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1.
You are killing yourself. Your body, your nerves, your cells.
It’s you and no one else. You do it to yourself.
Cacharel shifts in her plastic seat to shrug off the Radiohead song, and returns to
the room. Three fans blaze, one above each of the open walls, while the warm breeze
carries traffi c noise, Balinese chatter, some dogs barking and scents of humid green,
frangipani trees. Around the table, th
ree pairs of
anonymous
eyes fi x on
Cacharel
in her
chair at the head.
Dark haired, intense.
The fourth wall, behind her, holds a whiteboard
with a schedule, one column for each day of the week. In her seat, her body is killing itself.
It’s Sunday morning, and just as the board says, it’s Cacharel leading the Ubud 9 AM
Promises
meeting.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness
,
she reads, exhales,
and passes on the laminated page, copied from the Big Book.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it
,
the short, brown,
muscular woman to her left reads on. Onyx eyes look up as she hands over the card. Her
shoulders, over a tube top, gleam like Michelle Obama’s, silken and broad beamed.
We will comprehend the word serenity
,
the white woman next to her continues,
and
we will know peace
.
Her wrists are bloated around a gold watch, Knightsbridge bracelets,
understated, discreet for Bali.
Cacharel sits back in her seat. The broad shouldered woman, her torso in
the tube
top
shaped like Superman’s inverted triangle, taps a strong legged foot in a cowboy boot.
Cacharel shoots her a look, then catches the third pair of eyes: green, in an olive face
framed by sleek curtains of hair, parted in the middle.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone
,
Amal takes her cue,
we will see
how our experience can benefi t others
.
She breathes out, smiles, hands the page back.
Looking light in white shorts and shirt.
Cacharel too settles more comfortably in her chair as a long sigh escapes her.
Under the table, she kicks off her shoes. She’s killing herself. Her body, her nervous
system, her cells.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear
,
she reads. Fans
whirr. Scooters blast past in the distance. A tile cutter somewhere, construction. Two
monkeys leap across a roof.
Self-seeking will slip away
,
Tilly in her clipped tones is saying. Single pearl in each
ear. Bloated ankles.
Muffled sound of paws, coming up the stairs. Scratching at the closed door. A stray
dog’s snout peeks in from outside, around the doorframe.
And then the laminated page has circled back to Cacharel and she inhales.
We will
intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
Her bare feet rest lightly
on the clay tiles, soles breathing with the room up here in the green, humid air, the orchids
and incense and gamelans of the vibrating town around it, volcanoes in the distance.
She glows, suddenly embodied: nervous system, cells.
You do it for yourself/ Just
you and no one else—
They’ve reached the end of the page.
Bullit
, black eyes, sculpted shoulders
gleaming, calls,
Are t
hese extravagant promises?
As one, Cacharel, Tilly, Amal, call back in response.
We think not
.
It’s time to start the meeting.
You okay to pick a promise
, Cacharel catches the onyx gaze.
Share for a couple minutes
,
she points at the clock.
Sure.
The cowboy boot, black and turquoise under Thai boxing shorts, again taps
the floor. Toe rounded, more like a motor boot.
I’m Bullit and I’m an alcoholic.
Hi Bullit.
A glance at the page, a shrug.
‘
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door
on
it’. I guess.
Yeah, errm.
Another shrug, a frown.
Tough one, to be honest. The past.
That’s huge. When you think about it. The past, that’s from birth through drugs, alcohol, to
near-death. And on,
she gestures
, to this room. It’s a lot.
They laugh.
The boot still taps. She stills her knee, sits back, looks around. Earnest frown.
So,
the past. Yeah. My dad is Nigerian, but I grew up with my mum. He was a sharp suited
student in London—a chief, his dad a war hero, he himself a prince, a ruler back home.
Drove a mustang like Steve McQueen, he was obsessed with that movie. San Francisco,
fast cars, politics, whatever. Dominion. And then Mum’s knocked up and they need to
marry and meet the family.
Pause.
Today,
she inhales,
I know men like my dad: I know
that’s peak danger. Walls closing in. And
you
are that wall, the cause of all their troubles.
