Nobody's Girl — Chapter no 18

EIGHTEEN

Honeymooners

ook, if you had one shot or one opportunity / To seize everything youL ever wanted in one moment / Would you capture it or just let it slip? In the soundtrack of my life, no song better fits the start of my new life with Robbie than Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” which was released just days after we married. At the beginning of our relationship, still so new to one another but already completely attached, we must have listened to that song a thousand times. “You better lose yourself in the music / The moment, you own it, you better never let it go,” Eminem warned us, and we listened.

“You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow / This opportunity comes once in a lifetime,” Eminem rapped, and I believed him. Robbie was my one shot, my true love, a gift I had never imagined I’d receive.

The day after our wedding, we’d moved out of the Royal Princess and found cheaper accommodations. I also let the massage school know I was withdrawing. I’d loved my brief interlude with ITM, and I had completed two of its five levels of instruction, but I didn’t have enough of my own money to continue. Besides, Robbie wanted to take me on a honeymoon. I think we spent three more days in Chiang Mai. Then, after a quick luggage edit (Robbie said I could only take three of my six suitcases), we set off by train. We were headed to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, four hundred miles or so to the east, to get my passport stamped. Robbie was hoping that if we pinched our pennies, we could travel around Thailand for a few months, but my student visa was set to run out in just a few weeks. If I left the country, even briefly, and then entered again, Robbie had been told, the clock would restart, and I’d have more time to explore. So while Vientiane was hardly a romantic destination, that’s where we needed to go.

When we arrived, tired and sweaty, it was late afternoon. Robbie had warned me that the place was far from picturesque, but I was still appalled by the sight of children squatting and urinating in the streets. Soldiers were everywhere, just waiting to enforce the 9:00 p.m. curfew. We were so obviously tourists, with Robbie somehow carrying my three suitcases and his own big backpack, and I knew we stuck out like sore thumbs. So once we got proof of my visit to Laos stamped in ink on my passport, I told Robbie I wanted to get out of there. We took a boat back across the Mekong River, found a cheap hotel, and slept in Thailand that night.

In the morning, we got on another train. Our next stop, about eight hundred miles south, was Surat Thani, a transport hub where we’d catch a bus (and later, a ferry) that would deliver us to our ultimate destination: Ko Pha-Ngan, an island that Robbie and Mat had visited when they first arrived in Thailand. This magical place, one of three islands off the southeastern coast in the Gulf of Thailand, was renowned for its monthly Full Moon Party: an all-night celebration, tied to the lunar calendar, that attracted throngs of tourists. But Robbie promised me the island was also the perfect place to spend one-on-one time—beautiful, peaceful, affordable.

Sitting on a bench in the crowded, rusty ferryboat that took us from the mainland to Ko Pha-Ngan’s Thong Sala Beach, I was transfixed by the view. The ocean was an unbelievable shade of luminescent blue, and above it, like frosting on a cake, was the lighter blue strip of the sky. A Thai man next to us was carrying a rooster that he had trained to “sit” on command.

Every time the rooster sat down, I burst out laughing. Robbie held me tight with one powerful arm. I was happy.

Stepping onto the dock on Thong Sala Beach, we were immediately surrounded by locals, all of them tugging at our sleeves, each more determined than the next to lure us to stay in the hotel he or she was there to represent. One young man handed Robbie a printed business card that said Two Suns Resort. On the card, handwritten in English: “I can get you anything you want.” Robbie looked at me and grinned. Two Suns would be our place. For less than six dollars a night, we rented a private bungalow a hundred feet from the ocean. The resort was run by a family who cooked all

our meals. I was still shy about eating new foods. Epstein’s strict diet regimens had made me hyperfocused on remaining thin, and even the blandest Asian delicacies—pad Thai noodles, say—seemed off-putting. But Robbie was encouraging, and for him, I tried to be brave. Thai beer was cheap, and the sun was hot. Truly, we were in paradise.

