Don't Forget Your Guidebook

Past and Present

Past and Present

“I’ll never listen to you again ... EVER!”

The small boy had stitched us up... Still, I don’t know why Anne was complaining so much. It’s not as though we were staying in an utter dump. It’s just that the original place we booked was nicer. All the same, Anne insisted, we went to the original guesthouse we had booked. It was only two streets away. As it turned out, they were not booked out like the boy had said. Unfortunately, according to the receptionist, we could not get a refund because we never checked in. Or more to the point, we would not get a refund as we’d checked in somewhere else.

Anne sat on what would have been our guesthouse’s doorstep. Hands on cheeks, she looked out into the quiet side street. I sat down beside her, hoping to show some sort of mutual respect for getting done over by a boy of at least ten. She purposely shuffled over to the far edge. There seemed to be no way to win her back. So much had changed between us so quickly. So much so that I was still having a hard time piecing it all together.

In my final year of University I joined a study group with Charles, one of my best mates, and Anne’s big brother. We desperately needed pre-written papers for our finals. The group also had a great discount club for just about anything a student could want.

Ten percent discounts to the Icon cinema on Wednesdays. Free up sizes at a popular deli. Friday night half price drinks at Elliot’s. And, an end of Uni interest free ‘Freedom Flight’ promotion. It was a great idea. Put in a monthly cash subscription towards a select destination at the end of the school year. If you saved enough, you could get a substantial discount on a return flight to India, Thailand, Greece or some crime ridden beach in Mexico. We signed up, but Charles had been offered an internship at some solicitors firm so he offered the subscription to Anne. For me, it meant an easy way to save and something to look forward to as I still hadn’t a clue what to do with an arts degree.

It was during all this I met Anne, properly. I’d met her a few times at Charles’ house growing up. She was one of those dreary nose-in-the-book types of younger sisters. Half braless hippie, half bookworm.

That all changed last summer when Anne burst out of her hippy world and lay glistening in golden tanning lotion on Charles’ back lawn. She had dumped the hippie ways and become a ‘socialite’. That’s also when I got my first warning from Charles.

“Touch it, and you’re dead.”

I gave a shocked dismissive look and then pealed myself away from the window overlooking the back garden.

“I know what type of post-pubescent wanker you are,” he continued. “Both mentally, and between your sheets at night.”

“Piss off Charles, it’s b****y Anne. Ms. Harry bleedin’ Potter lovin’ Anne.”

He gave me one of those looks and that was the last we spoke about it. A Cuban theme night at Elliot’s with mojitos on tap would help me forget his warnings. Wrapped up in a blur of minted rum, I remember stalking Anne from afar while wearing a rainbow coloured poncho. I didn’t have a clue if Cubans wore ponchos, but it was all I could muster up.

Anne didn’t get the Cuban vibe either. It didn’t matter. She was wearing one of those straw Panama hats. A neon pink half-cut t-shirt. Boot cut jeans with big black cowgirl boots to match. This was no longer Hogwarts. I was like a lamb to the s*******r.

There’s something about the untouchable and unobtainable that appealed to me. That and the raw power of fresh-smelling mint fuelled alcohol at two a.m. Anne seemed to be on the same wavelength. Though I did briefly wonder if she had the ulterior motive of rebelling against her overprotective brother. There was once a time he beat the hell out of a guy who dumped her for another girl at the last minute before her secondary school graduation bash. As for me, all I remember was a brief discussion on how easy it was to remove a poncho compared to a neo pink t-shirt. And the sheer feeling of sobering panic the next morning.

“He can never find out ...”

I remember the pain in my eyes like they’d been used as nails by mint crushing hammers. Anne was lying next to me. Her arms stretched upwards and crossed succinctly above her head as if handcuffed. The panic left instantly in a sea of surging testosterone.

“Get off!”

My head returned to its pounding with reckless abandon as Anne pushed me back. Did I still smell of rum? Perhaps she was suffering, too.

Take it easy, Jonny.

Slow down.

I was in that semi-drunk next morning dream-like haze. Nothing really sunk in.

“Gawd ... what was I thinking?” she sat up pulling the bedsheet with her.

“Relax,” I cooed. Both to Anne and myself. “It’s my apartment. We’re fine here.”

Anne wrinkled her nose and I could see the tension ease from her shoulders.

“How?” she started, but then rephrased her question. “How’d you afford your own place, anyway?”

I don’t know what triggered my mind, but I knew this was an important question. Or more to the point, the answer was important. I went with the quasi-truth.

“Well, my parents,” I began, but then noticed a small frown on Anne’s face appearing. I needed to be more independent.

“My parents,” I started again. If she could, so could I. “They gave me a choice. A car, apartment deposit, or lump sum. That was the deal for going to a university away from home.”

“Oh, so you own it!”

“No,” I laughed. “I'm renting. But the deposit was good enough to get my own place rather than sharing.”

“Really?”

