I couldn’t remember his name so I called him Traveller Fifteen in my head. He was as old as my parents and he had dirty glasses and a long moustache. His buttoned shirt hung weird on him, like it used to fit but he’d gotten skinny.
“Perhaps I don’t live anywhere,” he said.
Traveller Fifteen tapped ash from his cigarette into the fire that burned in a metal wheelbarrow beside us. A log moved and fluffed embers into the front garden. The night air was hot but the fire at least seemed to chase away some of the Vietnamese humidity. So did the cigarettes.
“Home is where the heart is, they say, but we travellers don’t live in our homes,” he said, and winked at me. “So where do we live?”
I smoked while I pretended to think. “Where you usually are, maybe.” I shrugged and flicked the cigarette butt into the fire. That was 18 cents down. $52.63 remained until we could get some more cash from somewhere and it wasn’t enough. I looked around for Richard and couldn’t find him.
“Ah,” said Traveller Fifteen. He was standing close. I smelled the tobacco on his breath; his cigarettes were stronger than mine. “Then I’m probably from the airport, or the bus stop. That’s where I usually am.” He lit another cigarette with the butt of his first. “Where are you usually?”
“In my own head.”
“Inside a creative mind,” said Traveller Fifteen wistfully. “That must be a nice place to be.” He looked at my face and said, “Perhaps. Ah. You must tell me how you come up with such fascinating performance ideas. Perhaps I can buy you a drink.”
The show had only just finished. The sweat from performing was still sticky on my body and I wiped my forehead and tried to think of an excuse. Technically it had all been illegal so we hadn’t performed long and the air was still nervous and excited as people mingled inside and out.
Tuan came over and dumped wood on the fire, driftwood he’d collected from the river opposite and dried on his balcony. He was the owner of the house-gallery-cafe-performance space, a man who only became more polite the more the police came after him and his subversive art. He added a fragrant herb to the wheelbarrow to cover up the smell of the joint between his teeth. That was illegal too, but the police that drove by every night thought art and its ideas were worse.
I moved to light another cigarette - another 18 cents, so $52.45 remaining - but Traveller Fifteen procured a little green lighter.
“Allow me.”
Instead of giving me the lighter he wanted to light the cigarette between my lips. I hesitated but let him do it. I spotted Richard across the garden.
The hard stone that I could always feel in my stomach grew a little as Richard scowled at me. I looked away from him and when I looked back he was gone. He had been talking to two students who wanted to practice their English. They whispered together after he left them.
“Here is my card,” said Traveller Fifteen.
I took it and read both sides. One side was a crude world map and the other was his details, but it only had his initials: S. D. It said his location was ‘in transit’. After I studied the card he took it back and marked where we’d met on the crude map with a pen.
“So you will remember me,” he explained, and winked, “and I you.” He took another card from his pocket and marked it and wrote my stage name on it. “I have been travelling for twenty years now. This is my way of remembering everyone.”
The man who told me to call him Ya came to stand beside us. He had performed with us but he wasn’t sweating and he said that was because he was from Saigon so he was used to it. He had large black eyes and his teeth poked over his bottom lip.
Ya blinked at us. When he did that he always reminded me of a child patiently waiting for his mum or dad to notice him. I looked at him and he nodded.
“We get food,” he said. “Peanut butter banh mi or fish.”
Peanut butter rolls were 25 cents each. Fish could be a couple of dollars and it was hard to eat around the bones. Richard would be mad if I picked that.
“Peanut butter,” I said. I could have two. So could Richard and that would be a dollar for us both. $51.45 would remain.
Ya grinned. “Let’s go.”
Traveller Fifteen bowed to me as I left and I tried to smile.
Ya handed me a plastic army helmet. I put it on and it slumped to the side of my head. I did not look around for Richard but I wanted to.
“Sara is coming,” Ya said to me. “She said we need to save you,” he added and his eyes flicked to Traveller Fifteen.
We went to where the motorbikes were parked in the corner of the garden. Ya climbed on his bike, a grey thing with scratches down the side, and manoeuvred it into place and motioned for me to climb on the back.
“Hey,” said Richard. He marched over from the house so the light was behind him but I could still tell he was frowning. “Girls should ride with girls, shouldn’t they?” He pointed to Sara.
I shrugged, but I also clenched my teeth.
I went to where Sara was sitting astride her bike and fastening her helmet. Her shiny bike was a smoother ride. I climbed on behind her and held her narrow waist. Up close she smelled of coconuts and sand.
“He saw that creepy old man hitting on you and he did nothing,” said Sara quietly. “No, he did worse. He is jealous at you for it.”
“It’s fine,” I lied. Then I raised my voice a bit. “That guy just wanted to compliment the show.”
Richard heard and grunted as he climbed on the motorbike behind Ya. “Sure. You should stick to percussion and stop trying to sing.”
As we rode I looked at the thin sandals on my feet under my bare legs and imagined coming off the bike and my skin scraping away on the cracked bitumen and how often that sort of thing happened to tourists. But travellers aren’t really tourists.
We left the town and stopped at the bridge where the sandwiches were. There were no street lights. It was late for Vietnam so the houses were quiet and it was dark, the kind of dark you don’t see very often. The repurposed motorbike lights attached to the sandwich cart were a beacon and we were like drunk and hungry little moths. Gangs of young people sat by the side of the road eating.
Richard and Ya climbed off Ya’s bike and Sara pulled over a little away from them. When Richard faced us I quickly took my hands from Sara’s waist.
Sara took her helmet off and shook her short brown hair loose. She was really pretty but I’d never told her so. Some of the men eating sandwiches watched her.
I looked away and out over the river. It was so dark I couldn’t really see the water. It was like a wide black road cut through Vietnam, but a road for boats and rubbish and dead ducks.
Sara said, “You have not had dinner with me like you promised. You must, before you leave.”
“Maybe.” I looked over at Richard.
Sara followed my gaze and sniffed. “You do not need permission.”
“I sort of do,” I said. “I mean, he just wants to know exactly when I’ll be home, doesn’t he? And we need to track what we’re spending, obviously. Besides, what will he do if I’m not with him? He’ll get bored.”
“Have dinner with me,” Sara said, “or I will kidnap you.” She smiled.
Ya saw someone he knew and our strange little crew joined with another. There were other foreigners there with gross grins on their faces thinking they were the first to discover the cheap sandwich cart out of town.
