Chapter One - Richard Lewis

Chapter 3
Reed Davis, aging roué and eternal raconteur, demi-god of the Ubud expat tribe,
had made his first fortune in Balinese hair.
"I was dabbling in the usual, antiques and art," he told Tina Briddle. "In
Singapore I met this Chinese guy from New York who traded anything, including hair.
Said he'd buy all the hair I could get. I'd never heard of such a thing, but when I put the
word out, I had people coming to me from everywhere."
The two reclined on rattan couches on the verandah of the bungalow that Reed
had called home for the last forty years. Overlooking a lush ravine, with a stream
gurgling through volcanic boulders, the bungalow had been one of the first expat
residences in the hinterlands of Ubud. Now, Tina thought, the bungalow felt cramped,
hemmed it by the spa resorts and grand villas sprawling upstream and down. The
verandah melded into an elevated, open-air living room decorated with an eclectic mix of
antiques and art and plants. On the walls were several of Reed's famous photographs, of
palm-fringed shores and terraced fields and majestic volcanoes. One of the few portrait
shots was a black-and-white of two girls in school uniforms playing hopscotch, the boxes
chalked on an asphalted road. One of the girls was caught in mid-jump, her pigtail flying,
her long afternoon shadow trailing after her.
These days of computers and iPods and X-Boxes, Balinese children no longer
played hopscotch. The photo, and the landscapes, was of a long-ago Bali that Tina only
knew as romanticized myth. When she first met Reed as an anthropology graduate
student doing field work for her doctorate, that Bali had already faded, although not Reed
Davis. He was now seventy or so and still a handsome man in a salted cod sort of way, if
a cod could be said to have strong patrician features.
"It was the best hair in the world, no chemicals, no dyes," Reed said. "Some
women had their hair to their knees. My God, it was like chopping down two thousand
year old redwoods. I begged them not to cut it, but I was paying good money, more than
their own wigmakers, so they insisted on selling it."
Tina patted her hair, which frizzed like copper wire. "Mine's all natural," she said,
"but I don't think I'd get much."
"I told Harry I wanted a premium. This was Balinese hair. He told me it wasn't
any different than other Asian hair but I said, man, it's the name. Bali. Genuine Bali hair.
The cachet, you know? His big clients were Hollywood and Broadway. It was just the
craziest improvised business. Nothing I went to Harvard for, that was for sure, but I was
making money hand over fist." He hoisted the vodka bottle from the coffee table.
"Another drink?"
Tina had barely touched her first. "I have to drive back to Batu Gede. The traffic's
already crazy enough without me being tipsy."
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