“Yep, all mine. They thought it would help me to study better and all that.”

“It is handy, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“To have your own place while at Uni,” replied Anne with a little bit of a congratulatory nod. “I mean, not many people have their ‘own’ place at university.”

She was right. I knew it. My parents knew it. We all knew it. All the same, I did have to work to pay the rent, too. But that didn’t seem like the right thing to say here. It seemed I impressed Anne by having my own place. In hindsight, it was a mistake to capitalise on this. But my hormones told me otherwise.

“Yea, I can have all the privacy I want.” I smiled. “Invite who I want over whenever I want and all that.”

“So you can,” said Anne, hiding a slight smile.“I always wanted you Anne,” my hormones were taking over again. “Always. You’re amazingly beautiful. So perfect.”

Her face changed. That small hidden smile turned into a lip-bitten smile. She lifted up the single sheet and rolled over onto me.

“You’re so wicked Jonny ...”

And that was that. If Charles ever found out, I’d be pulverised. Our friendship would be ruined. My parents would never help me out like this again. And I’d be blamed for ‘corrupting’ Anne. We both knew this wasn’t the case. Yet, somehow, we both found it a turn on. The Charles finding out part, not the pulverising part. The corrupting Anne thing too. Well, at least in my case. Even if it was a fantasy. In truth, it was probably the other way around.

✳✳✳

It was hard to believe we spent an entire summer making secret rendezvous and avoided all eye contact when around Charles. If only he saw what she was like today. On second thoughts, having Charles see any of this would not be good for my health.

“Maybe a drink?” I suggested.

Anything to break the silence and the fact we were sitting in, at least, 50 degrees worth of heat with an added 200% of suffocating Thai humidity.

Nothing. Not even a shuffle or jaw clench.

I stared out at the little quiet street. Streams of tatty black cables ran along the mishmash of corrugated tin-roofed buildings. Nothing was uniform here. Even the unpainted concrete walls were different shades of grey. The terraced houses all looked so random. Some had odd extensions, walls, gates, railings, and roofing added on at a whim’s notice. And, by the looks of it, built by a person with no idea what structural integrity meant.

The Thais themselves were an odd bunch. Sometimes full of smiles. Usually, a smile only occurred when you were handing over a wad of cash to them. Otherwise, they were scowling at you from a distance. The smilers were often dressed in nice fresh looking clothes. The scowlers in saggy clothes that looked like Oxfam handouts.

I noted Thai men seemed to have problems growing beards. I’d never noticed this before in my entire life. Or at least once in people over the age of eighteen. In fact, come to think of it, Thai men didn’t even have light stubble. A hairline moustache was quite common. The type you’d see on a third former back home. What the Thais had, that nobody else had, were a few people with very long wiry hair growing from a mole or the end of a chin. Gender didn’t seem to matter in this case either. The older the Thai, the more chance the man or woman would sport at least one wiry foot long hair on their face. It wasn’t flattering either. It made me feel obsessive compulsive and want to yank the hairs out and go ‘there, that’s better now, isn’t it?’

Thais didn’t seem to like tourists around here either. We were definitely cash cows to them. Unless you were handing them money, they wanted nothing to do with you. So much for Asian friendliness. I was here half a day already and just knew it wasn’t for me. It would have been better if I’d booked the Greek flight. But no, Anne liked the idea of a trip to Asia. Europe just seemed more fun, safe and easy. We would have been nearer to home too. The thought of my mum’s home cooked dinner suddenly pulled across my stomach. Jet lag meant we’d missed out on a dinner or was it a breakfast?

“Maybe some food?” I suggested. “We’ve not eaten properly since yesterday. Let’s say we try out some of this Thai food everyone rants on about?”

Anne didn’t budge.

“My treat.”

Nothing.

“We can come back here tomorrow?” I said, getting just a little fed up with the pouting.

She turned to me, looking quite exacerbated.

“I’m going back for a shower. I’ll eat later.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Then go eat! I’m going back.”

“How will we meet up later?”

Anne didn’t answer. And for the second time, she walked away from me in Bangkok without even a hint of responsibility. We were meant to stick together when travelling abroad. It was written in big bold writing on all guidebooks. It was dangerous to travel solo in places like Thailand. Anything could happen. Charles would beat me to death if anything ever happened to her. It was his golden rule ‘no harm shall come to Anne.’ I’d broken it by sleeping with her. Trampled on it by dating here. Yet all the same, this was different. We were no longer in Blighty. Of all places and scenarios, we should be looking out for each other here. Hence, she was doing this.

Watching Anne walk away, I thought about calling out once more. Then, just as I was about to swallow my pride, I realized I had no clue how to get back to our new guesthouse. Heck, I couldn’t even pronounce the name of it properly. I had to follow her like a stalker. If questioned, I would say I didn’t want her to walk home alone. That was an appropriate answer that solved two problems. Yet it didn’t solve my hunger problem. Nor how this holiday was ending up.

Chapter 3