I lit a cigarette and so did Richard - 36 cents - and one of the foreigners came to stand with us. He didn’t say his name so he was Traveller Sixteen. He was very tall and had good posture and an easy smile.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” he said in a thick Dutch accent. “This is my fourth banh mi tonight.” He fit half a sandwich in his mouth at once.
“What brings you to Vietnam?” I asked him.
“Do you have to speak to every guy you see?” Richard said in an undertone.
“My dad left me in charge of his company and I cost him millions of euros,” said Traveller Sixteen. “So I took out all my money in cash and I’m hiding out here for a while.”
I laughed but Richard didn’t. “Money your dad gave you?”
Traveller Sixteen just grinned.
“And you’re telling everyone you meet?” said Richard.
“Well, sure,” said Traveller Sixteen. “When no one knows you, you can be more honest than ever, don’t you think?”
“Maybe if you’re normal,” said Richard. “But not if you’re artists like us. We have a reputation to uphold.” He looked at me and I nodded.
Traveller Sixteen shrugged and shoved the rest of his sandwich in his mouth.
I was thirsty so I bought a bottle of water at the cart. The sandwich woman looked at me then charged me 60 cents.
Richard heard the price and said, “Are you seriously buying that? It’s really expensive.”
“I’m thirsty,” I said as I paid the sandwich woman.
“Couldn’t you just wait until we got back to our hostel?” said Richard. “They have that free water cooler there.”
I clenched my teeth and drank. Richard folded his arms. I felt his mood plummeting from being tired and hungry. It radiated off him like heat. The hard stone in my stomach grew again.
“Eat your food.”
“I’m not hungry now, am I?” he said, and he dropped his sandwiches in the mud.
*
I showered in the airless tiled cave of a bathroom, then I chewed on my lip while I dried my hair with the towel. Richard still lay in the bed.
“We need to check out before we meet Ya and Sara,” I said to him.
Richard saw I was naked and grinned. He rolled over. “Pinchy-pinchy,” he said and pinched my belly. I tried to step away but backed into the wall of the tiny room. He reached up and pinched my nipple.
“Cut it out,” I snapped and I slapped his hand away.
Richard scowled. “Don’t abuse me by hitting my hand.”
I grabbed a bra and put it on fast. “I told you I hate it.” Richard didn’t respond so I said, “I can’t understand why you think it’s okay.”
“You want to do this now?” said Richard. “After we’ve only had five hours of sleep?”
I sighed and rummaged around for some clothes. “Could you clean up the bathroom?”
“You’re quicker at cleaning,” said Richard. “Whoever’s the quickest should do it because that’s the most efficient. Right?”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Downstairs we checked out and paid for the laundry and bought bus tickets from the reception. The overnight bus for that night, booked at the last minute. The cheapest seats they would sell us. The front of the hotel had wide concrete steps and we sat out there and smoked.
“They’re liars,” Richard said. “They had cheaper bus seats. They just keep them for locals.”
“So?”
“Why can’t we have them? Heaps of these people have more money than us.” He gestured to a woman in a red dress passing us on a motorbike. “Like her. She’s richer than us. It’s not fair.” He got out his phone. “I transferred the last of your money to my account. That way we can withdraw it all at once and save on fees.”
“Good idea.”
Ya and Sara picked us up and we rode on cheap motorbikes and bad roads. By the time we reached the ocean my legs were cramping.
Richard, Ya, Sara, and me. We were an odd crew as we parked by the water in the little fishing village. There were dozens of little wooden boats and reeds and the smell of fish. The houses were built right up to the water and boats were tied to their fences with string and bobbed in the ocean.
The sea was still and I couldn’t see land on the other side. I held my breath as I looked at it.
Ya waved at a village local who was lounging on the branch of a thick tree. Ya nodded and smiled and before long we all climbed into a narrow little speedboat.
Our driver didn’t speak while he ferried us onto the water. He had no shirt and his back was dark from the sun. All his ribs were showing.
In the distance a bamboo shack seemed to hover above the water. The sea perfectly reflected the sky and we sped towards the shack through the endless blue, like we were flying. The underwater current thunked against the bottom of the boat in a funny rhythm and I tapped it out on my knees with my fingers.
Our driver stopped the little engine and the boat coasted to the stairs of the bamboo shack. Up close it was big and there were kitchen sounds coming from inside. It was a proper bamboo house on stilts, the kind you see in postcards. We climbed the bamboo steps and I imagined falling through the thin bamboo floor and the sharp bamboo sticks scraping my skin.
“Are we too heavy?” said Richard to Ya. “You know, as a group?” He looked at me.
Ya blinked and looked at me too. “No. We are all of us small people.”
We went to the top floor. There was a greying bamboo roof and half a bamboo wall and a view for kilometres across the flat sea. We sat in a golden little bamboo nook in the corner and looked at menus I couldn’t read. Ya pointed out dishes we might like. There were no prices. When the waiter came, Sara ordered in broken Vietnamese and Ya smiled at her proudly.
“I’ll have the fish salad,” I said, pointing at a picture on the menu. The waiter nodded.
“But that’s got that gross pennywort stuff on it,” said Richard.
“Rau má?” said Sara. She narrowed her eyes. “So what? It is her lunch, not yours.”
“But now I can’t eat any of it,” said Richard. He scowled. “We’re supposed to be trying the local cuisine. It isn’t just her travelling, it’s both of us, and now I can’t try everything, can I?”
Sara held her chin high and didn’t say anything, just looked at Richard. I gazed at her and the fiery strength in her eyes.
Richard looked at me again and opened his mouth but I cut him off.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll have this one.” I pointed to another menu item. Ya explained it to the waiter.
Richard huffed. “Is there even a bathroom here, Ya?”
Ya showed him to the bathroom, a little bamboo booth with a hole in the floor. Sara looked at me with an eyebrow raised.
“You do not need permission,” she said. “How can you live with those tantrums?”
“I find it funny,” I lied.
The food took a while. Ya said they caught the fish fresh from the sea below us.
“Where are you going next on your travels?” he asked with a mouthful of rice.
“South,” I said. “We’ve got a gig in the city with that friend you told us about.”
“Phuong? She is very famous.”
“She’ll even pay us a bit. We just need to get there.”
