The Last Good Paradise: A Novel Page 4

  “See,” said Richard. “Always a negative, knee-jerk reaction.”

  “Could I have some water?” Ann asked.

  “Of course,” Eve answered. “Flat or sparkling?”

  After Ann downed the full glass in a few gulps, Eve continued.

  “I’ll have to use tough love with you two. I’m sending you on a trip alone together. Tell me the first thing that pops into your mind, Richard, for a romantic place.”

  “Romantic?” Richard repeated, seemingly stumped by the meaning of the word, as if he were on a quiz show. “Something French?”

  “Good! Now, Ann, a landscape that speaks to you.”

  “A desert,” she said, to be contrarian. Fat chance they were going anywhere with the restaurant about to open. They had no money to go on vacation, but she wasn’t about to admit that either.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere!” Eve was so excited she clapped her hands. “You’re building a vision of the future together. Let’s refine. Richard?”

  “Desert? You hate the desert—”

  “No, Richard, please,” Eve said. “No judgment.”

  But both of them knew judgment was all that was left.

  “Okay,” he said, narrowing his eyes in an effort to undo Ann’s choice. “Ocean.”

  “That pretty much leaves Algeria,” Ann said.

  “Okay, okay. You’re making it tougher,” Eve conceded.

  “A desert island!” Richard yelled.

  “That’s it! Perfect!” Eve shouted. “I know just the place. Picture water the palest blue. Sand blinding white. The breeze is warm and caressing. No crowds, no kids. It’s like the world has disappeared, and it’s only the two of you. With thousand-count Sferra cotton sheets and the best French wine. Here,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Open your eyes.”

  Ann saw a brochure with pictures not unlike the tropical screen savers she drooled over in her office. “It’s lovely,” she said.

  “It’s required. Don’t come back till you’ve gone.”

  Ann and Richard never went back to therapy.

  * * *

  It was the beginning of high season in the South Pacific. Although there were still plenty of vacancies at the bigger resorts, Ann had her own reasons for seeking out the most isolated, lonesome destination she could find, preferably sans telephone, WiFi access, or electricity.

  She had been obsessed with islands since she was a child. Had it started with Treasure Island, continued through Gilligan’s Island reruns (while her friends debated whether they wanted to be Ginger or Mary Ann, she had always wanted to be the Professor)? Had it ignited with that treacly remake of The Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields? All the endless incarnations of Mutiny on the Bounty? Had it solidified through multiple viewings of Swiss Family Robinson and Island of the Blue Dolphins (she preferred the book)? Her obsession wasn’t even diminished by the depressingly realistic Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, although the relationship with Wilson, the volleyball, was a disturbing glimpse into the void.

  Sure, she had the same triad of tropical island screen savers as everyone else, except for everyone else it represented a vacation, with the promise of alcohol and mindless sunbathing. For Ann, it was something without which her life would remain unfulfilled. These were not the ideal circumstances to live out this fantasy, but really, when would it be ideal? No man was an island, but maybe a woman could be.

  She charged the whole trip on their last credit card that still had room on it and then went out shopping for the most expensive flip-flops she could find—beautiful Italian ones with jewels and buckles sewed on the thin, butter-soft leather straps. That she couldn’t afford them seemed even more reason to have them now.

  When Richard came home from the restaurant and saw the sales receipt, he pounded his fist on the desk till his skin was bruised.

  He was at the vertigo-inducing, ruthless edge of defeat that he’d stepped back from so many times before. It had finally gotten too hard. Richard was tired to death, his body going rogue on him, exhausted by the relentless, penny-pinching life that had befallen them. He revolted from the cheap therapist psychobabble optimism of Eve: things would probably not get better. They were screwed. He would not utter the lie that things would work out because actually it looked like the Dark Horseman of the Apocalypse himself had ridden up. Richard clutched his chest, worried that he might be having a heart attack that their shitty piecemeal insurance would not cover. So be it.

  Then Ann showed him the bag of their stolen, about-to-be-stolen-from-them money.

  “You could be disbarred,” Richard whispered.

