End of the Ocean

by Matthew McBride

  “I am so hungry.”

  “What do you want?”

  Her hand left his hip and she reached around him, squeezing between his legs, making him stiffen, speaking softly, lips against his neck, small kisses on his shoulder.

  “I want you, American. That what I hungry for.”

  Sage, not thinking, just doing, reaching back, slid his hand up her dress, along the inside of her leg, the outside of her panties wet and thin as he became harder still—her leaning against his back, gripping him, feeling his muscles tighten, gliding her own hand up his leg—she took him then, squeezing, as he, still riding and steering with one hand, slipped a finger beneath her panties and pushed it inside her.

  She spoke to him in foreign whispers, her words like brushstrokes, painting images in his head.

  “I want you so much right now, Sage,” she said, her hand squeezing him, massaging him.

  “I’m yours,” he said, head turned, kissing her so hard, swerving, trying not to crash.

  She moaned to him again in Indonesian, revealing urges even he could understand.

  “Pull over,” she said.

  At that hour, for once, there was little traffic on the road. Sage brought his hand back to steer and she bit his neck. Holding the skin with her teeth, she said, “No,” and, reaching for his hand, bringing it back toward her, said, “Put it back, please.”

  Sage came to a small structure that sold petrol out of old bottles and parked. Together, with no regard for caution, they walked behind the shack. Once they were out of view he grabbed her and stood looking at her. Hair blowing in the wind, breathing very fast, they kissed. Long slow kisses that would not last long enough no matter how long they lasted. He unbuttoned her dress and opened the top and, pulling away from her lips, kissed her chin and neck and both breasts, licking her brown nipples in slow circles, sucking them, putting them between his teeth, biting gently, yet firmly enough it made her writhe.

  Ratri, pulling his head up, kissed him as he unbuttoned his shorts and let them drop to the ground. She took him in her hand again, all of him, squeezing, working her wrist back and forth as they kissed.

  “You are so fucking beautiful,” he said, kissing her mouth then pulling back, looking down at her breasts while she pulled on him, then, kissing her nipples again, listening to her breathe, her heart beating against his cheek. He had never felt more love for anyone than he felt for her right now.

  Reaching down, taking her dress in her hand, lifting it up, while he, still kissing her warm mouth, pulled her panties down and admired her.

  As he looked at her naked body she said, “I love you.”

  He moved toward her and kissed her passionately, faster than before and much harder. Pulling away from him, she brought her hand to her mouth and spit in it, and, reaching down while she looked up in his eyes, grabbed him and worked her hand back and forth, her spit allowing his shaft to glide easily through her fingers.

  “I want this very bad, Sage. Right now,” she said, grinding against him as he pulled away, sounds of voices inside the store now, sounds of cars and trucks and the horns from countless motorbikes; all of it so sudden and so loud.

  Sage, taking her face in both hands, kissing her lips softly, said, “We’ll get caught.”

  “I do not care.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said as she tugged him.

  “Yes, I know this so crazy, Sage. I want this to last forever but it will not.”

  “I don’t wanna leave you—you make me feel alive.”

  When he said that, she cried.

  “You so beautiful,” she told him. “You are the beautiful one. Such beautiful words.”

  He kissed her again, slowly: lips and tongues; he could taste her tears in his mouth.

  “I wanna make you cum,” he whispered, bending down, grabbing her soiled panties from the ground, pulling them up, close to her now, breathing on her, unable to resist the allure, wanting her to feel his warm breath, he kissed between her legs, rubbing the inside of his lips against her pink folds of skin, using a finger in her, then two. He kept his mouth there, sucking on her gently, blowing on her softly. Licking her. Fingering her.

  “Oh, God,” she said, very wet, squirming, wanting him to please her in ways she had only dreamed of.

  A voice called out from somewhere behind them and Sage pulled her panties up.

  Laughing together, he said he’d told her so. Then he said she was his mermaid. “Tonight I will build you a bed in the sand—not by some junkyard on the side of the road.”