Ya smiled warmly. Green rau má was stuck in his teeth. “Of course. You are very good artists, the best I have performed with for a long time. I know you will be successful in the city.”
“It’s him,” I said quickly, gesturing to Richard. “He’s the great player. I love it but I just organise everything.”
“You are good also,” Ya insisted. “I like to hear more of you.”
“But I’m the soloist,” Richard said.
Ya nodded and kept eating his fish.
“Must you go?” said Sara.
“We’re travellers,” said Richard, “and we’ve been here a few months. That’s way too long. We need to think about our careers.”
“Yes, you wouldn’t want to stay anywhere long enough to make friends,” said Sara icily.
Another group of four people arrived and sat in the nook next to us. People did that sometimes, clustering next to the only other guests instead of having their own space.
Ya recognised one of them and called to him, a chubby-faced man in his thirties. Next to him was a very thin man who had a huge tattoo on his neck in the old script, the one that looks Chinese but it’s not.
“Do you know everyone in Vietnam?” said Richard.
Ya chuckled. “I am also a traveller. I have been all over Vietnam and I know many people.” He waved at the chubby-faced man. “That is Hung. His father owns the TV station where I worked in Saigon. His friend is a performer also.”
Hung’s performer friend with the neck tattoo didn’t blink much and he chewed on a toothpick. Traveller Seventeen.
“You’re from Australia,” said Traveller Seventeen. He had an impeccable Vietnamese-American accent.
The two women with them could not understand and they put their heads together and chatted quietly. One of them kept looking at me.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Your skin,” said Traveller Seventeen. “It’s aged. You guys get too much sun down there.”
“You are a couple?” Hung said incredulously, gesturing at me and Richard with a cigarette. “You have children?”
“No way.” Richard grimaced. “You can’t have kids and travel and perform like we do.”
Traveller Seventeen rolled the toothpick across his teeth. I looked away from him so Richard wouldn’t think I was being inappropriate and I could feel them both staring at me.
“Travellers,” said Traveller Seventeen. “Running from things, finding others.”
Ya nodded. “Yes, I learned many things about myself.” He smiled.
“If you’re lucky you don’t hate what you find,” said Traveller Seventeen.
The bill came. $21.30 remained.
*
We drove back into town. Sara drove slowly and Ya and Richard got ahead of us and out of sight. I held Sara’s waist tighter. It felt nice to hold someone.
Sara turned off the main street and pulled over outside a little eatery in front of the river. Richard was out of sight. The hard stone in my stomach grew taller, like it was trying to reach up through my body.
“I am kidnapping you for dinner,” Sara said. “Just you, and no Richard.”
She took off her helmet and shook her hair free. I had a moment where I thought she was pretty, so stunningly pretty that I couldn’t believe she was talking to me at all and that she was clever and kind and too good to be anywhere near me and all I wanted was to put my hands on her waist again.
The eatery was inside and had air-conditioning. I hadn’t been in a place with air-conditioning for so long that I broke out in goosebumps.
We sat at a table for two. Sara smiled and took a menu from the stand on the table and gave it to me.
“The pasta here is excellent,” she said.
I looked at the menu and thought about what Richard would say about the prices.
“I’m not that hungry,” I said. “We had a pretty big lunch.”
“Choose something you like,” Sara insisted. “I’ll be right back.”
While Sara was in the bathroom I connected to the eatery’s wifi on my phone. There was a message from my mum:
How are you, sweetheart? Haven’t heard from you for a while. Where are you now? Do you have any photos you can send? I know you probably can’t call, you’re busy as always. So proud of you. Message me when you can.
I didn’t reply.
“Let us pretend,” said Sara when she returned, “that we are on a date.”
I laughed and blushed and hoped Sara would put it down to the heat. “What do you mean?”
She leaned over the table and touched the back of my hand. “Let us just pretend. And let us order food also.”
“What should I have?” I asked her.
Sara shook her head. “No, you decide. Anything you want.”
“But…” I looked at the menu. “What are you having? If you’re having pizza, maybe I’ll…” I trailed off.
“Anything you want,” Sara insisted. “I am paying.”
“I can’t…” I began, but I stopped. “Richard will be mad about this,” I said instead.
“Let him be mad.”
“You don’t understand. He’ll be mad at me, not you.”
“And you don’t see a problem with that?” Sara said gently.
“It’s just…” I was hit by a wave of tiredness. “I know it’ll annoy him if I go out to dinner with you, so it’s my fault if he gets annoyed, isn’t it?”
I felt something move inside me, like the hard stone in my stomach was trying to crack. I swallowed.
“I’m with him 24 hours a day.” My voice was croaky. “I have to make sure he’s happy so my life’s not miserable. When he’s having a bad day like today I just…”
Sara looked at me sadly. “Why don’t you leave?”
“I can’t,” I said at once. “I can’t quit performing, can I? It’s everything to me and I need him for that because I can’t solo. It would be the end of my career without him. Besides, I have no money.”
Sara reached across the table and touched the back of my hand. Her skin was soft but I didn’t say so.
When our date ended and Sara rode me back to the bar near the bus stop, Richard was standing out the front smoking. He had three empty drinks sitting on the table beside him, spirits so I knew he was furious, and a new packet of cigarettes. About $12.80 remained, but I didn’t know what he’d had for dinner, if anything.
“It’s my fault,” Sara said at once. “I kidnapped her.”
“You just can’t mind your own business, can you?” said Richard. “I knew you were one of those meddlesome types.” I saw his jaw clench.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sara snapped. “You don’t own her and she’s not responsible for your feelings either. Grow up.”
Richard raised his eyebrows and looked at me. “This is who you choose to be friends with? People who abuse me?”
I said nothing. I wished I could stay on the imaginary date with Sara.
*
We caught the bus in silence. When we arrived in the city it was the morning so we went to a cafe and bought one coffee to share and sat there for four hours on our phones. The staff didn’t move us on.
My phone buzzed and it was a message from Sara. I angled my phone away from Richard but he saw it.
“I thought you weren’t friends with her anymore.”
“I’m not,” I said quickly. “See?”
I showed Richard my phone so he could see the message notification which read, ‘I know you don’t want to hear from me’.
It occurred to me that Sara wouldn’t try to read my messages.