  “I’m tired of the law,” she countered.

  * * *

  By bedtime the next night they were on a plane, hurtling over the vast light grid of Los Angeles, the plane flinging itself into the darkness of sky and ocean that was farther west. Ann knew enough about the law to know they weren’t worth pursuing out of the country. Criminal intent in this case was a comfortably gray area.

  Ann looked around and wondered, did other people have a fantasy of how life should be lived? Would any of them pick up and change their circumstances if given the opportunity? She had the fantasy part down, but did she have the guts?

  They clinked umbrella-stabbed cocktails at thirty thousand feet. “Think of it as our first vacation.” Ann took another sip of her drink.

  In the old days, California was the end of the line, but now, with the forces of globalization, one could just keep flinging oneself farther and farther west, hopefully landing somewhere that fulfilled one’s dreams of happiness before one ended up back in the place one started.

  Unnamed Atoll Somewhere in the Tuamotu Archipelago

  Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.

  —MELVILLE, Moby-Dick

  The water surrounding the atoll was the green that green would be if it were drained from a bowl and only its ghost residue remained against the white porcelain. The memory of green, a promise of green. From the plane, the water appeared so translucent as to be almost invisible. The concept of a desert isle became concrete in Ann’s mind. After all, that’s what she specialized in with her clients—turning emotions into concrete plans. Sometimes it was enough just to have a plan. Which this wasn’t. This was pure impulse.

  Looking down on the bleached, arid white of her doughnut-shaped future, conveying as it did a terrible sense of solitude, isolated and alone in its universe of water, she was afraid the concrete would not work for Richard and herself. What was this thing, the pursuit of happiness, that moved out of reach as you approached it? Was the emphasis on the wrong word? Was it simply about pursuit? Did said happiness evaporate when one got within proximity of it, moving off to lure one from yet another difficult, forward location? A fata morgana of the soul? Or, as in their case, did the chance at happiness just take a headlong dive off a cliff?

  They climbed out of the small plane and crawled unsteadily off the wing, cramped legs and aching backs from the long flight from the coast, the longer overnight stay in crowded, noisy Papeete, where they had sat in the sweltering cab, stuck in traffic on the lagoon-side road, diesel fumes spewing from the truck in front. The buildings were defeated and ratty, patinaed by weather. Oily and trash-strewn water lapped at the docks. Tourists moved in bored raids on the stores. It could have been a particularly ripe neighborhood around San Pedro or Long Beach. Paradise seemed very far away.

  As soon as they landed, Richard’s cell had begun ringing—Javi.

  “Don’t answer it,” Ann said.

  Richard looked miserably at the flashing caller ID screen, then switched to vibrate, and every time it did, he winced. Finally, Ann grabbed the phone and flung it out the window of the cab. It bounced on the sidewalk and plopped into the viscous water.

  “We can’t afford roaming charges,” she said.

  That night they couldn’t get to the restaurant the hotel chef had
recommended (a matter of honor in the profession that he sent them to a true foodie place) because the main streets in Papeete were shut down, protesters clogging the thoroughfares, choking traffic to a standstill. They waved signs and banners in French with drawings of what looked like nuclear mushroom clouds atop palm trees: MORUROA E TATOU, ARRETEZ NUCLEAIRES, VERS UN MONDE SANS NUCLEAIRES, PROTEGEZ NOS ENFANTS, NON PLUS SECRETS, COMPENSATION, RESTITUTION.

  “Didn’t they stop testing decades ago?” Ann asked the driver, who was from the Philippines.

  “These people spoiled. Keep showing cancer and three-headed fish, tourists stop coming. Then how happy will they be?”

  Blocked, they turned back and ate an overpriced fifty-dollar hamburger at the hotel.

  The next morning on the way back to the airport, they had the taxi stop at a downtown bank specified by Lorna. Ann went in and came out with her tote bag perceptibly heavier. The island-jumper to Rangiroa in the more remote Tuamotu Archipelago was only an hour flight, but they sat stranded on the tarmac for three hours while the details of a possible strike by the airport personnel were hammered out. Ann had read about sun damage and mosquitoes, and wore cargo pants, a shirt, and a baseball cap made of SPF-treated fabric, which she now had to roll up as she sweltered in the cockpit.

