End of the Ocean Read online

  “This is bad timing,” Grady said.

  Djoko said, “No it perfect.”

  “But they’re gonna to take these guys any day now—it’s in the news.”

  Djoko sighed and said he knew. “I know. It make me worry but we do big run now.”

  “But now? With all this heat?”

  “That why we do now. Big run, big balls.”

  “There’s gonna be a lot of police at the airport now. This is risky.”

  “Yes, it risk—it always risk—but this plan for many months now. All of sudden we cannot just abandon it. Besides, this smart.” Djoko tapped his finger to his head to demonstrate just how smart this was. “They look for drug, not diamond. Dog can no smell diamond. Only fool try bring in drug right now.”

  Grady looked at Djoko.

  “Relax.” He leaned forward and messed up Grady’s hair. “Relax, you my stud horse, Grady,” he said. “It take big balls for this run and look at the balls on you.”

  Again Grady said, “Easy money.”

  Djoko left the kitchen and walked outside, glad he had set Grady’s mind at ease. It was the line about a stud horse having big balls that had done it. It was a confidence booster that worked every time. Djoko remembered how well it had worked on him the first time he’d heard it.

  ***

  Sage did not sleep well but at least he did not dream.

  After a night spent rolling from side to side uncomfortably, morning light came through the window and woke him. It was early. He showered and dressed and, stepping close to the mirror, decided he would shave. Removed his shirt, threw water on his face. After rubbing shaving cream across his skin, he withdrew his razor and started scraping.

  He had a few days growth to remove; it was at the point where the stiffness had grown out and become smooth.

  Once he’d put on his shirt he rubbed aftershave on his face and neck. He smelled good and his skin felt fresh and he felt clean. It was still early. Plenty of time. He picked up his phone but the screen was impossible to read. He thought it would dry out but it hadn’t; the water damage had been extensive.

  He walked toward the bed and sat, deciding that was fine, that he didn’t need a phone, and, tossing his phone on the pillow, scratching his arm, he realized he was nervous.

  He had never done that well with strangers. What the hell had he been thinking?

  Leaving his phone on the bed and sticking the key inside his wallet and putting his wallet in his pocket and opening the door, he left the room. He would forgo breakfast. No matter how hungry he was he would not go back to that restaurant. Not after the position he had put himself in, lying about being an author.

  When he got to the lobby Kadek was waiting. He sat beside a water fountain in a wide patch of shade.

  “Pagi.”

  Sage was surprised. He had not expected to see him that early.

  “Morning.”

  Kadek said, “Pagi.”

  “Huh?”

  “Pagi mean good morning.”

  “Oh, OK. Pagi.”

  “Pagi.”

  “I didn’t expect you so early.”

  “Yeah, early. It big day. We get you sarong.”

  “Listen,” Sage said. “Listen, I just wanna say thank you—I mean, Terima kasih—for taking me to look at that house yesterday, and for this, for Galen … Gal en—

  “Galungan—,” Kadek finished.

  “Yeah,” Sage said. “That. Galungan. It means a lot to me.”

  “It was my joy,” Kadek said. “Terima kasih—you learn good my language now.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, but at least I’ve got ‘thank you’ down.”

  “Yes terima kasih is thank you but also suksma.”

  “What?”

  “Suksma also thank you.”

  “There’s two thank you’s now? Why …why would they do that, Kadek?”

  Kadek grinned. He had straight white teeth and he was gracious with his smiles.

  “No. One Balinese and one Indonesian. Terima kasih Indonesian and suksma is Balinese.”

  “So which one do I say? And why do some people say it one way and some people the other?”

  “It depend if you speak Balinese or Indonesian then you say how you say.”

  “But what if you’re American?” Sage pointed to himself.

  “If you American—let me see, how you say thing depend on who you say to, if they Indonesian or Balinese.” Kadek was patient, but he could not understand how Sage could not understand.

  “So there’s two languages here in Bali?”

  “No, three,” Kadek said.

  “Three?”

  “Yeah Indonesian is,” he thought about how to say what he was about to say, “general language for Bali, but Bali have Balinese who have own language. Also Javanese live here and Javanese speak Javanese. If you count Javanese then three language. For Javanese thank you you say sama sama.”

  “Javanese,” Sage said, “What’s that?”

  “Javanese,” Kadek pointed north. “It island of Java but it very poor so sometime they come here for good job. To make good money.”

  “It must be small.”

  “Java? No, it bigger than Bali. Ratri from Java.”

  “She is?”

  “Yeah,” Kadek said. “She Javanese.”

  “And she’s your cousin?”

  Kadek shook his head. “She my cousin.”

  “You’re not Javanese are you?”

  “Her ibu my ibu sister. She married to Ratri’s father, who from Java, but he die. Now she marry my uncle, my father’s brother, so she still my family.”

  Sage could not grasp the dynamics of their relationship or the Indonesian culture but he was happy to know them both, and excited at the prospect of knowing her better.

