Come Away with Me. Karma Brown

17

      Bangkok is an assault on my senses. The noise. The smells. The chaos. The heat. God, is it hot.

      The guesthouse is a thirty-minute drive from the airport, according to the map search I did at home. But that apparently doesn’t take into consideration the morning traffic, or that our driver, a weathered Thai man whose head barely clears the taxi’s headrest, seems determined to get us lost.

      “Shanti House, do you know it?” I ask, for the third time. The driver keeps turning to look at me, as if waiting for me to give up this silly English-speaking thing and solve our problems.

      “It’s near the river?” Gabe asks, but the driver is just shaking his head, not understanding a word. Then we start a game of charades, Gabe and I using our arms and hands to try and mimic fast-moving water while repeating the name of the guesthouse, him continuing to shake his head, hands up in the air. I resist shouting at him to keep his hands on the wheel, because every time he takes them off my anxiety level rises. Also, I’m not feeling great, a combination of lack of sleep, choking exhaust and being in the wayward taxi that is making my heart beat so fast I’m light-headed. I’ve barely been in a car since the accident, and this ride is more than I bargained for.

      “Show him the map,” Gabe says, when I sit back hard against the sticky hot seat and sigh with frustration, trying to calm down.

      “The map is in English.” The stress is making my voice less than kind.

      “Show him anyway,” Gabe repeats, his tone matching mine. “At least you can point to the river. Think that’s a better plan than trying to mime flowing water, don’t you?”

      “Here...I have a map...” I say to the driver, grabbing the handle above my window when the cab brakes hard. My heart beats as furiously as hummingbird wings and my palms are instantly clammy.

      I feel around behind me again even though I know no seat belt will materialize. The taxi speeds up once again and narrowly misses a tuk-tuk carrying what appears to be three generations of a family—far too many people for its small size. Dust swirls around the three-wheeled motorcycle car and its passengers, who hang out all sides of the dilapidated mode of transportation.

      I relax my grip on the handle and fold the map as neatly as I can, as if that will help anything. The cab swerves, the driver hitting the gas then the brakes, and my travel-weary stomach protests.

      “I’m sure he’s going to be impressed with your origami skills,” Gabe says, and I look down at the small square of map in my hands. “Wrong country, you know that, right?”

      “Shut up,” I reply, though I have to smile. Diffusing tension has always been one of Gabe’s greatest skills. I shove the map forward over the cracked seat back, its vinyl surface grimy to the point of looking like it’s been painted black on purpose, and point at the large X that marks the guesthouse’s location. The driver takes the map from me, and to my horror keeps his eyes on it while flipping the small square around and around, clearly trying to get his bearings.

      “Uh, would you mind keeping your eyes on the road?” He doesn’t appear to hear me. I stretch forward, gripping the grimy seat and hooking an elbow over it to keep my balance in the speeding taxi. “Look, there’s the river.” I point to the squiggly blue line on the map.

      “I’m sure he knows where the river is, Teg.”

      I ignore Gabe and stick my finger onto the point I’d marked with the X. “See?” I say, tapping my finger against the map. I wish he’d just stop the cab, pull over for a minute. Fear begins to give way to rolling nausea from the taxi’s jerky ride. The pungent scent of dying flowers, from the jasmine garland hanging from the taxi’s rearview mirror, also doesn’t help.

      “Carsick?” Gabe asks, when I close my eyes and put my head down on my elbow. When I open my eyes, I see the cab driver glancing at us nervously. The map is on the seat beside him, forgotten. All around us cars jump in and out of lanes, narrowly missing each other and the bicycles and tuk-tuks attempting to share the road. I catch a glimpse of my face in the rearview mirror, and see why the driver looks worried. I’m a strange gray-green color, the skin around my mouth white as snow.

      “Pull over,” I say, but only half of it comes out because my voice cracks. All the driver hears is “over,” and his eyes dart to mine in the mirror but he doesn’t slow the cab.