The Last Good Paradise: A Novel Page 12

  Then the unimaginable happened—she fell asleep.

  Asleep as in an hour of deeply passed out. Only the rising tide nibbling the soles of her feet (“Richard?” she mumbled) woke her up. She sat up and was briefly scandalized to find herself bare-chested—who did that?—until she remembered. The tender white virginal flesh was now flaming pink. When she tugged her suit straps back up, the friction made her cry out in pain. Damn.

  She scuttled backward to the shade of an overhanging palm, pulled her suit back down because the press of spandex stung, and took out her lunch. Pulling the cork, she drank straight out of the bottle. The joys of solitude. She ate the whole sandwich in big, unladylike chunks, wolfed through the fruit, spitting pits and seeds into the sand, and then glugged down the rest of the wine. Her head buzzed pleasantly as she watched the white-foamed surf ride in on green waves, heard the percussive roar of breakers on the reef. She felt literally at the edge of the earth, alone, and reveled in it.

  After twenty minutes, she got a little bored and decided to pull out her paperback.

  One longed for the Robinson Crusoe experience only to a point. Spirits picked up considerably when the character Friday showed up. No fun at all to be shipwrecked with nothing: no food, no clothing, no communication, no companionship. What Ann had was perfect—a day alone, topless, and then a gourmet dinner, a luxurious bungalow, a companionable-enough husband. It was the precarious balancing act between solitude and community that made perfection. She got to her feet, leaving her string bag behind for later. No one would steal it. Another part of the Crusoe experience: the lack of crime. It was as if you were president of your own country. Forget that—the president had hardly any control over the country. Instead you were benevolent dictator, king, or, better, you were a god, little g, over your terrain, and could make it over to your own liking.

  A swim would be perfect—the water would be deliciously calming on her burning skin. She did a strong breaststroke parallel to the shore, the straps of the pulled-down bathing suit dragging like an underwater parachute, bunching uncomfortably between her legs. Why not go for the full experience?

  She did a sidestroke perpendicular to shore and bodysurfed till her stomach scuffed against sand, hesitated, then unpeeled herself from the suit as if it were an old dead skin. In many ways it was harder for Ann to take off her bathing suit than to give up being an attorney—she had never seen herself as a lawyer, but she thought she knew what kind of woman she was, and that didn’t include being a nude woman on a beach. Neither assumption ended up being the whole story.

  Fearing the incoming tide, Ann wadded the suit into a ball and threw it back into the tree line so that it wouldn’t get swept out. She took a mental snapshot so that she could find the suit again—a clump of five palms, some boulders, more trees. The interior was so repetitive one could circle the island without ever realizing it. The key was to face out and memorize the shape of the cove—hers was heart-shaped.

  Only a few days ago, she had been waylaid by the sight of a partially clad Wende, and now look at her. Filled with pure animal good spirits, she ran, kicking up the sand (she may have even let out a little victory howl), and jumped into the surf, splashing up drops of water that briefly sparked in the sunlight before gravity recaptured them. Then she dove deeply into the salty embrace of the lagoon.

  The green fairy incident in Loren’s bungalow had set off an estrangement between Richard and her that she was at the moment not at great pains to fix. As much as she loved her husband and wished to protect him, Ann admitted to a dark streak of wanting to shake him up.

  Although she was mildly jealous of his lust for Wende, she wasn’t jealous enough for the simple reason that she knew Richard wouldn’t act on it. The reason for nonaction had less to do with fidelity than with a basic tentativeness on his part, a timidity that extended from his personal life to his professional—Richard simply didn’t believe in himself enough to have an affair. Ann had always suspected that this was why he got swept up by Javi; they were so clearly opposites.

  * * *

  After Ann and Richard had been dating about a year, he went through a period Ann later called his depression. It coincided with a master class that included a trip to France to learn butchery. Ann had just started to work, and there was no way she could leave for a month. Javi had already moved to LA to work as commis at a famous restaurant; Richard would join him once the course was over.

