Orange Is the New Black

Northampton headed west with my buddy Lisa, I felt as if I were finally embarking on my life. I felt ready for anything.
    Lisa and I drove nonstop from Massachusetts to the Montana border, taking turns sleeping and driving. In the middle of the night we pulled into a rest stop to sleep, where we awoke to see the incredible golden eastern Montana dawn. I could not remember ever being so happy. After lingering in Big Sky country, we sped through Wyoming and Nevada until finally we sailed over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. I had a plane to catch.
    What would I need for my journey to Indonesia? I had no idea. I packed one small L.L. Bean duffel bag with a pair of black silk pants, a tank dress, blue-jean cutoffs, three T-shirts, a red silk shirt, a black miniskirt, my running gear, and a pair of black cowboy boots. I was so excited, I forgot to pack a bathing suit.
    Upon arrival in Paris, I went straight to the Garuda counter to claim my ticket to Bali. They had never heard of me. Freaked out, I sat down at an airport restaurant, ordered a coffee, and tried to decide what to do. The days of cell phones and e-mail were still in the future, and I had no idea how to reach Nora; I assumed something must have gotten lost in translation. Finally I got up and went to the newsstand, bought a Paris guidebook, and picked out a cheap hotel that was centrally located in the sixth arrondissement. (My one credit card had a very low limit.) From my little room I could see the rooftops of Paris. I called Jack, Nora’s old friend and now business partner in the States. Snide and superior and obsessed with prostitutes, Jack was not one of my favorite people.
    “I’m stranded in Paris. Nothing Nora told me is right. What should I do?” I asked him.
    Jack was annoyed but decided he could not leave me to my own devices. “Go find a Western Union. Tomorrow I’ll wire you money for a ticket.”
    The wire didn’t come for several days, but I didn’t mind; I wandered Paris in a haze of excitement, taking everything in. Alongside most French women I looked like a teenager, so to counter this I bought a pair of spidery and beautiful black crochet stockings to go with my Doc Martens and miniskirt. I didn’t care if I ever left Paris. I was in heaven, all alone.
    W HEN I got off the smoky thirteen-hour flight from Paris to Bali, I was surprised to see my former brewery coworker Billy waiting for me, towering above the Indonesians with a big grin on his freckled face. Billy could have passed for my brother, strawberry blond with bright blue eyes. “Nora’s waiting at the resort. You’re going to love it here!” he said. Reunited with Nora in our luxurious room, I felt shy with her in this unfamiliar setting. But she acted as if this were all perfectly normal.
    Bali was a bacchanalia: days and nights of sunbathing, drinking, and dancing until all hours with Nora’s crew of gay boys, any prettylocals who wanted to help us spend money, and young Euros and Aussies we met in the clubs at Kuta beach. I went to the street market to buy a bikini and sarong, bartered for carved masks and silver jewelry, and walked the back roads of Nusa Dua talking to the friendly locals. Expeditions to temples, parasailing, and scuba diving offered other diversions—the Balinese scuba instructors loved the long-finned, jeweled, and elegant blue fish that had been tattooed on my neck back in New England and eagerly showed me their own tattoos. But the festivities were punctuated by tense phone calls between Nora and Alaji, or Nora and Jack.
    The way their business worked was simple. From West Africa, Alaji would make it known to select people in the States that he had “contracts” for units of drugs (usually custom-built suitcases with heroin sewn into the linings) available—they could turn up at any number of places in the world. People like Nora and Jack (essentially subcontractors) would arrange to transport the suitcases into the States, where they were handed off to an anonymous pickup. It was up to them to figure out how to manage the transport—recruiting couriers, training them on how to get through customs undetected, paying for their “vacations” and their fees.
    Nora and Jack were not the only people with whom Alaji worked; in fact, Nora was now competing with Jonathan Bibby, the “art dealer” who had originally trained her, for Alaji’s business. The tension I observed in Nora derived from how many “contracts” were available,