The Wilds

by Julia Elliott

  “Look what I brought.” He smiles, leaning out of the pool to dig through his rucksack. “Sparkling apple cider. Organic. Though I forgot glasses.”

  “That’s okay. We can swig from the bottle.”

  “Exchange HSV-1 fluids?”

  “And ecthymic bacteria.”

  “Ugh.”

  We sit in the mystical vapor, sipping cider and touching toes. The haze softens the hideousness of our faces. Our voices dart like birds in a cloud. We talk about Red’s ex-wife, whose weakness for fey hipster boys is partially responsible for his sojourn at Mukti. I tell him about my money-obsessed ex-husband, who once updated his stock portfolio while I was in the throes of a miscarriage. I could see his reflection in the bathroom mirror of our hotel room in Bali as he sat in the other room, smirking over his iPhone. And then I heard him talking to his broker on the phone.

  “I’m sorry,” says Red.

  “I’m over it.”

  I find his hand under the water. We sit floating in a state of semicontentment. Then we start up with the cider again.

  Exceeding our daily allotment of alcohol, we drink until the bottle is empty and the effervescence inside us matches that of the bubbly springs. A plane flies over. The sun pops out to infuse our mist shroud with a pearly glow. And then, emerging from the steam as though from another dimension, clad in dingy cutoff shorts, a man steps into the pool. By all appearances, he’s not a patient. His skin has photo-aged into a crinkled rind. He’s got senile cataracts and wisps of long gray hair. And when he cracks a smile, we see a wet flash of gums, like a split in a leathery desert fruit.

  “I have company today,” he says, his New England accent tinged with a Caribbean patois. “I’m Winter.” He extends a gnarled hand. I’m thinking he must be an ancient hippie who retired here before Mukti took off.

  “You folks up from the spa, I reckon.” He sinks down into the pool.

  “How’d you guess?” says Red, and the old man chuckles.

  “And you?” I say.

  “I’m from around. Got a little cottage up over the way.”

  Winter tells us he keeps goats, sells cheese and yogurt to Mukti, plus fruit from his orchard and assorted herbs. He asks us how the healing’s going. Inquires about the new post office. Wonders what’s up with the pirates who’ve been plaguing the Venezuelan coast.

  “Pirates?” says Red.

  According to the old man, pirates, who usually stick to freighters, have recently drifted up to fleece Caribbean cruise ships.

  “Thought I heard something about yachts getting hassled near Grenada,” Winter says.

  “This is the first we’ve heard about any pirates,” I say, imagining eye-patched marauders, dark ships flying skull-and-crossbones flags.

  “Probably just talk,” says Winter.

  Red checks his watch, says our soak has exceeded the recommended span by four and a half minutes. We say goodbye to Winter, speed off on our ATV.

  Seventy-five percent humidity, and the boils on my inner thighs have fused and burst, trickling a yellow fluid. My neck pustules are starting to weep. Choice ecthymic sores have turned into ulcers. I spend my downtime pacing the tree house naked. I shift from chair to chair, daybed to hammock, listening to the demented birds. A plague of small green finches has invaded the island. They flit through the brush, squawk, and devour berries.

  This morning I’ve neglected my therapies. I’m due for nanotech restructuring in thirty minutes, and the thought of putting on clothes, even the softest of silk kimonos, makes my skin crawl. But I do it, even though I know the fabric will be soaked by the time I get to the Samsara Complex. I slip on a lilac kosode and dash down the jungle trail, gritting my teeth.

  I pass a few fellow Crusties. I pass a dead turtle, its belly peppered with black ants. I pass an island assistant lugging her sea-grass basket of eco-friendly cleaning chemicals. Though she, like all the assistants, is a broad, plain-faced woman, the beauty of her complexion startles me. But then I remember that in a few weeks, my sores will scab over. I’ll crawl from my shell, pink and glowing as the infant Buddha. I’ll jet to the mainland and buy an array of stunning clothes, get my hair cut, meet Red for one last rendezvous before we head back to our respective cities. We’ll revel in our sweet, young flesh, and then—well, we’ll see.

  Another evening in paradise and I pick at my grilled-fig salad. The ocean is gorgeous, but what’s the point? It might as well be a postcard, a television screen, a holographic stunt. Red’s pissy too, grumbling over his lobster risotto. And don’t get me started on Lissa.

