The Paradise Guest House (24 page)

Her cellphone rings. She reaches for it on her bedside table.

“Hi, Mom,” she says. She lies down again, her phone tucked to her ear.

“Did I wake you?”

“No. I was about to get in the shower.”

“It’s today, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I leave soon.”

“It will be hard.”

“I know, Mom.” Jamie pushes herself up in bed. Her ceremonial clothes are laid out on the bureau, waiting for her.

“What happened with your hero? Gabe. Did you find him?”

“I think it’s time to move on,” Jamie says.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m all right.”

“You sound sad.”

“I had a dream about Gabe for a long year. Hard to let go of that.”

“It might make you ready to find someone else,” Rose tells her.

“You’re lucky,” Jamie says. “You’ve got Lou.” To her surprise, she realizes she means it.

Her mother waits a moment before responding, and in the silence Jamie imagines Rose and Lou, drinking coffee at the kitchen table in Palo Alto,
The New York Times
spread before them. Lou leans across the table and kisses Rose’s cheek.

She remembers sitting beside Gabe in the balé one morning, reaching for the milk. When he passed it, their hands touched. It was more intimate than Miguel’s embrace, and she felt guilty for it. Now she yearns for that touch.

“Thanks,” Rose says. “I
am
lucky.”

Once they’ve hung up, Jamie gets out of bed. She’s late for breakfast, but Nyoman hasn’t banged on her door. She turns on the shower and steps in.

An hour later, Nyoman drives with her to Jimbaran, in the southern part of Bali. The ceremony will be held at a cultural park called GWK, named for an enormous sculpture that is being built there. The sculpture is of Wisnu, god of water, riding the back of the mythical bird Garuda.

They arrive at the park along with hundreds of other cars and motorbikes. Nyoman parks in the lot designated for special guests, and when they get out of the car they look toward the huge crowd ahead.

“You will be fine,” Nyoman says.

Jamie steps close to him and swallows her fear. “Let’s go,” she says, and they walk toward the throng.

They’re herded into a massive alley of limestone pillars called Lotus Pond. The giant head of Wisnu, made of copper and brass, towers over them. Nyoman explains that the rest of the sculpture is not yet finished. All the people file ahead as if they’re a little awed by their surroundings. A solemn hush fills the air.

It takes a long time to organize the groups—families of victims, survivors, journalists, government officials, religious leaders, and the many hundreds of people, Balinese and Westerners, who have come to show their support.

Nyoman finds Dolly, the organizer of the survivors’ and
widows’ foundation, and asks her to take Jamie to her seat. Before they leave, Nyoman whispers in Jamie’s ear, “I am with you.”

She reaches up and straightens his glasses on his nose.

“This way,” Dolly says impatiently, leading Jamie away.

The sun beats down on them as Jamie follows Dolly to the survivors’ section, close to the stage, where she climbs the stairs and sits in the shade of a large canopy. The bleachers are full, and still more people spill into the enormous space. The crowd is so large that she can’t see where it ends.

Jamie closes her eyes and begins to count. Larson once told her what to do when she awakened in the middle of the night after a nightmare: count backward from ten. Breathe deeply between each number. Start over when you hit one. Ten, breathe. Nine, breathe. But she can’t get her breath to match the slow numbers; it’s a force of its own.

Someone bumps her knee and she opens her eyes. A young Nordic-looking girl sits beside her on the hard bench. The girl is in her mid-twenties. Her face is a mess of scars—burn victim, Jamie thinks. The skin has been grafted and patched and mended. But the colors are wrong; the skin is mottled and bumpy.

“My name is Marit,” the girl says. She smiles, and her face struggles with the change until it is complete—she is beautiful despite the damage.

“I’m Jamie.”

“Are you from Australia?”

“No. The United States.”

“I’m from Norway,” Marit says. “But I live here in Bali. Thank you for coming. It means a great deal to us.”

Jamie’s breath slows. She feels her shoulders relax.

She thinks of Miguel’s parents and wishes that they’d decided to come for this, too. She had spoken to them by phone a couple of times during the year, but they didn’t want to see the country where their son had died.

A burst of music grabs everyone’s attention, and the ceremony begins. There are speeches in Indonesian and in English. A children’s choir sings a haunting Balinese song. The Australian prime minister speaks, and an eloquent British man tells the story about his son, a rugby player, who died in the bombing. Then a man takes the stand and begins haltingly.

“I was there that night,” he says. He’s tall and blond and very handsome—what a surprise to hear the trembling in his voice. Australian accent. Jamie sits forward, intrigued.

“I was eating dinner near the clubs on this night, one year ago. I had quit my career in journalism and had become an overage surf bum. I met up with a bloke for dinner—another expat—but, really, I was hoping to meet some sheilas at Sari Club later that night. I wasn’t a very serious man a year ago.”

His voice gets stronger as he speaks.

“The bombs shook our restaurant. Part of the balcony collapsed. Somehow I knew it was a bomb. I don’t know why or how—I certainly wasn’t paying any attention to the newspapers in those days, even though I once made my living writing for them. I then did a shameful thing. I walked away.”

He stops speaking and waits to compose himself. The crowd is silent.

“I never slept that night. I listened to the sirens all night long. I listened to the echoes of the screams I heard before I walked away. And in the morning I became a journalist again. I went to the bomb site and to the hospital, and I talked to every person I could. I was driven by shame, the worst of reasons,
but the more I learned, the more that changed. Soon I had to know, I had to understand. When I wrote my story for
Time
magazine, I felt a little bit of that shame slip away. I could tell the world what happened here in Bali. But still it wasn’t enough. So I started a foundation for the injured and the widows. I raised money from almost every country in the world.”

He pauses and gazes around. He’s now standing tall and holding his head high.

