Rinca: Part II

"There's a lot of things 

that can kill a man

There's a lot of ways to die ...

Will I always feel this way?

So empty, so estranged" - "Empty", Ray La Montagne 

At the park office Nathan and I pay extortionist rates, $30 for me, for admittance. Adik pays 25 cents. "So cheap for Indonesians!" she laughs and the park ranger laughs along. I bite my tongue.

Stepping out of the office and back into park Nathan says, "Are you okay? You look like you're going to cry."

I shake my head, I try to smile, "I'm fine."

Our requisite guide stops in front of a fence decorated with skulls and gives us the usual warnings about wandering through wilderness and reminds us that we may not see any dragons today. We stop again in front of a staff building, where a herd of well fed dragons lounge sedately, before continuing through some grassland and into the trees.

I follow the others down the easy, though mucky trail, thinking of you and the hike we took our first summer together. It was unusually cold that summer, and you were rarely able to work because of all the rain. Maybe you were worried about money, maybe I didn't have the fortitude for all those grey skies but all we seemed to do was fuck and fight.

You'd disappeared for four days that time, the longest yet, and when you showed up with groceries and wine, the food went untouched for another two.  On the second night, when you found me in front of the window watching the lightning paint the sky you yawned, "What are you doing? Come back to bed. You need to sleep." as if that's what we did in bed.

I wanted to tell you I was wondering where you got the money for the wine and the red kimono. I was wondering where you'd been sleeping. I was wondering what I would find in your bag if I dared to go looking. But I was scared to ask, couldn't bear the thought of you leaving again so instead I said, "I need to get out of the city. I need to breathe."

So, when day broke with a bright cloudless sky, we borrowed a car and drove out to a part of the forest neither of us knew. My body was bad that day, I was exhausted before we left the parking lot, but the musky smell of earth, the rustling quiet and the roiling sunshine haze buoyed my spirit and that was good enough to get me through the first two hours.  But by the end of hour three it was apparent, despite your denial, that we were lost and I couldn't push myself further on little more than a good mood.

I sat down on the bared bones of the Canadian shield and refused to move until we'd determined where we were.

"We're not lost," you insisted.

"Then why have we crossed the cut line five times and are back at this clearing with that burned out tree?"

"I grew up in the wild, I don't get lost," was your adamant, illogical response.

"Oh, well, that's helpful. You grew up in the wilds of the rocky mountains. This is the flatlands of the boreal forest. Recognize anything?"

"I don't have to. I know which way is North."

"Oh good, which way?"

You pointed towards the burned out tree.

"And where, in relation to North, did we park the car?"

"Fuck's sakes Eris, let's just follow the cut line..."

"Follow it back to where? The cut line is a swamp of redundant landscape."

"Well at least we know it runs East and West."

"Great. We'll just wade through the mosquito infested bog until we reach Toronto."

I swear I heard a door slam when you turned and walked away. I lay down on the sun warmed rock, the heat burning my skin but such a relief to my aching body I fell asleep.

"Look kakak, water buffalo," Adik whispers excitedly. There is a water buffalo immersed in a mud hole to his neck, but after staring at him for well over a minute, he doesn't twitch a muscle. I'm convinced he's not living but has been stuffed and planted here so the tourists can say they saw something on their hike. I resist the urge to throw something at it and test my hypothesis, still, nothing about this shady forest seems conducive to spotting solar powered komodos in the morning hours.

The guide shows us a big empty hole he claims is a dragons nest, points out some more skulls- alleged komodo dinner leftovers- decorating a tree, and warns us to watch out for tree vipers. Naturally, this only encourages Nathan to go looking for them. I think he's absolutely cracked but I love that about him and part of me hopes that he finds one.

We come to a dry creek bed and Adik excitedly shows me the kaasan littering the ground. I don't like them enough to battle the people crowded around the bins at the store to buy the cultivated ones but these ones have a nice sharp tart taste. Nathan decides to give it a go and pops one in his mouth before I realize he hasn't peeled it and can stop him. He immediately spits it out. "That's horrible! That's absolutely vile!" I laugh and pick up a few more for the walk.

