Paradise Lust

by Kates, Jocelyn

  “You’re in room 10,” Yande said from behind her. She turned to see Yande standing beside a smaller man, wearing what she assumed to be traditional Balinese dress and holding the handle of her suitcase. “Pic will take your bag to your room.”

  “Oh, you really don’t have to, it’s so heavy,” she began, but the man just smiled benignly at her protestations and began rolling her bag down the rocky slope to a cobbled path that led through the grass.

  “Okay, I will go now,” Yande said, blushing as she smiled at him.

  “Oh!” Adele suddenly became aware of herself and began scrambling through her backpack to find money for a tip. She thrust out a wad of rupiah to Yande—the enormous denominations of the currency confounded her; she had no idea whether she was giving an enormous tip or a dismally small one—but he waved away the money, smiling shyly again as he clambered back into the van.

  The engine blared to life, sharp and harsh against the ocean sounds, and then the van and Yande were gone, and Adele was seemingly alone in the blackness.

  After a few moments of taking in her new environment, she became acutely aware of the presence of another person. She felt suddenly chilled despite the hot air. She kept still, keeping her gaze on the vague horizon of black on black, until she was undeniably certain that someone was watching her. Turning slowly, she discerned the outline of a tall man standing under a large thatched room by the reception hut. Though she saw nothing but his silhouette, could make out no features, her eyes lingered on him, willing the darkness to lighten. As if reading her mind, the figure took a small step forward, out from under the thatching, and was bathed in moonlight.

  Adele’s stomach flipped. He was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in real life. What struck her most was his man-ness; as a woman in her late twenties, she mingled mostly with “boys,” or “guys” at best. Sure, some of them were hot, and they had their charm, but this person standing in front of her was undeniably all man. He could change my oil, file my tax returns, and then throw me down over the cabinets he refinished himself and…she shut down the involuntary madness that cropped up in her head.

  He had broad shoulders and bronzed skin, sun-streaked blonde hair, textured and wavy in a Bradley Cooper kind of way, and piercing sea-green eyes. Sweat glistened on his bold cheekbones and along his strong jawline.

  “Didn’t mean to disturb,” he said, his voice a deep liquid, as if a sound from a dream. She thought she detected a slight drawl to it, but couldn’t be sure.

  “Oh,” she said, turning fully to face him. “No not at all, I was just…just watching the ocean.”

  “Great thing to do,” he said, and took a step toward her. “Great place to do it.”

  “It is,” she said, and found herself taking a step toward him, feeling like she was floating.

  “Just arrive?” He asked, but she didn’t register the words, because all of a sudden she was close enough to him to feel the heat radiating off the front of his body, warming the goosebumps that had somehow popped up on her arms. Her heart was racing. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, then uncrossed them, then took a tentative step to the side—the intensity of being directly in front of him, chest to chest, less than 12 inches apart, was too much—then back to center. “Yes? No?”

  “Pardon?” She said, and looked up to meet his eyes, which were crinkled in amusement.

  “I asked if you just arrived.”

  “Yes,” she said, then added, stupidly, “From America.”

  “Ah,” he said. “America. Heard of it.”

  She smiled and looked down. Her heart was still pounding, but she felt a little calmer.

  “I’m Adele,” she said, and attempted to extend her hand to him, though they were standing so close that the angle was awkward and skewed.

  He laughed at her crooked arm, suspended just an inch in front of his body, and reached up with his hand to slowly lower hers. His touch was warm and electric, firm and tender, and when he removed his fingers once he’d gently brought her hand back down to her side, the skin that he’d touched tingled for a long time afterward.

  “It’s Bali,” he said. “In Bali we hug.”

  She looked back up at him, and their eyes locked with an intensity that caught her off guard. Realizing that her body was about to be pressed into his, his electric touch all over her back, her heart began to pound even harder and faster. It had been an embarrassingly long time since she’d had physical contact with a man, let alone a man who looked like this guy.

