Naked in Dangerous Places

by Cash Peters

  “But how? How will you tell them? There's no pablik telefon.”

  “No what?”

  “Oh, I'm sorry.” Realizing she doesn't speak Bislama, I translate.

  “I spoke with the owners of the hotel just now. The island has radio phones. Also, they have a satellite phone we can use. Like the one in Jurassic Park. It's not ideal, but I can at least call the office tonight, confirm that we got here okay, and th—” as she's talking, a fly lands on her bottom lip and rests there. “Ugh! Ugh! Yeuw!” She flaps it away with both hands. “YEUW!!! I can't bear it.”

  For a moment or two we lapse into depressed silence, jointly surveying the stick furniture in the room, the rough stone floor, and the raised roof, which looks like it was made from glued-together Weetabix. Then she collects herself and explains what she came for.

  “Tomorrow,” she says, “we begin shooting for real. We're aiming for an 8 A.M. call time. So be at the van in your show clothes by 7:50, okay? Right now, the boys and I are heading out to scout locations.”

  “You're leaving me alone?”

  I hate it when they do that—go off without me. Each time it happens, I notice they all bond just a little more, and I feel left out just a little more, widening the gulf between us.

  “Well, you can't come, obviously,” she insists. “You're not allowed to see it. Don't worry—we won't be long. In the meantime, rest, chill, whatever, okay? I'll see you at dinner.”

  With a cute little wave, she charges off toward reception at her usual brisk clip, thumbs hooked inside the straps of her backpack, mind already on to the next thing.

  Shortly after, I hear van doors slam and an engine burst into life. Then, after a brief grapple with seat belts and some general disorganization, the hand brake is let off, tires scrunch across gravel, and everyone-but-me disappears back to the main road and away for their little afternoon excursion.

  The main building of the hotel is a large, airy log cabin-type structure straight out of the Architectural Digest: Places You Think You'd Like to Live but Would Probably Regret Later On edition. En route to the deck, I find the same middle-aged man standing in reception …

  “Alo.”

  “Alo,” he says again.

  … and begin quizzing him about the fake light switches in my room.

  A lively conversation follows. Well, lively from my side at least. He just stares at me like I'm a moron. “They're not fake light switches, sir. They're real light switches.”

  “But they don't work.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Mine don't.”

  “Yes they do.”

  “Then, sir,” I reply, “I invite you to come to my bungalow and try flicking them.”

  “I don't need to come and flick them, sir. I know they work. Because …”

  “Well, I'm sor—”

  “… because we switch the generator off each day until 6:30 P.M.”

  Ah. I see.

  What I didn't know—How could I? Nobody told me—was that Tanna, despite its overall tendency toward the primitive, is, paradoxically, one of the most eco-advanced places on earth. The people strive in all kinds of ways to conserve their environment, including using energy resources sparingly, which, while enlightened and highly admirable, is nonetheless—and not to sound selfish or anything—a damned nuisance when you want to take a shower and can't heat your water.

  “Oh, and another thing. If you could please send someone to lower the ceiling in my bungalow before nightfall I'd be most grateful. Your porter told me there was a lever somewhere …”

  The guy's eyebrows shoot up. “He said that?”

  “… but I'm damned if I can find it. And I don't want bugs crawling in. Or midgets.”

  “Midgets?”

  But mainly bugs.

  Rather than engage in further argument, I thank him for his attention and, ignoring his continued quizzical expression, stroll off in search of the sundeck.

  Despite the hotel being a mere few feet from the water's edge, where you'd think there'd be a breeze, there isn't. The air in the main bar-lounge is unbearably hot and sticky, another harbinger, I suppose, of what lies ahead. Seriously, you could steam broccoli in here. And of course, that makes the place a magnet to flies. Bluebottles especially. Big chubby ones carve a zigzag path between tables, coming in to land like ghastly winged tumors in my hair and on my bare arms to get at my sweat.

