The Paradise Guest House (9 page)

Gabe watched Theo maneuver through the crowded restaurant, forging a path back to his table. Even among Westerners, Theo stood out. He was tall, blond, and more arresting than some of the women in the crowd. Gabe wondered for a moment if Theo had ever been a serious journalist—hadn’t he written about pop culture? Maybe he just went to social events and reported on the lives of the rich and famously depraved.

Christ, Gabe thought. Two years in über-serious Ubud and I’ve become a snob.

“You’re a mountain man!” Theo roared, and threw a hearty arm around Gabe’s back.

My beard, Gabe thought. He liked the surprise of seeing someone unfamiliar when he happened to look in the mirror.

“Good to see you, Theo.”

They sat and Theo waved over a waitress, then called out for a large Bintang.

“So you’re a schoolmarm?” Theo asked, turning his attention back to Gabe.

“ ’Fraid so. Found my true calling.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“I met a woman who started a school and one of her teachers got dengue fever. I said I’d step in for a week. That was a year and a half ago.”

“You must be rooting the woman. No other reason for something like that.”

“Rooting?”

“Shagging, mate.”

Gabe shook his head. He
had
slept with Lena a few times, but now they were friends. He wasn’t about to explain any of it to Theo.

“Just a midlife crisis,” Gabe said.

“Fuck that,” Theo said, and the beer appeared before him. He looked up into the face of the pretty Balinese waitress and a smile spread across his face. “Cheers, my friend,” he said to the grinning girl.

“Cheers,” Gabe said, lifting his whiskey.

The waitress glided away.

“You writing?” Gabe asked.

Theo shrugged. “Don’t ask.”

Gabe laughed, then stopped. Theo’s face was dark.

“Tell me about the waves, then.”

Theo talked surfing for a while, and Gabe pretended to know about swells and bottom turns. Suddenly he couldn’t remember why he’d wanted to come to Kuta in the first place, why he wanted to get drunk with Theo and sleep on the guy’s scummy sofa bed. He thought of his small house in the hills outside Ubud. He could be sitting on his back deck right now, staring at a million stars.

The restaurant was humming with loud conversation, Tracy Chapman songs, and wooden fans circling noisily above their heads. Gabe saw a hefty man moving from table to table, shaking hands, kissing cheeks. Must be the owner, he thought. Santo’s was a glitzier restaurant than most in Kuta, catering only to Westerners. It was sleek and modern, a little too cold for Gabe’s taste.

“You gonna stay in Ubud?” Theo asked. Gabe had missed something—weren’t they just talking about swells?

“For now,” Gabe said. “I spent the last fifteen years planning my life. Now I’m trying to spend a few years without a plan.”

“I talked to Devon a few weeks ago,” Theo said. Devon was their mutual friend at the
Globe
.

Gabe lifted his whiskey glass and poured what was left into his mouth. He looked for the waitress, ready for a second one.

“He told me you were one of the best.”

“Easy to say when I’m long gone,” Gabe muttered.
Long gone
. The words echoed.

“Why’d you quit?” Theo asked. “I never asked you that.”

Gabe lifted his glass to the waitress, who nodded her head. Then he turned to Theo.

“You know what I don’t understand,” he said, and immediately he could hear something nasty in his voice. Theo was staring at him too intently. He took a breath. “Everyone comes here to reinvent themselves. We’re dropouts. We got sick of our lives back home or we failed or we got lost along the way. Bali beckons. We get here and discard our old selves like we toss those worn-out winter coats. But then what do we do? We talk about the past. Endlessly. Every fucking expat I know spends more time talking about his old life than whatever new one he might have found. Why is that?”

Theo didn’t answer, but he looked amused.

“Ignore me,” Gabe said, his head down. “I just took my sister to the airport after a weeklong visit. I’m a little crazed.”

“It’s good,” Theo said.

“What’s good?”

“Your anger. Ubud puts most people into a spiritual coma.”

“It’s got nothing to do with Ubud.”

“No worries, mate. I don’t give a fuck about your life in the States.”

Gabe smiled. “Good man,” he said.

“You need to get back tonight?” Theo asked.

Gabe shook his head.

“Then we’ll head to the clubs after dinner. I’m going to meet a friend at Sari Club later.”

