"And a romantic table for three please." Oh, Chris. He has such a way with nostalgia and the sweet long good-bye. We're on the beach in Jimbaran just before sunset. It's a long stretch in front of the fish markets and they serve fresh seafood on the sand. We picked it out, the seafood, just like at Bingin, but instead of about a dozen or so tables, there's hundreds maybe more and great throngs of Chinese tourists that had come in by the great chartered busload. We sit farther down, way down at the end of the drag. Away from the noise and frantic commotion that I guess comes with big Chinese dinners with the tables lined up long.
No, we're far from that, not quite at the fringe of all things, but right up there next to it. A single small table, three chairs, and three large Bin Tangs that we cheers and sip serenly on in the bright red-orange maroon light of the sky and on the water and while we wait for our food to grill up. Chris convinced us to take on a barracuda along with the usual; the king prawns, the calamari, and of course the red snapper.
He tells us about Oz, about home in Sydney, and about the absolutely beautiful woman of a Canadian he met while volunteering in Ubud. He shows us pictures as he flips through dreamy-eyed. She's stunning and silly and a treat by the looks of it.
"I can't believe I'm going back, tomorrow already, and then she comes out with her friend and we'll drive up the coast, and well, I dunno, then I'll ask to marry her," he says leaning back running his hands through his hair. He's not looking at us, he's watching the sky darken. "She's gonna break my heart, I think."
"Nonsense!" says I. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-three. But she's got to go back to Canada eventually." He's a soft-spoken romantic, this guy. When the food comes out, the barracuda's delicious.
After dinner, and a fucking dinner it was, a damned good one, we follow Chris out of Jimbaran and into the lion's den. Kuta. We meet again. Chris has got a place picked out for us to stay. He's been to it before, down a little alley just off Poppies II. It's nice, 200,000 rupiah for the night in a fan room with two beds for Mike and I. It's on the third floor, the very top. The city's a chocked sea of concrete and curlicue roofs and wires and metal tanks and antennaes and lights and lights and lights.
I lean on the railing in front of our door which is not so much a railing as it is a waist-high wall - it's wide, I could lay down on it. Below is the silent pool in place of a courtyard, and Chris' plush air-conditioned single to the left on the floor below. He's outside too, and like I, he's just showered. "You boys all clean up there?"
"Just about. Mike's almost done. How far is this place?"
"Alley cats? You could throw a rock at it from here."
"How promising..."
Mike's done. He busts out the door yelling, "You boys like Mexico?!" like some trailer trash redneck and with a rebel yell we're down the stairs and meet Chris in the alley.
The rest we won't speak of. (maybe later)
Suffice to say, I woke up the next morning with blood everywhere, and Mike was missing.