  They left the villa and Sage followed him through the traffic to his village in Penestanan. Despite the traffic they made good time. Kadek was very pleasant to ride with. The Balinese were kind people and Sage enjoyed being around them.

  Kadek parked his motorbike beside many other motorbikes and Sage parked his motorbike beside Kadek’s. They walked across the road and climbed a steep narrow walkway across a deep ditch where water rushed below them.

  Kadek said, “Don’t fall.”

  “This is a drunk’s worst nightmare.”

  “It hard if you drunk. I fall in water many time.”

  Crossing the ditch, walking through a stone doorway, down a hallway made of rock and wood, they came to a courtyard of sorts where people stood and talked.

  A woman, short and squat and somewhere in her sixties, walking toward him, stopped and hugged him and asked about his friend.

  “This Sage from America.” The three of them laughed then because Kadek could not pronounce his name, something Sage had noted but ignored.

  He said, “It beginning of your name that hard for me.”

  “S?”

  Kadek nodded. “Yes, it hard to say.”

  Kadek’s mother walked toward Sage, extending her calloused hand. He took it.

  “Pagi,” Sage said.

  “Pagi,” Kadek’s mother said.

  “This my Ibu,” Kadek said. “My mother, patron saint of my life.”

  “Aw,” she smiled at her son and Sage saw that she had fine dimples in her round cheeks. “He so sweet, my boy.”

  A man of some degree of seriousness walked toward them and stopped beside Kadek’s ibu and placed his hands on his hips.

  “This my father,” Kadek said, as the man, looking grim, introduced himself, saying his name was Kentu, pointing to a table with material on it and walking that direction.

  Kadek told Sage to follow him.

  Sage followed Kentu to the table and stood in one spot while Kentu reached around Sage’s waist with material in his hand and fitted him for a sarong. When he finished, Kadek to
ld Sage he looked good.

  “You look Balinese.”

  “I feel Balinese.”

  Kadek’s ibu spoke to him in Balinese then Kadek told Sage to come with him, and, walking to a statue covered with offerings, said, “Here you sit,” pointing to the ground and sitting beside him as his ibu stood in front of them with a pot of water, dabbing her fingers in it, sprinkling the top of Sage’s and Kadek’s heads with wet drops, then handing them a bowl filled with rice. They reached into the bowl, pinching rice between their fingers, and, raising their fingers to their wet foreheads, stuck the rice to their skin.

  They sat quietly and prayed and remembered their ancestors. At least Kadek did.

  Kadek set a square piece of paper in front of Sage and put several flower petals on it and set incense on it and burned the incense. When the smoke rose from the incense, Kadek told Sage to lean over it. When he did, Kadek waved the smoke in Sage’s face three times and allowed the smoke to wash over him.

  “There,” Kadek said, “we finish.” He stood and walked toward his Ibu, telling Sage he would be right back.

  Sage said OK and stood, his eyes wandering the courtyard. It was lush. Flowers in full bloom. He reached for his phone, again and again, not because he needed it but because he thought he did. It was something people did, reached for their phones, whether they needed to or not. Having the newest, latest phone had become a symbol of class, a necessity most could not do with out, but Sage found a certain freedom in not having it. An important lifeline now removed.

  It felt strange not to have it, but also good.

  Kadek called his name and when Sage turned he saw Ratri. Kadek was talking to her.

  Sage was stunned. At first he did not recognized her, not in her attire. Hair pulled high, rolled tight in a ball, she wore an elegant sarong that was gold and black.

  “This Ratri,” Kadek said. “You remember her?”

  “How could I forget?” Sage said, instantly regretting it, wishing he had come up with something more gentlemanly.

  When Ratri smiled Sage forgot about everything in his life that had gone wrong. He forgot who he was and where he came from and why he was there. Her skin was like smooth caramel and her lips were small. She had a long slender neck that was perfect.

  Ratri bowed to Sage and asked him how he liked Bali.

  “I love it,” he said. “It’s hot, but I’m getting used to it.”

  “Yeah, it’s very hot here. But hot to you is normal to me. Today normal day for me.”

  “I guess you get used to it.”

  “This is all I know.”

  “You speak very good English,” he said, because he wanted to change the subject and because it was also true, she did speak well.

  She thanked him, and asked him where he lived.

  “You from America?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it like there?”

  Sage did not know what to say. He hated it there, but he did not want to tell her that.

  “It’s very big,” he said. “And very busy.”

  “Is it good place?”

  “Bagus?” Sage asked.

  Ratri laughed. “Yes, bagus. It is bagus?”

  “It’s not a bad place, but it’s not a good place either.”

  “What does that mean, a kind of paradox?”

  Sage laughed, said again her English was remarkable. He wondered how she knew that word.

  “Thank you, I study.”

  “What do you study?”

  “Movies. Television. I study how Americans talk. I listen and I read lips. Many things.”

  “That’s smart.”

  “I think so.”

  He laughed.

  “I also watch television with caption to read English words.”

  “Well all that hard work paid off,” he said. “You sound like an American.”

  Now she laughed at him. “One of these days perhaps I do.”