  Settling down in an angular slatted chair on the deck, I order a margarita from the bar, to be followed over the next couple of hours by three more, then break open The Da Vinci Code and thereafter divide my time equally between plowing through a dozen cliff-hangers in as many chapters, and, when that gets old, watching the sun slide dramatically into the ocean in a tantrum of citrus hues, before finally throwing itself over the horizon like a hysterical soprano. In its wake a dense, hostile darkness descends, the likes of which I've never encountered before.

  Once the light fades in Vanuatu, you're as good as blind. It's coal-shaft black out there. Ghoulishly, back-of-your-closet black. Convulsing flames in small kerosene lamps distributed among tables in the restaurant do their best to provide occasional golden pockets of reassurance, but it's not enough to make the slightest dent on the monolithic emptiness of the world beyond this one.

  At my feet, a lazy surf gurgles and eddies into rocky inlets barely visible through the gauze of night. After that, several yards out and just below the surface, lies a ring of coral one hundred meters deep. Then nothing. You don't touch land again for another four thousand miles—four thousand!—not until you hit the Great Barrier Reef.

  That fact alone has me totally creeped out.

  For the first time, I'm beginning to appreciate how difficult it must have been being an explorer three centuries ago.

  The only reason Captain Cook found Tanna at all, I hear, was because Mount Yasur happened to be erupting on the eastern side of the island that particular night, tossing orange fireballs into the sky like distress flares. Otherwise I'm sure he'd have missed it entirely, the way he so often did, sailing merrily by in his ship The Resolution, and running aground on the Great Barrier Reef months ahead of schedule.

  With the onset of night, I feel a slight chill skitter across the back of my neck. A fleeting, barely perceptible breath, like the icy touch of winter.

  A kiss from Cook's ghost perhaps?

  A warning? Telling me I've committed to something I shouldn't have.

  “You idiot, signing that goddamned contract! You know you didn't want to. Now look—look at the mess you're in.”

  Suddenly, the world I'm used to and feel comfortable in—of leafy suburbs, celebrity neighbors, of food stores open around the clock, movie theaters, Starbucks on every corner, my beautiful home, my relationship—feels like it's in a different galaxy.

  Once, when I was a little kid in England, I lost my parents in a department store. They walked off in one direction and I got sidetracked and ran off in another. Before I realized I couldn't see them anymore, it was already too late; they'd gone and I was lost.

  Every child has moments like that. Most, by the time they get to be adults, have assimilated them and moved on. For some reason, I never did. That sense of abject abandonment, the helplessness, the distress I felt sitting in the rug department crying my eyes out that day, has stayed with me all these years: the dread of going unmissed, the fear that nobody knows I'm here, nobody cares, and nobody's coming back for me. And that same thumbprint of anxiety returns to haunt me once again now, as I look out from the deck of the hotel at… well, nothing.

  Soon after, the restaurant begins to fill up with a trickle of guests arriving for drinks or dinner. Still no sign of the crew, though. Then, at 8:35 P.M., just as I'm starting to grow concerned, I catch a familiar rustle of shorts moving at speed behind me and Tasha gallops in, looking grubby and anything but her usual spirited self. Eric, an equally unsmiling string bean, strands of gray flopping about his pale face, follows close behind. Both sport brown s
mudges and skid marks across their cheeks and clothes. Their shoes are caked in mud.

  “So?” I ask, a little fruitily (it's four margaritas later—Sir is hammered!), “Do we have a show?”

  Clearly in shock, Eric makes an effort to talk. “Dude,” he sneers, throwing down his papers on the table, “I … I mean …”

  “What is it? What's happened?”

  He shakes his head. “Good luck, is all I can say. Good luck making something of this place.”

  The two of them swap loaded glances.

  “Obviously, we can't go into detail,” Tasha says. “It would spoil the surprise.”

  “But what she's trying to say is that parts of this place are horrible … and other parts are really, really horrible.”

  Oh, come on! It's a Pacific island. How bad can it be?

  “Dude, you have no idea. Ask Todd and the two Marks. They thought the same thing. Wait 'til tomorrow, you'll see.”

  “Ugh!” Tasha shivers again. “You should see how they—” In danger of saying too much, she clams up. Mustn't give the game away. “Anyways, I'm gonna take a shower, boys, and get this crap off me. Dinner at 9:15?”

