Bill woke with a start, his mind had been searching for something for the past day or so but he couldn't quite grasp what it was. His ordeal at the hands of Trung and his thugs has addled his brain to the point where he could only think of survival and had seemingly erased all other vestiges of his memory. He desperately wanted to call Phuong, for surely his old friend would know what was making his mind restless but it was 3:00 am and he knew better than to disturb the man who had saved his life.
Instead Bill spooned into Mai and held her to his chest and kissed the nape of her neck pausing between soft kisses to breath in her scent, but even this couldn't distract him from what churned through his minds. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the night unable to quite grasp what was deep within his subconscious...
The following morning they had decided to take a picnic lunch out to the Thien Mu Pagoda just 5 km from the Citadel on the banks of the Perfume River, and enjoy the peace and quiet of the river and surrounding jungle, Bill stood beside Mai on the sidewalk outside their hotel.
It was a relatively busy morning, although this was the first time they'd made it out of their room before 1:00 pm it was difficult to gauge whether it was busy or this was normal, when a car stopped and deposited an attractive blond westerner some distance away. Bill sensed something about this woman that reminded him of his past, but was struggling to get his brain thinking but then out of nowhere he realized that Lea was on her way to see him in Hanoi.
The first thing Mai felt was a tug on her hand that Bill had clasped so tightly all of a sudden, she turned to see him unsteady on his feet and looking a little woozy. "Are you okay?" she asked, starting to feel concerned.
Perhaps its too soon and led him back inside the sanctuary of the hotel grounds. Bill's memories had flooded back to him, as he tried to comprehend the timeline and expectations of the last call he'd had with Lea.
No comments:
Post a Comment