  “I think you’d love it, and I don’t say that to many people.”

  “It is expensive, yes?”

  “Oh yes,” Sage said. “Ten dollars for a hamburger.”

  She thought about that. “Ten dollar?” she said. “For hamburger?”

  Sage nodded.

  “Ten dollar for hamburger? That like one hundred twenty-five thousand rupiah.”

  Sage shrugged his shoulders and told her the same thing he told everyone else who said what she said: That America was not as great as she imagined; that she did not miss anything living in Bali. He said: You’re the lucky one.

  The American Dream was broken; she was the one living everyone else’s dream.

  “It’s nothing like it is here,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “It not like this?”

  “After five minutes you’d come home.”

  She looked around and said, “It is nice here. It beautiful.”

  “It’s beautiful, that’s true.”

  “How long you stay?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Guess it depends.”

  Kadek told Sage it was time to go and asked him if he was ready.

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  Kadek asked Ratri if she was going with them or going with her mother and she looked at Sage before she answered and said she was going with them.

  Kadek spoke to her in Balinese and she removed her phone from the pocket of her sarong and told Sage and Kadek to stand together. When they did, she took their picture.

  “Hang on,” she said. “Sage you not smile.”

  “Sorry, I’m not much on pictures.”

  “No, you smile,” she said. “You have good smile.”

  She took their picture again and he smiled as well as he could though it was still less of a smile and more of a grin. She shook her fist at him and handed Kadek his phone.

  “Thank you,” Kadek said. “Hang on, wait minute, you stand beside Joe.”

  Sage noticed Kadek called him Joe but did not know why he said that or how long he’d been doing it, or if he had called him Joe on purpose because he could not say his name without being laughed at and Joe was something he could say.

  Coming toward him, she walked unhurriedly; as if time itself had slowed to almost nothing and favored Sage with the pleasure of watching her approach him.

  They smiled at each other and everything felt right about that moment.

  “Stand beside him, Ratri.”

  She stood beside Sage and he did not know what to do so he put his arm around her. She moved in close to him, wrapping her arm around him in return. It was a small gesture, but it reassured Sage that he had made the right move.

  Kadek took their picture and Sage offered a very good smile, a better, more genuine smile than before.

  Kadek walked toward them and handed Ratri her phone and she looked at her screen and smiled.

  “Look, Sage,” she said.

  As she handed him her phone he hoped their hands would touch then he laughed at himself and his own immaturities, but then, when he took her phone, their hands did touch and Sage wondered how such a small, unimportant thing could have any power at all but it did.

  He raised the screen to his face and looked at it and nodded his head. It was a good picture, and for once he did not look that bad.

  “This great picture,” Ratri said.

  Sage agreed it was fabulous.

  “Want me send to you?”

  Sage told her he would love that but his phone was out of commission.

  “What you mean?”

  “It got wet,” he said. “I need a new one.”

  “Tidak bagus—but I know place to get new phone. It is good place.”

  “That’d be great. I need to check in with my people back home.”

  “You have family?”

  “Mom, dad, brother and a sister.”

  “
That nice,” she said. “I have sister also, she in Java. She work at clinic.”

  Kadek called to Sage and Ratri and they followed him back through the stone hall across the narrow strip of concrete bridge. After crossing the road, Kadek walked to his motorbike and set a wooden crate filled with incense on the back seat and secured the crate to the seat with rope.

  “Where I sit?” Ratri said.

  “Where your motorbike?”

  “My mother ride it. I tell you already.”

  “Sage ride you.” He looked at Sage, nodding, and asked if that was OK.

  Sage looked at Ratri and she nodded at him and asked if he would mind.

  “That’s fine,” Sage said, immediately worried since he could barely ride himself, but elated at the thought of her behind him.

  Sitting down, Sage put the key in the ignition and nodded at Ratri, who, lifting her sarong, sat down on the seat behind Sage, on her right hip, both legs on the left side of the motorbike, like most women sat who wore a sarong and rode as a passenger.

  Kadek rode away and Sage followed him and Ratri sat very close to Sage.

  “How you like riding motorbike in Bali?” she said.

  Sage said he enjoyed it.

  She asked if he was nervous riding his first passenger and Sage told her he was not, even though he was, but he wanted her to feel secure.

  Kadek stopped on the shoulder and parked and Sage parked behind him, saying, “That was quick.”

  Kadek, climbing off his motorbike, grabbed several sticks of incense and a few flowers and put them in the pocket of his sarong.

  Ratri followed Kadek and stopped at the crate and grabbed a blue flower and a red flower and a yellow flower and a pink one. She handed the blue one and the white one to Sage and told him to hang onto them because he would need them when they got to the temple.

  As Kadek led them across a small patch of hard dirt that had once been grass but over the years wore down to nothing, crossing a pebbled lot that displayed intricate stonework, Sage saw other people walk about, but no Americans beside himself.

  Kadek, stopping, said something to Ratri, who, also stopping, sat cross-legged. Grabbing Sage’s hand, she pulled him to the ground to sit beside her.