Chapter One - Richard Lewis

The blond girl shrieked and ducked under the bar to fling herself into his arms.
Nol watched as Putu returned her kiss enthusiastically—lustily, one might say.
Suti grabbed Nol's hand and together they marched around the crowd and up to
Putu, who was still clinging to the girl. He spotted his mother and immediately let go, his
face smoothing into a blank. "Mother," he said. "Father. Didn't you get my email? I said
my friends would meet me."
"These are your friends?" Nol asked.
"From college. Visiting Bali. They got here before me." He switched to English.
"Zoe, this is my mother and father. Mom, Dad, this Zoe. And this is Stan and Jim. Jim's
my roommate in the dorm." Which he explained again in Balinese.
The girl Zoo, the English a name for caged animals, this Zoo girl waxed
enthusiastic in a mix of English and Balinese. "Putu's been teaching me Balinese. I'm so
happy to meet you."
Nol ignored her to say to his son, "What happened to you? We send you away a
nice Balinese boy and you come back looking like one of those beach gigolos."
Putu's smile was more of a grimace. "Anyway, I'm back. Thanks for coming out,
Mother. Father. I'll be home later this evening. I'll get a ride—"
"You're coming home with us," Nol said.
Suti cupped his cheek. "I made you all your favorite cakes. And your
grandmother's waiting too." She laughed and wrapped her arms around him. "It's so good
to have you home."
Nol caught the slight rolling of eyes that his son gave this friend…this Jim…this
surfer. Drinking beer at noon. Could crystal meth be far behind? What was his son
learning at Stanford?
"I better go with them and call you later," Putu said to the girl.
Speaking as if we're not here, Nol thought. He took his son's duffel bag, and Putu
hustled his surfboard bag out to the parking lot. Nol hadn't any brought any rope to tie
Putu's the long bag to the top. "Why surfboards?" he growled. "You never surfed."
"I did too. At Kuta, Serangan. You weren't paying attention."
Nol opened the tailgate door and shoved the long bag over the left-hand seats,
which meant that Suti had to sit behind him and Putu in the rear, all in a row. On the
drive home, Suti barraged Putu with questions about America and school and his flight
and where was this Zoo animal girl from?
Putu stared sullenly out the window at the billboards—Ronald McDonald
Welcomes You to Paradise! – Complaints about the Police? Call our Police Complaint
Hotline! — and grunted short replies. Zoo girl was from some place called Pacific
Palisades.
"She looks like a nice girl," Suti said.
Nol didn't like hearing this at all. It sounded as if Suti had accepted the fact Putu
had a blond bulé girlfriend. Better than a Javanese Muslim girlfriend, but not by much.
Nol honked his horn at a pedestrian who was trying to cross the road and swerved
past her.
"You try to do that in America," Putu observed, "the cops will pull you over."
"She can call the police complaint line," Nol said. "Did you bring your report
card?"
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