  She laughed at him, nodding through tears. “OK. I love how you think of me,” she said. “Nobody ever say anything like that to me before, Sage. Most guy just want to fuck me or marry me but no one want to take their time with me.”

  Leaning down to kiss her again, he told her he’d take all the time she needed.

  “Tomorrow night,” she whispered. “Last night in Bali—my last night with you we make love, Sage, all night. We do it for hours.”

  “Ratri—

  “—no, I want this, Sage. I want you inside me,” she said. “So bad right now.”

  A man’s voice called out to them, but she would not let Sage go. Squeezing him again, pressing her mouth against his, he took her bottom lip between his teeth, pulling on it; he almost said he loved her but he stopped himself, even though he knew she waited to hear it.

  “Tomorrow night will be heaven,” she said, very softly, eyes closed, nodding her head, squeezing him, encouraging Sage to say yes. Hoping he would say I love you.

  “Tomorrow night,” he said.

  “I cannot wait,” Ratri said. “I will dream about you tonight.”

  “And I’ll dream about you.”

  As she kissed him, melting into him, an old man, frail and hunched over, behind the building now, walking toward them, asked what they were doing, and, yelling in Indonesian, he ordered Sage to move his motorbike.

  Both of them, half-dressed, bowing, apologizing, walking hand in hand to the motorbike, put on their helmets, sitting down, pulling onto the road, blending in with the chaos, they rode to Jimberon, to feast and watch the sun set and explore their burgeoning romance.

  ***

  Sitting in a small café, drinking whiskey in their morning coffee, strong wind blowing through the open window as a krete blind lifted from its mount and returned with a crash, Sage, between small sips, told Wayne Tender, “This is damn good coffee.”

  “Because this is damn good whiskey,” Wayne said, returning the flask to his pocket, adding, “Coffee is only as good as the whiskey that’s in it.”

  Sage was quiet after that and Wayne asked what was wrong, though he already knew.

  “Nervous.”

  “Sure,” Wayne nodded. “Perfectly understandable, mate. I was nervous, too, my first time.”

  “How’d you pull through?”

  “Mean how’d I find the balls?”

  “Yeah, how?”

  “Easy. I thought about the money.”

  Sage, squirming, adjusting himself in the chair, said, “What about getting caught?”

  “I didn’t think about getting caught.”

  “What about prison?”

  “I didn’t think about that either.”

  Sage said, “There’s just—” but Wayne cut him off, saying, “Listen, just stop. It ain’t goin’ ta help, believe me. It’s gonna be fine. I mean, look at me, Sage; you’ve seen how I live, man. This is what I do and I’m very good at it. I don’t get caught, and not because I’m slick or crafty or any of that rubbish …although, honestly—” raising his shoulders, shrugging, turning his palms up, he shook his head and said—I am. “But it’s not just that, it’s because I pay the right people, mate, I been doin’ this a long time.”

  Sage, taking a deep breath, nodded at Wayne then sipped more coffee.

  Wayne, sitting back in his chair, said, “
Hell, I don’t even have to do this. Not like I need the bloody money, I just want it. It’s what I do. Look, you’ll be back in a week and you’re gonna feel like a million bucks, really. Once a man’s done a thing like this he can do anything.”

  He looked at Sage and said, “You believe you can do anything?”

  Sage said he did, though he didn’t. But before long he would. Because he would have to. He was leaving the country in one day and that weighed heavily on his mind, but the main thing on his mind was Ratri. Not the diamonds or the trip to Thailand, he thought about last night. That was all he could think about. He had not slept because of it. God, how her lips had tasted. And now he would go to the prison, and as stressful as that was, the idea of what he was about to do seemed minor in comparison to what the night held in store for the both of them.

  “Just think,” Wayne went on, “think of all your friends back home in that little shitter of a town you come from, think if they could see you now. I promise, month or two, you’ll be back. We’ll do this again and make an arseload of money.”