As we lay around on the sand, Robbie and I began really getting to know one another. He told me about his parents, Antonina and Frank. His dad had once worked painting and refurbishing fishing boats, but now the family ran a catering business in Sydney. Robbie told me about his older siblings—two brothers, Gaetano (who everyone calls Guy) and Frank Jr., and a sister, Angela. Robbie had dropped out of high school because he was bored, he said, though he’d later finished another year through a correspondence course. At seventeen, he’d moved out of his parents’ house and lived for a few years with a Korean woman who became his fiancée despite her parents’ objections. “I stayed longer than I needed to,” he said of that relationship. Indeed, while he’d never lacked for female companionship, Robbie tended to be a one-woman man, not a player. He said he’d always prided himself on having close women friends, and he was often the “bloke” who gave these “sheilas” romantic advice. My new husband had strong opinions, I was learning, but also understood that people moved at their own pace. To be a bully basher, you must have a sixth sense for spotting vulnerability, but Robbie’s response—the polar opposite of Epstein’s—was to help, not to hurt.

Robbie asked more about my family and my upbringing, too, and bit by bit, I divulged the ugliest parts of my childhood. As I described what my father and Forrest had done to me, and what my mother had failed to do in response, I saw anger in Robbie’s eyes. All families have their difficulties, his face said, but this was beyond the pale. “Where were your brothers?” he demanded, clearly imagining how he would have reacted if his sister had been so mistreated. I explained that Danny was sent away to boarding school and that Skydy was a kid, too small to defend me. And besides, neither of them knew, because I’d never told them. Robbie just shook his head, then opened his arms wide to envelop me in a hug.

At one point, I asked Robbie if he believed in God. “God is like the wind,” he said, explaining how reading about paganism had taught him to see God in nature. “Can you see the wind? No. But you can feel it when it brushes your cheek.” Did I believe in God? I couldn’t answer that. I’d always been comforted by the idea of reincarnation because it promised that my piss-poor excuse for a life was not the only one I was going to get. But God? I wasn’t sure. Hadn’t Forrest, one of my earliest abusers, invoked God to manipulate me—just as the counselors at Growing Together had done? In my experience, God had been wielded by others to get what they wanted. Still, meeting Robbie at the very moment I needed him most seemed the best evidence I’d ever had of the existence of something divine.

Lying in the sand on that pristine island, exchanging stories about our lives and our beliefs, we covered a lot of ground in a short time. For example, we talked about how Robbie’s spirituality dovetailed with his interest in fighting. He’d grown up watching Monkey Magic, a wacky, cult Japanese TV show that played on Australian TV every Sunday night. From the moment he discovered the show—whose title character is an ape, a skilled fighter and the king of his tribe, who achieves enlightenment through martial arts—Robbie was fascinated with the Buddhist concept of satori: the sudden comprehension of one’s true nature. “The nature of Monkey was…irrepressible,” said a voice-over in the show’s opening montage, and Robbie could relate. That his spiritual awakening owed such a debt to a badly dubbed 1980s TV series could be seen as funny, he knew.

But hey, he said, you take your illumination wherever you can find it.

“Martial arts is not just about fighting,” he told me. “It’s a way of thinking—a way of life.” Robbie was fascinated by the idea that through intense physical conditioning, you could prepare yourself for anything.

“One of my teachers was all about controlling your punches,” Robbie told me. “You were not allowed to land a hit. You had to stop an inch away from your opponent’s face. Instead of dominating them with force, you blocked their blows and let them wear themselves out. We used to take broken bottles and scrape up our shins so that after a while, we couldn’t feel

anything. My body got conditioned to the point where if someone hit me, I’d just look at them and smile.”

I’d never set foot inside a boxing ring, but I understood at least a version of what Robbie was talking about: shoring yourself up to increase the odds of your own survival. I’d spent my life blocking the blows of others, wishing they’d tire of abusing me. And at least for a while, I’d gotten good at blotting out feelings while keeping a smile plastered on my face. Robbie’s experience helped me look at my own from a different vantage point. I flashed on the mantra I’d learned at ITM—the Pali prayer in which we asked to attain “the knowledge of all nature.” Was this how I would do that? Not just knowledge of the world around me, but of my internal self? I sensed that I was beginning a process that would not be easy.