  Richard came back changed, and the only logical conclusion was that it was due to meeting a girl. Ann waited for the announcement that he was breaking up with her, but it didn’t come. Instead Richard worked at the restaurant longer and longer hours. When he came home, haggard, he went straight to bed. Their sex life sputtered out. Ann figured he was too nice to break up with her, or didn’t know how. When he began talking about apprenticing with a famous pastry chef in Paris, that was the last straw.

  Ann called Javi up and asked him to have a drink with her after work. She needed to run something by him.

  She waited for him at a trendy Westside bar he chose. Ann felt guilty and out of place to even be in such a place without Richard knowing. It was happy hour, and she had been elbowed off the bar, and crowded at her table, and one by one her empty chairs had been removed by adjoining parties. She feared that if she went to the bathroom, the table would be gone on her return.

  When Javi walked in—jeans, black T-shirt, wetted-down hair—men and women turned to stare. Javi had charisma; he looked like someone whose name you should know. A chair miraculously reappeared along with a menu. The cocktail waitress whom Ann couldn’t flag down for a glass of water was now all attention while he ordered shots of a little-known brand of exclusive tequila. Then he turned to Ann.

  This was Javi’s great gift—when he directed all that magnetism, charisma, and wattage on a poor single female entity, said entity felt so grateful. Now Ann fumbled over how she would inform him she was breaking up with his best friend and wanted his help.

  His dark eyes pooled themselves into hers. He hunched over in his seat and held her hand in both of his, almost like a confessional.

  “You want to dump Richard?”

  “How did you know?”

  “How could I not know? Question to you: How did you last this long? Richard’s messed up, man.”

  Ann hung her head in guilt and, worse, started crying. Smeared black raccoon eyes. “I’m a terrible person.”

  “He doesn’t see you, mi amor. He is too caught up in his own shit.”

  The classic pot calling the kettle black, but she didn’t know it at the time. “He’s good-hearted.”

  “And hardworking. Blah, blah, blah. Pour me another.”

  The waitress hovering nearby made eye contact with Javi, nodded, and shot away like a hunting dog for more tequila.

  “He’s a talented chef,” she said, digging in. “Better than you.”

  To his credit, Javi nodded his head at this blow. “I’ll give you that. Maybe. But it’s about more than dry technique, isn’t it? Where’s the passion? He doesn’t like to sweat. Answer me: Does he take care of you?”

  Ann was startled out of her tears by the question.

  “You know.” He ran his index finger along her wrist.

  “I don’t care—”

  “You don’t care?!” he said with such force that people at other tables turned to look at him. “It’s a crime! Beautiful woman such as yourself. Leaving you at home every night while he goes out for a beer with Alicia. Nice girl, but not a thought in her head. Just ‘You’re the bomb, Richard.’”

  He had said the magic words to release her (although didn’t the very act of choosing lacy, special-occasion La Perla lingerie that morning indicate premeditation on her part?). Half an hour later, she was at Javi’s place with said lacy underwear around her ankles. He was on his knees, making her feel as if she had never known what sex was before. Multiorgasmic, no-strings-attached sex. Afterward he gave her an affectionate peck on the forehead. No talk
of love or a relationship in the future. Only years later did he also admit there had been no Alicia.

  Javi’s cool professionalism as a lover balanced nicely against Richard’s maudlin tenderness, his recent postcoital crying in bed, his lack of initiative pretty much all the time. But somehow Ann put off breaking up with Richard even as she continued to sleep with Javi. She rationalized that this technically was the definition of a transitional stage.

  One day Richard came to Ann’s office unannounced at lunchtime. “Grab a bite?”

  “Sure.”

  On the drive to Richard’s favorite gourmet hot dog stand, she said nothing, fearing that he had found out about the affair.

  “I’ve been fired,” he said as he took the first bite of his grilled cipollini onion, horseradish-mustard-slathered veggie dog.

  “Why?”

  “I told them I wouldn’t work with foie gras or veal any longer. I told them my preference was that they be taken off the menu. These meats in particular are harvested using inhumane methods.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “I have to stand up for what I believe in. It’s been killing me. You are the reason I get up every morning, and I hurt you like this.”

  “Oh.”