  “Adele?” A woman’s voice called from the shadowed thatching, and Adele jerked her head toward the sound. “Adele Salavert?”

  “Yes,” Adele croaked, then cleared her throat and said again, “Yup, I’m Adele.”

  She felt the heat of the man’s body move away from hers, and the intensity drained from the moment. A muscular and curly-haired blonde in a bikini top and cutoffs walked toward her, her rippled abs catching glints of moonlight as she moved.

  “Hi!” She said, her voice welcoming and joyful. “I’m so glad you made it! You’re the last one! We’re all in the studio, about to do intros and everything.” She was hugging Adele, and though the embrace was sweet and energetic and genuine, it was definitely not what she’d just been gearing up for. “I’m Val. I’m Ajuni’s helper, assistant, gofer, what have you. Any questions you have, I’m your gal.”

  Val released Adele from her hug, gestured for her to follow, and began walking toward the path down which her luggage had disappeared a few minutes before. Adele followed, feeling strangely sheepish and fighting the urge to look back.

  The main asana studio and classroom was a large circular hut, its thatched roof coming to a high peak in the center. Adele stepped slowly inside and surveyed the room in which she would spend most of her time for the next six weeks. Some 15 or 20 people (fellow students, she assumed) had already settled on the floor, sitting on rolled up mats or yoga blocks or pillows. She found a spot near the center and perched cross-legged on a block. She was nervous, but excited.

  Glancing around the room, she counted 19 students, plus herself and Val, who lingered by the door. As Adele settled, an expectant hush slowly came over the room. Where was their instructor? People shifted their position, craned their necks around, smiled hesitantly at one another. A minute or two passed in that manner.

  A tall figure darkened the doorway, backlit by the lamps on the porch. His shadow tumbled into the room, larger than life. They all turned to look at once, spiraling in unison.

  Framed by the door, with the black ocean as his backdrop, was a striking man. He stood perhaps six foot three, maybe taller, with the broad and elaborately sculpted muscles of someone whose body was his life’s focus. His skin was a shade lighter than that of the native Balinese people, though he himself was ethnically ambiguous—maybe part Japanese. His broad facial features and burnt caramel tan lent him a mystery along with his handsomeness. He’d pulled his long black hair into a taut knot at the back of his head. He had a presence that seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room. Their teacher had arrived.

  After what seemed like several minutes, he stepped into the room and walked to the front of class. Adele couldn’t help but notice Val following him with adoring eyes.

  “Namaste,” he said when he reached the front of the room. He pressed both hands together at his heart and bowed slightly. The class returned the gesture, mumbling the word as they bowed. “I am Ajuni. I will be your instructor.”

  Ajuni spoke for some time, though it took a few minutes for Adele to actually begin paying attention to the content of his words rather than his mannerisms and presence. It wasn’t so much that she was attracted to him—though he was undoubtedly attractive—but rather fascinated by his magnetism. She tuned in when he got to logistics.

  “We begin with asana early tomorrow,” he said. “Six-thirty sharp, though I will be here from six if there are those who wish to begin practice early. Three hours of asana, breakfast, then we resume for class. Br
ing mats.” He paused and surveyed the room for a moment. “Valerie will continue from here.”

  He bowed once more, strode toward the door, and was gone. More than few heads turned to watch him go.

  Val scampered to the front, and the energy in the room shifted palpably. In the same cheery voice with which she’d greeted Adele, she read off the list of roommate and hut assignments—Adele would be in a large hut at the back of the resort with a Filipino woman named Diane—had the class go around the room and do introductions, and then sent them into the night. Her adventure had begun.

  Chapter 3

  The next day, as Ajuni had warned, started early and promised not to end until late. Adele’s morning began with the electronic jingle of her alarm at 5:50 AM—an hour she used to be quite familiar with, but hadn’t seen since GreenGrub had shuttered—when she positively hopped out of bed, feeling a surge of happiness that she hadn’t in a long time. Through the windows of her and Diane’s living room, she could see that the sun had already risen over the hillsides, and was cascading golden light through the palm trees, onto the sand, over the water. Everything had a warm, pink haze, and the entire landscape seemed to be in waiting, patiently lying still—for what? For me, Adele thought to herself, and though the thought was ridiculous, it still made her smile.

