The Paradise Guest House (23 page)

Jamie walks on. She passes long tables of food, mostly Indonesian specialties. She’s not hungry—she has only one reason to be here. Where the hell is he?

A cheer rises up from the far side of the field. She sees a group of kids kicking a soccer ball and one man among them. Gabe. She takes off in his direction.

He looks up as she nears and he stops for a moment. All the light fades from his face when he sees her. His eyes narrow as if he’s deep in thought. Then a ball hits his shin and a boy rams into him. He picks the kid up and tousles his hair. And just like
that he’s Gabe again, not some angry stranger. His face fills with warmth. But it’s not for her—it’s for these boys who keep smashing into him as if that’s the goal of the game.

Stay here, she tells herself. Don’t flee.

He plays with the boys, but she can tell he’s distracted—the boys keep yelling at him when he misses the ball. Finally, he says something to the biggest boy and charges off the field, heading in her direction.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” he says, his voice cold.

He stands a few feet away from her, his arms crossed, as if ready to block a tackle.

“I came a long way,” Jamie says.

“For the anniversary ceremony,” Gabe says.

“For you,” she tells him. She can no longer fool herself.

He shakes his head.

He steps toward her, and for a second she thinks that he’ll fold her in his arms. But his head is down, his voice low. “I’ll walk you out,” he says.

He keeps walking, past her and toward the school. She turns and joins him at his side.

“It’s not fair, Gabe,” she tells him. “You know how hard it was for me last year.”

“I’m not blaming you,” he says. He doesn’t look at her as he walks. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“It has everything to do with me.”

Again, he shakes his head. “I only mean that I’m taking care of myself this time. This is what’s best for me.”

“To turn me away?”

“Yes.”

They hear a loud cheer and look up to see a crowd gathered around the pole. One skinny boy has made it to the top, where
he grabs one of the flags. The crowd whoops and whistles. The boy’s face glows with triumph; he slides down the pole like a happy monkey.

“Mr. Gabe! He did it! He did it!” A redheaded girl flies at Gabe and wraps her arms around his legs. Then she steps back and gazes up at him, wide-eyed. “Only three boys. Everyone tried. No girls, Mr. Gabe.”

“Come on, Layla. You can do it.”

“I tried two times. It’s too hard for me. It’s too hard for girls, Mr. Gabe.”

Jamie walks straight to the man who’s collecting tickets at the pole.

“Can I try?” she asks.

“Sure,” the man says, pleased. “We haven’t had any of the parents try. You’re very brave. I’d be mortified.”

“I may feel that way in about five minutes,” Jamie tells him.

He takes her ticket. She doesn’t look back to see if Gabe is watching. She hopes the little girl has her eyes on the pole.

Jamie grabs the pole high above her with both hands, then pulls herself up and wraps her legs around. It’s more slippery than she would have thought. She wishes she had stopped to rub her hands in the dusty earth, but it’s too late for that. She grips the pole tightly with her legs.

She reaches high above her again, grabs hold, and then pulls with her arms while pushing with her legs. I can do this, she thinks.

The first cheer goes up from the crowd.

“Who is she?” someone calls.

“Is she a mom?”

“Teacher, I think,” someone else says.

“Mr. Gabe’s friend!” a kid yells, and all the kids let out a whooping cheer.

Jamie shimmies up the pole with real energy, until she’s two-thirds of the way up.

Then she needs a break; her arms are tiring too quickly. This last part’s the toughest, and she needs her strength.

Is he watching? She won’t look down to scan the crowd. He probably walked away. Anyway, she’s not doing it for him. She’s doing it for the girls. Hell, she could use a little success in her own life right now.

Her bad elbow aches, yet she pushes past the pain. This pure physical effort, the tangible goal of climbing a pole, feels so damn good.

She reaches again and grips more forcefully with her legs to make up for her tired arms. She’s still too far away to grab the flag. She hears more cheers below; the crowd must be growing.

How silly, she thinks. If I fail now, what have I proved? That a grown-up should behave like a grown-up? That there are some things girls just can’t do?

She stretches far above herself, grasps the pole, pulls and pushes, and hears the screams of the crowd. She’s there. The flag dangles only a foot from her head. She’ll be able to grab it. Her heart pounds against her ribs.

