For a second or two I think I saw the beginning of what just might be a tear in his eyes, but even that didn’t move me. There had been too many tears already because of bugil and so I just left him sitting there.
I started to leave Starbucks and as I was getting to the door two young girls came in. They looked very pretty and one of them smiled as she held the door open for me so I smiled back. As I walked out I heard her friend shout out a greeting to someone;
‘Neil,’ she shouted. ‘How are you?’
I turned and see her go over to Charlie and embrace him.
Neil???????
I was confused and about to go back inside and demand more answers but suddenly I was overcome with a strange calmness and I realised it just didn’t matter anymore.
I smiled to myself and started walking back through the mall to where I could get a taxi or bus home. I didn’t know what would happen with me and Gary, but I decided I was going to have fun finding out. I didn’t know if I really loved him or not but I decided I was not going to be such a naïve mummy’s girl again, that’s for sure.
I was standing at the bus stop when I suddenly saw Selvey’s face looking back at me.
It was on a poster stuck onto the bus stop and I looked closer. It was information about a drama taking place at the National Theatre here in Jakarta and Selvey was acting in it. In fact, she was the star!
Well, I almost peed myself laughing. That was her big secret. That was why she had been so strange recently, speaking a lot in English on the phone. Hahaha … she had been practicing for her acting!
Oh my goodness!
That’s why she had extra clothes in the office and make up and perfume, it was all for her rehearsals!
When I stopped laughing I took my phone out of my bag and I called Naughty Boy Ari.
‘Ari,’ I said, ‘You won’t believe what I just found out!’
3
Jack’s Story
I am Setiono Jacobsen, but you can call me Jack, and this is my story.
I live in Jakarta, which I am sure you know is the capital city of Indonesia, and I am a poor man but I am on the way up, and it is only a matter of time until I improve myself and my position in life. This is what I tell everybody I meet for the first time, and it is what I say to myself and to my God when I pray.
It is a matter of time. That’s all.
I will tell you my story from the beginning up until now and then I am sure you will be able to see why I feel this way and you may even agree with me.
I am twenty-four years old and I am from a small village called Ciang in the centre of Java. Java is the largest island of over one thousand islands in the archipelago of Indonesia. Ciang is about four hundred kilometres from where I live now, which is in the heart of Jakarta.
I was born in a field twenty-four years ago. This was because my mother was a farm worker, and when she was pregnant with me she kept working right up to the day I came into the world. She couldn’t afford to take many days off work and so when she went into labour there was no time to get to a hospital or even back to the farmhouse. Everyone she was working with at the time helped with the delivery, and after I was born then my mother and I were carried across the fields to the farmhouse where my mother rested for the remainder of that day and went back to work the next.
I was the sixth child to be born alive and survive in our family (there were two siblings before me who died just after they were born) and another two babies were born to my mom in later years. This meant that our family was of average size for the time and place, and was full of laughter and love, if not money and food.
My parents are good hard-working people and have always looked after their children well and with love, but have never been able to provide as much for us as they would have liked. However, they did insist that all eight of us got at least some education, and both I and my two younger brothers were educated all the way up to junior high school.
My parents are old now and don’t work very much. My mother just washes people’s clothes or runs errands for them back in Ciang, while my father has a motorcycle and sometimes ferries people around for small sums of money. They live alone now with just a young maid as all us children have left home.
The four boys in our family have all left the village, as have two of my sisters, while the other two girls are still in the village but are long-married with their own families now.
This is a very brief introduction to me and my family, and so now I will give you more details before I get to the main part of my story.
When I was a small boy, I sometimes helped my mother in the fields or I played with my older brother, Heri, but usually I preferred to be alone. I was known as a ‘muser’ within my gang of friends and family, as I often gave the appearance of musing, or daydreaming, when I should have been doing something else.
I guess I was a bit of a daydreamer in those days, but my musing wasn’t aimless or useless
