The Paradise Guest House (6 page)

In the middle of a solo performance—a boy plays an instrument that looks something like a flute and pierces Jamie’s heart with its sad notes—she turns around and finds herself looking at a girl a row behind her, who stares back at her with penetrating blue eyes.

Just like that, Jamie smells fire. She hears screams. She tells herself: It’s a memory. This feels like the beginning of one of her nightmares, but she’s wide awake. It’s broad daylight. There is no fire. There is no bomb. She blinks and the girl behind her tilts her head, as if searching for something in Jamie’s face.

Jamie looks down. The girl wears yoga pants; a prosthetic foot emerges from the bottom of one of the legs.

“You—” the girl says, and then she puts her hand over her mouth.

Once again, Jamie hears screams. She’s back in the nightclub and the air is thick with smoke. A wooden beam has crushed the girl’s leg. She tries to lift the beam but it’s too heavy. The wood is hot, as if already on fire. But the fire is on the other side of the club, sizzling and popping. Jamie can smell burned flesh.

“Stay with us!” she yells, and the girl opens her eyes. Blue eyes. There was no color and then there is the shocking blue of the girl’s eyes.

Now Jamie looks from the girl’s prosthetic leg to her startling eyes. The girl nods her head with recognition, and Jamie turns back. She stands, then steps away from Nyoman, so fast that he never glances in her direction. She pushes through the row of people, bumping shoulders and knees, muttering words.
Sorry. Have to go
. At the end of the row, she turns and runs.

She runs until the crowd is far behind her. She runs until her breath is ragged and her body trembles with exhaustion.

Then she stops and leans over the curb and throws up.

She wipes her mouth and keeps on running.

“Marry me,” Miguel said, leaning toward her over their plates of seafood curry.

It was her last dinner with him in Bali, almost a year ago to the day, at a restaurant in Kuta, the night windy and hot, the noise of so many young Australians lifting in the air like a constant cheer.

“You’re crazy,” she told him. “We barely know each other.”

He was tall and lanky and his hands felt wonderful on her
skin. Somehow they had been together for six months, longer than she’d been with most of the men in her life. They had spent a couple of weeks in Patagonia when Jamie was between trips (“Bold Brazil,” then “Wild Argentina”); he had taught her to ice climb at Fitz Roy and she was a natural on the glacier, so fearless it made her giddy.

“I’m not crazy,” he said. He pushed a box toward her. Her gin and tonics lurched in her stomach as she reached for the gift.

She held it in her hand for a moment without looking at him. The gin slowed down her brain, and she scrambled through her thoughts to find words: No, thank you. I’m not ready. Not me.

She opened the unwrapped box and saw the glint of the diamond, then shut the box as if blinded. She eyed him, a worried look on her face.

His face glowed in the light of the tiki flame. He had a kind of fierce pride, this handsome boy from Santiago.

“Marry me,” he said again.

She shook her head and pushed the box back toward him.

“We’re just starting,” she said weakly.

“Yes,” he said, his voice insistent. “Look at what we’ve begun.”

“I’ve never even been in a long-term relationship,” she told him. She didn’t say: I don’t even know if I’m in love. “I can’t marry you, Miguel. I’m not ready. And I can’t pretend that I’ll be ready in a week or a month. That’s not what I want in my life right now.”

Miguel flinched at her words. He looked stunned, as if he’d never imagined the possibility of her refusal. And why should he? For three days now, they’d played at love, like accomplished
actors in the most romantic setting. They kissed in the backseat of their taxi, they held hands while hiking the mountain, they soaped each other’s bodies in the hotel room’s outdoor shower and then made love while the water cascaded over them.

Miguel stood up. His body swayed, and Jamie wondered if he had drunk too much. But he turned and walked toward the door without a word, steady on his feet, not looking back.

Jamie left some money on the table and ran after him.

She stood in front of the restaurant for a moment, frantically searching in both directions until she caught a glimpse of him through the crowd—his royal-blue shirt flashing in the glare of the streetlight. She ran toward him, calling his name.

He stopped but turned his face away from her.

“Miguel—”

“I do not want to be your adventure,” Miguel told her. “I want to be your husband.”

“Don’t walk away from me.”