  “No,” Sage said, shaking his head. “This is a one-time deal.”

  “Ha.”

  “No, really. One time’n I’m out.”

  “I know it, mate, I do. But just so you know you’re not that first bloke to declare such a thing then change ‘es mind soon as the money’s gone—you’ll think about it again,” Wayne said. “How easy it is. There’s no such thing as a one-timer.”

  “I’ll be the first.”

  “Unlikely,” Wayne said, shrugging. “Then again, perhaps you will.”

  Later, riding toward Denpasar, wearing headphones under his helmet to hear the navigation, cell phone in the pocket of his motorbike, Sage got a call from Ratri, and, veering right, avoiding a deep hole in the pavement, answered while he rode.

  “Can you hear me?” he said, holding the wire to his mouth, listening for her reply.

  “Halo, Sage.”

  “Can you hear me, Ratri?”

  “Halo Sage, yes I hear you but not so good. How are you?”

  Grinning, switching lanes without caution like a seasoned rider, like everyone else, he smiled, saying, “I’m so good, Ratri. Best I’ve been in a long time.”

  She laughed and said, “Why that?”

  Now Sage laughed and told her she knew why.

  “Because you cannot wait see me tonight?”

  “It’s all I can think about.”

  “What?” she said, breaking up, sounding distant; as if she were a thousand miles away.

  Sage, yelling, “I said I thought about you all night.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think about you, too.”

  Sage, approaching a stoplight, not knowing when the light might change, watched other motorbikes and did what they did and when they stayed on their throttles he stayed on his, when they crossed the road he did the same.

  “Hey,” Sage said, yelling, cupping one hand over the microphone in the wire to block road noise. Then, in front of him, a flatbed truck, tall and narrow, filled with black plastic trash bags, came to a hasty stop, slamming on its brakes, so Sage slammed on his, swerving at the last minute, utilizing instincts he had not realized he’d developed, leaning hard to the left, avoiding a collision, Sage, panicked but levelheaded, crossed lanes without getting hit but was furiously honked at.

  “I almost got killed,” he said, passing the truck and pulling in front of it. Then, slowing down, letting the other motorbikes pass him, he relaxed and tried to catch his breath and asked Ratri if she’d heard him scream.

  “Ratri?”

  Sage watched the shoulder for shade, then, once he had found it, pulled over and came to a stop and put his kickstand down. He had lost his call with Ratri and could find no signal.

  Cursing, following the map on his phone with his eyes, he saw that he was close. Almost in Kuta now, it would not be long to Denpasar, where he would find Kerobokan, a place he had read about and instantly feared when he learned he would have to go there. Because someone had to, and Wayne had been there several times and did not need to show his face.

  “It’ll just take five minutes,” Wayne had assured him. “Tell Grady you work with the Australian. And remember, tell him we’re gonna get him outta there, were working on it, OK? Djoko’s putting money together to make the bribe.”

  Sage would meet Grady soon, and while he had been nervous about the ride to Denpasar, he was more nervous about Kerobokan. From what he’d been told it was the worst prison on earth.

  Built in 1979, it was designed to accommodate three hundred people, but it now held a thousand. Thirty men to a single unit was not uncommon, Wayne said.

  “If you’re lucky your cell has a squatter toilet that works. If you’re unlucky, you have to shit in a plastic bag.”

  Wayne then said most inmates were unlucky. He’d seen a lot of plastic bags.

  Sage, finding a break in traffic, pulling back on the road, curled the throttle toward him and followed whatever road he was on until he passed a polisi guard shack and, turning left, followed that road, slim and twisted, through a small village that came to a four-way stop across from Kerobokan Prison.

  Nestled in North Kuta, Badung Regency, it was a rundown structure that wanted to fall down, surrounded by four stone walls with faded paint and razor-wire dulled by time, centered in the middle of the city, cornered by dilapidated watchtowers that always stood empty. It loomed in front of him like a tumor, baleful and malignant, and, after waiting in traffic and pulling into the lane and riding for a hundred feet, he crossed the road and turned right in the parking lot, unprepared for the chaos that awaited him.