  Shocked sober by their news, I remain glued to my seat for the next thirty minutes or more, staring out at the bleak Atlantic waves (wherever they are), alarmed. No, more than alarmed—frightened, actually, at what I've let myself in for, not only here on this one show, but in the rest of the season. More islands, more out-of-the-way places, more bugs, more mud, more 100-degree days …

  It's Day One.

  Not even Day One.

  The day before Day One.

  We haven't filmed a single shot yet, apart from the landing sequence, but already I'm tempted to lock myself in my bungalow and never come out.

  1 Melanesia is the collective name given to islands located in West Central Oceania, including Fiji, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands, etc. It's bounded by Micronesia to the north, Polynesia to the south, and to the east by … well, let's just call it Amnesia, because quite honestly I don't remember the name of it.

  4

  The Land That

  Trousers Forgot

  Daylight in Vanuatu is greeted with the same heightened sense of relief I imagine rich people must feel after a night of rioting, as they emerge from the basement to find that their Mercedes didn't get torched after all.

  All I know is, when I open my eyes first thing and discover that the blanket of grim, vampiric darkness has lifted, replaced by a foamy sunlight trickling onto my bed, I am so thrilled not to have been eaten alive by bugs (although, with the ceiling stuck in a raised position like this, God knows they tried) that I spring to my feet singing.

  After a quick shower, I float toward the dining room on a cloud of profound gratitude for the simplest of earthly pleasures—sunshine, hot water, and a breakfast of scrambled eggs, with toast and jam, followed by a big bowl of grated raw cabbage, which I assume to be a local delicacy and complimentary, because I certainly didn't ask for it.

  By the time I arrive at the van, the driver and some porters are busy cramming the last of the equipment we'll need into the rear. Despite yesterday's horrors, the crew, including Eric, seem to be in remarkably high spirits and raring to go.

  “Did you see Tasha in the restaurant?” he asks.

  Before I can reply, here she comes, breezing up the path toward us—“Morning, boys!”—cigarette in hand, taking sips from an espresso cup, a little flustered after dealing with the office in L.A. via the satellite phone, but otherwise happy enough.

  One of Tasha's main duties is to concoct a progress report each day, to reassure our two executive producers and the guys at the network that the shoot is on schedule, everyone's behaving themselves, and—most important—we're finding time to make an actual TV show while we're on the road, not squandering the budget on fine wines, spa treatments, and high-end souvenirs, which, by the way, if we weren't being scrutinized so tightly, I, for one, most certainly would.

  “Okay, guys!” Mark, our young, upbeat director, claps his hands to move everyone out. His face, half-hidden behind a drape of mousy bangs that don't quite meet in the middle, is bleached white. Poor guy, he's sick again. Been plagued by stomach problems since the Australia shoot last week, although he assures me he's feeling a little better today, which is a relief. You don't want to be falling ill in a place as remote as Tanna Island, that's for sure.

  “Let's go, people,” Eric shouts. The cheap sunblock he's just slathered on his forehead twinkles in the frosting of premature gray at his temples. “We're late.”

  Things are really cooking in the neighborhood today. The narrow byways of Tanna are teeming with people, mostly young women in bright summer skirts migrating along the roadside with languorous strides. Some are accompanied by kids, whom they steer onto the hard shoulder at the last moment to avoid oncoming traffic. And when I say oncoming traffic, I mean us. I don't think I've seen another motorized vehicle the entire journey. Most people can't afford a car, and, strictly speaking, don't need one anyway—it's a small island; where are they going to go?—so they walk.

  Lurching into the bush, we plow along curling canyons of tall grass, passing more women along the way, tiny babies swinging from their shoulders in loose cotton papooses. Some carry woven palm-leaf baskets laden with okra, bananas, and mangoes. Others just stand there and watch us go by, one arm slung casually over a cow's neck.

  Incidentally, we've been here almost twenty-four hours already and I've yet to see a man do this: shoulder anything, carry anything, or sling his arm over a cow's anything. Every time you lay eyes on a guy on Tanna he's either loafing around laughing with his pals, sitting on the ground in a watchful stupor, or dawdling among the trees, swinging a zig-zaggy tree branch he's turned into an improvised weed whacker, which he clearly thinks gives the impression that he's busy mowing, when it's obvious to everyone that it's just a useless stick and the women are doing all the bloody work.