  If only she could take back the last month, but that genie wasn’t going back in the bottle. Guilt for betraying Richard, who loved her. More guilt for enjoying her afternoons with Javi so much. Guilt for not breaking up with Richard, or with Javi, for that matter.

  “I was going to propose when I got promoted to line chef.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now what?”

  “How about opening your own restaurant?”

  Richard nodded. “That’s my dream, but not yet. We don’t have the money or experience.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Richard was excited by the prospect of his own place but scared at the reality. Ann didn’t know enough about the business to help. That’s when she thought about Javi. The next afternoon while in his bed, she brought her plan up.

  “You need what he offers,” she said.

  “What about us?”

  “Us ends.”

  But not before a last afternoon-into-the-early-evening of amor. She chastly kissed Javi on the forehead as she left.

  Armed with a master plan, Javi and Richard moved to a new, high-concept restaurant chain and quickly went through the ranks from commis to sous chefs. Richard, with Javi covering for him during really noxious duties, did all the rotations, spending extra time (no Javi) as garde manger, legumier, potager, and entremetier; less time (50 percent Javi) as friturier, grillardin, and rôtisseur; no time (all Javi) as boucher. Surprisingly he excelled as saucier and was promoted to sous position ahead of Javi, but Richard was nothing if not loyal. Ann did her part by working long hours at FFBBP to raise capital.

  Ten years later Ann’s memory of being with Javi was as unthinkable as incest. Not quite that bad, but knowing Javi and his history with women had cured Ann of ever being tempted again.

  * * *

  Hours passed. Ann swam and walked farther than she had ever gone before around the island. The solitude was so complete she couldn’t imagine it being broken. Her thoughts, instead of heading as usual to fixing the disaster of their life back home, stayed right on the island, right in the moment. Even though a week before Richard and she had been on the brink of the success they had so struggled for, today she couldn’t summon much sadness for its passing. How could a sacrifice of ten years be wiped away in a week and not matter? What was wrong with that picture? Did they know that the restaurant would be a success? What if El Gusano turned out to be just another type of prison? Was she becoming gun-shy of commitment of any kind? It felt like she had only done the prep work and skipped the climaxes of her professional life—partnership at the firm, running a restaurant. Already she was at the denouement. For the first time in her carefully planned life, the future remained opaque.

  Surprisingly, it didn’t feel as bad as she thought it would.

  She was gazing up the beach, feeling like some cross between a castaway and a mystic, when she saw it. A sight that literally stopped her in her tracks and took her breath away.

  Her head pounded. The first thing that came to mind was the scene she had read in Robinson Crusoe—when after living alone for many years Crusoe found that single human footprint in the sand of his deserted isle. Far from making him happy, it terrified him. Granted, cannibalism was a problem she thankfully didn’t have. This was a twenty-first-century footprint. She felt dizzy, and then the reality of her nakedness occurred to her. One arm went across her breasts; the other covered her pubic area. Her chest went concave, as if she were less visible that way. Ann turned and ran, realizing, too late, that her bare ass was in full view.

  It took her half an hour to scour the beach backward toward the resort for the heart-shaped cove and clump of five palms, where she found her string bag but no brown bathing suit. When she had retraced her steps to said cove for the fifth time with still no bathing suit in sight, she gave up and scurried to the resort. Her previous confidence and joy in her nakedness, her oneness with nature, had evaporated, replaced by the primal terror one had in dreams of appearing naked. Except she wasn’t dreaming. What were the odds—the first time she had done such a thing—that this would happen? Chastened, she was frantic to hide all evidence of her lapse.

  The dive boat had returned and was tied up at the dock, but thankfully no one was in sight. She hid behind a palm for a minute, surveying the empty path, then made her run for her fare on the other end of the beach. Behind her a door slammed, but she did not dare turn, just barreled straight ahead, determined on invisibility. As she jumped on the lanai and placed her hand on the doorknob, she distinctly heard a wolf whistle. She did not look back.