  Lissa won’t shut up about the pirates. Keeps recirculating the same crap we’ve heard a hundred times: the pirates have attacked another Carnival cruiser; the pirates have sacked yachts as close as Martinique; the pirates have seized a cargo ship less than ten miles off the shore of our very own island. Angered by the poor resale prospects of boutique med supplies, they’ve tossed the freight into the sea.

  “I always thought pirates were the epitome of sexy,” says Lissa, crinkling her carbuncular nose at Red.

  “They won’t seem so sexy if you run out of Vita-Viral Plus,” says Red.

  “Unless you think keloid scars are the height of chic,” I add.

  “But medical supplies are worthless to them,” whines Lissa. “What would they gain from another attack?”

  “They might attack out of spite,” I say.

  “Mukti keeps emergency provisions in a cryogenic vault,” says Lissa, “in case of hurricanes and other potential disasters.”

  “Or so the pamphlet boasts.” Red gazes out at the ocean, where a mysterious light beam bounces across the water.

  “You think they’d lie to us?” Lissa widens her enormous eyes and runs an index finger down Red’s arm. She’s a touchy person, I tell myself, who hugs people upon greeting and pats the hands of shy waitresses.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” Red smiles at her and turns back to the sea.

  Both Red and I are in the latter stages of fibroblastic contraction when the pirates seize another cargo ship. Our flesh has crisped over with full-body scabbing. We’re at that crucial stage when collagen production stabilizes, when full-tissue repair and dermal remodeling kick into high gear. Although the patients can talk of little else, the powers that be at Mukti have not acknowledged the pirate incident. The powers that be have given no special security warnings. They’ve said nothing about waning provisions or shortages of essential meds. The therapists and medical staff carry on as usual, but I detect a general state of skittishness—sweat stains in the armpits of their white smocks, sudden jerky movements, faintly perceptible frown lines on faces hitherto blank as eggs.

  Rumors spread through the spa like airborne viruses. And one day, a day of high humidity and grumbling thunder, the kind of day when your heart is a lump of obsidian and you wonder why you bothered to get out of bed at all, it becomes common knowledge that the pirates have seized a freighter that was bound for Mukti, that they’re negotiating a ransom, asking a colossal sum for the temperature-sensitive cargo.

  Red and I are on the Lotus Terrace eating zucchini pavé with miso sauce, waiting for poached veal. Our waitress slinks over, apologizes, tells us that the dish will be served without capers. Red and I exchange dark looks. We imagine jars of capers from Italy stacked in the belly of a cargo ship, the freighter afloat in some secret pirate cove. And deeper in the bowels of the boat, in a refrigerated vault, shelves full of biomedical supplies—time-sensitive blood products and cell cultures in high-tech packaging.

  All around us, scabby patients whisper about the pirates, reaching a collective pitch that sounds like an insect swarm. Hunched in conspiratorial clusters, they flirt with scary possibilities: spoiled meds, botched stage-five healing, full-body keloid scarring, an appearance that’s the polar opposite of that promised by Regeneration at Mukti. “Shedding your pupal casing,” the pamphlet boasts, “you will emerge a shining creature, renewed in body and spirit, your cell turnover as rapid as a
ten-year-old’s. Skin taut, wrinkles banished, pores invisible, you will walk like a Deva in a pink cloud of light.”

  I’m in the Samsara Complex for cellular restructuring. There’s a problem with the nanobot serum. They keep rejecting vial after vial, or so I’ve gathered through several hissing exchanges between the biomed doc and her technicians. When Tech 1 finally shoots me up, he jabs the needle in sideways, apologizes, then stabs me again.

  I stagger into the Bardo Room, where a half-dozen Crusties mill among orchids, the floor-to-ceiling windows ablaze. Nobody speaks. The endless ocean glitters beyond, a blinding queasy green. The light gives me a headache, a kernel of throbbing nausea right behind my eyes. I collapse into a Barcelona chair. My skin tingles beneath its husk. I stare down at my hands, dark with congealed blood and completely alien to me. I wonder if I should have stayed as I was—blowing serious bank on miracle moisturizers, going to yoga five times a week, dabbling in the occasional collagen injection.

