“I don’t,” he said with a shrug and another grin, reminding me that his size contributed to who he was. He never made excuses for it nor gloated over it. It was what it was. And it’s breathtaking, I thought then immediately chided myself.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spied a woman acting strangely, looking over her shoulder a hundred times, memorizing the people around her. I suspected she was An’s contact but I wasn’t sure so I continued eating without catching her attention. Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was notice her if someone really was watching us. She’d be dead before she crossed the street to us.
So I drank the broth of my soup slowly, eyeing my chopsticks as if they were the most fascinating things in the world, and before long, a shadow fell over our tiny table and all three of us looked up.
“Xin lỗi cho hỏi?” Excuse me? She said it quietly, hesitantly.
“Yes,” Father replied in Vietnamese, but this time I didn’t find the humor in his accent.
They continued to have a conversation and I could only catch bits and pieces. Words like girl, men, and lost. Ethan and I had set our bowls down to listen as if we could understand what they were saying, both of us on edge. I turned my head to look at Ethan, studying him, scrutinizing him as his eyes widened in alertness, his muscles bunched beneath his skin, flexing as if he could jump twenty feet any direction he chose, and I believed he could have. My gut churned with nerves. The soup had lost its soothing charms.
I watched Father and the woman in animated conversation, wishing I’d had any clue as to what they were discussing. I looked around me, at the people living out their morning, bustling to and fro, getting from point A to point B. It all looked so innocuous, so commonplace but something, I don’t know what, was telling me to flee. For some inexplicable reason, my chest tightened, my breath quickened, my skin crawled.
“We have to leave,” I said suddenly. “We have to leave, we have to leave,” I kept repeating, but Father was too deep into his conversation with the woman in front of him. “We have to go, Ethan,” I said, standing up. Ethan followed my lead, standing but keeping his body between mine and the street. I tugged on Father’s shirtsleeve. “Father, I have a weird feeling.”
He looked up at me. “’Tis it, my choild?” he asked, his voice rising an octave in curiosity.
“Tell her we’ll contact her later. I have a sick, paranoid feeling we need to leave.”
Calmly, Father stood. “I don’t believe there is anything to worry ’bout, lass, but I won’t make you stay here.” He turned to the woman and explained. She nodded quickly, turned, and sprinted for the street, the same direction she had come from.
“She said to meet her at her apartment. ’Tis just down the road a wee bit,” he said, bending to reach for his helmet.
Just then bullets rang out in rapid succession. Screams joined the chaos, but before I had time to do the same, I was whisked into someone’s arms, cradled like a child against a big chest. I looked up and saw Ethan’s steady expression, his warrior-like countenance. His was a look of a man who knew exactly what to do.
I watched spellbound as he hoisted me up and around the metal counter of a nearby street shop. He left briefly and the fear crept back, the noises rose tenfold. Suddenly, Father was spun in front of me as if he weighed nothing, his cane fell with a clatter upon the concrete floor, adding a sharp echoing thud to the disorder as women, men, and children went diving into tight places, begging for a safe haven from the spray of bullets.
“Ethan!” I screamed when he stood back up as if he intended to go back into the line of fire. “No, Ethan! No!” I yelled desperately at the top of my lungs when he kissed my cheek quickly and gave me a piercing look that confused me.
He went bounding into the fray, me screaming after him to come back as Father dragged me back behind the counter.
“No, lass! Stay put!”
I raised my head, my gaze barely breaking the top surface of the counter to search for Ethan as Father signaled families to give him their children to hide behind the metal counter in his stead. My instinct told me to run after Ethan but I knew I had a duty to protect the children around us. Protecting children was the reason I was there. So I pulled at as many kids as I could, tucking them into one another like a can of sardines, desperately pushing my racing heart and the reason it raced to the back of my mind.
Ethan was out there with the gun. A million thoughts raced through my mind. Why didn’t he stay there with me? What was he hoping to accomplish? How could he risk himself like that? Didn’t he know how much I needed him?
I’d reached for a toddler just as the bullets died down to a complete halt. We all stood still, quiet, waiting. When I was sure the bullets were no more, I bounded up, ignoring Father’s heed to stay. I ran out into the ghostlike street, such a dichotomy from what it had been not a minute before, and searched for Ethan. My eyes scanned then fell upon Ethan knelt beside the woman we’d been talking to, giving her mouth to mouth, pumping her chest, working furiously to revive her.
“Father!” I yelled into the shop. “They shot her!” I screamed.
He bounded up, hobbling toward her felled body in the middle of the empty road. He fell beside her, checking her vital signs. The resigned expression that came upon his face let me know she was gone and that Ethan was working for nothing.
He put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Son, she’s gone,” he said, stopping Ethan’s pumping hands. Ethan pulled back, his whole body trembling with the adrenaline no doubt leaving his body in droves.