Palimpsest of Us

Ambon, 2019

Rain.

Mira hadn’t expected this much rain. The sky had been overcast ever since her flight left Makassar and landed at Pattimura Airport. But clouds were not a promise. They were only a possibility.

Then the rain came just as she had landed and was looking around for a public minivan or taxi to take her into the city. It was entirely the sky’s decision, apparently, though Mira had hoped the clouds might hold their water a little longer, at least until she reached the City Hotel.

The sign reading “City Hotel” was visible from where she stood taking shelter in front of a karaoke place that was still closed. The hotel was so close, yet somehow still out of reach. She could run for it, but she didn’t want to arrive completely soaked and bedraggled.

On the plane, Mira had struck up a conversation with a woman. Perhaps because she looked sweet and harmless, the woman had offered to share a taxi with her once they landed. “I’ll pay. We’re going the same way.”

Mira was petite, with full cheeks, brown skin, and narrow eyes that almost always looked as though she were smiling. Offers like this came her way fairly often, but she usually turned them down.

This time, Mira had almost refused too, not because she was afraid of being drugged on the way and sold somewhere, but out of the reflex of someone who had lived independently for too long. But then Mira remembered: she was here because she was trying to stop saying no to things that felt too good. Besides, in weather like this, it would be difficult to find a Damri bus or public minivan quickly, or without having to squeeze herself into a crowd.

“Thank you,” Mira said. The words felt strangely unfamiliar.

But the car only stopped at the Tulukabessy intersection, because the woman was turning left toward Pitu Ina, while the City Hotel was to the right. Mira got out and ran across the street toward the Tulukabessy turn, in front of the karaoke place.

Mira’s clothes were wet. So was her phone, after water seeped into her pocket. She wiped it with the relatively dry part of her pants, the section around the back of her hip that was covered by her backpack, which was wet too.

Mira checked her phone. It was fine. The phone was still working perfectly, with no damage to the mechanism or screen. There was one incoming WhatsApp message.

“Landed?” Rowan. Thirty minutes ago.

Mira typed: “100 meters from you, in front of the karaoke place, not far from the hotel. Soaked.”

Being soaked was the risk she had taken by accepting a stranger’s offer to share a taxi and agreeing to get dropped off on the road. Trace it back far enough, and it was because she had agreed to come to Ambon. Go further back, and it all began when Mira decided to reply to Rowan’s messages. Three months ago.

Mira glanced at her phone screen again. Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

“Stay there. I’ll be there in five minutes. Bring an umbrella.”

Mira stared at the screen. Her heart did something ridiculous: beating far too fast for someone who was only about to meet an acquaintance. But perhaps that unusual heartbeat was simply the effect of suddenly realizing that Mira had actually been reckless enough to fly here to meet someone she had known only through three months of messages.

It had all started with a message that appeared on the dating app Mira had installed a few months earlier. This wasn’t the first time Mira had used a dating app. Her friends had called her almost pathological. Match. Chat. Meet. Block. She had done it over and over again. Then she would get bored, uninstall the app, and install it again.

Then Mira found Rowan, whose bio read: “I believe in accidents that aren’t accidents. Everything else is negotiable.”

Matched.

Then they exchanged messages almost all night. Then every day. Everything was done through text. Philosophy at two in the morning. Theology before breakfast. Long voice notes about Taoism and whether the universe had a purpose or was simply running on momentum.

Rowan was in Barcelona. Mira was in Jakarta. Rowan said he had moved to Barcelona from California ten years ago, around the same time Mira had started building a life in Jakarta.

“When can we meet?” Mira asked at one point.

“I’ll be going to Indonesia. December.”

A tourist boyfriend, Mira thought. Maybe Rowan had opened a dating app and set his search radius to Jakarta because he was planning a vacation. The typical kind looking for some temporary sweetness, then disappearing with his return ticket.

But Mira didn’t turn him down. If it was fun, why not? Every now and then, in the middle of her busy work life, there was nothing wrong with having some fun.

Except that, for Mira, pleasure never came without conversation. She needed something deeper, something that didn’t stop at physical attraction or a mere intellectual match that could sometimes feel superficial. Those things didn’t automatically make her soul tremble. Meanwhile, encounters through dating apps were also determined by algorithms that worked as if they were fate. So, through the cycle of match, chat, meet, block, repeat, she rarely found anyone who stayed long enough for something deeper to take root in her heart.

Still, among all those matches, Mira secretly hoped she would find one, two, or maybe more connections that went deeper.

“Good! To Jakarta or somewhere else?”

“Hmm... I’m planning to go to Raja Ampat. But before that, maybe Maluku. Ambon, then Saparua or Banda Neira.”

“Why Maluku?”

“I love the sea. It inspires me. Want to join? We could meet in Ambon.” Rowan threw the invitation out there, either completely serious or just talking off the top of his head.

“Okay.” Mira didn’t give Rowan a chance to take the invitation back.

That same night, they bought tickets to Maluku for the following month. They would both leave from Jakarta, but decided to fly separately.

Rowan had arrived in Ambon early that morning. Mira chose a morning flight and arrived around midday, edging toward afternoon, never imagining that it would rain this hard.

Several minutes passed, but the rain still didn’t let up. At least Mira was under a safe roof, even if the rain was blowing in from the side.

Mira’s phone rang.

“I’m walking from the hotel now. One or two minutes. Are you still in front of the karaoke place?” Rowan said over the roar of the rain.

“Still here. I think I can see you.”

Mira saw him before Rowan saw her. Tall, but not particularly tall. Thin. Pale skin. Freckles everywhere. His eyes were blue, almost gray. His blond hair was a mess.

Rowan was holding a black umbrella that looked completely useless. One of its ribs had bent backward, forming a strange upward curve. Another had come loose and dangled down, making a downward curve on the other side.

Then Rowan looked toward Mira. He smiled.

For a moment, time seemed to stop, but the world kept turning. The rain kept falling. A motorbike ridden by someone in a blue raincoat passed by, splashing water everywhere. Somewhere in the neighboring shop house, a radio was playing a Sumatran song, faint beneath the sound of the rain.

Amid all that ordinary motion, something changed direction. Like a gear that had briefly caught before turning again. Like a lock suddenly giving way. Like finally finding a word you had been searching for and having it emerge, whole, from your mouth.

“You’re real,” Rowan said when he reached the place where Mira was sheltering.

“You are too.”

They stood two meters apart. Water raced down their clothes, keeping time with the pounding of their hearts as they looked at each other.

“Your umbrella is broken,” Mira said.

“Yes.”

“Completely useless.”

“Absolutely.”

“But you brought it anyway.”

“The intention was there.” Rowan held it up, looking at the broken umbrella with a strange kind of affection.

The next minute, they walked together toward the hotel, doing their best to make use of the black umbrella that had long since given up trying to keep the rain out. Over the course of those hundred meters, their wet arms brushed against each other.

This was the moment when three months of conversation collapsed into something immediate and dangerous.