Out of Orange: A Memoir

by Cleary Wolters

  I watched Craig collect Molly, their pool towels and stuff, then head off toward our rooms. Bradley watched Craig’s exit too; still cruising him. But as soon as Craig took Molly’s arm, Bradley turned back to me, having lost interest or hope in the unattainable Bostonian.

  Phillip appeared from out of nowhere and approached us with a strange look and an apprehensive gait. But as soon as he was in our midst, his expression changed and he greeted Bradley warmly with a “Hey, dude” and they man-hugged. Phillip had met Bradley in Paris on his first trip and had liked him. We had all briefly been guests in the same hotel, the Saint-André des Arts, and Bradley was a totally likeable guy.

  Phillip had never met Henry, though he had heard plenty about him from me. Henry was cool and guarded but polite. We all sat down at a table together. I don’t think Bradley and Henry could tell I was freaking out, wishing I could run away or magically go back an hour in time to undo this unfortunate rendezvous. Phillip looked nervous and I wished he would calm down. But I couldn’t tell him Craig and Molly were safely squirreled away in the room. I guessed he was worried about them showing up, because he kept looking all around us like he had a severe attention deficit. We ordered drinks from the cocktail waitress, who brought us a little bowl full of what I thought were tiny peanuts, but I think they were roasted beans.

  We told them everything that we had discovered about Jakarta so far and generally made small talk. We finally got a moment to slip away and speak privately when Phillip went to the bathroom and I followed him. We decided to say we were meeting the couple from Boston for dinner and returned to the table separately. We were just about to try our escape when I saw Molly over by the elevators. She looked impatient but maintained her distance.

  I realized we had been sitting with Bradley and Henry already for over an hour and it was dinnertime. Our secret travel companions were getting hungry, I guessed, and the buffet we had talked about earlier would only be open for another hour.

  Bradley saw Molly exchange a look with Phillip and remembered her having been the one with Craig, the cutie. He looked at Phillip, then at me, with the expression of someone about to solve a mystery. “You guys did it!” he said, looking back in Molly’s direction. I had hoped Bradley had forgotten the conversation we once had, but obviously he had not.

  Phillip smiled a devilish little grin and Bradley guessed we had actually followed through on our harebrained scheme. Henry was slow to understand the direction and contents of our conversation. He wasn’t really paying attention. But as soon as he realized that I was uncomfortable with him hearing what was being discussed, he got very curious, sat up, and paid very close attention. He then acted like he couldn’t believe his ears, and he almost whined, “I want someone to carry my bags. Shit! I’m the one here who should be the most worried.” I hadn’t expected that reaction. He was right, though.

  Phillip jumped at an opportunity to salvage things he thought Henry’s reaction had indicated. He told him we had other people and that he could have someone carry his stuff. Phillip’s offer was a smart move. It was actually the only possible solution, now that the cat was out of the bag. There was no way to keep it secret from Alajeh without including Henry and Bradley in the scheme.

  Phillip left us and went to the room to call Garrett in Chicago. He asked if both he and his boyfriend could be ready to come to Jakarta quickly, instead of Garrett going only to Paris. There had been another change in the plan and they were both needed for a complete trip. When they agreed, he told them to sit tight. He would call back later to discuss tickets, vaccines, and visas. Then Phillip called another recruit in Northampton and told him to get ready to fly to Paris when he got Phillip’s next call. This guy would be a replacement for Craig on the Paris-to-Chicago leg of the trip now. The only thing left to figure out was how to pay for all their tickets and expenses.

  Phillip came back to the table beaming with excitement, and not a moment too soon. Henry was starting to pick at me again about something. Henry objected to Phillip’s idea of charging tickets to his American Express card. He thought Phillip was an idiot to even suggest such a move, believed Alajeh would kill us for leaving a paper trail like that, and said so in a very patronizing tone. That slightly aggravated Phillip. He was offering to cover the guy’s costs on his own credit card, give away one of his precious recruits, who also happened to be his best friend, and Henry had insulted him as thanks for his efforts. Phillip suggested Henry wire cash back to Chicago, and that idea was similarly objectionable to Henry. Phillip gave up and told him to figure it out himself, and let him know what to tell his friend when he had.