After we paid for our hotel we had 40 cents left. The hotel had free mango and dragonfruit and we ate all of it. Richard invited me into the shower with him but once I had my clothes off he kept trying to pinch me. I didn’t have the energy to tell him to stop so I just got out and waited to shower after he was done.
We couldn’t afford a cab so we walked to our performance and carried our instruments in the heat. Richard seemed angry when we left the hotel but I didn’t ask.
The gig was at a bar just outside of the tourist district. It was a brick building with rounded corners and it was painted glossy black. It looked like a huge beetle. Inside it was an L shape that wrapped around the kitchen and the stage was at one end.
Ya’s friend Phuong was a tiny, fierce woman covered in tattoos. She gave us free drinks and food and told us the wifi password. When Richard went to the bathroom I connected to the wifi and read the message from Sara:
I know you don’t want to hear from me but I think you need to. I’m sure Richard will read this and I don’t care. I am coming south to the city (anyway, to see my cousin) and I will worry about you forever unless I see you again. Please, if you are there next week, meet me beside the fountain on Tuesday night, the big one in the tourist area. I will wait for you. Remember, you don’t need permission!
Richard came back and I put my phone away. I imagined what it would be like to meet up with Sara, what we would do and what she would say. She would be kind to me. Maybe she would even help me. She would talk if I wanted, hug me if I wanted. Sara wouldn’t tell me what to do.
“Don’t drink too much,” said Richard. “We’re supposed to start now.”
The stage was bright. I could only see some of the people in the bar but I looked towards them anyway, where I knew they were, and put down my drink on a little wooden stool in front of me. There was water there too, open bottles and empty wine glasses. I looked at Richard until he nodded at me.
We started. I joined together different ideas and created colours as Richard moved through his favourite sounds and tunes. I supported him and people in the bar gravitated to his side of the stage as they listened to his solos.
It went well. It was a relief.
When we reached the final piece Richard took his microphone and spoke to everyone like he usually did, thanking them and explaining who we were. They smiled at him, the ones I could see. I sipped my wine and smiled too and didn’t really listen.
“…will be our last gig.”
I looked at Richard.
“After this we’ll be moving in a new direction. It’s time for us to stop performing and start doing behind-the-scenes work like film scores and composing.”
“What?” I hissed.
Richard scowled and covered the microphone with his hand. “We’re going to a film festival next. You’ve been basically mute for 24 hours so you probably didn’t notice me booking it. We leave on Tuesday. If you want to keep performing you can do it on your own.”
He raised an eyebrow when he said Tuesday and I knew he’d read my messages. The stone in my stomach cracked.
“What? No. I can’t,” I said. My throat felt tight and my body felt too hot. “I can’t solo. That’s why you always do it. I can’t. I…” I couldn’t breathe.
“Stop embarrassing me and play something,” Richard hissed.
I drank some wine to give me a second to think. My mouth was dry. I blinked and my eyes felt dry too.
I put the wine glass down on the little stool in front of me. It was real glass and it made a little ding sound as it hit the wood.
I breathed in and hated Richard.
I breathed out at the people in the bar, the audience, and they were watching me. I smiled at them.
I pulled the microphone close to my wine glass and rubbed the rim with a finger. It made that ringing sound that wine glasses make, the one that seems to double over itself and fill up your ears. I signalled to the sound engineer to up the volume on my microphone.
The audience kept looking at me and watching my hands. I saw someone cock their head and look at their own glass, like they never thought before that the sound could be beautiful but it was.
Richard started to play something on his guitar. A solo. I wasn’t really listening to him and it felt weird not to.
The single note of the wine glass was deafening even though it wasn’t loud, and I sang over it. With my free hand I poured water into the other wine glasses.
People had come to stand in front of me, on my side of the stage. Their eyes were glued to my hands. Their attention was a buoy and I floated on it.
Phuong brought a few more wine glasses over and put them on the little stool before me and winked at me. I played two wine glasses at once. They made a chord that was clashing and stunning in its ugliness. I played all the wine glasses and they were all different pitches and they made a melody that was sad and eerie. It was like an old music box, broken but still pretty. I sang more and the sound of my voice pulled something rotten out of me and shared it with the audience.
I stopped touching the wine glass just for a moment and the room felt empty and cold, and I realised Richard had stopped playing and was listening.
The room paused. In music you need to play the silence as much as you play the notes. Sometimes stopping like that lets you start something else.
I put my mouth into a glass of water and screamed.
The sound echoed through the wine glass and mixed with the bubbles and distorted. It was the sound of someone fear and breaking and drowning.
I stopped when I had to, when my breath ran out. Richard was still and the audience was still. I looked out at them and bowed and I didn’t look at Richard. Before the clapping had stopped I bowed again and left the stage and went outside.
I leaned against the warm bricks of the building with my eyes closed and breathed out again. The air was heavy and damp and I knew rain was coming.
I heard the door creak behind me and I opened my eyes and saw Phuong.
“No more?” she said. “That was amazing.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know if Richard will want to do that again.”
Phuong snorted. She reached into a pouch on her apron and handed me some money. “Your share. And I want you to come back.”
“I’ll ask Richard if—“
“No. Just you. Ya messaged me about you. I need more girls playing here. I want people doing their own thing, you know?”
I smiled at Phuong and pocketed the cash. As she went inside, another tattooed woman came outside. She wore a little black dress and combat boots. She offered me a cigarette and I took it.
“You’re quitting music?” she said. She was Filipina.
“No,” I said. “But he is.” I nodded inside towards where Richard was.
Traveller Eighteen. Eighteen was a lucky number in Vietnam. She frowned and looked back towards the bar. “You’re not a couple with that guy, are you?”
I took a breath. “No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“Come to Manila,” said Traveller Eighteen. “I run an art space there. We have board for artists, you can live there as long as you perform every now and then.”
“I don’t know if I can,” I said. I hadn’t counted the money from Phuong yet and I touched my pocket.
Traveller Eighteen handed me her card. “Think about it.”
When Traveller Eighteen went back inside, I connected to the wifi on my phone. I had a message from my mum:
Darling, I’ve transferred a few hundred dollars to your bank account for your birthday. Your father has done the same, I think. It’s not for bills or rent or anything boring like that! You have to do something special with it, something for yourself. Love you loads.
I went to my bank account. My hands were shaking. I wasn’t sure when that had started. The money was there, hundreds of dollars, more money than I’d seen for years.
I changed my account password.