  “Don’t you have any luggage?” the American pilot, Carl, asked when they handed him Richard’s backpack.

  “We travel light.”

  But Ann was staggering under the weight of her tote bag, which she kept glued to her side.

  Since they were the only passengers, Carl propped open the passenger door for a breeze, pulled out some cold beers, and offered them a round. He was in his fifties and had a weathered, castaway look. He flew the plane barefoot.

  “Don’t worry. Things will straighten out,” he said.

  “Does this happen often?” Ann asked.

  “Yup.”

  Ann was used to timing not only her lunch breaks but also her bathroom stops. The casual disregard of a schedule unnerved her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had nothing to do. In LA, everyone worked themselves to death, to exhaustion, to hysteria, for the day when the phrase “I’ll have my people call your people” was not ironic. The new status symbol in the first decade of the twenty-first century was lack of time, and the more people you employed to do the everyday mundane, the more you rose among your peers, so Ann’s clients employed not only maids and gardeners, pool men and personal assistants, nannies and au pairs and private chefs, but also hairdressers and facialists who came to their houses, along with yoga and Pilates instructors, personal wardrobe buyers, astrologists and nutritionists, pet walkers and masseuses. There were even rumors of a man who went around the Westside and adjusted all the manual clocks in one’s house to compensate for daylight savings time. Ann had neither time nor people.

  Carl was a former army pilot who’d flown scores of missions in the Middle East. “Done with that life,” he said. “This is paradise. You’ll get used to it.” Still undecided, the air tower finally allowed their small plane to leave while holding back the larger Airbuses. “See, I told you things would work out. And if they didn’t, at least we got beer.”

  When they landed on the deserted coral airstrip, there was no one to greet them.

  “What happens now?” Ann asked.

  “Your boat ride to the main resort, then on to your final destination. That place is as remote as it gets. I never thought Loren would get any business.” Carl shrugged and began checking the engine, ignoring them.

  An hour later, a small motorboat trailing a black fan of smoke roared up to the dock. A tall, gaunt man, shirtless, skin turned the shade and texture of ironwood, waved his arms at them as if in long-lost greeting.

  “Loren, you SOB. Where’ve you been?” Carl shouted.

  “Here and there, my friend.”

  “Your guests are here and now. I have to pick up a fishing charter in two hours on Mooréa, and I’m late. How about that?”

  Loren jumped over the side of his boat and tumbled face-first into the water.

  The pilot cracked up laughing. “Yeah, man, you’ve been here and there in a good bottle of rum.”

  “Where’s their luggage?”

  “They travel light.”

  Loren turned to look at Richard and Ann.

  She shrugged. “It’s not a crime.”

  Loren swept out various debris from the boat, and hauled out a few plastic garbage sacks. He and Carl exchanged desultory local gossip in French.

  “Put the sacks in Cleo’s Dumpster while I keep her busy.” Loren went inside the customs building/grocery store/petrol station/restroom.

  Ann pulled Carl aside. “Is he okay?”

  “It’s hard to dump trash. Can’t bury it—the ground is too waterlogged. No place for a dump on an atoll.”

  “I meant his drinking.”

  Carl pondered the question as if it might be valid. Tourists were their lifeblood, and locals had to stick together. Still, Loren didn’t make it easy. “Oh, he’s drunk all the time. Perfectly safe. Frankly I’d be more worried if he was sober.” He looked Ann over and liked what he saw. So would Loren. Carl still had the rigidity and squareness of being military, and he found Loren’s open debauchery distasteful. “A word to the wise—he likes the ladies. If it’s female, he’ll try to jump it.” That should set Loren up for a fun, tense little vacation.

  “I can take care of myself,” Ann said.