We hike up into the grassland, where the grass grows almost as tall as me and the unfiltered sun has free rein of the field, heating the sea salted air to oven degrees.We climb up the hill, take in the view then start to head back.

I don't know if I dreamed or not but when you shook me awake I wasn't ready to forgive you.

"C'mon! Get up! I've got something to show you!" As always, your boyish exuberance, so dichotomous to your masculine features won me over and I followed you back into the trees.

"Where are we going?"

"Just trust me. Just once trust me. You know I always come through for you, take care of you. When are you going to learn to trust me?"

I know you're right. It's just that no one's ever done that for me before, ever, I've always had to look out for myself and whoever else needs me. I don't know how to let you take care of me. I should have told you that, but I was still too young to know that being vulnerable is not being weak so I said, "Well, possibly if your methods of taking care of me weren't so dubious..."

"Dooby what? I have no idea what that word means, but if it means brilliant then I am the king of dooby what the fuck."

I laugh, despite myself and we walk another half hour in silence. Just as I'm about to make a snide remark about the second coming of christ and wandering in the wilderness we stumble on a brand new, three story log cabin.

"It's a beauty ain't it?" you said, proudly.

"You'd think you'd built it yourself," I answered drily. "Why, exactly, did you drag me half an hour through the woods to see someone's cabin?"

"Because, there's nobody here!"

"Oh, even better. You dragged me half an hour through the woods to show me a deserted cabin, a cabin with no one to tell us how the hell to get out of here."

"Why, would we want to get the hell out of here when we have our very own cabin in the woods?" you answered.

And then, seeing understanding beginning to dawn in my eyes, a great big grin lodged itself on your self-satisfied mug.

"Oh no, no,  no you didn't! We can't!" But you had already made use of some of the skills that had you in and out of jail, so when you scooped me up and tossed me over your shoulder like a two by four the door was no longer an obstacle.

"We cannot do this. This is someone's home," I protested when you tossed me down on the couch.

"No it's not!" you answered, triumphantly waving the brochure on the coffee table with the rental rates and terms of use. I was about to point out that you had no way of knowing that until you'd already invited yourself inside when you added "It's an eco-lodge. No sense in letting it sit here empty."

"No sense at all, except that, while you may not mind traveling on a fake passport, I happen to like using my government issued ID..." But then your lips were on mine, your hand on my thigh and all my senses flooded in to fill the space where reason had been only moments before.

Adik asks if I want to go to Komodo. "It's only another two hours and our passes are good for three days." She's already told me she doesn't want to go to Ende, "Besides, you need to rest, kakak", she argues but I spent half my twenties resting, I have no more time or patience for rest. And there's the problem of the plane tickets, time, your ghost.

"I don't know," I tell her.

When we get back to the entrance Nathan starts photographing in earnest. He's so focused, so obviously passionate about what he's doing, I love watching him. Occasionally he asks me to help him with something and I do my best but it's been years since I held a video camera and being around all that expensive equipment makes my clumsy self nervous. While he works his cameras I watch the docile lizards and try to imagine them as creatures needing to be fended off by the stick of our ever alert guide but I can't.

I walk behind the staff house and see one jogging towards me. Watching it, I remember the story on the news the day of your father's retirement dinner. A woman, in Japan, had thrown herself into the alligator pit at the Tokyo zoo and an astonished crowd had watched her being torn limb from limb after she embraced the largest gator in the pit.

"Can you imagine how dark that woman's mind must have been," I said, sitting on the edge of the bed watching you knot your only necktie "to see that kind of a death as salvation?"

Today I can almost imagine. I can imagine a woman who is afraid to sleep, afraid of who she'll meet in her dreams and, once she's asleep, she's afraid to wake up, afraid of who will not be beside her. I can imagine a woman tormented by nothing more than her own memories. I wonder how long it might take for a komodo to kill a human, or if it would even notice if I tried to wrap myself around it's neck.

"Fuck's sakes, would you stop thinking about shit like that?" you said, zipping up my black dress. "It doesn't help anyone."