She glances below and sees the heads of so many people. They’re all looking skyward, their mouths open as they shout and cheer. Gabe’s there, his face turned toward her, as well. His mouth is closed, but the edges lift in a smile. She remembers his smile.

She reaches out her hand and captures the flag.

The crowd goes wild.

She tucks the flag into her back pocket and slides down the pole.

When her feet hit the dirt, she’s bombarded by kids, who throw their arms around her. They’re mostly little girls, but even some boys join the throng of admirers. Jamie is laughing, and the sound of her own laugh surprises her.

She hands the flag to the smallest girl. “The prize is yours,” she tells her.

The girl shrieks and runs off, clutching the small rectangle of fabric.

Jamie looks for Gabe. He’s standing at the back of the crowd, still smiling. She walks up to him.

“Pretty impressive,” he tells her.

“You’re surprised?”

He shakes his head. “I had forgotten,” he says.

“Mr. Gabe! Mr. Gabe!” a young boy shouts. “Soccer game’s starting!”

“Go on,” Jamie tells him.

He holds her eyes for a moment, as if he has something to say. But then he turns and jogs back toward the field.

Jamie watches him for a while, but he never looks in her direction.

Maybe I can let him go after all, she thinks.

Early that evening, after dinner alone in town, Jamie walks back to the Paradise Guest House. When she arrives, the gate opens and Dewi, Nyoman’s renegade niece, appears, scowling.

“I hate parents,” she says.

Jamie nods. “I know what you mean.”

“They say no party. I go swimming with girlfriends. No boys even. They no believe me.”

“Is that where you’re headed?”

“Yes. I go anyway. They too old to stop me.”

Jamie remembers herself at that age—her mother was helpless in her meager attempts to curb Jamie’s reckless behavior.

“Where are you going swimming?”

“Waterfall,” Dewi tells her. Then her eyes brighten. “You come!”

“With your girlfriends?”

“Yes!” Dewi’s face looks like a young girl’s again, despite the rings of black kohl around her eyes.

“Why not?” Jamie says. “I’ll get my bathing suit.”

Minutes later, she’s on the back of Dewi’s motorbike, holding on for dear life. The girl maneuvers in and out of traffic, weaving around cars and pedestrians, then flying down the country roads. The noise of the bike makes conversation impossible; Jamie can only watch Ubud disappear behind them.

The sun sets over the rice paddies, turning the world velvet green. Jamie stops squeezing Dewi’s bony hips and settles onto the back of the bike. The mountainsides are terraced with endless rice paddies—one field of green melts into the next.

Dewi turns the bike off the main road and down a path in the middle of the field. They bump along for a while and then the bike comes to a stop.

“We here,” Dewi says.

“Where?” Jamie asks. She looks around.

“You follow,” Dewi tells her.

They climb off the bike, and Dewi balances it next to two other motorbikes. Jamie follows the girl down the path.

Dewi cuts through a thicket of trees, holding back some branches to allow Jamie through. In another minute or two, they’re swallowed by the jungle.

Jamie can hear the roar of a waterfall almost immediately. Dewi whistles loudly, and response whistles fill the air.

“Girlfriends,” she says, and runs ahead.

Jamie takes off after her. She feels like a kid on an adventure—the thrill of this nighttime gathering, banned by the parental units, lifts her spirits. They pass through an opening of trees, and the waterfall appears in all its glory.

It’s huge, sending an enormous screen of water crashing into a pond in front of her. Three girls’ heads bob in the water—their jubilant faces all turn to Dewi, who strips off her clothes and dives into the water. She’s wearing a bikini, and even in the twilight, Jamie can see a tattoo on the girl’s back. Is it a guitar?

Jamie waves to the girls, who look at her suspiciously.

Dewi berates them in Indonesian, and then they meekly wave back.

“You swim!” Dewi orders from the middle of the basin.

But the cellphone in Jamie’s pocket rings, startling her.

“In a minute!” she calls to the girls.

She flips open the phone and sees Larson’s name. She takes the call and heads into the woods to find a quiet place so she can hear him.

“Larson!” she yells.

“Why are you screaming?” he asks. His voice sounds weak and scratchy.

“I’m at the edge of a waterfall. With a bunch of teenage Balinese bad girls. I’ve found my sisterhood!”

