The Paradise Guest House (17 page)

He slipped the photo into his shirt pocket; Jamie might want it with her.

Opening the top drawer of the large teak dresser, he discovered lacy things—bras, panties—and he felt as if he were doing something illicit. Quickly, he put the underwear in the suitcase. In the next drawer he saw shirts, shorts, a bikini, and he piled the clothing into the case. He found a passport with a couple of hundred-dollar bills tucked inside. The last drawer contained jeans, a sweater, a pair of silk pants.

In the bathroom he found another bikini, hanging on a hook. Midnight blue, covered with tiny stars. Very small. He wished he could find a picture of Jamie, something that would show him what she looked like before her face was cut, her body battered. She was once a girl who wore a bikini like this.

He gathered her toiletries into her red kit bag. She didn’t wear much makeup, just a lipstick, eyeliner, mascara. She had a brush, some suntan lotion, face cream. He remembered how Heather traveled with two or three bags of toiletries and makeup. “We’re going into the woods for a week,” he would tell her. “Maybe I want to look like a sexy wood nymph,” she’d say. But Gabe always thought sexy was simple, unadorned beauty. Hair falling out of a bun. Skin the color of a late-summer tan.

He looked up and saw himself in the mirror. He looked awful. His face was gaunt and his beard needed trimming. He hadn’t run a comb through his hair in two days. He looked away.

On a shelf in the bathroom were two bottles: melatonin, birth-control pills. Again, he felt like a snoop. He quickly swiped the pill bottles into the kit and zipped it up.

When he was finished packing her suitcase, he took a quick
look around the room. There was a book by the bedside table. A memoir of a woman who explored the Arctic. I’m learning her, Gabe thought. Little by little. This is who Jamie is.

Or who she once was.

In the lobby, the Balinese woman walked up to him.

“I have the messages for Miss Jamie,” she said.

“I’ll take them to her.”

She handed him two slips of paper. He held them in his open palm.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” she asked.

“No, thank you. I left the other suitcase outside the door of the villa. There’s an address on the tag.”

“We will ship the suitcase, sir.”

“Thank you.”

The woman stood there.

“I should pay for her room,” Gabe said. “I’m sorry. Let me take care of that.”

“There is no need,” the woman said. “There is no charge right now for any of our guests.”

Gabe nodded.

The woman turned and walked away.

He looked at the top message.

Report back, Legs. No answer on your damn cellphone. You better be fine. Get your ass out of Dodge. All expenses paid by Global Adventures. Larson
.

The next one from her mother.

Please call me. I’m so scared. Please call me. I love you more than you could ever know
.

Back in the car, Gabe’s phone rang. He picked it up: His sister’s name lit up the screen. He tossed the phone on the seat beside him. He didn’t want to tell her again that he wasn’t coming home.

When he turned his car onto the main road, he saw signs:
KUTA. SANUR
.

Without even giving himself time to decide, he turned toward Kuta.

The roads were clogged with cars and motorbikes. He heard some voice in his head say:
Get out of here. Go back to Jamie
.

The car inched forward. Another phone call. Lena this time. Again, he didn’t answer.

Finally he cut across to a side road that would get him to the bomb site faster. He wove through traffic and hit a roadblock:
NO ENTRY
.

This was foolish. He should turn around. He should get himself back to Sanur.

Still, he pulled his car off to the side of the road—an illegal parking space, but the cops had far more important business right now. He got out of the car and headed to the bomb site on foot.

He could smell it before he could see it. Fire. The acrid smell of explosives and burned skin. Fire retardant. He covered his nose with his hand.

Indonesians and a few Westerners wandered aimlessly through the streets. This area was usually packed with tourists.
The shops along the street—souvenirs, leather, bikinis, T-shirts, straw bags—were all closed. One sign on the door of a store read:
OUR HEARTS WITH VICTIMS. WE PRAY
.

Gabe turned a corner and stopped. He saw burned buildings, collapsed buildings. That one was Sari Club, the other Paddy’s Pub. In the middle of the road was an enormous crater. There were shells of cars, twisted metal, a melted sign for Coca-Cola. Just a few feet in front of him was a high-heeled shoe—emerald green—in perfect condition.

Gabe closed his eyes for a moment. He tried to breathe deeply, but the smell of fire and death filled his lungs.

None of it felt real in the little cottage by the sea. Even Jamie, with her wounds, seemed to have arrived from nowhere. But that night wasn’t a nightmare. It was this very real, hideous carnage.

A man with crooked glasses stood on the street in front of the still-smoking rubble of Sari Club. He held a large framed photograph of a woman to his chest, as if he were pressing her into his heart. Gabe could see that the woman was pregnant, her small body stretched with a very round belly. She was smiling at the camera, a shy smile, as if she were telling secrets to the man taking the photo.

He lost her, Gabe thought. Unable to bear the expression on the man’s face, he turned away.

A team of policemen with white gloves was busy combing the charred remains of the cars on the street. One of the cars was tilted on its side, burned to a skeleton.

Gabe saw flowers everywhere. Wreaths, bouquets, and single flowers lined the street, lying next to the blackened buildings. One young man—a Westerner—was placing a bouquet of flowers at the side of the street, in front of Sari Club. Tears
poured from his eyes. Another man stood next to him, dazed, staring into the rubble. Two girls near Gabe kneeled in front of small prayer offerings, the kind that the Balinese used to maintain balance in their world. One of them chanted, “Laura, Laura, Laura.” The other sobbed.

It started to rain. Gabe could feel the drops on his head and on his arms, and, though it was hot, he felt suddenly chilled. He stood there, stunned, unable to move. He tried to remember running into Paddy’s, through the fire, toward the screams. It felt as if it happened to someone else. But this was real. This was a war zone.