“I need a drink.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“I want to be alone, Jamie. Please.”

He wouldn’t look at her. She dropped his arm.

“Should we meet back at the hotel?”

“Right now I just want a drink.”

He turned and walked toward a bar at the side of the road. Reggae music blasted from the open windows of the building.

“Miguel.”

He shook his head and kept walking. Jamie stood on the sidewalk and watched him go. He walked through the doors of Paddy’s Pub without ever looking back at her.

Jamie stood on the sidewalk, struggling with the urge to run
after him. She could join him in the club, lure him onto the dance floor. Don’t think about marriage, she could whisper in his ear. Think about this. Later she could take his hand and lead him to the hotel, where they could make love late into the night.

Or she could walk away. She could go back to her hotel and get some sleep.

Still, she stood there.

She could have told him that she loved him even though she didn’t want to marry him.

But did she love him?

She loved to chase his well-toned legs up a mountain; she loved acrobatic sex with him. But she was hungry to see every corner of the world, to have every adrenaline-fueled adventure. Wasn’t marriage the thing that stopped you?

A young man bumped into Jamie, almost knocking her over. Dazed, she looked around.

“Sorry, miss,” the man said, slurring his words. “Buy you a drink?”

“My boyfriend’s in there,” Jamie said, and she started walking toward the club.

It was then the sky flashed white. Blinding white. The sound came a split second later, a series of small pops, like firecrackers, and then a deafening explosion. She felt herself lift into the air, into the white space above her, and, just like that, she was flying.

Jamie slides down the wall of a building until she is sitting on the street, her back pressed against the cool wood. The farther she ran from the children’s performance, the more the memories
chased her. She had to stop. She has found an alleyway that is almost abandoned—the rest of the streets in Kuta are flooded with people.

“Larson?” she says into her phone.

“Jamie—where are you?”

“I don’t know. Lost in Kuta. Why haven’t you answered my calls?”

“I met someone. We went to Point Reyes for a couple of days. No cell service.”

“Christ, Larson.”

“It’s the middle of the night here.”

“She in bed with you?”

“Jamie. What’s going on? You sound awful.”

“I can’t do this. I thought it would be no big deal. But I’m losing it.”

“Maybe you
need
to lose it a little bit.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m going back to sleep now.”

“No. Wait.”

Larson doesn’t say anything.

“Help me,” she says quietly into the phone.

“Let me go into the other room.” Larson sighs. She hears him walking through the hallway of his Berkeley house. She can imagine him: He’s thrown on his ratty terry-cloth robe. It hangs on his too-skinny body. He will make his way to the leather chair by the fireplace, and, when he sits down, Rosalee, his old cat, will settle onto his lap.

Jamie has shown up at Larson’s house in the middle of the night after a bad fight with a boyfriend; she has slept in his guest room for a week when she was between apartments. He
understands her—they’ve shared so many trails in so many obscure parts of the world, it’s as if each knows the landscape of the other’s life.

Once Jamie told Larson that he was her replacement father—a better version of the man who’d walked out of her life. “Don’t do that to me,” he warned her. “Too big a burden.” But he has never failed her. And now he’s dying. Her damn father is alive and well in Connecticut, and this gift of a man in Berkeley is fading away.

“Talk to me, Legs,” he finally says. He’s been calling her Legs since their first marathon hike together, when she kept pace at his side for hours, to his great surprise.

“I’m going to come home tomorrow.”

“The ceremony isn’t until the weekend.”

“I can’t stay.”

“Don’t give up.”

“I saw a girl from the bombing.”

“So?”

“I don’t want to go back. I want to move on.”

“This is moving on.”

“The guy I’m staying with believes that his wife will be reincarnated as his child.”

“Maybe she will be.”

Jamie begins to cry. She saves her tears for Larson. Her mother once yelled at her: “Maybe it would be easier if you weren’t so damn tough.” But Larson knows that she’s not so damn tough after all.

“I’m here,” he says quietly into her ear.

“Listen. Put me on the New Zealand trip. I can get there easily from here. I love that trip.”

“Stay where you are.”

“I’m sitting on the sidewalk like a beggar. I’m probably sitting in someone’s pee.”

“Then that’s exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

“You sound like Nyoman.”