  When Loren emerged from the building, he squinted at her. She looked like a hazmat worker getting ready to defuse a bomb. “No good. You must change for the ride. Much waves and water.” He motioned with his hands, water flowing down his face and over his chest, which he pushed out in an approximation of air breasts. “Wear the hat and shirt for sun over the bathing suit. Sandals so that the coral does not cut your feet.” He gave her a tired, worn smile, his eyes distant, the same transparent blue-green as the surrounding water.

  “What’s that smell?” he asked, coming close to her.

  “DEET.”

  “Hand me your bag,” he said.

  “That’s okay.”

  “Ah, one of those angry American fem-lib types.”

  She carried the bag into the customs building to change, turning just in time to see Loren retch over the side of the boat.

  * * *

  They were supposed to go straight across the lagoon and then on to the more remote motu where their lodgings were, but Loren mumbled about difficulties getting supplies. Ann had overheard Carl mention a burned-out engine and saw money exchange hands. They were comped a night at the fancy main resort, and would meet up in the morning to continue out.

  Beyond jet lag and on their way to serious collapse, Richard and Ann agreed, grateful to be stationary with the prospect of a night’s uninterrupted sleep.

  Ann stood looking down at their aquarium coffee table, surveying the rocks, coral, and fish suspended in the water below as if in blue amber.

  “What are we doing here?” Richard asked, not expecting even the effort of an answer. He flipped on the flat screen and searched for the Cooking Channel. “We could at least be in Paris or Nice. Eating to die for.”

  “I’m sick of food.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  When she had first met him, Richard had been wire thin and passionate about being a great chef. They would eat at restaurants, and if he approved, he would bang his hand down on the table in approval. She found his excitement sexy. Now he had what was commonly known as “chef’s slump.” A combination of too much tasting and too little time out in the sun doing things like jogging. The extra pounds gave him a ponderous, rolling gait and fallen arches.

  “I’m sick of fancy food. I’d be fine if I never touched another mole again.” Oaxacan Mole Negro was Javi’s signature dish. Ann had turned cruel.

  Despite all the water and humidity, the billowing pink clouds on the flat horizon, there was a great impression of dryness on the islands that made her parche
d. She downed the small green bottles of mineral water in the minibar one by one.

  “You know those are ten bucks each? A dollar a swallow,” Richard said, reading the in-room menu.

  He felt sorry, culpable for his own part in the restaurant fiasco, but still he couldn’t stop himself from complaining. He wanted to get back to LA and somehow fix things. Maybe Javi could explain the situation to the bank, or better yet to Inez. Maybe the loan shark would be interested in having a personal chef to work off the debt? Even if it took another ten years to set things straight, that was better than standing still, there, which was basically nowhere, the end of the earth, doing nothing. “We could go home tomorrow. Return the money. Start over. I mean, what’s the plan here?”

  “The plan is to not have a plan right now.”

  Had she really just said that? She had told the human resources person at the firm that a family emergency had come up, and she would be out of town indefinitely. If this wasn’t an emergency, she didn’t know what was. If her actions were discovered, she might be fired. Even if she wasn’t dismissed, the hint of impropriety would blow her chances of making partner.

  * * *

  They picked their way gingerly across the narrow beach of crushed coral, under a scraggly row of desiccated palms. The place gave off the ramshackle aura of a B-movie set. Felled, diseased coconut trees were scattered throughout the beach, victims of the last hurricane, poisoned by the salt water. Neat little pyramids of coconuts were stacked here and there, resembling rusted cannonballs or shriveled heads, some already splitting open, sprouting shards of neon-green leaf.

  At the hotel bar, they sipped drinks prickling with more paper umbrellas. Ann’s stock-in-trade irony, her anger-tinged sarcasm, had been declared strictly verboten on this trip as per Richard. It almost killed her to not make a quip about the European diver set sprawled around the hotel, wearing Speedos the colors of tropical fish, sporting long, unkempt hair, pierced and inked body parts, trying for the vintage Richard Gere, Mick Jagger, Steven Tyler looks of the ’80s. She felt like a downed electrical wire, bouncing, snapping, smoking, useless.