  In time, the heavily wooded trail narrows to the point of being impassable and we have no option but to continue on foot, each of us lugging a piece of Camera Mark's equipment: the tripod, a battery pack, a light, a bag with filters and lenses in it.

  Eager to be a team player, I do my bit. I carry his Pepsi.

  “Wait here, Cash,” Director Mark orders after a few yards. “I don't want you to see what's up ahead.” That's how they maintain the element of surprise.

  Waving everyone on, he leads them through a clump of bushes until they disappear, abandoning me in the woods alone.

  The setup for one of these shows is complicated. It takes ages to block out camera angles and to frame things—where the sun is, where I will walk, where the crew will stand so as not to be in shot, basically fielding all possibilities before we get around to shooting anything. That's the problem with spontaneity; it takes so much planning.

  Usually, while all of this is going on, I'm left by myself.

  I don't complain. I'm aware it has to be this way. It's the hook of the show, not knowing where I'm being taken. But that still doesn't make the alone times any easier to deal with. We've shot just three episodes so far, but already there's an odd “us and him” situation developing. If this continues I can see us eventually splitting into two groups: the in group and the out group. The out group being me. It's a shame, but as host of the show I'm not strictly a member of the crew, so I tend to be excluded from all meetings, discussions, excursions, planning lunches, and so on. As a result, all too often I'm left limping along behind the herd like a lone, bewildered wildebeest—or a bewilderbeest, even—forgotten, ignored, and doubtless flagged by predators as an easy kill.

  It's not a lost cause yet, but quite clearly, in the name of self-preservation, I have to do something to heal this rift.

  As I continue to loiter among the trees in the hot sun, brushing flies from my face, trying to come up with an ingenious idea for yokoing my way into their beatles, I spot Tasha walking by a gap in the foliage up ahead.

/>   “Hey, what's going on back there?” I call out to her, being extra friendly.

  “You'll see. Not long now.” And she disappears again.

  “Oh,” I whimper. “Okay.”

  My clothes are starting to itch. The crew's lucky, they can wear what they like during the shoots; I can't. And unfortunately, to the daffy lady hired to buy my wardrobe in L.A., the words “steamy jungle setting” must have conjured up images of A Passage to India and of me flitting about the set in light cocktail attire, the sort of thing one might wear to a polo match, for instance. Or in court when I'm suing her. Because I'm standing here in ninety-four-degree heat in a thick shirt, heavy beige pants, and white sneakers, roasting.

  Eric reappears to give me instructions, which he does with the mild disdain of a Best Buy assistant who's been asked one too many questions about photocopy paper and is about to snap. “Alright, here's what's going on. It's the opening of the show. You've wandered out of the airport and you stumble into this place.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “What d'you mean, how?”

  “I've just landed. The airport's fifteen miles away. How could I have stumbled fifteen miles in two minutes? It's not—”

  “Pah! We'll shoot a walking montage later. Nobody will ever know.”

  “They won't?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh.”

  “When Mark shouts ‘Action,’ you walk out of here”—indicates bush—“and along here”—indicates pathway—“and into there”—indicates large clearing beyond. “Then you'll find … er … well, you'll see … just talk to … whoever … Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, and wipe your forehead. You're sweating.”

  No shit.

  Thirty seconds later, Mark's piercing whistle ricochets among the trees.

  “Action, Cash!”

  Not knowing what to expect, I follow the path around the bushes and step into a dreamy, dappled glade overhung by magnificent banyan trees, their branches a matrix of spindly fingers locked together into a protective atrium above my head, in the shade of which stands a huddle of topless women wearing ankle-length grass skirts. Alo! At Director Mark's request, they have their arms folded over their boobs. It's either that or we pixelate them later, to spare the blushes of puritanical Christian watchdog groups in the American Midwest who have set themselves up as the sentinels of good taste, not only for themselves, but for the rest of us as well, and for whom tits, I'm told, are taboo.