  Three hours of physical yoga practice began at 6:30 sharp. She’d never been to a class that lasted longer than 90 minutes, and was intimidated at the prospect, but pleased at how much she enjoyed it, how quickly the time passed, how little her body fatigued. She was pleasantly surprised to find that her physical practice wasn’t orders of magnitude less advanced than her peers. When practice ended, her mind felt alert, her body tingling and energized, her heart open—and her stomach suddenly very, very empty.

  The group, Adele somewhere in the middle, surged toward the hotel restaurant, which turned out to be the little area covered by thatched roofing that she’d seen the night before. Suddenly back in that environment, she remembered the man—had that even been real? At this point, it seemed so improbable, so fuzzy, so of a different world, that she had a hard time believing it had happened. Either way, her heartbeat began to make itself known.

  Glancing around and seeing no sign of anyone but her yoga peers, Adele loaded up a plate of food—mango, papaya, hot fried plantains—and joined a group of women sitting at the table closest to the ocean. One by one, the women finished their breakfast and excused themselves to get ready for the lectures that were to begin at 10:30, until Adele was left alone at the table, jabbing at her last few pieces of pineapple and gazing out at the sea, now almost blindingly bright under a fully mature sun. She wore a pair of black cropped yoga pants and a black sports bra, and closed her eyes to enjoy the feeling of warm sunshine bathing her face, her shoulders, her stomach, her calves. She leaned her head back against the chair and involuntarily sighed. Things are going to be okay.

  “Playing hooky?” A low, firm voice came from behind Adele, and she snapped her eyes open, jerking her head up from the chair and spinning around to see the man from last night standing a few feet away, holding a surfboard. So he had been real.

  In the sunlight, the color of his tan skin looked deeper, his golden streaks blonder, and the light—plus the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt—allowed her to get a good look at every smooth plane and chiseled crevice of his muscular stomach and arms. Realizing that she was gaping, Adele labored to return to the state of a functioning, verbal human.

  “Um,” she said. “No. No, not playing hooky. I still have,” she craned her neck to see the clock on the back wall of the restaurant, “Nine minutes.”

  “Ah,” he said, and one corner of his lips went up, as if Adele had just said something amusing, had uttered some joke that only he knew the humor of.

  “You going surfing?” She asked, stupidly, gesturing at his board.

  “Was gonna try,” he squinted out at the water, “But the waves aren’t looking too great right now.”

  Adele nodded, turning to look out at the ocean as well. She tried to remember the electric ease with which they’d interacted the night before—it was as if they were sharing the same synapses, completely in sync. But now, she was all klutziness and chaos, her words spilling out as carelessly as her body moved. She still felt an overpowering sexual attraction to this man, but in the daylight had lost the ability to channel it.

  She heard the scrape of bamboo chair legs against flagstone tiles and looked to see the man taking the seat next to her. He settled in, made himself comfortable, looking like a paragon of serenity and ease.

  “So,” he said, turning to face her, letting that heart-stopping smile overtake his face, “I’m Danny.” He extended his hand.

  “I’m Adele,” she said. “I thought we didn’t shake hands in Bali—I thought Bali was the land of hugs?” She added, trying to keep enough humor and levity in her voice so as to not sound desperate.

  He grinned even wider. “It is,” he said. ”But you’re all in this intense yoga thing now, I don’t want to steal your karmic energy or taint your journey with the vibes of a lowly surfer or something. Plus, I’m covered in sunscreen.”

  She wanted to protest that karmic energy couldn’t be stolen through hugs—in fact, the contrary could be said to be true—and that the surfer vibes argument was all bullshit, but realized the embarrassing position of having to argue with someone to get a hug, and kept her mouth shut. She felt rejected, and, letting her eyes linger once again on his body, vastly disappointed.