  There were many cars and many people. Motorbikes everywhere. Several men, standing beside a gray metal door, holding cameras and talking among themselves, looked at Sage as he rolled past them. Then he sat in traffic, sweating beneath his helmet. Still in the lot, he moved again, slower than before, past a second group of people, polisi, looking small and unfriendly as they gathered in front of a white guard shack while factions of military police stood beyond them, in small clusters, beside a large Indonesian tank.

  A heavily armed man in a brown uniform, tall for a Balinese, thin and lean-featured, walked by Sage as he parked. Removing his helmet, standing beside his bike, stretching, looking around, he saw the long building to his left Wayne had told him about, the one he would go to and show his passport and fill out paperwork that said who he was, why he was there, and who he had come to see. And that was the part that made Sage nervous. Filling out paperwork, because he would have to lie on it, and then giving them his passport. What if they kept it and did not give it back?

  Walking to the building, Sage was approached by a man who asked him a question in Indonesian he did not understand so he responded with the only word he knew, besides thank you, saying, “Pagi,” which meant good morning, even though it was mid-afternoon.

  A few men laughed and one of them asked Sage, in halfway decent English, where he was from.

  “United States,” Sage said, and one or two of them came to attention immediately, another man saying, American, why you here? and Sage, not expecting this, told them the line he had been rehearsing, that he was there on mission work and had come to console prisoners.

  “You know Bali 9?” someone said. “How you know Andrew Chan?”

  Sage, not knowing what to tell them, decided he would tell them nothing, and, turning away from them as one raised a camera, walked toward the long brown building as reporters started gawking and a few of them took pictures.

  Glancing at his wrist, looking where his watch used to be, Sage entered the building, stepping into a small room of small people who sat in small plastic chairs, sweating, reading, or sleeping. He walked to a long wooden counter and, after removing his passport, told the man beneath a large dirty fan, standing in a long gold sarong, who he had come to see.

  “Graydee who?”r />
  Sage said his last name again, slowly, difficult name that it was, one he could not say right to begin with, a name he could not even spell; doing the best he could, which was not good enough, since the man, plainly agitated by the language barrier, ranted at Sage, and, pointing a long thin finger, told him to go home, which served only to confuse Sage and did little to appease his nervousness.

  “It’s the visiting hours, mate,” he heard someone say.

  Sage, turning to scan the room, noticed a stout man with wide shoulders and a thick chest who leaned against a dull gray wall.

  “It’s not time yet,” he said, looking down at his phone. Then, looking up at Sage, said, “Visiting hours are a joke, they start at nine and end at noon—whenever they decide, actually. Then you’ve gotta leave the building and come back at one. That lasts till maybe three.”

  “So,” Sage asked, walking toward him. “What do I do?”

  “It’s quarter of one now; you fill out a paper and take a number—whatever number he wants to give you—it can range from 1 to 100 dependin’ on how many people are here.”

  Sage, sweating profusely, looking around the room at all the people, at least thirty or more, and before he could reply he heard the man behind the counter, still disconcerted but less so, call to him. After handing Sage a paper and pen, he asked to see his passport.

  The other man, the thick one who had been so helpful, walked to the counter, and, standing by Sage, offering to assist with paperwork, asked why he was there.

  “Just came to do a little ministry.”

  The thick man, eyes wide and alert, clapped his hands together and said, “Praise the Lord, mate. I’m a minister, myself—Owen,” he said. “From New Zealand.”

  Sage, unable to believe his misfortune, setting his pen down, told Owen his name was Sage, from the USA, followed by Praise the Lord.

  “Here,” Owen said, reaching for the paper. “Just put your name, who you’re here to see, passport info, date. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Thanks,” Sage said. “I appreciate it, brother.”