  * * *

  The scuba diving ménage à trois had taken an interesting turn that day. Before they took off, Richard as usual checked the gas level in the boat, made sure there was an extra can of petrol, established that the radio was operational. Cooked was much too lax. Earlier Richard had talked Loren into teaching him how to check the gas levels in the scuba tanks and inspect them for leaks. On his own initiative, he gave the mouthpieces a quick antibacterial swipe.

  A pattern had developed over the previous outings: At first the three of them would take off and look at things together. Then Dex and Wende would swim away, and Richard obligingly swam in the opposite direction to give them privacy. The first time he was alone, he heard a crunching sound, like someone eating cereal. He thought he was hallucinating when he spotted its source: a beautiful green-and-blue fish, munching on coral. Sometimes Richard was so still, fish came and nibbled on him as if he might be edible. He liked these nibbles and never shooed the fish away. Afterward his skin would have small purplish bites like miniature hickeys. Richard was growing to cherish these times when his mind was so concentrated on the sights around him—lacy fans of white coral; clumped brain coral in magenta, apricot, and green; clown fish; manta rays; sea turtles; blue starfish—that he literally lost himself until either Cooked or Wende swam to get him.

  Needless to say, he greatly preferred Wende’s visits: the halo of blond hair floating, the flipper-elongated mermaid legs, the sparkle of belly button ring. He even liked how her lower jaw and mouth looked under the mask, like a goofy Muppet, making the beauty of her whole face less intimidating. Her running joke was to sneak up behind him and pull on the elastic waistband of his swim trunks, then let go, snapping him. When, lost in his fishy daydreams, he startled and sputtered in his mouthpiece, she found this hilarious. She would tap on his air gauge, indicating it was time to surface, and then they would ascend side by side, air bubbles promiscuously mixing, their heads finally breaking above water, masks crowning their foreheads.

  “Don’t do that,” he said, mock angry even as their thighs brushed while treading water. “Naughty girl.”

  Each day after lunch on one or an
other deserted atoll, Cooked and Dex lit up a joint, and soon both would be conked out. Although in truth Richard wouldn’t have minded a nap himself, Wende was wide-awake and, for his intents and purposes, alone.

  Under normal circumstances, Richard would have put himself out of temptation’s way. He would have toked with the guys, then napped. He’d had years of practice turning a blind eye to pretty waitresses, hostesses, and even the occasional femme fatale chef. But the recurring vision of Ann propped up on that sarcophagal sleigh bed, sopping down that disgusting snot-green drink with Loren, burned behind his eyelids. So when Wende called, he went.

  The first time this happened, they decided to explore a bird sanctuary on one of the islands. As they crawled up on the birds, trying to keep quiet and not scare them away, Richard put out his hand and laid it on her sun-warmed shoulder. He inhaled deeply. She smelled like good soup.

  Another time, guiding her around a rocky shore, he held her hand. Even these chaste acts racked him with shame, as if the two of them were having wild crazy sex orgies each afternoon. He was a swine, a typical horny guy dry-humping as soon as an attractive young woman walked by, and yet … Wende was pretty, Wende was well built, Wende was young, sweet, unironic, worshipful, and, most important of all, Wende didn’t see him as an utter loser.

  Although the demise of El Gusano, the fact of Javi’s profligacy, and Richard’s own carelessness in allowing things to come to this unforgivable pass were soul-shattering, what could be done now? His solution was to go back to work. Things would either straighten themselves out or not, but he didn’t envision no longer cooking. Richard cooked, therefore he was. This is where his guilt came in: Ann hated her job. She did it for them, and her sacrifice was on the verge of being wasted. How long would it take Javi to pay them back? It would never happen. There was nothing Richard could do about any of it, and so he lusted after Wende.

  This last week had been revelatory. He had forgotten what normal people did with the empty hours of a day, how long and voluptuous said hours could be when wrapped around pleasure. His usual day started at six a.m., when he rose to accept deliveries at the kitchen, continued to cleaning and prepping, then cooking, ordering, managing staff, and at the end of a long day, two a.m. on average, falling back into bed exhausted. His view of the bigger world was out the kitchen’s back door to the alley. Of course his body was enjoying this leisure, but his soul was restless. The knowledge that he had done his best to be what Ann wanted and failed tore him up.