Page 55 of I Did Something Bad
His team excuses themselves as they slip past me and out the door I just walked through. By the way he’s pretending to fumble with his shirt while sliding me the occasional deliberate stare, it’s obvious we’re both trying to find a moment alone to talk about the cop car currently parked outside. However, by the way Tun is holding the door open and muttering into his headset, I knowhe’sfully intent on delivering Tyler to set ASAP.
We step out, May and her team exiting the trailer opposite at the same time. We’ve only taken a few paces when a voice that makes my eyes reflexively squeeze shut calls out my name.
“Detectives!” I say as the two men catch up. “Morning.”
“Morning!” Detective Htet grins, and my stomach roils not justbecause he is, generally speaking, the personification of the word “slimy,” but because there’s a glee in his eyes that can’t be good news for me.
“We’re about to start shooting,” Tyler says.
But neither of them move. “This’ll just take a moment,” Detective Zeyar tells him before turning to me. “Khin, you take notes in a notebook, right? With a pen?”
I don’t catch my startle in time. “A what?”
“Your notes.” He nods over at my tote bag. “I noticed that you carry a pen and notebook with you all the time, right?”
The roiling in my stomach is out of control, like a boiled pot that’s overflowing, water and foam spilling and sizzling all over everything, everywhere. “Why?” I ask.
He shrugs. “We’re trying to figure out where a piece of evidence came from.”
“What kind of evidence?”
There’s a crinkling sound as he reaches inside his front pants pocket to withdraw a small clear ziplock bag. A bag that contains what is one hundred percent, undoubtedly, unmistakably, my pen. To be specific, my Cartier pen that I had bought for myself after one full year of freelancing full-time. It had cost nearly $400, but I’ve used it every day since—at least, until it fell into Kandawgyi Lake with a middle-aged white man attached to one end. Even through the wrinkled plastic, I instantly recognize the sleek blue-steel lacquered body with the silver palladium finish.
I would feign ignorance and ask why they think this pen has anything to do with me, but I don’t, because I know the answer. It’s capitalized in the classic Cartier CG font and was a complimentary service, and I was spending four hundred American dollars on a pen so why the hellwouldn’tI have gotten it monogrammed?
But of course, Tyler doesn’t know this, so he shakes his head and asks, confused, “May I ask why you’re questioning Khin about this? It’s a pen. Everyone on set has a pen.”
Detective Zeyar’s smile remains cool—a lion confident in the knowledge that their prey is trapped. “That’s true,” he says with a small nod. Then, lifting the bag, he pinches the pen between his thumb and forefinger and brings it closer to Tyler. “Butthisone has ‘KH’ engraved on the clip,” he says with a cutting stare in my direction.
This is how I come undone, isn’t it?I think as Tyler squints at where the detective is pointing with his thumb.Over a pen.The headline is going to be a stupid play on “pen,” isn’t it? Something like “Crime and Pen-ishment” or “The PenIsMightier than the Sword.”
“Where did you find this?” Tyler asks. He’s still trying to sound exasperated, but his tone doesn’t have quite the same bite anymore.
“My colleagues and I returned to where the body had initially been discovered, and somehow our team had missed this the first time around. Probably because two-thirds of it was submerged in the sand, or the crime lab had initially dismissed it as some random lost pen.” Then, “Khin,” Detective Zeyar says, bringing the pen to me in what feels like slow motion. I work to keep my facial expressions neutral even though he’s reading me with a magnifying glass. “Is this your pen? KH. Those are your ini—”
“Holy shit!” May’s screech makes everyone literally jump. “You found my pen!”
What?I think.
“What?” both the detectives ask.
May bounces over and opens her palm, gesturing at the ziplock bag. “May I?” she asks sweetly. As though in a trance, Detective Zeyar hands it over.
Her grin expands as she turns the pen back and forth in her hand.“I thought I’d lost it! Thank yousomuch, Detectives!” she says, beaming at the two of them.
Detective Htet shakes his head and points to the bag. “This isyourpen?”
Snapping out of his temporary hypnotic state and realizing that he’s literally just handed over evidence, Detective Zeyar reaches to retrieve the bag. However, May either doesn’t notice or pretends not to, and instead passes it over to her assistant, Kyi Kyi, who is now clutching it to her chest as though she would protect it with her life if it came to it.
May flicks her hair behind one shoulder. “Yes! I lost it on the first day of filming. I was taking a walk around the lake before we started shooting, you know, to work off the nerves. And the purse I was using that day is expensive and pretty but definitelynotpractical,” she says, rolling her eyes. “My phone rang and as I was digging around inside, a bunch of stuff fell out. I thought I’d gathered everything, but I didn’t realize until I got home that night that I’d lost my pen. It must’ve rolled off the boardwalk and into the water.” She throws her hands up in the air in glee. “But you guys found it! It’s a miracle!”
Detective Zeyar gives a shortHeh,but his attempt at a smile fails miserably. He looks at the pen, at May’s grinning face, at my own face which is doing who knows what at this point, then back at May. “But KH—” he stammers, and scratches his head, bewildered. “That stands for…” He trails off, his gaze on me silently finishing the sentence.
Except it doesn’t, because May says, “ForKiss Her! I got this pen to celebrate my first Oscar nomination.”
The detectives aren’t pretending to play it cool anymore; I don’t think they can. They’re just standing there, mouths open, two invisible thought bubbles that scream,What the fuck is happening?hanging over their heads.
“So it… Khin…” Detective Htet frowns over at me, then, admitting defeat, asks point-blank, his earlier coyness nowhere to be found, “‘KH’ doesn’t stand for ‘Khin Haymar’? That’s notyourpen?”