I opened my social media accounts and changed the passwords there too. Then I counted the money from Phuong.
$618.90 remained. It was enough.
“Perhaps I don’t live anywhere,” he said.
Traveller Fifteen tapped ash from his cigarette into the fire that burned in a metal wheelbarrow beside us. A log moved and fluffed embers into the front garden. The night air was hot but the fire at least seemed to chase away some of the Vietnamese humidity. So did the cigarettes.
“Home is where the heart is, they say, but we travellers don’t live in our homes,” he said, and winked at me. “So where do we live?”
I smoked while I pretended to think. “Where you usually are, maybe.” I shrugged and flicked the cigarette butt into the fire. That was 18 cents down. $52.63 remained until we could get some more cash from somewhere and it wasn’t enough. I looked around for Richard and couldn’t find him.
“Ah,” said Traveller Fifteen. He was standing close. I smelled the tobacco on his breath; his cigarettes were stronger than mine. “Then I’m probably from the airport, or the bus stop. That’s where I usually am.” He lit another cigarette with the butt of his first. “Where are you usually?”
“In my own head.”
“Inside a creative mind,” said Traveller Fifteen wistfully. “That must be a nice place to be.” He looked at my face and said, “Perhaps. Ah. You must tell me how you come up with such fascinating performance ideas. Perhaps I can buy you a drink.”
The show had only just finished. The sweat from performing was still sticky on my body and I wiped my forehead and tried to think of an excuse. Technically it had all been illegal so we hadn’t performed long and the air was still nervous and excited as people mingled inside and out.
Tuan came over and dumped wood on the fire, driftwood he’d collected from the river opposite and dried on his balcony. He was the owner of the house-gallery-cafe-performance space, a man who only became more polite the more the police came after him and his subversive art. He added a fragrant herb to the wheelbarrow to cover up the smell of the joint between his teeth. That was illegal too, but the police that drove by every night thought art and its ideas were worse.
I moved to light another cigarette - another 18 cents, so $52.45 remaining - but Traveller Fifteen procured a little green lighter.
“Allow me.”
Instead of giving me the lighter he wanted to light the cigarette between my lips. I hesitated but let him do it. I spotted Richard across the garden.
The hard stone that I could always feel in my stomach grew a little as Richard scowled at me. I looked away from him and when I looked back he was gone. He had been talking to two students who wanted to practice their English. They whispered together after he left them.
“Here is my card,” said Traveller Fifteen.
I took it and read both sides. One side was a crude world map and the other was his details, but it only had his initials: S. D. It said his location was ‘in transit’. After I studied the card he took it back and marked where we’d met on the crude map with a pen.
“So you will remember me,” he explained, and winked, “and I you.” He took another card from his pocket and marked it and wrote my stage name on it. “I have been travelling for twenty years now. This is my way of remembering everyone.”
The man who told me to call him Ya came to stand beside us. He had performed with us but he wasn’t sweating and he said that was because he was from Saigon so he was used to it. He had large black eyes and his teeth poked over his bottom lip.
Ya blinked at us. When he did that he always reminded me of a child patiently waiting for his mum or dad to notice him. I looked at him and he nodded.
“We get food,” he said. “Peanut butter banh mi or fish.”
Peanut butter rolls were 25 cents each. Fish could be a couple of dollars and it was hard to eat around the bones. Richard would be mad if I picked that.
“Peanut butter,” I said. I could have two. So could Richard and that would be a dollar for us both. $51.45 would remain.
Ya grinned. “Let’s go.”
Traveller Fifteen bowed to me as I left and I tried to smile.
Ya handed me a plastic army helmet. I put it on and it slumped to the side of my head. I did not look around for Richard but I wanted to.
“Sara is coming,” Ya said to me. “She said we need to save you,” he added and his eyes flicked to Traveller Fifteen.
We went to where the motorbikes were parked in the corner of the garden. Ya climbed on his bike, a grey thing with scratches down the side, and manoeuvred it into place and motioned for me to climb on the back.
“Hey,” said Richard. He marched over from the house so the light was behind him but I could still tell he was frowning. “Girls should ride with girls, shouldn’t they?” He pointed to Sara.
I shrugged, but I also clenched my teeth.
I went to where Sara was sitting astride her bike and fastening her helmet. Her shiny bike was a smoother ride. I climbed on behind her and held her narrow waist. Up close she smelled of coconuts and sand.
“He saw that creepy old man hitting on you and he did nothing,” said Sara quietly. “No, he did worse. He is jealous at you for it.”
“It’s fine,” I lied. Then I raised my voice a bit. “That guy just wanted to compliment the show.”
Richard heard and grunted as he climbed on the motorbike behind Ya. “Sure. You should stick to percussion and stop trying to sing.”
As we rode I looked at the thin sandals on my feet under my bare legs and imagined coming off the bike and my skin scraping away on the cracked bitumen and how often that sort of thing happened to tourists. But travellers aren’t really tourists.
We left the town and stopped at the bridge where the sandwiches were. There were no street lights. It was late for Vietnam so the houses were quiet and it was dark, the kind of dark you don’t see very often. The repurposed motorbike lights attached to the sandwich cart were a beacon and we were like drunk and hungry little moths. Gangs of young people sat by the side of the road eating.
Richard and Ya climbed off Ya’s bike and Sara pulled over a little away from them. When Richard faced us I quickly took my hands from Sara’s waist.
Sara took her helmet off and shook her short brown hair loose. She was really pretty but I’d never told her so. Some of the men eating sandwiches watched her.
I looked away and out over the river. It was so dark I couldn’t really see the water. It was like a wide black road cut through Vietnam, but a road for boats and rubbish and dead ducks.
Sara said, “You have not had dinner with me like you promised. You must, before you leave.”
“Maybe.” I looked over at Richard.
Sara followed my gaze and sniffed. “You do not need permission.”
“I sort of do,” I said. “I mean, he just wants to know exactly when I’ll be home, doesn’t he? And we need to track what we’re spending, obviously. Besides, what will he do if I’m not with him? He’ll get bored.”
“Have dinner with me,” Sara said, “or I will kidnap you.” She smiled.
Ya saw someone he knew and our strange little crew joined with another. There were other foreigners there with gross grins on their faces thinking they were the first to discover the cheap sandwich cart out of town.