One thing, though, could not have been easier: hanging out with Robbie. Being with him never felt like a chore. Despite our differences, we seemed to move at the same rhythm. He introduced me to an Australian rock band called Powderfinger, and I fell in love with their biggest hit, whose lyrics—“My happiness is slowly creeping back / Now you’re at home / If it ever starts sinking in / It must be when you pack up and go”— described to a tee the feeling of pining for a lover who’s far away. I told Robbie I never wanted to be far away from him.

One night I told Robbie there was something I needed him to help me do. First we went to a bar in Ko Pha-Ngan, so I could sip a little liquid courage. “I think I’ve told you that Jeffrey Epstein prohibited tattoos,” I said, taking a swallow of Thai whiskey. Robbie nodded. He had a yin-and- yang symbol on his right shoulder that I’d admired, but he knew I didn’t have any ink. “Well, there’s a tattoo parlor next door. And I need you to come with me and hold my hand.” A few minutes later, I told a Thai tattoo artist what I wanted and where I wanted it and then lay face down on a table. Soon, I had a blue butterfly—to symbolize the freedom of flight—and the words “In Love With Robbie G” on the small of my back. (Actually, the artist misspelled Robbie, using only one B. To this day, in my phone, my husband’s contact number is filed under “Robie.”) In my mind, my new tattoo accomplished two goals: first, declaring my commitment to Robbie

for all the world to see; and second, guaranteeing that I would repulse Epstein, who shunned tattooed girls. As I told Robbie, only half-joking: “This is an insurance policy. Because now Jeffrey wouldn’t want me, even if he could make me come back.”

We must’ve been at the Two Suns for about a week when Mat showed up for a visit. Back in Chiang Mai, Mat had at first been worried when he heard how quickly Robbie and I planned to wed. He thought Robbie’s parents would kill him for not somehow slowing us down. Robbie had always had a way with the ladies, Mat knew—“I don’t think I’ve ever known him to be single,” he’d tell me later. But Mat could see that Robbie’s and my connection was deeper than those he’d witnessed before. So Mat had stood up for us at that mountaintop temple, and now he had arrived to make sure all was well.

You know how you can learn a lot about people by the company they keep? From ITM, I already knew Mat had a kind way about him. But to see Mat and Robbie together showed me a different side of my new husband.

They teased each other relentlessly, but with affection. Mat had had a rough upbringing after his parents divorced. He’d left his mother’s home at fifteen and moved to Sydney in search of his father. After he and Robbie met, Robbie’s family had eventually taken Mat in. They’d been friends ever since.

We were on the beach drinking beer when Mat turned to Robbie with a serious look on his face. “Do you think it’s a coincidence, Rob?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” Robbie said.

“Petra,” Mat said, and I watched Robbie’s mouth drop open. Robbie is a talker—it’s usually hard to get a word in edgewise around him. But now, he was mute—and his tan, brown face had gone a little pale.

“Who’s Petra?” I asked. Mat looked at Robbie and, after getting a nod of approval, turned to me. “You know by now that Rob is a searcher,” he began. “Well, about two years ago, we heard about a psychic named Petra who lived out in Campbelltown—that’s west of Sydney. Friends told us she was the real deal.” Mat was reluctant to go see her, he said, but not because he doubted her powers. He had an aunt who could see the future, so he

knew such people existed. For a variety of reasons, however, he didn’t want to know what life had in store for him. Robbie, though, was gung ho. He

couldn’t wait to track Petra down.

“So what did Petra say?” I asked.

“She said Rob would travel a long distance,” Mat said, “to meet a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl who would be his Only One.” I couldn’t believe it. I turned to look at Robbie, who was shaking his head.

“I’d forgotten, mate,” he stammered, clapping Mat on the shoulder.

Then he took a deep breath and turned back to me. He was still processing the memory. “There’s more to this story,” Robbie said. “Right before Mat and I left for Thailand, another good mate of mine asked me to be the best man at his wedding. When I told him I’d already bought my ticket to Bangkok, he tried to persuade me to push the trip back a month. But I said no. ‘I don’t know why,’ I told him, ‘but I’ve just got to go now.’ So now I’m realizing why: if I’d come a month later, I wouldn’t have met you.”

This was like a fairy tale, I thought, as Robbie took my hand and held it. “I told you I believe in us, baby,” he said. “I believe we are meant to be.”

