d had to cut it to pieces to get it off her. When I told Aunt Jennifer what I remembered seeing, she said, ‘The mind plays tricks under stress,
chika
. It’s a neurological thing.’
Was I experiencing a ‘neurological thing’ right now? I’d seen the vines twisting around the enormous trunk. I’d seen the light green leaves. And I’d seen the ribbons tied around the trunk, the little gifts and stick figures offered to the ghosts who lived in the tree. Just like in Thailand.
For those moments when I tried not to smash into the tree, somewhere in my mind I’d been thinking Mya had brought a piece of Thailand here. Or brought us there. Like the smell in my house when she was around, like the strange creatures that came with her and ate my trail mix. It had seemed so real.
Now we were standing at the base of a big pine tree. Or maybe a fir. (I can never tell them apart. Like I said: I hate the woods.) There were no ribbons. No offerings. It wasn’t even as big as I remembered it.
I started to cry.
I don’t even know what happened.
One minute I was looking at the stupid tree feeling pissed off at the way everything was slipping and sliding underneath me. Like the world was some unsolvable puzzle that I’d had enough of. I just wanted to throw it across the room. Like you throw a woman you say you love. Like you throw your opponent. Like you throw your chances in life, if you’re not careful.
Then I was on my knees at the roots of the tree, my hands covering my face, crying like a baby.
I wanted my mother. I wanted Nana to not be dying. I wanted the world to be solid. And it isn’t.
It really isn’t.
After a little while I felt Mya’s hand on the back of my head. As if it had a will of its own, the crying stopped.
She said, ‘I can’t take you to the forest without the night orchid drug. Only myself. I tried, but we came here instead.’
I stood up and wiped my face with the end of my t-shirt. Beyond the van there was a shallow hillside, and I could see a trail of crushed underbrush and battered saplings where the van had crashed through. The forest floor was torn up by the skid. At the top of the slope I could see light, a break in the woods.
I ran up there. It was a country road, and we’d driven off it. Trees everywhere, in all directions. Great.
I took out my phone. There were seven texts and two messages from Malu.
Oops.
I hit ‘Call.’
‘Tell me you’re at least alive,’ she said.
‘Of course I’m alive. Malu, you know that app our parents use to trace our phones? Like, when they want to find out if we are where we say we are?’
‘You mean the app I used on you to see if you were really at Mr. B’s and you were at the apartment?’
She was mad.
‘I’m sorry, Malu. I had to lie. There were good reasons. You didn’t tell Mr. B, did you?’
‘Where the hell are you now?’
‘Well... I was sort of hoping you could tell me that.’
‘This is a joke, right?’
‘I’m not sure where I am. I had an accident. Can you come get me?’
‘Can I...? Jade, I have no words for you right now.’ This was a whole new level of mad for Malu.
There was a pause. I could hear her clicking and tapping on her phone. Then she said. ‘What the hell are you doing in the Pine Barrens? Don’t tell me somebody threw you in a sack and dumped you there.’
‘Malu, please. I’m supposed to be on a plane in three hours. Please...’ My voice broke. I really was about to lose it and not get it back.
‘Stay where you are. Sit your ass down and wait. I’ll call you when I get closer. Under no circumstances are you to hitchhike. Got it?’
I hung up.
‘I don’t know how she turned out so bossy,’ I said to Mya, turning.
The back of the van was open, revealing heaps of flowers wrapped in cellophane and several gourmet gift baskets. Mya had grabbed as many of these as she could carry, with their wedges of cheese and expensive jams and chocolate-covered pretzels.
I stared.
‘You’re thinking about food
now?
’ I marvelled.
‘I have to go, Jade,’ she said. After listening to Malu bellow at me over the phone, Mya’s Thai sounded even softer than usual. Like soothing music. ‘We will see each other again. Tell Shea good luck.’