“There was a snake in the road,” an elderly Balinese woman said. She was standing beside Gabe; he hadn’t even noticed her. “In the morning after the bombs. It was reaching toward heaven. It is an omen.”

“What kind of omen?” Gabe asked.

“It was reaching to the gods. For help. We have done something wrong. We have angered someone.”

“No,” Gabe said, looking at her. He tried to keep his voice calm. “We have done nothing wrong. It is the terrorists who have done something evil.”

“Because of our sins,” the woman said. “Because of the dancing and drinking. We have lost our way.”

Gabe thought of Jamie, lying in bed at the beach cottage.

“No,” he told the woman gently. “These were good people. These were innocent people. They did nothing wrong.”

Without another word, the woman turned and walked away.

Gabe watched a young man wandering through the devastation, holding a sign:
TERI HUGHES. MISSING
. On the sign was a picture of a woman with a beguiling smile. The boy, eyes
swollen, mouth tight, walked in circles, his sign raised high above his head.

As soon as Gabe pulled onto the main road out of Kuta, he was snagged in a traffic jam, the cars barely moving, the heat of the day weighing on them. The rain had stopped, and steam rose from the sides of the highway. He drove a couple of yards, slowed, waited, then drove another yard. He could feel his heart racing.

Jamie’s alone, he thought. I’ve been gone too long. How long did he stand and stare at the bomb site? He looked at his watch. They still had a few hours until they had to leave for the airport.

The traffic eased for a moment, and, as soon as Gabe sped up, a motorbike cut him off. He slammed on the brakes. The car behind him screeched to a stop.

He closed his eyes. In seconds, the air filled with the sound of blaring horns.

He looked up and thought: I can’t do it. I can’t go forward.

Again, the car horns blasted him.

He shook his head. He could taste bile in his throat.

Pulling to the side of the road, he put the car in park and rested his head on the steering wheel. His breath came in harsh gasps, as if he couldn’t find air, and then he was sobbing, loud, racking sobs that came from deep inside his chest.

He let himself cry until he was done. Then he thought again of Jamie, waiting for him, and he pulled back onto the highway.

When the path opened up and the cottage appeared, Gabe saw someone sitting on the patio. The person was facing away from him, looking out toward the garden. Was it Billy, or one of Billy’s friends, or a stranger he’d have to talk to? He felt a flash of anger, as if this were his home and no one else had the right to be here.

The person heard him approach and turned in his direction.

It was then that Gabe saw the bandage, the auburn hair, the pale-blue scarf that supported her cast. Jamie. He smiled, and then suddenly he couldn’t stop smiling.

“Look at you,” he said.

“I took a pain pill,” she told him.

“Your arm?”

“My mind,” she said. “These things work for psychic pain, too, it seems.”

“Maybe I’ll steal a couple,” he told her.

“This is—” she started to say, then stopped and looked out at the garden. “Lovely,” she said finally. “It’s like I’m dreaming this.”

He sat in the wicker chair next to her.

“My friend is a landscape designer. He’s very good at what he does.”

Gabe noticed a pad of paper on Jamie’s lap, a pencil in her hand. She had sketched the garden, using quick lines and a delicate touch.

“You’re an artist.”

“Barely,” she said. “I like to sketch while I travel. I found this pad in a kitchen drawer.”

“Did you see much of Bali … before?” Gabe asked.

She shook her head. “I was only here three days. Now I don’t want to see any of it. I want to sit right here.”

“I’m sorry I was away so long,” Gabe said. “Can I get you something to eat?”

“No,” she said. “Sit here with me.”

Gabe followed her gaze out into the garden. Lakshmi, a goddess holding two lotus flowers, sat at the center of the lawn, encircled by gardenias. There was a balé, a wooden pavilion, at the far end of the garden; Billy had found its original thatched roof in an antiques store in Seminyak. On the balé were a teak table and gracefully curved teak chairs. A red ceramic bowl sat in the middle of the table.

“I have messages for you,” Gabe said.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the two pieces of paper, which he passed to Jamie.

He watched her as she read them, her brow furrowed.

“The hotel will ship Miguel’s things back to his family,” he said.

She glanced at him and then quickly turned away.

“You should call his family, Jamie,” he said gently.

She shook her head, her eyes on the garden.

Let her be, he told himself. You’re done saving her.

“It’s my fault that he died,” Jamie said, her voice strained.

“It’s not your fault.”

“What do
you
know?” she said, with a sharp stab of anger. “If I had said yes to him—yes, I’ll marry you, yes, I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you—he’d be alive. We’d have stayed in that crappy little restaurant until we finished our meal. We would have taken a taxi back to our fancy hotel and spent the night making love instead of getting blown apart by a fucking bomb.”

Gabe reached out and laid a hand on her arm. She stood up
abruptly, as if his touch had jolted her, and her chair clattered to the ground. She kept her back to Gabe.

“I was waiting for you to come home, and then suddenly I was angry. I’ve never waited for a man to take care of me. I can take care of myself. I don’t even know who you are.”

“We went through a lot together.”

“I’ll call a cab to take me to the airport.”

“I want to take you.”

She picked up her chair and sat back down in it. He could hear her release a deep breath.

“I stopped at the bomb site,” Gabe said.

She turned to him, her anger gone in a quick moment. “Why?”

“It didn’t feel real. Maybe it’s this garden, this house. I needed to see the clubs in the daytime.”

“I never want to see it,” Jamie said.

Gabe thought of the Jamie he discovered in the hotel room. A girl in a bikini. Sweet perfume.

“I have this for you,” he said. He pulled the photo of the dog out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her.

She looked at it and her face softened. He felt relieved to see her smile.