The waitress brought Gabe’s whiskey. “Here you go, sir,” she said, while eyeing Theo.

“Another for me,” he told her, lifting his beer.

She placed menus on the table and brushed Theo’s shoulder as she walked by. Gabe didn’t know why he felt a pang of jealousy. He was too old for these kinds of pickups. It was one of the reasons he’d left the party town of Seminyak and headed to quiet Ubud two years earlier.

“You living in town?” Theo asked.

“Found a place about twenty minutes outside Ubud. It’s a joglo—one of those Javanese houses. It’s made of old teak, and it overlooks the valley. Pretty damn nice.”

“You live alone?”

Gabe nodded. “At the end of a day with seven-year-olds, I need a lot of quiet.”

“Can’t imagine any of it. The seven-year-olds. The mountain life. Give me my board, a six-pack, and a girl in my bed.”

“Who pays the bills?”

“Hell, I can support myself here by selling a few pieces of jewelry each week.”

“Jewelry?”

“Some chick I met strings beads and calls them Balinese art necklaces. We set up a website and I’m selling shit in Australia and Hong Kong and the United States.” Theo leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair. “I kept pretending I was going to write that fucking novel. And every time I sat down at my desk, my brain hurt. I get on my surfboard and I’m soaring. Easy choice, mate.”

Gabe nodded. “I hear you.”

“Those seven-year-olds making you happy?”

“In a way.”

“How’s that?”

“Maybe it’s like surfing,” Gabe explained. “For seven hours a day, I lose myself in the rush of noise and energy. It’s bigger than I am. I just drop into the swell and ride it for all I’m worth.”

“Man, I hope you have that six-pack at the end of the ride,” Theo said, toasting him.

They clinked glasses, and the room rocked with a thunderous boom. There was a pause between the sound and the movement—first the roar, then the rumble. And moments later, while everyone seemed to hold their breath, glass broke—from windows and walls, cracking and splintering, smashing on the floor. After another split second of eerie silence, screams filled all the space of the room. Terrifying, earsplitting screams.

Gabe was standing, though he didn’t remember getting up. He watched a blur of people run out of the restaurant. He looked for Theo: Where did he go? When did he leave? The cook stepped out from the kitchen, his mouth open in terror, his hands over his ears.

Earthquake? No. Somehow Gabe knew: It’s a bomb.

And then came the second bomb—bigger, more forceful and violent. The ground under Gabe rocked, the walls sagged, and then, as if the earth were about to split open, the mezzanine of the restaurant buckled and crashed to the ground. The lights went out.

Gabe stumbled toward the door in the darkness. He fell over someone, then bent down and lifted the waitress to her feet.

“You okay?” he asked. His voice was lost in the noise of so many screams. “Can you walk?” he shouted.

In the dust-filled haze he could see her face, streaked with blood.

“Let’s go!” he yelled.

She stared at him, as if she couldn’t understand. He wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her along with him, pushing over toppled chairs and tables, bumping into someone headed the opposite way.

The waitress buckled over, then pushed away from him.

“Leave me alone!” she shouted, and fled in the other direction, back toward the kitchen.

Should he go after her? Should he be leaving through a back door? Were there more bombs waiting for him on the street?

Go, he thought. Keep moving. The air was thick and putrid—he could smell something chemical and something burned. Skin, he thought. Burning skin.

He pushed through to the door, knocking a table out of his way. Someone behind him—the big guy who was the owner?—called out, “Everyone stay calm. Don’t panic. Walk toward the door if you can. We’ll get help for those of you who are trapped.”

The cook wailed, drowning out the calm, measured tones of the owner.

Gabe stumbled over something—a part of the mezzanine, now crushed into planks of wood—and when he looked up, he saw that he was in the street. What happened to the front of the restaurant?

He felt a blast of heat. Across the road, Sari Club was swallowed by flames. Did the fire set off an explosion? No. A bomb set off the fire. He could feel his brain sluggishly trying to make
sense of this, as if it, too, were shrouded in dust and darkness. Bombs in Bali? At nightclubs?

The scene in front of him made no sense. In the smoke and darkness he heard horrific screams—words called out in Balinese, Indonesian, English, and sounds that had no language. He could see a wall of fire at Sari’s, and then, when he looked to the right, he saw more fire—was that Paddy’s Pub?

The second bomb?