I lit a cigarette and so did Richard - 36 cents - and one of the foreigners came to stand with us. He didn’t say his name so he was Traveller Sixteen. He was very tall and had good posture and an easy smile.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” he said in a thick Dutch accent. “This is my fourth banh mi tonight.” He fit half a sandwich in his mouth at once.
“What brings you to Vietnam?” I asked him.
“Do you have to speak to every guy you see?” Richard said in an undertone.
“My dad left me in charge of his company and I cost him millions of euros,” said Traveller Sixteen. “So I took out all my money in cash and I’m hiding out here for a while.”
I laughed but Richard didn’t. “Money your dad gave you?”
Traveller Sixteen just grinned.
“And you’re telling everyone you meet?” said Richard.
“Well, sure,” said Traveller Sixteen. “When no one knows you, you can be more honest than ever, don’t you think?”
“Maybe if you’re normal,” said Richard. “But not if you’re artists like us. We have a reputation to uphold.” He looked at me and I nodded.
Traveller Sixteen shrugged and shoved the rest of his sandwich in his mouth.
I was thirsty so I bought a bottle of water at the cart. The sandwich woman looked at me then charged me 60 cents.
Richard heard the price and said, “Are you seriously buying that? It’s really expensive.”
“I’m thirsty,” I said as I paid the sandwich woman.
“Couldn’t you just wait until we got back to our hostel?” said Richard. “They have that free water cooler there.”
I clenched my teeth and drank. Richard folded his arms. I felt his mood plummeting from being tired and hungry. It radiated off him like heat. The hard stone in my stomach grew again.
“Eat your food.”
“I’m not hungry now, am I?” he said, and he dropped his sandwiches in the mud.
*
I showered in the airless tiled cave of a bathroom, then I chewed on my lip while I dried my hair with the towel. Richard still lay in the bed.
“We need to check out before we meet Ya and Sara,” I said to him.
Richard saw I was naked and grinned. He rolled over. “Pinchy-pinchy,” he said and pinched my belly. I tried to step away but backed into the wall of the tiny room. He reached up and pinched my nipple.
“Cut it out,” I snapped and I slapped his hand away.
Richard scowled. “Don’t abuse me by hitting my hand.”
I grabbed a bra and put it on fast. “I told you I hate it.” Richard didn’t respond so I said, “I can’t understand why you think it’s okay.”
“You want to do this now?” said Richard. “After we’ve only had five hours of sleep?”
I sighed and rummaged around for some clothes. “Could you clean up the bathroom?”
“You’re quicker at cleaning,” said Richard. “Whoever’s the quickest should do it because that’s the most efficient. Right?”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Downstairs we checked out and paid for the laundry and bought bus tickets from the reception. The overnight bus for that night, booked at the last minute. The cheapest seats they would sell us. The front of the hotel had wide concrete steps and we sat out there and smoked.
“They’re liars,” Richard said. “They had cheaper bus seats. They just keep them for locals.”
“So?”
“Why can’t we have them? Heaps of these people have more money than us.” He gestured to a woman in a red dress passing us on a motorbike. “Like her. She’s richer than us. It’s not fair.” He got out his phone. “I transferred the last of your money to my account. That way we can withdraw it all at once and save on fees.”
“Good idea.”
Ya and Sara picked us up and we rode on cheap motorbikes and bad roads. By the time we reached the ocean my legs were cramping.
Richard, Ya, Sara, and me. We were an odd crew as we parked by the water in the little fishing village. There were dozens of little wooden boats and reeds and the smell of fish. The houses were built right up to the water and boats were tied to their fences with string and bobbed in the ocean.
The sea was still and I couldn’t see land on the other side. I held my breath as I looked at it.
Ya waved at a village local who was lounging on the branch of a thick tree. Ya nodded and smiled and before long we all climbed into a narrow little speedboat.
Our driver didn’t speak while he ferried us onto the water. He had no shirt and his back was dark from the sun. All his ribs were showing.
In the distance a bamboo shack seemed to hover above the water. The sea perfectly reflected the sky and we sped towards the shack through the endless blue, like we were flying. The underwater current thunked against the bottom of the boat in a funny rhythm and I tapped it out on my knees with my fingers.
Our driver stopped the little engine and the boat coasted to the stairs of the bamboo shack. Up close it was big and there were kitchen sounds coming from inside. It was a proper bamboo house on stilts, the kind you see in postcards. We climbed the bamboo steps and I imagined falling through the thin bamboo floor and the sharp bamboo sticks scraping my skin.
“Are we too heavy?” said Richard to Ya. “You know, as a group?” He looked at me.
Ya blinked and looked at me too. “No. We are all of us small people.”
We went to the top floor. There was a greying bamboo roof and half a bamboo wall and a view for kilometres across the flat sea. We sat in a golden little bamboo nook in the corner and looked at menus I couldn’t read. Ya pointed out dishes we might like. There were no prices. When the waiter came, Sara ordered in broken Vietnamese and Ya smiled at her proudly.
“I’ll have the fish salad,” I said, pointing at a picture on the menu. The waiter nodded.
“But that’s got that gross pennywort stuff on it,” said Richard.
“Rau má?” said Sara. She narrowed her eyes. “So what? It is her lunch, not yours.”
“But now I can’t eat any of it,” said Richard. He scowled. “We’re supposed to be trying the local cuisine. It isn’t just her travelling, it’s both of us, and now I can’t try everything, can I?”
Sara held her chin high and didn’t say anything, just looked at Richard. I gazed at her and the fiery strength in her eyes.
Richard looked at me again and opened his mouth but I cut him off.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll have this one.” I pointed to another menu item. Ya explained it to the waiter.
Richard huffed. “Is there even a bathroom here, Ya?”
Ya showed him to the bathroom, a little bamboo booth with a hole in the floor. Sara looked at me with an eyebrow raised.
“You do not need permission,” she said. “How can you live with those tantrums?”
“I find it funny,” I lied.
The food took a while. Ya said they caught the fish fresh from the sea below us.
“Where are you going next on your travels?” he asked with a mouthful of rice.
“South,” I said. “We’ve got a gig in the city with that friend you told us about.”
“Phuong? She is very famous.”
“She’ll even pay us a bit. We just need to get there.”
Ya smiled warmly. Green rau má was stuck in his teeth. “Of course. You are very good artists, the best I have performed with for a long time. I know you will be successful in the city.”
