Soft Landings

My driver swerves to avoid the oncoming truck and squeezes the ojek between it and a minivan. We barely fit, but instead of being terrified I just feel free. Around every bend there's excited children calling out in the only English they know, "Hey mister!" while we follow an overloaded bus, the people riding on top with the luggage waving at me, up the winding mountain road. The air is fresh and cool, the scenery verdant and lush and god it feels good just to be alive.

We drive all the way to the top but the man stationed there to guard the power generators says we've gone to far. The driver idles the engine on our way back down the mountain and we weave in and out of traffic as we coast. Eventually he turns down a dirt road that turns into a muddy path that, at times, he navigates by propelling the bike with his feet.

The path opens up into a field and we stop at a gate where we are greeted by a man who tells us we must have a guide. I look at Adik skeptically, but she shrugs and says, "That's the rule."

As we hike the jungle path, through the rice fields, than back down more jungle paths I'm glad we hired him. The path ends at the river and without him, while I can hear the water running in the distance, I'm not sure we'd have made it. Still, I am annoyed that my ojek driver has insisted on accompanying us, and worse insists on trying to help me. This is not the sort of terrain that's easily negotiated while someone tries holding your hand. We scramble across razor sharp stones, clinging to to tree trunks and branches along the river's edge to keep from falling in but when we finally reach the flat stones we stand in awe of the giant waterfall before us.

Clear, blue water rushes in a pounding cascade over black rocks, while kupukupu in vivid shades of green and blue flit and flutter around us. I pull out my camera to try and take their portraits but my camera falls into the river.

The boys cross the river in their underwear, which is more than Adik or I really wanted to know of them. When we reach the other side we climb the rocky cliff and our guide, doffing his shirt now too, throws himself over the edge.

"Now you," he urges from the river below.

I laugh and tell him he's gila but even as I say it, with fear churning my stomach, I know I'm going to do it. I look around for a place to change into my bathing suit but resign myself to one of two options; jump in fully clothed or strip down to my underwear.

Pulling my shirt over my head I tell myself it's no worse than wearing a bikini, which I'd never do either, but it's been two years since any man's seen me without clothes on and I really had imagined, if such a thing were going to happen again, there'd be softer lighting and a bit more affection involved, rather than these two jokers, particularly the ojek driver who has taken out his cell phone and started snapping pictures. I grab it from him and threaten to throw it in the water.

"Ok, ok" he says angrily, as though he's the one wronged.

Still, now that I'm standing in my underwear on the edge of the cliff, staring down at the water three stories below, I am not, as I'd hoped I'd be, any more keen to jump.

"Fuck's sakes Eris, just jump," says a distant memory.

You are sitting on the dock, watching me stare into the abyss of the cold black lake.

"If you're not going in, let's go back inside. There's no point in standing out here freezing if we're not going swimming."

"I'm going swimming," I answer, more to myself than to you, my eyes never leaving the water.

"Then, let's go already!"

"Do you have any idea how cold it's going to be? It hasn't broken 20 degrees all summer."

"Well, it's not getting any warmer while you stand here staring at it."

"I know that," I snap back. Of course I know that, but still, I cannot force my feet to leave the dock.

"That's it, I'm not waiting another ten minutes," and before I can pull my eyes from the water below you're on your feet, you've picked me up and tossed me in.

A sharp pain rockets through my body when I make contact with the water, the cold knocking the wind out of me and numbing my nerves so quickly my skin stings. When I resurface, gasping for air, you're in the water beside me, your face so twisted with fear I nearly drown from laughing. We both flounder for the dock and, when we've hauled ourselves out of the water I lie on the wooden platform convulsing in a fit of laughter.

Later, in front of the fire, you say, "You are the craziest woman I've ever met."

I start to giggle again. "You should have seen the look on your face."

"Well, I thought I was dead for sure. My own life flashed before my eyes when I watched you flying through the air and I realized what I'd done."

When we're done laughing this time I kiss you deeper than the ocean, warmer than the midday sun and longer than a leap year but when we come up for air you say, quietly, as though afraid I will hear and we'll have another fight, "That's our problem, you know. You think too much."

"Well, you're half right," I say, turning back to the fire, "half the time it's because I think too much and the other half it's because you don't think enough."

But today, my half is the only half that matters so I take a step forward and I jump. When I surface, there is a smiling, brown face beside me and when our eyes meet he lets out a victory whoop that ricochets off the rocks.

"Lagi," I say, laughing. "Lagi, lagi, lagi."