“Who’s Nyoman?”

“My host.”

“His wife died?”

“In the bombing.”

“Maybe it works. His philosophy.”

“Not for me,” Jamie says.

“Give it a chance, Legs,” Larson says. His voice is low and serious.

“I didn’t even ask how you’re feeling,” she says, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“I’m doing fine,” he says, too quickly. Jamie realizes that he’s lying—there is no woman in his bed.

Even though she knew that pancreatic cancer was a death sentence the moment Larson told her about his diagnosis, she hasn’t let herself think about the end. His end. She’s the only one who can take care of him. She doesn’t know if she’s big enough for that job.

“I don’t want to lose you,” Jamie finally says.

“Oh, I’ll be haunting you forever. That’s my plan. I’ll tuck myself into your backpack and follow you around the world.”

A couple of Balinese kids race down the alleyway, chasing after a puppy. They pass by her as if she’s invisible.

Jamie stands and looks at the sky—the setting sun sends out streaks of red across the cloudless blue.

“Go on back to sleep,” Jamie tells Larson.

“Stay in Bali, Legs,” he says, and hangs up.

Jamie puts her phone into her pocket and starts walking.

It takes her a long time to find the parking lot. Nyoman sits peacefully on a bench at the back of the now empty lot. All the bleachers have been put away and the stage has been taken down. He watches Jamie walk toward him.

“I’m sorry,” she says when she reaches him.

“In my garden is a sculpture of Ganesh.”

“The elephant?”

“Yes. The elephant. He protects us from the demons. I wait for you. I will be your Ganesh.”

Jamie dreams about Bambang. He’s on a bicycle, dog at his side, and Nyoman runs after him yelling, “Stop! Thief!” Bam-bang laughs, the dog yips, and Nyoman plunges a dagger into the boy.

Jamie sits up in bed, her heart jackhammering.

“Bambang,” she says aloud, and she realizes that she needs his help.

She throws on clothes. She should shower, but she doesn’t want to take the extra time.

She opens the door to her room and sees Nyoman setting the garden table for her breakfast.

“I’ll be right back,” she calls to him.

He looks up, surprised, as she races past.

She opens the gate to the street and, sure enough, Bambang is waiting for her, as if summoned. His dog waits, too, ears perked, tail wagging. If Bambang had a tail, it, too, would be wagging.

She hurries across the street. The boy looks worried.

“Bambang in trouble?” he asks.

“You’re always in trouble,” she says. “But I couldn’t care less. I need your help.”

His wide smile lights up his face.

“Twenty dollar,” he says.

She pulls a twenty out of her back pocket. His eyes open wide.

“Find a man for me. You can do this. You probably know everyone in this country.”

“Only this town.”

“We’ll start here. Ubud. A year ago he taught school in Ubud.”

“Your boyfriend?” Bambang sings, taunting her.

“Not my boyfriend.”

“Your baby daddy?” he asks, grinning wildly.

“How the hell do you know that expression?” she asks, laughing. “No, he’s not my baby daddy.”

“Yoga lady teach me that. Baby daddy.”

“Isabel?”

“No. Lots of yoga ladies here. This one Lucy.”

“I don’t care about yoga ladies. You find this man.”

“I promise you,” Bambang says proudly. “What is his name?”

“Gabe. I don’t know his last name. You gotta earn your twenty. Here’s what I know. He’s American. Schoolteacher. Green eyes. Dark hair and a beard. Tattoo of a bird on his forearm.”

“What’s forearm?”

“You know baby daddy and you don’t know forearm?” Jamie asks. She shows him her forearm. “Here.”

“He teach in Ubud now?”

“I don’t know. You start here.”

“This cost more than twenty,” the boy says, crossing his bony arms across his chest.

“You got a list of services? It says somewhere:
Find missing man …
what—forty dollars?”

“Forty dollar,” he tells her.

“You find him, you get the other twenty.” The dog rubs against her leg, as if adding his own plea for more money. “What’s the dog’s name?”

“TukTuk.” Bambang runs down the street, waving his twenty in the air, TukTuk bounding after him with paroxysms of joy.

“Boy is no good,” Nyoman says when Jamie sits down for breakfast.