The Paradise Guest House
by ellen sussman
“And you?” the man says. “What takes you to Bali?”
The plane breaks through the cloud and there it is — an island full of dense jungles, terraced rice paddies, and glorious beaches. Jamie flinches as if someone’s laid a fist into her heart.
“Vacation?” her seatmate asks when she doesn’t answer.
“Yes,” she lies. “Vacation.”
He’s already told her about his silent meditation retreat, how he can’t wait, how he needs to unwind, and she thinks: Start now. She curses herself for talking to him in the first place. It was the second scotch that loosened her tongue and made her break her rule: no chats on airplanes. You can’t escape.
“All by yourself?” he asks.
Jamie turns toward him. “There’s an event,” she says. “I was invited to attend.” She absentmindedly runs her finger against the long, thin scar at the side of her face and then buries her hand in her lap.
“A wedding?” he asks eagerly. He’s already told her about his wonderful Australian fiancée who will meet him at the retreat in Ubud.
“No,” Jamie says. Her mind’s a muddle of thoughts now. There’s no reason to tell him anything. And yet she’s been telling the world: I’m going back to Bali. She’s loved watching the astonished faces of her friends. How brave, they’ve said. How bold.
The plane shudders as it passes through a cloud, and Jamie grips the arms of her seat.
“What are you drawing?” her seatmate asks. “You’re good.”
Jamie looks at the pad in her lap. She’s sketched the island from an aerial view. She uses a light hand and few strokes — she’s self-taught, and it shows. Sometimes she gets it right and sometimes — like this time — the lines don’t add up.
“Doodles,” she says, covering the paper with her hand. The plane tilts to reveal the southern coast of Bali. “That’s Kuta Beach.”
The white-sand beach stretches for miles. The center of the island is all mountain and jungle. The color is astonishing — iridescent lizard green. Then it’s gone and they’re immersed in a thick cloud.
“You’ve been here before?” he asks.
“A year ago,” she says. Her palms are slick with sweat.
“When my fiancée told me to meet her here, I said, No way, José. Hundreds of people were killed in the terrorist attack last year, right? Bombs at nightclubs? But she keeps promising me it’s paradise.”
How the hell will this guy survive a silent meditation retreat, Jamie thinks.
And like a man who doesn’t know what to do with a momentary silence, he plunges on. “Why would terrorists target Bali? I get the World Trade Center — it was the core of the economic world. But kids dancing at a club on some remote Indonesian island?”
The plane bumps along the runway. Jamie releases her breath.
“You don’t have to go,” Larson, her boss and her best friend, had told her yesterday when he drove her to the airport from Berkeley. “You’ve been through enough.”
“I have to do this,” Jamie told him.
“Me, I avoid pain.”
She watched a sly smile appear on his craggy fifty-seven-year-old face. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer three months before. His life was pain.
“You’ll be okay without me?” Jamie asked.
“Who needs you? I’ve got two dates this weekend.”
Jamie put her hand on his bald head. She calls it her Wishing Dome. She’d rub it and make three wishes. Live longer. Live better. Live.
“Call me while I’m away and charge it to the business,” Jamie had said. “Don’t tell the boss.”
“The boss never misses a thing,” Larson told her. “I know what you’re up to in Bali. And it’s not all about the ceremony.”
“It’s all about the ceremony,” she insisted.
“You’re going to try to find that guy,” Larson said. “Gabe.”
“Wrong,” Jamie told him. But her voice wobbled and she turned away from him.
Now loud static fills the air, and the pilot says something inaudible over the intercom. The man next to her pats her hand. She swings her head back toward him.
“You take care now,” he says. He is already standing and gathering his things. The passengers fill the aisles. When did the plane come to a stop?
Jamie nods. She doesn’t move. The man disappears down the aisle.
She looks at the drawing in her lap. A couple of the lines — palm trees, though she can’t remember if there even are palm trees in Bali — look like monsters standing guard over the island. I’m back, she tells them. Don’t mess with me.
Finally she pushes herself up and out of her seat. She’s the only passenger left on the plane. She reaches for her bag in the overhead bin and then moves down the aisle, rolling the suitcase behind her. A flight attendant, her vest already unbuttoned, mutters, “Sayonara my ass,” to herself. When she hears Jamie’s bag knock against the leg of a seat, she looks back.
“Oh, sorry,” the young woman says. “I thought everyone was gone.”
“I’d fallen asleep,” Jamie lies.
The flight attendant steps aside and finds her cheery smile. “Your first time in Bali?” she says sweetly.
Jamie hesitates, then nods.
“Spiritual journey?” the woman asks.
“God, no.”
The woman laughs. “Good,” she says. “So you won’t be disappointed. I can’t tell you how many of them get on the return flight and they’re surprised that they’ve still got all the same miserable problems they came with. I don’t know what they’re looking for.”
“The sun,” Jamie says. “That’s all I’m looking for.”
“That you’ll find,” the woman assures her. “Happy tanning.”
Jamie steps through the door of the plane and pauses before heading down the metal staircase to the tarmac. The heat wraps around her and stops her breath. She’s blinded by the sun, and she remembers the moment after the club was washed in a hot white blankness as if it had been erased — sound, too, had stopped — and then it all came screaming in — color, noise, pain.
“Can I help you?” the flight attendant asks Jamie.
“No,” Jamie says, and she takes a step forward, into Bali.
Ellen Sussman, who lives in Los Altos Hills, is the author of the New York Times best-selling novel “French Lessons” and the San Francisco Chronicle best-seller “On a Night Like This.” This piece is an excerpt from her latest novel, “The Paradise Guest House,” published in March. www.ellensussman.com.