“It’s him,” I said quickly, gesturing to Richard. “He’s the great player. I love it but I just organise everything.”
“You are good also,” Ya insisted. “I like to hear more of you.”
“But I’m the soloist,” Richard said.
Ya nodded and kept eating his fish.
“Must you go?” said Sara.
“We’re travellers,” said Richard, “and we’ve been here a few months. That’s way too long. We need to think about our careers.”
“Yes, you wouldn’t want to stay anywhere long enough to make friends,” said Sara icily.
Another group of four people arrived and sat in the nook next to us. People did that sometimes, clustering next to the only other guests instead of having their own space.
Ya recognised one of them and called to him, a chubby-faced man in his thirties. Next to him was a very thin man who had a huge tattoo on his neck in the old script, the one that looks Chinese but it’s not.
“Do you know everyone in Vietnam?” said Richard.
Ya chuckled. “I am also a traveller. I have been all over Vietnam and I know many people.” He waved at the chubby-faced man. “That is Hung. His father owns the TV station where I worked in Saigon. His friend is a performer also.”
Hung’s performer friend with the neck tattoo didn’t blink much and he chewed on a toothpick. Traveller Seventeen.
“You’re from Australia,” said Traveller Seventeen. He had an impeccable Vietnamese-American accent.
The two women with them could not understand and they put their heads together and chatted quietly. One of them kept looking at me.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Your skin,” said Traveller Seventeen. “It’s aged. You guys get too much sun down there.”
“You are a couple?” Hung said incredulously, gesturing at me and Richard with a cigarette. “You have children?”
“No way.” Richard grimaced. “You can’t have kids and travel and perform like we do.”
Traveller Seventeen rolled the toothpick across his teeth. I looked away from him so Richard wouldn’t think I was being inappropriate and I could feel them both staring at me.
“Travellers,” said Traveller Seventeen. “Running from things, finding others.”
Ya nodded. “Yes, I learned many things about myself.” He smiled.
“If you’re lucky you don’t hate what you find,” said Traveller Seventeen.
The bill came. $21.30 remained.
*
We drove back into town. Sara drove slowly and Ya and Richard got ahead of us and out of sight. I held Sara’s waist tighter. It felt nice to hold someone.
Sara turned off the main street and pulled over outside a little eatery in front of the river. Richard was out of sight. The hard stone in my stomach grew taller, like it was trying to reach up through my body.
“I am kidnapping you for dinner,” Sara said. “Just you, and no Richard.”
She took off her helmet and shook her hair free. I had a moment where I thought she was pretty, so stunningly pretty that I couldn’t believe she was talking to me at all and that she was clever and kind and too good to be anywhere near me and all I wanted was to put my hands on her waist again.
The eatery was inside and had air-conditioning. I hadn’t been in a place with air-conditioning for so long that I broke out in goosebumps.
We sat at a table for two. Sara smiled and took a menu from the stand on the table and gave it to me.
“The pasta here is excellent,” she said.
I looked at the menu and thought about what Richard would say about the prices.
“I’m not that hungry,” I said. “We had a pretty big lunch.”
“Choose something you like,” Sara insisted. “I’ll be right back.”
While Sara was in the bathroom I connected to the eatery’s wifi on my phone. There was a message from my mum:
How are you, sweetheart? Haven’t heard from you for a while. Where are you now? Do you have any photos you can send? I know you probably can’t call, you’re busy as always. So proud of you. Message me when you can.
I didn’t reply.
“Let us pretend,” said Sara when she returned, “that we are on a date.”
I laughed and blushed and hoped Sara would put it down to the heat. “What do you mean?”
She leaned over the table and touched the back of my hand. “Let us just pretend. And let us order food also.”
“What should I have?” I asked her.
Sara shook her head. “No, you decide. Anything you want.”
“But…” I looked at the menu. “What are you having? If you’re having pizza, maybe I’ll…” I trailed off.
“Anything you want,” Sara insisted. “I am paying.”
“I can’t…” I began, but I stopped. “Richard will be mad about this,” I said instead.
“Let him be mad.”
“You don’t understand. He’ll be mad at me, not you.”
“And you don’t see a problem with that?” Sara said gently.
“It’s just…” I was hit by a wave of tiredness. “I know it’ll annoy him if I go out to dinner with you, so it’s my fault if he gets annoyed, isn’t it?”
I felt something move inside me, like the hard stone in my stomach was trying to crack. I swallowed.
“I’m with him 24 hours a day.” My voice was croaky. “I have to make sure he’s happy so my life’s not miserable. When he’s having a bad day like today I just…”
Sara looked at me sadly. “Why don’t you leave?”
“I can’t,” I said at once. “I can’t quit performing, can I? It’s everything to me and I need him for that because I can’t solo. It would be the end of my career without him. Besides, I have no money.”
Sara reached across the table and touched the back of my hand. Her skin was soft but I didn’t say so.
When our date ended and Sara rode me back to the bar near the bus stop, Richard was standing out the front smoking. He had three empty drinks sitting on the table beside him, spirits so I knew he was furious, and a new packet of cigarettes. About $12.80 remained, but I didn’t know what he’d had for dinner, if anything.
“It’s my fault,” Sara said at once. “I kidnapped her.”
“You just can’t mind your own business, can you?” said Richard. “I knew you were one of those meddlesome types.” I saw his jaw clench.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sara snapped. “You don’t own her and she’s not responsible for your feelings either. Grow up.”
Richard raised his eyebrows and looked at me. “This is who you choose to be friends with? People who abuse me?”
I said nothing. I wished I could stay on the imaginary date with Sara.
*
We caught the bus in silence. When we arrived in the city it was the morning so we went to a cafe and bought one coffee to share and sat there for four hours on our phones. The staff didn’t move us on.
My phone buzzed and it was a message from Sara. I angled my phone away from Richard but he saw it.
“I thought you weren’t friends with her anymore.”
“I’m not,” I said quickly. “See?”
I showed Richard my phone so he could see the message notification which read, ‘I know you don’t want to hear from me’.
It occurred to me that Sara wouldn’t try to read my messages.
After we paid for our hotel we had 40 cents left. The hotel had free mango and dragonfruit and we ate all of it. Richard invited me into the shower with him but once I had my clothes off he kept trying to pinch me. I didn’t have the energy to tell him to stop so I just got out and waited to shower after he was done.