  Henry was right on all counts, but neither Phillip nor I could see that. Henry threw his arms up in a clearly bitchy gesture and said, “Fine.” He stood up, wobbling a little, which served as a reminder we were all pretty loaded by then. He looked at Bradley like Are you coming? Bradley got up, smiled at Phillip and then me, then suggested we sleep on it and sort out the details in the morning.

  “He’s an asshole,” I swore quietly to myself, once Bradley and Henry were out of earshot.

  “You weren’t kidding.” I think Phillip had heard me, but he was agreeing with the things I had told him about my experiences with Henry before. However, the fact was we both knew we had just avoided a catastrophe. Alajeh would not find out. Even if the solution to keeping him in the dark sucked horribly, it still worked.

  Bradley had convinced Henry to stay at our fancy resort and not the cheap hole Henry had located in his research prior to their arrival in Jakarta. This upgrade was a treat they were affording themselves. We didn’t know if they would agree to the same when they were paying for two more heads. But that was what we had promised our friends.

  There was another obvious problem to consider. We weren’t expecting to make a mountain of money off the arrangement, just to avoid carrying anything ourselves, and we had failed to discuss that part.

  One more problem I thought of was that we had also already collected three of the bags we were taking back with us and were only waiting for one more. I doubted Henry would be happy with us leaving without making sure the recruits we had promised them were standing in front of him.

  The following morning I woke with a hangover to the noise of Phillip stomping around the room, snorting like a bull about to charge, and sweating so profusely he looked like he had taken a shower fully dressed. The room was air-conditioned, but he had obviously come from outside, where it was oppressively hot and humid. Something told me Phillip had engaged Henry again on money matters. “I take it you’ve talked to Henry,” I said and sat up waiting for more, a clue as to why he looked like he had just run a 5K and was about to kill someone.

  “No, I haven’t talked to him. He’s gone. He has Craig with him.”

  “What?” I tried to understand, imagine it—Craig leaving his girlfriend behind and running off with Henry, Henry kidnapping Craig. Nothing made sense, but I was wide awake and Phillip’s anger was infectious. “What do you mean?” I crawled out of bed and threw my shorts on. I would need coffee, stat!

  “Henry has taken him to the consulate,” Phillip offered and threw me my sandals.

  “It’s Sunday.” I didn’t think government offices would be open on a Sunday. “Wait. Why the fuck did he take him to the consulate?”

  “To get a new passport.” Apparently, Henry and Bradley had gotten up early and been quite industrious. So much for sorting out the details with clearer heads. They’d found our friends at breakfast and introduced themselves. In conversation, the problem we had run into with Craig’s passport stamps had apparently come up, along with the solution we had already established. Henry had told Craig and Molly our solution was wrong. The solution that Henry had heard about still involved the same recruit who was supposedly going to be Henry’s stand-in. Craig didn’t know there had been a slight adjustment to that scenario. Henry probably thought we were full of shit and no one was coming to help him.

  But Henry had found out ab
out more than Craig’s passport problem and how we proposed to solve it. He had also learned that we already had three bags. This had probably also set him off; the fact that we had not told him about this last night would make Henry wonder if he could trust us. Bradley had told Phillip that Henry had said he should tell Alajeh what we were doing. It was hard to determine whether Bradley was working with Henry or not.

  Henry and Craig returned later but had not gone to the consulate. The bickering and nonsense went on for a couple of days, making it almost impossible to figure out what to do. The last bag had not yet arrived, so we were stuck there until it did. Henry shared his worries about delays. Then, as if by magic, Henry became civil again. He apologized with an explanation for his state of being and devised a sensible plan to get us through the rest of the trip safely and peacefully.