  “I see,” she said. “Yes, I’m on a very intense yogic journey that other humans couldn’t possibly understand. Even speaking to you might undermine the spiritual work I’m doing.” She couldn’t help it, her sarcasm slipped out unguarded.

  “Hey,” he said, still smiling. “I wasn’t making fun. I think what you guys are doing here is really cool.” His eyes were smiling again, and Adele again had the distinct feeling that she wasn’t in on some joke; in that moment, she felt an overpowering desire to know exactly what was making him smile, to understand what was behind the glittering in his eyes, to get him.

  But instead she said, “Yeah, it’s, like, totally tubular, dude.” She gave him the “Surf’s Up” symbol with her hand and smiled goofily.

  “Oh!” He leaned back in his chair and laughed, “Aren’t yogis and surfers supposed to get along?”

  Adele smirked and shrugged, then turned back and glanced at the clock.

  “I’ve gotta get going,” she said, and stood from her chair. Standing and, for the second time in 12 hours, facing him head-on, she felt the same electric surge from body to body that she had the night before. She actually had to fight the reflex to take a step forward, slotting herself between his legs and folding her body down over his. She stared at the ground and let the warm rush of electricity wash over her.

  “Have a great class,” Danny said, and Adele looked up to see him smiling again, this time a simple smile of kindness and warmth, the twinkling amusement gone. She couldn’t help but beam back at him.

  “Thank you. Enjoy the waves.”

  Chapter 4

  A week and a half in, and Adele was both getting into a groove and constantly surprised by the unpredictable way of things on the island. The chance monsoons, the moody tides, the transient characters, not to mention the changes in her peers and herself—not even a week had passed, and people were sharing deep emotional truths, and performing physical feats they hadn’t thought possible. For Adele’s part, she’d kept the specifics of her emotional baggage to herself, but did feel a sense of calm and a sort of (she felt silly saying it, but it really was the best word) “centering” at her core. Plus she’d been able to hold crow pose for half a minute, something she’d thought impossible just a week ago.

  Relationships, too, were changing. Her feelings toward the women around her felt soft and simple, uncomplicated by the normal tensions of female-to-female relationships. Stateside Adele was quick to be annoyed, quick to judge, and
yet here, she felt a pure warmth toward the ladies around her. She’d begun to have nightly post-dinner chats with her roommate Diane on their front porch, sipping coconut water straight from the fruit, holding the big, rough spheres in their hands as they gazed out at the ocean.

  She’d also begun to feel a shift in her interactions with Ajuni. Beyond the authenticity she felt between herself and everyone in the group, there was an added…intimacy? That word seemed too weighted, and yet, she couldn’t think of another one to describe the feeling she sometimes got from him.

  Then again, she wasn’t sure she should trust her own judgment on such matters. It had been two and a half years since her last real relationship, and she didn’t think even that was the best standard by which to measure male-female interactions. She and Jeremy had met in law school, and both been such type A go-getters that their relationship had been based largely on a shared lust for ambition, rather than each other. At least, that’s the retrospective conclusion she’d drawn after document review replaced sex with little grief from either party. The handful of dates she’d gone on since then hadn’t given her much more insight into interpreting signals and gauging chemistry with the opposite sex.

  Probably it was the case that Ajuni was just an intimate person. He’d built his life around the concept of transcending borders—between the physical and the spiritual, between living and dying, between one person and another. So it made sense that his eye contact penetrated, that his hands turned a casual touch into a lingering caress, that his words reverberated in your mind, blanketing other thoughts in velvet.

  During asana practice that morning, she couldn’t seem to obey Val’s exhortations to “clear your mind and focus on your breath”—that whole don’t-think-about-anything part was still a major hurdle for her—and her thoughts had turned to Ajuni. She watched him weave amongst the bodies, murmuring the melodic names of the poses, the liquid verbs describing each action, the poetic descriptions of body parts.