Chapter One - Richard Lewis

"A what?"
"That's the kind of laptop I want. A Mac."
"Do you know this thing called Eh-Bay?"
"It's E-Bay. A Mac, Bapa."
"Well, love, that sounds expensive, and money is tight."
"That's right," Suti said. The way she said that, she might as well have crossed her
arms across her chest.
Nol flicked a beetle off his knee. She knows about the cockfight. That damned
blabbermouth Timon.
Dian shoved a sheet of paper at him. "Here's the math test. A ten."
Nol frowned at circled red number. "But it says a nine."
"I know, but it's really a ten."
"Look." Nol pointed. "It's a nine. And circled. How can that be a ten?"
Dian gave another long sigh. "Because I talked to the teacher afterward and she
said I was right and that it should be a ten."
"Then take this back and have your teacher put a ten on it, because all I see right
now is a nine." His daughter's brows lowered and her jaw tightened. "Don't get me
wrong, a nine is wonderful, it's terrific, I'm very happy, aren't we, Suti, we're very happy
with a nine."
"But it's a ten!"
"Putu got elevens," Suti said. "The teacher had to give him extra hard problems."
"I'm not Putu, all right? And you gave him a laptop. I want a Mac. And that is too
a ten!" She tossed her tea into a jasmine bush and stalked off to her room.
Nol grinned. "I think Dian has the talent to be a lawyer."
Suti's mouth remained flat. She looked lovely as ever, but he would have
preferred a smile that showed her crooked eyetooth, the one that had snagged his heart
when he first met her, all those years ago at the warung after a cockfight. She helped her
mother run the stall and she'd served him coffee. He had won all his bets, and when she
smiled at him, he placed another bet with himself that he would win her, too.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she said.
So there it was. Maybe it was better to get this all out in the open. He never did
like keeping secrets from her. It wracked his nerves and his twisted his conscience. "You
know how it is," he said, trying to find the right words that would dampen her imminent
explosion.
"My friends, the other women at the arcade, they were all talking about it, and I
had to ask them, what is it? Do you know how embarrassed I was, that I'd be the last to
know?"
Nol raised his hands. "Suti, I'm sorry. It was an awful moment. I was weak."
Her face softened, her mouth relaxed. "I understand. It must have been terrible for
you."
Nol lowered his hands, confused. She understood? Well, by all the gods, this was
a change.
"But you could have at least sent me a text message," Suti said.
A text message? What was this? First she'd threatened to leave him if he ever
gambled again, and now she was complaining he hadn't sent a text message after losing
50 million? Actually, come to think of it, that was a clever way to break bad news.
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