“I got you onto the New Zealand trip,” he says. “You can leave as soon as you want.”

Jamie finds a rock to sit on. It’s almost dark now, and the forest muffles the sound of the waterfall.

“You were right,” she says. “I’m not done here.”

“Since when do you listen to a word I tell you?” Larson asks.

“You sound awful,” she says. She can barely hear him.

“Not doing so well.”

“Chemo?”

“Don’t think so. It’s the pain now. A lot of pain.”

She hears a shout and looks back toward the waterfall. The girls are laughing riotously. She feels as if she’s a million miles away. Larson’s breath in her ear pulls her close to him.

“I’m coming home,” she tells him.

“No.”

“Don’t say no.”

“You love the New Zealand trip,” Larson says.

“I’ve got more important things to do,” she insists.

She will spend her time with him, in his old house in Berkeley, doing whatever she needs to do to help him. As hard as it might be—his last months or weeks—she will try to ease the way.

Larson doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Jamie looks up and sees a sky suddenly full of stars.

“Will you go to the anniversary ceremony before you come home?” he asks.

He’s not going to fight with her. Jamie feels a great relief. She also feels a deep sadness—it is so unlike him to let her take care of him.

“It’s on Sunday,” she tells him. “I’ll go and then I’ll fly home on Monday.”

“Thank you, Legs,” he says, his voice unbearably soft.

She closes the phone and tucks it into her pocket. She walks
back to the waterfall. The full moon reflects off the water, and the girls’ faces look almost electric.

“You swim!” Dewi shouts from the middle of the pond.

Jamie strips off her clothes. She stands in her bikini on a rock on the edge of the water. She listens to the roar of the waterfall, the shrieks of the girls, and Larson’s voice in her head, which always whispers,
Dive in
.

Later, she stands outside her cottage. It’s sometime after midnight and she’s exhausted, but she can’t sleep. She’s been wrestling with the sheets for too long—she needs fresh air.

The light is on in Nyoman’s cottage, too. We’re both haunted, she thinks.

Now the door opens and Nyoman appears on the step, as if her thinking about him has called him forth. He looks at Jamie and nods, apparently unsurprised to see her there.

“Can a guest at this hotel get ginger tea in the middle of the night?” she calls out.

“It is very expensive,” Nyoman says, smiling.

Jamie smiles, too. “Put it on my bill.”

“I will bring it out in a moment,” Nyoman says, stepping back into his house.

Jamie looks toward the other cottages in the compound. The windows are all dark—Nyoman’s parents, grandmother, and his brother’s family are all asleep.

She wanders over to the table under the banyan tree. The moonlight gives her enough light to make her way around the tree roots, and she sits at the end, in her usual breakfast spot. The air is surprisingly cool, though minutes before, in bed in her cottage, she had cursed the Balinese heat.

Nyoman steps outside again, with a teapot and two cups in his hands. As always, his smile lifts her spirits—she is glad to have his company.

“When I was in the bombing, there was an American man who saved me,” she tells Nyoman when he sits down. “Yesterday I found him.”

“He is still in Bali,” he says.

“Yes. He teaches at a school in town.”

He nods and sips his tea.

“Suddenly I’m not sure why I needed to find him,” Jamie says.

“You needed to find something else in Bali,” Nyoman tells her. “Not this man.”

“What?” she asks.

“When my wife died—” he begins, and then stops. In the moonlight, she can see his face darken. “When my wife died, I lost my way in the world. Then I would look at my community and think: How can I be lost when everyone knows where I am? Grief is a very difficult thing. It weighs on one’s heart and makes it hard to walk. Now I feel light again.”

“Because of your community,” Jamie says, trying to understand.

“You are not lost,” Nyoman says, his voice strong. “You have friends who know where you are. Friends like me.”

“Thank you,” she tells him.

“Drink your tea and then you will sleep,” he says, and she knows that it is true.

On Sunday morning, Jamie waits for a long time before getting out of bed. Today is the anniversary of the bombing. She
doesn’t want to participate in the ceremony. She has struggled enough on this journey; she just wants to go home.

But Nyoman would be very disappointed—she is his responsibility and this ceremony means a great deal to him. So she will haul her sorry ass out of bed and put on the ceremonial clothes that he has found for her. Tomorrow she can leave Bali.