We couldn’t afford a cab so we walked to our performance and carried our instruments in the heat. Richard seemed angry when we left the hotel but I didn’t ask.
The gig was at a bar just outside of the tourist district. It was a brick building with rounded corners and it was painted glossy black. It looked like a huge beetle. Inside it was an L shape that wrapped around the kitchen and the stage was at one end.
Ya’s friend Phuong was a tiny, fierce woman covered in tattoos. She gave us free drinks and food and told us the wifi password. When Richard went to the bathroom I connected to the wifi and read the message from Sara:
I know you don’t want to hear from me but I think you need to. I’m sure Richard will read this and I don’t care. I am coming south to the city (anyway, to see my cousin) and I will worry about you forever unless I see you again. Please, if you are there next week, meet me beside the fountain on Tuesday night, the big one in the tourist area. I will wait for you. Remember, you don’t need permission!
Richard came back and I put my phone away. I imagined what it would be like to meet up with Sara, what we would do and what she would say. She would be kind to me. Maybe she would even help me. She would talk if I wanted, hug me if I wanted. Sara wouldn’t tell me what to do.
“Don’t drink too much,” said Richard. “We’re supposed to start now.”
The stage was bright. I could only see some of the people in the bar but I looked towards them anyway, where I knew they were, and put down my drink on a little wooden stool in front of me. There was water there too, open bottles and empty wine glasses. I looked at Richard until he nodded at me.
We started. I joined together different ideas and created colours as Richard moved through his favourite sounds and tunes. I supported him and people in the bar gravitated to his side of the stage as they listened to his solos.
It went well. It was a relief.
When we reached the final piece Richard took his microphone and spoke to everyone like he usually did, thanking them and explaining who we were. They smiled at him, the ones I could see. I sipped my wine and smiled too and didn’t really listen.
“…will be our last gig.”
I looked at Richard.
“After this we’ll be moving in a new direction. It’s time for us to stop performing and start doing behind-the-scenes work like film scores and composing.”
“What?” I hissed.
Richard scowled and covered the microphone with his hand. “We’re going to a film festival next. You’ve been basically mute for 24 hours so you probably didn’t notice me booking it. We leave on Tuesday. If you want to keep performing you can do it on your own.”
He raised an eyebrow when he said Tuesday and I knew he’d read my messages. The stone in my stomach cracked.
“What? No. I can’t,” I said. My throat felt tight and my body felt too hot. “I can’t solo. That’s why you always do it. I can’t. I…” I couldn’t breathe.
“Stop embarrassing me and play something,” Richard hissed.
I drank some wine to give me a second to think. My mouth was dry. I blinked and my eyes felt dry too.
I put the wine glass down on the little stool in front of me. It was real glass and it made a little ding sound as it hit the wood.
I breathed in and hated Richard.
I breathed out at the people in the bar, the audience, and they were watching me. I smiled at them.
I pulled the microphone close to my wine glass and rubbed the rim with a finger. It made that ringing sound that wine glasses make, the one that seems to double over itself and fill up your ears. I signalled to the sound engineer to up the volume on my microphone.
The audience kept looking at me and watching my hands. I saw someone cock their head and look at their own glass, like they never thought before that the sound could be beautiful but it was.
Richard started to play something on his guitar. A solo. I wasn’t really listening to him and it felt weird not to.
The single note of the wine glass was deafening even though it wasn’t loud, and I sang over it. With my free hand I poured water into the other wine glasses.
People had come to stand in front of me, on my side of the stage. Their eyes were glued to my hands. Their attention was a buoy and I floated on it.
Phuong brought a few more wine glasses over and put them on the little stool before me and winked at me. I played two wine glasses at once. They made a chord that was clashing and stunning in its ugliness. I played all the wine glasses and they were all different pitches and they made a melody that was sad and eerie. It was like an old music box, broken but still pretty. I sang more and the sound of my voice pulled something rotten out of me and shared it with the audience.
I stopped touching the wine glass just for a moment and the room felt empty and cold, and I realised Richard had stopped playing and was listening.
The room paused. In music you need to play the silence as much as you play the notes. Sometimes stopping like that lets you start something else.
I put my mouth into a glass of water and screamed.
The sound echoed through the wine glass and mixed with the bubbles and distorted. It was the sound of someone fear and breaking and drowning.
I stopped when I had to, when my breath ran out. Richard was still and the audience was still. I looked out at them and bowed and I didn’t look at Richard. Before the clapping had stopped I bowed again and left the stage and went outside.
I leaned against the warm bricks of the building with my eyes closed and breathed out again. The air was heavy and damp and I knew rain was coming.
I heard the door creak behind me and I opened my eyes and saw Phuong.
“No more?” she said. “That was amazing.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know if Richard will want to do that again.”
Phuong snorted. She reached into a pouch on her apron and handed me some money. “Your share. And I want you to come back.”
“I’ll ask Richard if—“
“No. Just you. Ya messaged me about you. I need more girls playing here. I want people doing their own thing, you know?”
I smiled at Phuong and pocketed the cash. As she went inside, another tattooed woman came outside. She wore a little black dress and combat boots. She offered me a cigarette and I took it.
“You’re quitting music?” she said. She was Filipina.
“No,” I said. “But he is.” I nodded inside towards where Richard was.
Traveller Eighteen. Eighteen was a lucky number in Vietnam. She frowned and looked back towards the bar. “You’re not a couple with that guy, are you?”
I took a breath. “No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“Come to Manila,” said Traveller Eighteen. “I run an art space there. We have board for artists, you can live there as long as you perform every now and then.”
“I don’t know if I can,” I said. I hadn’t counted the money from Phuong yet and I touched my pocket.
Traveller Eighteen handed me her card. “Think about it.”
When Traveller Eighteen went back inside, I connected to the wifi on my phone. I had a message from my mum:
Darling, I’ve transferred a few hundred dollars to your bank account for your birthday. Your father has done the same, I think. It’s not for bills or rent or anything boring like that! You have to do something special with it, something for yourself. Love you loads.
I went to my bank account. My hands were shaking. I wasn’t sure when that had started. The money was there, hundreds of dollars, more money than I’d seen for years.
I changed my account password.
I opened my social media accounts and changed the passwords there too. Then I counted the money from Phuong.
$618.90 remained. It was enough.