Someone slammed into him, running past. He felt heat on his arm: The man was shirtless, and his shoulder was as hot as an iron. People were moving in all directions but mostly away from the carnage. Cars in the middle of the street were flipped on their sides, burned-out shells, smoking.

Gabe felt the air go out of his lungs. He stopped and crouched, his hands on his knees. Still, his head spun. He leaned over and threw up.

Then he headed toward Paddy’s.

He stepped over bodies—dead bodies, lying at broken angles in the street. With his hand over his mouth and nose, he tried not to breathe through the acrid stench. His stomach heaved again. He could feel his pulse pounding in his temples. Another bomb could go off. Another fire could start. A wall could tumble.

And yet he headed toward the carnage, not away from it. He pushed against the crowd of people fleeing the clubs.

A man with his clothes on fire, his mouth open in a silent scream, tore past him.

A woman shouted, “Pool! Get to the pool!”

Someone lying on the ground screamed words in another language—German? Dutch? Gabe heard a grunt, and when he reached the kid—a boy, a teenager—he was already dead, his body burned, his young face eerily untouched.

Without thinking, Gabe turned and ran into the open gaping hole of Paddy’s Pub.

Fire lit up the place. Unlike Sari Club, which seemed to be a mass of flames, there were only patches of fire at Paddy’s—the bar ablaze, one wooden wall on fire. He could see dead bodies, charred bodies. These are kids, he thought. Twenty-year-old kids. Who wants to kill kids?

He stopped for a moment. The chaos overwhelmed him—the screams, the noxious smell, his own icy fear. Move, he told himself. Do something.

A flash of fire lit up part of the room, and he could see someone dragging a man out from the rubble. He ran toward them.

“Can I help?”

“Take him,” a woman yelled. An American accent. “I’m going back in.”

Gabe reached under the man’s arms and got a firm grip on his body. The woman ran toward the back of the building, shouting, “Miguel!”

“Hang in there,” Gabe yelled to the man. It was a boy, not a man. His eyes fluttered open and then closed. His body was covered with blood, and one leg dangled from his hip at an odd angle.

Gabe hoisted the boy up to get a firmer hold and then carried him out to the street.

“Need help!” he shouted.

“Yes, yes!” someone yelled.

Gabe laid the boy on the ground and leaned over him. “Someone’s coming. Help’s coming.”

He looked up and saw a Balinese man run toward him.

“Get him help!” Gabe yelled. “I’m going back in.”

He ran back into Paddy’s and scanned the thick haze. Again, the screams and the smells assaulted him. He could hear the American woman’s voice over the din: “Don’t you dare fucking die!”

He raced to her side in the back of the room, climbing over bodies as he went.

She was pumping the chest of a young man, her arms strained and taut. The man was covered with blood, his eyes closed.

“Leave him,” Gabe said. “There are so many others.”

He touched her arm and she pushed him off. “He was breathing. Breathe, Miguel. Breathe, God damn it!”

Gabe heard a muffled voice from somewhere close by. “Out! Get me out!”

He started pulling wood and plastic and boards from the wreckage beside him.

“Where are you?” he shouted.

“Here! My leg—”

Gabe hauled what felt like a boulder from the pile, and he could see the boy’s head.

“Almost there,” he shouted, but the boy passed out. “Stay awake! Stay with me!”

He looked over at the woman; she was crouching over the young man, her head down.

“I need help!” he yelled.

She glanced over at him, then back at the dead man.

He couldn’t wait for her. He frantically pulled more debris while the boy’s eyes fluttered open again.

“Let me get this side,” the woman said—she was suddenly beside him—and together they lifted one last wooden plank from atop the boy’s leg.

“I’ve got him,” Gabe said. “There’s someone else trapped behind him. Start over there and I’ll come back.”

The woman looked at him. He saw her face, wet with tears, and then he saw something else—a kind of fierce determination. She moved to the next mound of rubble. Gabe heard garbled words in another language from underneath the pile, and the woman began to scramble through the wreckage.

Gabe scooped the boy into his arms and ran back to the street. He found the Balinese man and the first boy in the same spot and laid the new boy beside them.

“Where the hell are the ambulances?” Gabe yelled.

“Need help,” the Balinese man muttered. “Need more help.” The man had tears running down his cheeks.