They’ll kill you. Mum with you, collateral damage.
Silence.
Or, if you’re lucky, they’ll walk. Leg it, disappear.
So yeah.
Lucky me.
No laughter this time.
The boot taps again.
I fi rst met him when I was sixteen and he showed up for some reason, wanting
cash, Mum didn’t have any of course. But I got into LSE and got a Politics degree. PhD in
Conflict. Drove a race car—not a mustang, an MG—drunk. Ended up with 6 foot blonde
fi ghter in a tank in Ukraine saving one last bottle, each night, for the morning. Got blown
up. Then fi nally drove some beat up Mercedes overland through Goa and Phuket, and into
a tree. Got clean and sober here last year. Found support.
She glances to her right,
catches Cacharel’s eye.
For the fi rst time, I’m not doing everything alone.
Cacharel beams.
Amal smiles, radiant, silent.
So I guess…the past is what brought me here. That’s the part about not regretting it
I suppose. But to be honest I’m nowhere near that yet. Shutting the door is more my jam.
Laughter.
BANG
. As if on cue: the door. More scratching and pawing. Again, the snout around
the frame, sniffi ng the room from outside.
Bullit gets up, opens the door. The dog streaks past, to a chair by the street-facing
wall, leaning out to watch the football fi eld below, the road across.
He bites,
Tilly holds very still, her swollen ankles in rose gold TOMs pressed
together.
Not if you don’t startle him,
Bullit pats his flank, sits back down at the table, as the
dog climbs from his panorama seat and settles under hers. Her boot taps.
Cacharel keeps her own bare feet to herself. She’s seen the dog nick an ankle.
Bullit sighs, stretching her legs, her boots, under the table. Squaring her shoulders.
To get current. On shutting the door. My six foot fi ghter ex is coming to Bali. Last saw her
in... I’m not even sure. Somewhere outside Kharkiv. Some bombed out building. We had
sex in the black out, I remember that, and then I woke alone. She’d taken the last bottle.
Shrugs
. Last I saw of her.
So yeah,
Bullit looks up at the clock, down at the dog.
See how that goes.
After the meeting, Cacharel bungs the laminated card, the Big Books into a cupboard,
rushes down the stairs to the cafe below. No inverted triangle torso, motor boots, nappy
afro.
She runs into the fi eld in front of the cafe, to a potholed gravel lot, rows of scooters,
motorcycles parked in the dust. Gleaming Hondas, plastic, PVC seats melting in the sun.
One battered metal ride, a
Royal Enfi eld Bullet.
You alright,
Cacharel catches Bullit just as she slides into the cracked leather
saddle.
Yeah…
Where you off to?
Home, need to clear the junk in my place, before Ruslana—
Right. Nervous about seeing her?
Nah. Busy. You?
Oh.
Cacharel
glances over her shoulder at the cafe, where a van load of Lovina
rehab inmates, pale, smoking, has just arrived for the 11 am meeting.
The usual. Can’t sit
still. You know.
Bullit nods. Says nothing.
Behind them, the inmates mix with the tan, beaded yoga crowd, the Australian
junkies, Swedish drunks, British alkies and meth heads that make up Ubud’s recovery
community. Like family.
Sure you okay?
Yeah. More stressed about my junk, to be honest. Not the housekeeping type.
Alone under the sun, the two of them lean in to hug. One short and broad, one
narrow, taut. Bullit fi res up her bike. Cacharel straightens, feet fi rmly on the ground,
traverses the dust lot, potholes, then too hits the road.
Walks.
