Come here, my delicious one.
Felipe is also the endearment master. In bed he slips into adoring me in Portuguese, so I
have graduated from being his “lovely little darling” to being his queridinha. (Literal translation:
“lovely little darling.”) I’ve been too lazy here in Bali to try to learn Indonesian or Balinese, but
suddenly Portuguese is coming easily to me. Of course I’m only learning the pillow talk, but
that’s a fine use of Portuguese. He says, “Darling, you’re going to get sick of it. You’re going
to get bored of how much I touch you, and how many times a day I tell you how beautiful you
are.”
Try me, mister.
I’m losing days here, disappearing under his sheets, under his hands. I like the feeling of
not knowing what the date is. My nice organized schedule has been blown away by the
breeze. I finally do stop by to see my medicine man one afternoon after a long hiatus of no
visiting. Ketut sees the truth on my face before I say a word.
“You found boyfriend in Bali,” he says.
“Yes, Ketut.”
“Good. Be careful not get pregnant.”
“I will.”
“He good man?”
“You tell me, Ketut,” I said. “You read his palm. You promised that he was a good man.
You said it about seven times.”
“I did? When?”
“Back in June. I brought him here. He was the Brazilian man, older than me. You told me
you liked him.”
“Never did,” he insisted, and there was nothing I could do to convince him otherwise.
Sometimes Ketut loses things from his recollection, as you would, too, if you were somewhere
between sixty-five and a hundred and twelve years old. Most of the time he’s keen and sharp,
but other times I feel like I’ve disturbed him out of some other plane of consciousness, out of
some other universe. (A few weeks ago he said to me, completely out of nowhere, “You good
friend to me, Liss. Loyal friend. Loving friend.” Then he sighed, stared off into space and ad-
ded mournfully, “Not like Sharon.” Who the hell is Sharon? What did she do to him? When I
tried asking him about it, he would give me no answer. Acted suddenly like he didn’t know
who I was even referring to. As if I were the one who’d brought up that thieving hussy Sharon
in the first place.)