Apparently, though, we were also meant to face adversity together.

Robbie and I had befriended a charming nineteen-year-old Canadian, one of several travelers from all over the world who were staying at the Two Suns.

After Mat said goodbye, promising to reconnect with us soon in Australia, we invited the Canadian to join us one night to party inside our bungalow.

We thought he was terrific until the next morning, when we discovered most of our money was gone. Robbie ran outside half-dressed and raced to the raised structure where the Canadian had been staying, but on the way, he encountered two Irish women who told him the guy had booked it out of there just after sunrise. We were out more than $2,000; we had only $200 or so left.

Months later, Robbie would say that the robbery was a blessing. “It was time to get out of holiday mode and come down to earth—to get back into real life,” he’d say. But in that moment, we panicked. The robbery meant our honeymoon was over, obviously. But worse than that, while Robbie had

already bought his return ticket to Australia, I had no ticket to fly, and now we couldn’t afford to buy one.

Robbie called his parents. I’m sure they were wondering—who was this woman who’d bewitched their son, and who was now stranded with him, nearly penniless, on a remote tropical island? But they stepped up to help us, as they would do so many times in the coming years, paying $800 for my flight to Sydney and sending a little more money to tide us over until we got there. We packed up and told the Two Suns goodbye, retraced our steps from our honeymoon paradise to Bangkok, and then checked into a dingy, dirt-cheap backpackers’ hotel to await our departure.

There was one glitch in the plan: Robbie’s parents had not been able to get me on his direct flight, so we’d be traveling separately. My flight would leave a few hours earlier than his did and would connect through Singapore.

Realizing this, I was filled with dread. I’d come to rely on how secure Robbie made me feel. The next day, as Robbie walked me to my gate at Bangkok International Airport, I didn’t want to let go of his hand. “I’ll see you on the other side of the world,” Robbie said, grinning. I tried to smile, too, but I didn’t completely succeed. We kissed goodbye, and I got on the plane.

It turns out I was right to be nervous. When I landed in Singapore and tried to make my way to my connecting flight, customs officials descended upon me. If I was not an Australian citizen, they wanted to know, why did I only have a one-way ticket into the country? Where, they demanded, was my travel visa to Australia? (I had no idea I’d needed one. Maxwell had always handled those matters for me before.) I was almost hysterical with fear. If they sent me back to Bangkok, I didn’t know what I’d do. I thought of the time, back in Florida, when Tony stole the tip money and got me fired, and I’d had no choice but to go crawling back to Epstein. Was this going to be like that—a brief escape followed by a pitiful return to purgatory? In my despair, I yearned for Robbie, who by this point was somewhere above the South China Sea. But I was going to have to figure this out on my own.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more persuasive. It helped that I was telling the authorities the truth: that I’d just married an Australian citizen. I showed them the seven strings around my wrist. Where was the marriage license? they wanted to know. Of course, I didn’t have one (later, we’d end up having to get remarried in Australia to make our union legal). But I pulled out several of the photographs Mat had taken with my FunSaver, feeling grateful that I’d hurried to get them developed. The customs officials looked at the photos, then back at me. And then a miracle: they let me get on my connecting flight.

Eight hours later, I arrived in Sydney and stepped into the terminal feeling both exhilarated and anxious. Robbie’s parents were coming to meet us, and since I’d landed before Robbie, I would need to introduce myself.

Coming out of the baggage area, I saw an older couple behind a rope—a wiry, white-haired gentleman and a stout, broad-shouldered woman whose round face was framed by an auburn pixie cut. They looked like the people that Robbie had described. I took a deep breath and headed toward them, forcing a smile.

“I’m Jenna,” I said, extending my hand, which Nina and Frank each shook, nodding politely. Then we just stood there together, not talking, waiting for Robbie. I’d soon learn that Frank spoke little English, but I didn’t know that then. So the silence made me worry they already disapproved of me. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was only a few minutes, I glimpsed Robbie walking toward us down a long hallway.

Relief washed over me. Slipping under the ropes separating us from the passengers-only area, I sprinted until I was in his arms. We’d made it.

Together. Now, our new life could truly begin.