I went out with Brazilian Felipe again, twice over the weekend. On Saturday I brought him to meet Wayan and the kids, and Tutti made drawings of houses for him while Wayan winked suggestively behind his back and mouthed, "New boyfriend?" and I kept shaking my head, "No, no, no."(Though I'll tell you what—I'm not thinking about that cute Welsh guy anymore.) I also brought Felipe to meet Ketut, my medicine man, and Ketut read his palm and pro-nounced my friend, no fewer than seven times (while fixing me with a penetrating stare), to be "a good man, a very good man, a very, very good man. Not a bad man, Liss—a good man."

我又和斐利贝一同出去，周末出去两次。我在周六带他去见大姐与孩子们，图蒂画房子给他看，大姐则在他背后挤眉弄眼，以口形默示"新男友"？我不断摇头："不是，不是。"（尽管我已把那个威尔士家伙抛诸脑后了。）我还把斐利贝带去见我的药师赖爷，赖爷为我的朋友看手相，断言——不下七次（同时以锐利的眼神直盯着我看）——他是"好男人，非常好的男人，非常非常好的男人。不是坏男人，小莉——是好男人。"

Then on Sunday, Felipe asked me if I'd like to spend a day at the beach. It occurred to me that I'd been living here in Bali for two months already and had not yet seen the beach, which now seemed like sheer idiocy, so I said yes. He picked me up at my house in his jeep and we drove an hour to this hidden little beach in Pedangbai where hardly any tourists ever go. This place that he took me to, it was as good an imitation of paradise as anything I'd ever seen, with blue water and white sand and the shade of palm trees. We talked all day, interrupting our talking only to swim and nap and read, sometimes reading aloud to each other. These Balinese women in a shack behind the beach grilled us freshly caught fish, and we bought cold beers and chilled fruit. Dallying in the waves, we told each other whatever was left of the life story details which we hadn't yet covered in the past few weeks of evenings spent out to-gether in the quietest restaurants in Ubud, talking over bottles and bottles of wine.

而后斐利贝在周日问我想不想去海滩。我突然想到自己在巴厘岛住了两个月之久，却还没见过海滩，简直荒唐，于是我说好。他开着自己的吉普车来接我，我们花了一小时的车程去到帕当湾（Pedangbai）几乎没有游客流连的隐密小沙滩。这个地方简直是我见过最像天堂的地方，碧海、白沙、棕榈树阴。我们聊了一整天，偶尔停下来游泳、打盹、看书，时而为对方朗诵。海滩棚屋里的妇女烤捕获的鲜鱼给我们吃，我们买了冰啤酒和水果。我们在海浪中嬉戏时，诉说着彼此过去几星期来在乌布各家餐厅喝酒共度夜晚时尚未提及的人生细节。

He liked my body, he told me, after the initial viewing at the beach. He told me that Brazili-ans have a term for exactly my kind of body (of course they do), which is magra-falsa, trans-lating as "fake thin," meaning that the woman looks slender enough from a distance, but when you get up close, you can see that she's actually quite round and fleshy, which Brazilians con-sider a good thing. God bless Brazilians. As we lay out on our towels talking, he would reach over sometimes and brush sand off my nose, or push a mutinying hair out of my face. We talked for about ten solid hours. Then it was dark, so we packed up our things and went for a walk through the not-very-well-lit dirt road main street of this old Balinese fishing village, linked comfortably arm-in-arm under the stars. That's when Felipe from Brazil asked me in the most natural and relaxed of ways (almost as if he were wondering if we should get a bite to eat), "Should we have an affair together, Liz? What do you think?"

他告诉我，他喜欢我的身材，在海边第一次目睹之后。他说巴西人对我这种身材有个特定的说法，就是"magra-falsa"，译为"假瘦"，即这女人远远看来苗条，近看却发现她其实颇丰腴，在巴西人眼里很是不错，愿神保佑巴西人。我们躺在毛巾上谈话时，有时他伸手过来拍去我鼻子上的沙，或拨去我脸上的乱发。我们聊了整整十小时左右。而后天色渐黑，于是我们收拾东西，漫步穿越巴厘岛这古老渔村昏暗的泥土主街，在星光下愉快地勾着手。这时，巴西人斐利贝十分自然而轻松地（仿佛在考虑我们是否该吃点东西）问我说："我们是否该谈场恋爱，小莉？你说呢？"

I liked everything about the way this was happening. Not with an action—not with an attempted kiss or a daring move—but with a question. And the correct question, too. I remembered something my therapist had said to me over a year ago before I'd left on this journey. I'd told her that I thought I wanted to remain celibate for this whole year of traveling, but worried, "What if I meet someone I really like? What should I do? Should I get together with him or not? Should I maintain my autonomy? Or treat myself to a romance?" My therapist replied with an indulgent smile, "You know, Liz—all this can be discussed at the time the issue actually arises, with the person in question."

我喜欢这一切的发生方式。不是以行动——不是打算亲吻我，或采取大胆行动——而是提问一个问题，而且是正确的问题。我记得一年前展开这趟旅行前，我的治疗师说过的话。我跟她说，我希望在这一整年的旅程中维持单身，却担心"假使遇上自己真正喜欢的人呢？该如何是好？我该不该跟他在一起？我是否该保持自己的自主性？或者让自己享受一场恋情？"我的治疗师宽容地笑道："你晓得，小莉——这些可以等问题发生时，再和当事人一起讨论。"