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SNOWING IN BALI

Rafael was a little bit fed up with me.

– Sparrow

Sparrow flew out on the next flight at 7 am. For nearly three hours his heart beat hard and fast as he was absorbed by a movie in his head, imagining police with machineguns, a squalid little cell, his life razed, wiped, finished. Terrible visuals were rushing through his brain. He thought about his life. Was his dead father looking down disappointed? What would his mum think if he went to jail? Would he ever see his sister again? He questioned why he was doing this – he was a qualified architect – but he knew it was the lure of $12,000 fast cash. Even in these darkest moments, he didn’t think of ditching the bag. All too soon he arrived in Bali, and the bag was sitting on the floor near the conveyor belt. He showed his ticket, grabbed the bag and walked over to customs. He was terrified. This was it, right now, the seconds he’d been dreading; mere seconds but they could wipe out the entire rest of his life. He breezed past. Ordeal over.

Suddenly, he felt like a rag doll that had been flung around interminably by a heavyweight champ. The mind-blowing nervous tension fizzled into limp-limbed exhaustion; the line of adrenalin that had sustained him had been cut. As he walked out, home free, into Bali’s bright sunshine and cloying heat, he felt like collapsing. He was happy to see Rafael standing waiting for him among the tourists, vaguely disguised in a sports cap, with his hair scrunched up into it, and sunglasses. The old friends smiled at each other, but when Sparrow discovered Rafael had come on his motorbike and not in his car, he simply slung him the bag and teetered off on his spindly legs into the distance to get a taxi. He was way too wobbly to sit on the back of a bike.