The Brink by Austin Bunn Read Free Book Online Page B

Haley read the headline and saw in her mind the French girls thrown into the air, an explosion of brides.
    Mac and Haley retreated to two rattan chairs to devour the paper. The previous evening, explosions had destroyed a restaurant on Jimbaran Beach, the tourist zone three miles up the sand. She tried to visualize the street. They’d taken the shuttle from the airport, through narrow streets of low-slung shacks and surf shops, with mopeds darting through every opening in the traffic. The route depressed her. Countlessblack wires crosscrossed above the road; did the whole island run off stolen cable? She saw the water in snatches between the buildings and eventually closed her eyes until they passed through the gates of the resort.
    â€œDid you hear anything?” Haley asked.
    â€œI thought I heard sirens,” Mac said, but he often claimed special, unverifiable knowledge. Apparently, the bombs were crude, pipes stuffed with shrapnel and ball bearings, stashed in backpacks. None of the suspects had been found. The article said the majority of the victims had been islanders, and Haley allowed herself a small, guilty relief. The brides had been spared. On the second page was a photograph of a white man in a ruin of splintered benches and tables. Beside him, she could just make out a leg in the sand. A brown leg, without a person.
    â€œWho does something like this?” Haley asked. Mac shrugged. She wanted someone to explain the facts to her. She was smart, she could hold it in her head, but this newspaper was toilet paper.
    Bali had not been Haley’s idea. She’d been thinking four-poster beds and long echoing halls of stone. Impressively, Mac had kept the honeymoon location a secret until the airport. Standing at the destination gate, Haley felt ambushed. In an instant, she knew exactly who had given Mac the idea. It was as though Saul had followed her here, into her privacy.
    Saul was Mac’s best friend from college, a curly-haired Virginian with a barking laugh and prominent chipped tooth thathad somehow, despite his pedigree, eluded dentistry. Saul had spent a year island-hopping in Indonesia, lugging two surfboards in a giant duffel. Five months ago, he’d returned to the States and crashed on their couch in Rogers Park to see if “Chicago was next.” He was one of those people who appeared to live exclusively outdoors, on a mysterious trickle of cash. At different points, Saul had taught snowboarding, led wilderness adventures for deaf teenagers, built rustic log cabins for millionaires in Montana.
    â€œWill he make me feel pathetic for not having some amazing life?” Haley had asked on the way to the airport to pick him up. She visited housing projects and patches of dirt she called “gardens” on all the forms. Her job for the foundation depressed her, would have depressed anybody, seeing that much rebar and broken concrete and kittens in tires. Often, when she pulled up to the curb, she’d have a moment of pure terror, when the idea of opening the car door and “leaving the bubble,” as she called it, felt like a burden too great to shoulder.
    â€œHe can’t make you feel anything, sweetheart,” Mac said. “But I do tend to feel fat and pale around him.”
    Saul arrived in sandals and grimy cargo shorts and sick with stomach flu. He slept for two days. She found sand, fine as flour, on the bathroom tile. They left him the apartment during the day, and odd books, pilfered from their shelves, appeared on the counters. Haley and Mac came home to elaborate meals Saul had made using every possible kitchen implement. Cans of coconut milk mounted in the sink. More thanone fresh pineapple lay quartered on the cutting board for them in the mornings. It was clear Mac loved Saul, or loved how Saul made him remember himself, but Haley found Saul’s restlessness unsettling. She felt like he was going through every drawer while they were at work,