“But I’m not a hero. I’m just a poor wanker who has tried every day to make up for what I failed to do on this day, one year ago.”

He hangs his head for a moment, and the crowd waits.

“I’d like to call someone up here. He doesn’t know I’m going to do this. But I’d like you to meet a real hero. I want you to meet a man who did the right thing that night.”

He looks out into the crowd.

“Gabe Winters, please come up here.”

Jamie leans forward in her seat, now alert. Her heart gallops in her chest—so much for the damn breathing exercises. He’s here? Nervously, she runs her thumb over the scar on her face, as if rubbing it away. She scans the crowd, looking for movement. Suddenly he’s standing next to the journalist onstage, embraced in a bear hug. When the man releases Gabe, Jamie sees his face. He looks pale and unsure.

“I’d like to tell you about this man,” the journalist says into the microphone. “That night, he ran into the burning buildings. He saved a dozen lives. The flames grew and he just kept charging back in, carrying people out to safety. Many of you—” The man stops and points to Jamie’s section of the bleachers. Gabe turns and looks directly at Jamie. It doesn’t take him a moment to find her—he knows where she is. He holds her
gaze. “Many of you were saved by this man. He’s the real hero.”

The journalist steps aside and offers the microphone. Gabe averts his eyes from Jamie’s and raises his hands as if to say: Do I have to do this?

“Come on, mate,” the journalist says under his breath, but the mike catches it, and his encouraging words carry through the air.

Gabe reluctantly takes the microphone.

He looks at Jamie again, as if searching for something, and then out toward the crowd in front of him. He clears his throat and steps back, surprised by the noise as it reverberates through the sound system.

“I didn’t expect this,” he says quietly. “I’m more than a little surprised.” He scans the crowd. When his eyes reach Jamie’s, she sees that he’s seeking courage. Something softens in his face. He’s letting her in.

She nods. You can do this.

“Thank you, Theo. I don’t agree with you, but I thank you. I think we all react in different ways. For that one night I might have been a hero, but you’ve done heroic things in the year since. We all thank you for that.”

The crowd applauds for a long time. When the noise dies down, it appears as if Gabe is going to walk away from the mike, but he steps up to it again.

“I want to mention one other hero,” he says, squinting out into the crowd. “When I ran into the building that night, there was already one young woman doing a hero’s job. She went into the club to find a friend after the bomb went off, and even though that friend died, she kept going, pulling many people to safety. And even when part of the ceiling fell on her, injuring
her, she didn’t stop. She kept helping others. That’s remarkable bravery.” He looks directly at Jamie. “The woman never quits.” He offers her a sly smile. “Jamie Hyde, will you please stand up.”

Jamie’s heart seems to stop. She can’t stand—she’ll pass out. Her legs aren’t solid; her head spins. The young woman next to her reaches over and takes her hand. She takes a breath and then stands. Her knees wobble. She peers around at the kaleidoscope of faces and hears a roar of cheers. The sound fills her and makes her stand taller. She glances at Gabe, and now he nods, as if to say: I am with you.

Take it in, she tells herself. All of it. It feels bigger than anything she’s ever experienced in her life. Somewhere out there, Nyoman is clapping his hands for her. She imagines Larson, her mother, Lou, her father in Connecticut—her own Balinese compound of family—holding her in this cheer. She imagines Miguel, and she can almost hear his voice in her ear. You did everything you could, he whispers to her.

She sits down and the young woman squeezes her hand.

“Thank you,” Marit says.

The man in front of her turns around. “Thank you,” he says.

Someone pats her shoulder from behind, then leans forward and whispers in her ear, “Thank you.”

The gamelan plays and the crowd quiets. Jamie looks to the stage; Gabe is gone. A man plays a song that is so beautiful it brings tears to her eyes. The young woman next to her doesn’t let go of her hand.

“I did not know,” Nyoman says when he finds Jamie after the ceremony. “I thank you for what you did.”

“I want to find Gabe,” Jamie said. “Will you help me?”

“Of course,” Nyoman says. “I just saw Mr. Theo talking to Dolly. We can ask him.”

They work their way through the crowd. Halfway across the amphitheater, Jamie shouts, “I see him!”

It’s the tall Australian she sees; his blond head towers over a group of Balinese women. They maneuver their way toward him.

When she gets closer, Jamie notices that the women are all aflutter—they’re flirting with the handsome man. And he’s flirting right back. Jamie has to call out to get his attention.

“Excuse me!” she says loudly.

He looks at her and his face lights up with recognition. He steps through the crowd of women and takes Jamie in his arms. She is swallowed by his enormous hug.

“Thank you,” he says, stepping back to look at her. “I’ve heard stories about you from many of the survivors.”

“Thank
you
,” she tells him. “I know from Nyoman the huge impact of your foundation.”

The man vigorously shakes hands with Nyoman.

“Wonderful ceremony, Mr. Theo,” Nyoman says.

“Do you know where I can find Gabe?” Jamie asks.

Theo looks around. He’s got the advantage of height—he scans the crowd in all directions. “If I know him, he sneaked off as soon as he could.”

“Do you have his phone number? The one I have is disconnected.”

Theo reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cellphone. He finds the number and gives it to Jamie, who writes it down.

“Thanks,” she tells him. “For everything.”

“Can I take you for a drink?” he asks. “Dinner?”

She smiles. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Tonight?”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Will you come back?” he asks. “To Bali?”

“I may,” she tells him. And for the first time, it is not a lie.

TukTuk sits across the street from the Paradise Guest House, alone. Jamie looks up and down the road, peering into the hazy morning light, searching for Bambang. She’s never seen the dog without the boy, or the boy without the dog.

TukTuk trots over and stands next to her, leaning into her knee as if he can finally rest.

“Where’s your pal?” Jamie asks.

The black dog simply pants.