She eats Monkey Forest road with her soles, chewing up the paving, a furious, ravenous
binge, hunger stilled only by the mile. Keeps to the shade. She’s had breakfast, tofu, eggs,
but she’s empty, hollow all over, rattling like a barrel. Waits at the bend in the road, where
the sun, this early, switches sides behind the shop facades. Scooters zoom past, transit
vans, green Grab motorbikes, white boho passengers in the back. She crosses, ducks
back in the shadow of trees, paces on, traffi c and fumes tuning out noisy thoughts, leaving
her mind blank, free to wander, chew up roads of its own. In and out of focus. Food—
where to stop—clothes, all the yoga gear she passes in the windows, Ralph Lauren, Eco
Ego, all the upmarket crap she does not need, in this vegan Vegas, the nail bars and
massage, the latte and gelato joints, the gluten-free pizzas, dragon fruit bowls. It’s a blur,
the heat, the noise, the yoga, the spas. Her soles on the uneven pavement, keeping her
sane, reducing life to its bare bones, to not-death. One step to the next. Moment to
moment. Free time, free from pain, or so painful that nothing else matters. Free from
feeling at all.
Until she replays a scene from the meeting, Bullit’s tapping boot, her glance at the
dog.
See how that goes.
Cacherel’s pace steps up, nervous thrill in her spine. She reaches the path into the
forest, turns in, under the ancients trunks, distant crowns, scooters still puffi ng past, down
the winding trail. Monkeys sprawl on the ground, paws up in the air, pink bellies exposed,
as their kin feel for ticks with tiny black leather fi ngers.
The trail leads out to a long, shaded street, lined with more cafes, Bohemia, the
Black Sheep, and then the hushed walls of templed family compounds. Frangipani trees
drop their blooms on either side of the road, pink, white, yellow. A sacred Banyan tree
looms sky high at a cool, silent intersection. She walks on. Another mile, and she hits the
main road, turns left, past a charity shop where she buys her clothes, trucks and SUVs
thundering past in the blaze of the midday sun. No pavement, her feet skipping in and out
of the road, the berm, as she dodges scooters, lorries, minivans. She reaches the corner,
Hanoman street, the artery back up to town. She thinks of Bullit alone at home and
hesitates. Too hungry to think. Crosses traffi c, ducks into a cool, shaded doorway next to a
window stacked high, enamel bowls piled with chilli chicken, curried tofu, beef rendang. A
Padang food place. Inside, she picks tuna.
Nasi nggak
, she reminds the boy at the
counter, but he knows—diabetes, no rice—loads her plate with cassava leaf, fresh chilli.
Back on the road, uphill, she walks on, not homewards but turning right at the Pertamina
gas pump, and on in the heat, towards Peliatan, where Bullit lives. Grinding tile cutters,
hammers and saws eclipse the drone of traffi c. The usual construction-crazed Bali bedlam,
if lacking all Balinese fi nery here. A
three-story
concrete fancy, in the ‘eclectic’ style, an
enclave of Russian apartments, health food shop and vegan cafe is under construction, It
looks like the billboards a
dvertising new dacha developments
festooning the
highways
leading
from
Moscow.
Just as she feels she might faint in the sun, a scooter horn makes
her jump. It’s Tilly, zooming past, gone before she thinks to wave back.
Arriving at the market intersection, beneath another giant Banyan, she sits in the
shade, looks up, at the temple built in the tree, but she still can’t keep still, needing the
slow-burn of feet moving beneath her. Gets up, walks. Into the narrow alleyway behind
Peliatan market. No tall women, nothing. Scans the lane again. Walled family compounds.
She knows about Bullit’s fi ghter ex, like she knows about the dog. She’s watched the dog
sink a fang in a leg. She’s heard about Ruslana.
But standing here in the blaze, between a laundry kiosk, left, and to her right, a
home stay hidden behind an overgrown wall, she is lost. She doesn’t, in fact, know where
Bullit lives. All she knows is that it’s her home, with an old Balinese woman who goes
topless and calls her
anak
, child. It could be the next walled compound, or the last. Any of
the dozen or so just down this lane. Careful to not overstep, she’s made a point of never
asking. Even just standing here, she’s shaking. Exposed in the sun, she darts her eyes, for
the parked
Royal Enfi eld Bullet
. She feels like a spy. More worried about being caught by
Bullit, now, than running into Ruslana. She can hardly stand guard here for Bull all day.
Breaking her privacy. Crossing her one boundary, the home she’s found with her host, her
old Nana. Sweat runs down her back, she quickly walks on, speeds up her pace, almost
runs now, down the endless, twisting alley.