  Henry proposed we all relax for one week somewhere other than at the expensive resort in Jakarta. Henry claimed to have insight into what was occurring and thought that the rest of the bags would get there by then. The plan was, once they arrived we would get Phillip’s friends from Chicago to fly over. But if the bags did not show up by the end of the week, when we all reconvened in Jakarta, we would cross that bridge when we got to it. Phillip and I both accepted the terms of our détente with Henry. Bradley reminded us that Henry did, after all, have a lot more experience than we did and that maybe it was for the best that we had this blowup.

  We were all going our separate ways for a week. Henry and Bradley were going exploring. Our friends wanted to take a short hiatus to the other side of Java, the island Jakarta is on. They wanted to go to the beach. We sent them packing with a hired driver and car and with an agreement to meet us back in Jakarta one week later. We were happy that they had taken the initiative to find a fun place to go, and it was actually pretty inexpensive. Phillip and I would be staying at the Marcopolo Hotel, the cheap hotel Henry had suggested, and we would be babysitting the heroin-stuffed bags we already had. We would also be there to retrieve new bags if they arrived while everyone was dispersed.

  Henry and Bradley were taking a trip to Yogyakarta, a long train ride away to the other side of the island, so they could see some ancient ruins and temples or ancient ruined temples. Henry claimed it would be as cheap for them to go off on this great journey as to stay at the Marcopolo. He was excited. He loved exploring and would have made a great Christopher Columbus type, back when the world was all new. He told me about the eleven-hour train ride he and Bradley would be taking, the bamboo housing they were headed for, and all the trappings of a true adventure. Henry was correct too; the costs for everything dropped dramatically once they got away from Jakarta.

  Phillip and I didn’t mind getting stuck at the Marcopolo. Henry joked that it was our penance for lying to them by omission when we hadn’t told them everything right up front. Henry and Bradley helped us get to the hotel with all the goodies and left behind some of their own stuff in a couple of suitcases, things they wouldn’t need with them on their trip. Our hotel wasn’t that bad. There was a swimming pool and we were closer to things like the mall and McDonald’s. In reality, anything would be better than more time with Henry. I felt like he was a loaded gun when he was around. I think Phillip felt the same. Both of our moods improved dramatically as soon as they left.

  This break gave us some downtime, a chance to get our heads back on straight, without the bickering that had been going on for the preceding few days. We were happy to get our friends far away from Henry too. They went in the opposite direction, to the inexpensive beach resort three hours outside of Jakarta. They were going to stay at either one of two resorts, and they both looked nice and safe enough from the brochures Craig had found at a travel agent in the mall. They would call us at the Marcopolo and let us know which they had chosen.

  Phillip and I enjoyed our drama-free day, swimming, drinking scotch, and eating ramen. The Marcopolo didn’t have big fancy restaurants and poolside cafés. It had a little market on the first floor that sold the staples of low-budget hotel living: hot coffee, tea, cold sodas, ready-made sandwiches, potato chips, cigarettes, liquor, and ramen. The hotel was right in the center of the city, a tall, L-shaped building. The market, pool, and sundeck were its only amenities, and it had lousy air-conditioning. The rooms all had balconies facing the pool and sliding glass doors that remained open in most of the occupied rooms.

  Throughout the day at various intervals I could hear the Muslim call to prayer coming from several directions around the city. Some were so close I could hear the crackle of the audio projecting them, others were a faint wailing from the distance, echoing across the city so I couldn’t really tell where the sound came from. It was interesting how different Jakarta felt from this new perspective, definitely farther from home.

  That evening Craig called to let us know they had arrived at their destination and to make a confession. We discovered that Henry had shared secret plans with our friends to return to the United States without us and with the heroin-stuffed luggage Phillip and I were babysitting. Henry hadn’t counted on Craig’s apprehension or that he would tell us what Henry and Bradley had been plotting behind our backs. Craig’s confession was incomplete; he tried to say this information was all presented in a phone call he had received from Henry when they’d gotten to their current destination. That was impossible, since Henry wouldn’t know how to reach them without prior arrangements to do so, and Henry and Bradley were still on the eleven-hour train ride to Yogyakarta.

