Remembering a Storm

When I was 28, I believed a holiday fling could have a future.

Typhoon warnings shut down the trains and trails, as chance had my path cross another’s. I couldn’t leave and she couldn’t hike. Instead she went out for a late breakfast. When I woke up later, our host sent me to the same café (bless you, Doris).

I recognized her from dinner the night before. I asked to join her table. We talked.

And ate.

And played with the café’s two cats.

We decided the hostel crew would enjoy a dinner party while being stuck indoors in the typhoon. We raided 7–11 to buy snacks and beer.

Dinner was a feast cooked up by new friends, our snacks mostly forgotten. Over my semi-serious protests, she convinced everyone to see the Minions movie.

Outside, the storm broke. And I needed to get moving.

The next morning I went onwards, thinking it was the last I’d see her.

But then she joins me! And we get ten days of wonderful, fleeting memories.

We are on a train to a tiny surfing town in the south. We listen to music on headphones, together and on our own. Now to an old city in the west, a centre of culture. She picks up tea eggs and I bananas from stalls on train platforms. Next an industrial centre, gateway to the lake-filled interior. I read short stories while she naps.

We get off at the wrong station and go with the flow.

Flying down highways after dark on rented electric scooters. Hunting for the best shaved ice on the island. Getting soaked trying to catch a bus in the sudden downpour. Wandering deserted streets at night swapping stories of our past. Jumping past a spider lying in ambush on a dimly lit sidewalk. Watching a sea god breach the ocean to teach his children how to float. Gingerly trying duck blood rice.

Covertly cycling past “no access” signs to map unfinished tracts of lakeside boardwalk. Getting sand everywhere. Buying mystery pastries — certain that whatever it was, it would be yummy. Swimming in a sheltered cove, getting cut on submerged rocks. Revealing secret hopes for the future over walking beers. Holding towels like curtains around each other while changing clothes on a beach. Raiding shops for dumplings and bubble tea for sharing between us.

Falling, laughing on the shore, floored by deep blue Pacific waves.

Our last night together is less physical, and more intimate. Pillow talk is about the future or lack of it. Letters would be written. Messages too. Maybe to blunt the sadness of backpacks pulled apart by lives otherwise unconnected. I turn away to sleep, one more time, now melancholy.

Inside, the storm breaks. And I need to get moving.