  Of course, it’s too late to turn back now. I must focus on positive affirmation, as Guru Gobind Singh so smugly touts. I must not allow my mind to visualize a body mapped with pink puffy scars. With such an exterior, you’d be forced to hunker deep in your body, like a naked mole rat in its burrow.

  Red, fresh from bee-sting therapy, joins me under the shade of a jute umbrella, our eyes protected by wraparound sunglasses. It’s too hot to eat, but we order smoked calamari salads and spring rolls with mango sauce. Red’s incommunicative. I’m trying to read Zen and the Art of Aging on my iPad, but the sun’s too bright. We don’t talk about the pirates. We don’t talk about our impending Shedding. We don’t talk about the chances of scarring, or the jaunt to the mainland we’ve been planning. I tell Red about the monkey I spotted from my tree-house porch last night. I try to discuss the ecological sustainability of squidding. We shoo jhunkit birds from our table and decide to order a chilled Riesling.

  More and more Crusties crowd onto the patio. Waitresses hustle back and forth. They no longer inform us when some ingredient is lacking. They simply place incomplete dishes before us with a downward flutter of the eyes. Certain therapies are no longer offered—sensory deprivation and beer baths, for example—but we strive to stay positive.

  Although we keep noticing suspicious changes in medical procedures, we prevent cognitive distortions from sabotaging our self-talk. When a bad thought buzzes like a wasp into the sunny garden of our thoughts, we swat the fucker and flick its crushed corpse into the flower bed. And most importantly, we spend thirty minutes a day visualizing our primary goal: successful mind-body rejuvenation and an unblemished exterior that radiates pure light.

  Nevertheless, it’s hard to sustain mental focus when your spring rolls lack almonds, when your wine’s third-rate, when your dermis burns beneath its crust. It’s hard to envision yourself floating in a bubble of celestial light when you look like you’ve been deep-fried. I’m having trouble picturing the crystalline features of the deity. I can’t help but notice that the sea smells of sewage, that our table is sticky, that our waitresses are contemptuous, smooth-skinned and pretty in their way, with decades of insolent youth to burn. When Lissa alights at our table in a translucent white kimono, my misery is complete.

  But Red only nods at her, keeps staring out at the empty sea.

  I’m studying his profile when I spot a dark figure lurching from a clump of pink hibiscus. Black skin, green shorts, ammo vest. The man lugs a Kalashnikov. He’s yelling in Spanish. More pirates emerge from the landscaping, waving guns and machetes. One of them screams in English: “Surrender, you scab-covered dogs!” Lanky, with a dramatic cheek scar, he tells us to put our wallets on the table, along with all iPhones, handheld gaming devices, and jewels. Other pirates randomly fire their guns into the air.

  In one convulsive movement, patients start rifling through pockets and purses, removing rings and bracelets, plunking valuables onto tables. Then we sit with hands behind our backs as the bandits have instructed. We don’t flinch as they rip designer sunglasses from our faces. We squint with stoicism at the sea while they fill their rucksacks with treasure. Shadows grow longer. The sun sinks. The jhunkit birds, emboldened by our immobility, descend on the tables to peck at canapés.

  When the pirates finally creep off into the jungle, crouched in postures of cartoonish stealth, the waitresses spring into action. They bustle about distributing bottled water. They assure us that security has been summoned. They refill our wineglasses, wipe bird shit from our tables, spirit away our dirty plates. The sky flushes pink. Lissa trembles like a Chihuahua until Red drapes a friendly arm over her back. He’s just being courteous, I tell myself, as I wait for this contact to end.

  A woman weeps quietly at the edge of the patio, then she blows her nose and orders shrimp dumplings in ginger broth.

  According to the pamphlet, the final days before Shedding should be days of intense relaxation—no medical procedures, no exhilarating therapies, no excursions. Even extreme dining is discouraged. It’s difficult to drift like a feathery dandelion seed when Mukti’s security forces have crawled out of the woodwork into our sunny paradise. They’ve always been here, of course, lurking in the shadows, monitoring the island from subterranean surveillance rooms, but now they loiter openly in their khaki shorts, handguns only partially concealed by oversized tropical shirts.