  I realized this had probably been under way before Craig’s current change of heart, but I didn’t see any point in calling him on it. I asked Craig to think about what he thought Henry had at stake in their safe return home and to compare it to what he imagined Phillip and I had to lose. I wasn’t talking about the money alone. I reminded him that we all came from the same place and had some of the same friends. Their fate would follow us all the way home. I asked him if he even knew how to contact Henry when they got back. If they thought Henry would be more likely to get them back safely and pay them, then they should go with him, by all means. But I asked him not to answer. I wanted him to really think about it. We would call them back in one hour.

  Phillip only heard my side of the conversation, but he knew essentially what was happening. He and I faced the fact that our grand plans had failed miserably and they would never work. It had been naïve to think we could get away with this with the million things that could go wrong. We would have to take the bags ourselves and hope Craig and Molly would be happy to have gotten a two-week all-expenses-paid trip to Indonesia as their consolation prize and go home without trying to reconnect with Henry. If they did that, they would end up in the same exact boat we were in and it would be all our fault.

  Henry’s problem with me and Phillip had turned him into a loose cannon. His behavior was increasingly unpredictable from the day he’d found out we had people there, up to this latest development. If he thought he was better suited than us to get these guys home safely, it no longer mattered. We would never believe his efforts were anything but self-serving and deceitful. He had planned this last trick, I guessed, when he pretended to have reached a détente with us to end the dissension created by our mistake with Craig’s passport. That brief peace had been a charade. What I couldn’t figure out was how he expected to get the heroin-loaded luggage from us. We still had it.

  I realized then that they had not escorted us to the Marcopolo to help us find it, to see what the place looked like, or to store the crap they didn’t want to have to drag along on their trek to the other side of Java. Henry had wanted to get a key to our room and he had gotten one. I opened the closet and looked at their two pieces of personal luggage, the ones they had left with us. The two cheap suitcases we had assumed held clothes and personal belongings they would pick up when they returned were still there.

  I started laughing hysterically. Phillip looked at me with worry but then understood what was so funny when I popped one of their bags open to re
veal it was almost empty. Phillip understood what I was thinking. He ran to the bed we had stowed the heroin-filled luggage under and dropped to the floor, announcing that they were still there. I was relieved but pissed off. The call from Craig had been one thing. It had ruined any hope of making the stand-in thing work. But something about this made it feel like such a personal slap in the face. I could imagine how pleased Henry must have been with himself, as he left these props for their subterfuge in our closet and walked away.

  I guessed he planned to come back to the Marcopolo, retrieve the three pieces of drug-packed luggage we had already collected, and leave us with the empty suitcases, the suitcases that supposedly contained his and Bradley’s personal belongings—the suitcases that made his coming with us to the Marcopolo and getting a key to the room seem perfectly logical and harmless.

  Phillip and I packed our stuff, gathered the three other bags, and immediately left the Marcopolo Hotel. We needed to buy ourselves a little time to think. We left Henry and Bradley’s empty suitcases behind, exactly where they had been, and took the heroin-filled luggage with us to the Grand Hyatt. Once there, we asked for adjoining rooms, as if we were coworkers on a business trip, and checked in with cash and aliases. The best they could do were two rooms across from each other, but that would still work. Phillip and I could at least find out how badly Henry had really screwed us, while we were not so easy to locate and discard.

  We could keep our eyes on the heroin without sitting in the same room with it. Without a credit card, they asked for a cash deposit to cover incidentals. This was the last cash we had. Stupid or not, we would have to use Phillip’s American Express from that point on.

  We couldn’t simply pack it in and go home, not yet. If Henry took our luggage, Alajeh would have expected someone to stay and collect what would have been intended for Henry and Bradley to carry. Henry knew that I recognized that much, even if he did think I was as stupid as a box of hair. It wasn’t enough to assume Henry thought we would just wait for his luggage to arrive and do nothing about his trickery. We had to know for certain if he had covered his own ass and told Alajeh what was happening. He could have easily made us out to be a problem he had solved for Alajeh, rather than risk being caught lying to him.