The guard spoke to the driver again and went to open the barrier. The driver continued through the arch and followed the road to the main hotel complex. Milton had checked the hotel website during the journey and had seen that it had been built on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The reception was actually at the hotel’s fifteenth floor, with the rest of the property descending to the beach below.

The driver pulled up and Milton’s door was opened by a porter. Milton paid the cabbie and got out into the sweltering heat. He looked around and admired the manicured gardens. The entrance to the hotel sat beyond a wooden pagoda that sheltered two sofas arranged around a small fountain. Milton asked the porter for directions to the restaurant and was encouraged to follow along as the man took him to an elevator and pressed the button that would take him to the foot of the cliff. Milton tipped the man with a dollar and turned to admire the view of the darkening horizon as the elevator dropped down.

The hotel was huge, stretching out in both directions. This was a very different part of Bali than the area he had just left. This was for foreign money. He wondered how many tourists ever ventured beyond the fringes of these kinds of establishments, impressive yet anodyne and disinfected, and saw the real Bali, the country that people lived in rather than just visited.

The elevator slid to a halt and the doors opened.

“John!”

Milton turned to see Victoria striding toward him, a broad grin on her face. She ignored the hand Milton extended and pulled him into an embrace. Milton was not keen on outward shows of affection, but he remembered that she had always been something of a hugger, especially after she had conquered the bottle. She was wearing a crumpled linen sundress and a pair of sandals that might have been described as shabbily chic. Her face was deeply tanned, and when she smiled, her white teeth stood out against the nutty brown.

“There’s a sight for sore eyes,” Victoria said. “How long?”

“Years.”

“I know exactly how many,” she said. “I last saw you when I got my six-month chip. And that was six years ago. Actually, six years, two months and thirteen days.”

“Not that you’re counting,” Milton said.

“You know how it is,” she said.

Milton did know. Recovering alcoholics gave thanks for every day that they shunned the next drink. He had originally likened it to a convict scratching the passing days into the wall of a cell, but now he saw the good sense in keeping track; the more days that had been accumulated, the more there was to lose.

“You’re still sober, then?”

“Couple of wobbles here and there,” she said, “but I managed to stay the course. You?”

Milton nodded. “Same.”