"Hello, what are you doing?" I asked him, surprised at my forwardness.

"Waiting for the moon to rise."

"So am I."

"Come watch with me. It won't come up until the sun goes down."

I joined him on the steps. He was wearing cut-off short pants and a white T-shirt, bare feet. His hair fell naturally into one eye and he kept tossing his head back to flick it out of his way. His forearms were muscular and darkly tanned. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Laurie."

"Lowee."

"Yes, and you?"

"Nyoman Bagus."

His name intrigued me. The Balinese have only four first names, regardless of their gender. The first child is Wayan, the second child is Made, the third child is Nyoman and the fourth is Ketut. If a mother has a fifth and sixth child, she starts all over again, calling the children Wayan, Made, and so on. So Nyoman Bagus was the third child (or else the seventh) but his last name, Bagus, I had learned meant "good." The woman I rented my guest house from had explained that the Balinese say "bagus" with varying emphasis, depending on how "good" something actually is. If someone were to ask you how you are feeling and you're just OK, you would say "bagus," flatly. If you happened to be exceptionally happy that day, you would say "bagus!" with great emphasis, practically shout the word.

Nyoman Bagus was an artist, a painter. This explained his well-developed forearms. He offered to show me his latest works of art. Inside his dark and cluttered shop, I saw massive canvases of jungles and dark forests filled with mythological beasts, freakish ghouls and demons, winged maidens, sleeping princes, and golden mountain people. Other paintings were of bizarre hairy animals entwined with powerful goddesses, ocean birds, and sorcerers. One painting was of the moon. I got lost inside Nyoman Bagus's paintings. Only when he suggested we go for a ride on his motorbike to watch the moonrise did I find my way back to earth.

"I'd love to go."

Nyoman Bagus put on some shoes. They were leather sandals and would not be considered safe, or even legal, to wear on a motorbike where I come from. He owned no helmets either, which was fine by me. I watched him swing his leg over the bike and rev the engine. He tossed the unruly flop of hair out of his eye as he turned to smile at me. "I usually drive my mother on here. This is much better." I laughed and climbed on the back. I was used to riding on the back of motorcycles.

We set off to the west. "We'll go to the sea," he shouted over his shoulder as we sped down the winding dirt road beside the rice paddy.

"To the moonrise," I shouted back.

We passed through village after village, all alight with color and ornate temples, golden gates, and art in every crevice. We saw carvings along the roadside, carvings of beasts, gods, and demonic masks. I could smell roasting bananas and sweet blossoms, incense and musty bamboo mats. We passed seas of terraced rice fields that looked like green ocean waves. Bali is volcanically active and the fecundity is extravagant. The scent of frangipani blossoms saturated the air so thickly, I felt drunk. Prehistoric tree ferns and passionate wild flowers hung down from the cliffs beside the road. Color burst out of the moist ground. And in every village, in front of the thatched huts, children laughed and waved at us. Outside one village, women with sarongs around their waists were washing themselves beside the road in a bathing place under a grove of trees. They had come in from the end of a day's work in the rice paddles. As we drove by the bathing women, they laughed and covered their breasts, waved at us, and splashed water at each other. We passed high above a lush river gorge and I saw red temples hidden down in the trees, temples to house spirits of the dead. Through a jungled woods we drove too fast around curves. At the edges of my eyes were flashes and movements among the branches, mystical birds, I imagined, and wild, running animals. If I looked directly into the forest, I couldn't see anything but trees. Finally we reached the sea.

"The Balinese don't look to the sea. We look to the mountains. People are afraid of the sea," said Nyoman Bagus when we stopped and parked on the beach. "But I like it here. I like the life of the sea, the things that crawl out of the water and under the sand, the sea beasts."

We walked along the shore examining the sea beasts. Everything we picked up we would inspect with the utmost attention and fascination. We found vibrant purple coral formations that we stuffed into our pockets, perfect sand dollars, hermit crabs and jellied things attached to stones. On our stomachs we lay down to watch tropical fish trapped in shallow tide pools. We skipped down the shore using giant rubbery seaweed tubes as skipping ropes. The white surf crashed over our feet and the salty wind blew warm sultry air on our faces as we gazed into the sand. Then we looked up.

"Look, the moon." Nyoman Bagus saw it first, the sea giving birth to the moon. As orange as the setting sun it reflected, the moon stirred the sky in a hush too soft for human ears. The sea beasts must have heard the rising of the moon because the beach began to transform. Everything was quieter, more muted. Sharp edges of rocks and even the cutting surf adopted subtler tendencies, mistier, as details became lost in shadowy curves and shapes impossible to define. A sea bird cried out for love down the shore. A fish flung itself straight up out of the ocean into the world of air, then down again into the water. I wanted to dive into the ocean, enter the sea beasts' domain. "Oh no, we can't go in there. Poisonous snakes, the sea is full of them," said Nyoman Bagus.

We sat on the sand instead and watched the moon. Nyoman Bagus put his arm around my shoulder and asked what my favorite American movies were. It had been months since anyone had put his arms around me. I felt like dissolving my entire body into the tender sand.

Next page | Lost in the warm scent and skin of each other