  Yesterday, while enjoying an aloe-vera bath in the Bodhi Herb Garden, I heard a crude snicker. I gazed up through a tendril of sarsaparilla to glimpse the smirking face of a security guard. There he was, licking an ice-cream cone, his mustache dotted with pearls of milk. And now, as I float in the Neti Neti Lagoon, stuck in step two of the Instant Calming Sequence, I hear a security guard barking into her cell phone. I count to six and wait for her to finish her conversation. When I start over with a fresh round of uninterrupted breathing, her ring tone bleeps through the gentle thatch of birdsong. So I switch to Microcosmic Orbit Meditation, envisioning a snake of light slithering through my coccyx. Now the security guard is laughing like some kind of donkey. I open my eyes, gaze up into the palms, and spot a tiny camera perched next to a cluster of fruits. Its lens jerks back and forth like the head of a nervous bird.

  In addition to the dread of pirates charging through the bush, in addition to the distraction of security guards and the fears of type-I scarring, we must also worry about the weather, as the island’s now on hurricane watch—or so the powers that be informed us this morning. The ocean breeze has become a biting sandy wind. A weird metallic scent blows off the sea, and I get the feeling that the island’s swathed in bad karma. Plus, a few Crusties, having shed their husks, have been jetted to the mainland without the Rapture Ceremony—a ritual designed to reassure remaining Crusties that their golden time will come, that they too will walk in flowing robes, their silky necks garlanded with narcissus.

  Yesterday afternoon, instead of gathering on the beach to watch the smooth-skinned Devas depart in the Ceremonial Boat, we crowded into the lobby of the small airport. Through a plate-glass window, we observed two Devas dashing from flower-decked golf carts toward a commuter jet, their faces shrouded by scarves and sunglasses. Security guards swarmed, their tropical shirts easy to spot. Rumor has it that one of the Devas, a famous movie star, was being whisked off to California, where she’ll resume her career as romantic-comedy queen—blond icon of feminine joie de vivre, laughing in the sun.

  Red, in the final throes of his Remodeling phase, has a TSF of 99.6 percent. His exterior has the golden huskiness of a pork rind. And now, as he scans the endless ocean, his beautiful brown eyes burn behind his scabby mask. He’s barely touched his scrambled tofu. He takes long, dreamy slurps of mango smoothie. I know he’ll be jetting off to the mainland soon. Once there, he won’t be able to contact me by phone or e-mail, as the Mukti contract dictates, so we’ve made arrangements to reunite, booking reservations at the Casa Bougainvillea.

  I keep picturing that moment when we’ll meet by the pool at sunset. I keep picturing R
ed reclined beside the waterfall featured on the hotel’s brochure. First he’ll look startled. Then he’ll smile as his eyes run up and down my body. He’ll bask in the vision of a female epidermis refortified with type-III collagen and glowing like the moon. Though I haven’t worn jewel tones for years, I’ll highlight the infantile pallor of my skin with a scarlet sheath dress. I’ll wear a choker of Burmese rubies. Dye my hair auburn, paint my nails crimson, wear lipstick the color of oxygenated blood.

  After we revel in the softness of a ten-minute kiss, we’ll drink Romanée-Conti under the stars.

  Yesterday, I stood in the airport lobby, watching Red hop from a flower-decked golf cart and then scurry through strong wind to Mukti’s commuter jet. Keffiyeh-style headgear and huge sunglasses concealed his face. When he turned from the platform to wave, a shadow passed over him, and then he dipped into the jet. I have no idea how his Shedding went. I have no idea what his refurbished carnality looks like, though I’ve seen Facebook pics of his thirtysomething self, his high school yearbook photos, a few snapshots of the young Red rock climbing in Costa Rica.

  Lissa too has been spirited away—nubile and golden, I fear. Though she was obscured by a chiffon Lotus robe, I have the sick suspicion that she’s gone through her Shedding unscathed. That she looks gorgeous. That she’ll stalk Red at the Casa Bougainvillea, appearing naked and luminous beneath his balcony in a courtyard crammed with flowering shrubs.

  And now, as the few remaining Crusties huddle in the basement of the Skandha Center, awaiting the wrath of a category-four hurricane named Ophelia, Gobind Singh lectures us on the Deceptive Singularity of the Self.

  “The Self you cling to,” says Gobind Singh, “is an empty No Self, or Shunya, for the True Self does not differentiate between Self and Other, which is not the same, of course, as the No Self.”