I hated him for badgering me.
"What's the matter?" Narayan jeered. "You won't beg? Look at this—you've given up? You don't want it anymore?"
I threw him a murderous look but didn't budge.
He came in the room. "Here, take your poisonous powder."
I grabbed it from his hand and ran past him to lock myself in the bathroom. I stayed in there a long time, and eventually he left.
He wanted me to choose? Well, I'd chosen. Ha!
When he came back later that night, I refused to open the door. He pounded a while, then gave up and went away. Still I kept the door locked. An hour later, I went to investigate a sound coming from the bathroom and found him trying to climb in the high window near the ceiling. He didn't fit. With one arm and his head hanging in, he tried to talk me into forgiving him.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I won't touch your stash ever again. I promise. Let me in."
"GET OUT OF MY WINDOW!"
"Will you let me in?"
"Never. Go away." I closed the bathroom door and went back to the spy novel I'd been reading. I could hear his muffled shouting.
"CLEO. COME ON. I SAID I WAS SORRY. CLE-OOOO . . ."
I ignored it but had trouble concentrating on the book. I was dying to throw my arms around him. I wanted to sit with him on his porch like the day before, laughing at his jokes and throwing liquorice drops at the goose. I wanted us to walk hand in hand through Denpasar.
But it was over now. He'd ruined it. I hated him for it. Monica came through our connecting door. "What's that noise?" she asked.
"Oh, it's only Narayan trying to worm through the bathroom window."
"Did you two have a fight?"
"It's over. It's just over."
Next afternoon, as I returned from a shopping spree, a Balinese porter rushed to carry the wooden statues I'd bought in Kuta Beach.
"Your friend is here," he said.
"Who? What friend?"
"Your friend—the black man." He smiled and added, "The sheriff."
"Jimmy! Jimmy's back?"
I left him struggling with the carvings and dashed down the flagstone path. Patrick was hurrying out his door. He beamed and announced, "Jimmy's back!"
I followed one rock behind him as we loped along the path. We entered Jimmy's bungalow to find everybody there from our lodge those pro-smack and those anti-smack, even baby Anjuna. Fat grins were on the faces of those waiting for the brimming bhong to come around.
"Cleo, like, Look who's here," said Trumpet Steve.
Jimmy sat at the centre of the group, reigning over his smoking paraphernalia, the silver star pinned to his chest.
"Welcome back," I said, giving him a kiss. "Good trip?"
"Right on." Jimmy held up a tin powdered-milk container. "Yo, dig this. One pound of pure Malaysian white dope."
I squeezed into a spot between Steve and Sylvia and accepted the bhong from Elame, who lit it for me. As I exhaled a cloud of smoke, Jimmy held a carved ivory spoon to my nose.
"Try some this way. Primo shit, man."
I took two snorts in each nostril and joined the others in their childish grins. Patrick lifted the milk container, peered at its soft white contents, expanded his smile, and passed it to me. I gazed at it a bit, then passed it to Sylvia. Everyone had a turn caressing it. We ordered wine and lounged the night away in Jimmy's room, smoking and sniffing his acquisition. It was a time for celebration.
The party atmosphere extended for days and then weeks as friends, and friends of friends, came by for the feast. It seemed we turned on everybody within five miles. Jimmy repeated his tale over and over.
"I heard Kuala Lumpur was the place to score," he retold us, "but I didn't know anyone there. So, know what the sheriff did? I hired a likely looking taxi driver to drive me from the airport, and I asked for his help. He drove me around a while, and I gotta tell you, I wasn't sure this Dode wasn't gonna rip me off or hand me over to the narcs. And then."
Narayan came to see me a few times, but either I was at Jimmy's whose room he wouldn't enter because of the smack—or I'd locked myself in my room and wouldn't answer his knock. Sometimes, I ran into Narayan at one of the outdoor discotheques Monica and I frequented. I'd ignore him.
But I missed him. I missed the way he put his head down and locked sideways after saying something cute and clever.
One afternoon, as Monica and I returned from the beach, we passed aslew of police going the opposite way. Policemen! At least a dozen of them. Holy shit! Hastily we entered our bungalow and locked the door.
"Hero, boy! What was that?"
Peeping out the curtained window, we saw the police enter Jimmy's room and heard Elame scream. She screamed and screamed. The rest of the lodge lay quiet and still. The screaming went on, accompanied by crashing noises. Then silence. After an hour of crouching by the window, Monica and I dared to venture across to Patrick's.
"They're waiting for Jimmy," he informed us. Patrick had heard from the room service waiter that the police had come for Jimmy, who'd left only moments before.
"We have to warn him," I said.
"I'm not driving out of here now."
"Maybe I could sneak away by the beach."
I returned to my room, changed back into a bikini, grabbed a towel, and strolled casually to the beach. No one followed. As soon as I reached the sand, I dropped the towel and ran. I ran the mile or so till I came to the path heading inland to Narayan and Richard's. I ran into their compound so fast the goose didn't bother coming after me. Puffing and sweaty, I ran into the house shouting, "THE POLICE ARE AFTER JIMMY! THEY HAVE ELAME! WE MUST WARN HIM!"
"Well, what did you expect?" said Narayan. "Half of Bali knows he's dealing smack."
"Come on," I urged. "We have to stop Jimmy before he drives into the trap."
"Isn't that fitting—there's a posse out for the sheriff."
"Narayan! Come on. Richard?"
They did organize themselves quickly and rush to their bikes. Richard said he'd check places Jimmy might be. Narayan would stay on the road to stop him if he returned.
As Narayan swung his leg over the bike, I noted again how graceful he was. It had been weeks since we'd been lovers—since he threatened to flush my precious stash down the toilet. I gave him a hesitant wave. Could I forgive him? Then maybe we could be together again. "Good luck," I called out to them.
When I ran back to the lodge I found everything still quiet. Monica wasn't in the Bungalow, and when I went to track her down. Trumpet Steve waved me to his place. They were all there. It looked like a town meeting.
"The police are, like, still here," said Steve. "They're, like, waiting to ambush Jimmy."
"It's okay. I have Narayan and Richard covering the roads. They'll stop him."
"We've, like, got a problem."
"Maybe the police will go away when they see Jimmy's not coming back," said Sylvia.
"Hoo, boy—they've got the smack."
"Wait a minute, we don't really know what they're after," said Laura.
"Maybe it has nothing to do with the smack. Maybe they just want Jimmy."
"If they want Jimmy, they want the smack," said Patrick. "And if they're in Jimmy's room, they have the smack."
"And they, like, know we're all one group."
"Do they?"
"We could be separate tourists. How would they know we knew each other before?"
The speculations continued. By evening, we were restless. After watching the room service boy go to Elame twice, I beckoned him to find out what was going on there.
"She orders dinner," he told me.
"But what about the police?"
"They order dinner too."
"I'm going over to see what's happening," I told the gang.