by Tatjana Soli
“We can have this. I can give you this,” she said.
She pulled at the string around her neck, felt the pieces of fabric fall away from her breasts. Of course, toplessness didn’t really count for the French, but still. The shock of her nakedness made her hesitate. Unable to look down, she looked into Loren’s eyes; his delighted gaze gave her confidence to continue dancing, newly emboldened.
Loren reached for the bottle, and as she came close, he ran his hand up the inside of her leg, touching her tattoo.
“Ouch!!”
It burned as his fingers touched the outlines of the half shark, and the physical contact broke the spell. She motioned with her hands water flowing down her neck and over her breasts, throwing her head back, a backstroke with her arms as she danced away toward the door and the night beyond it, escaping straight into the disapproving bulk of Titi, who stood there.
“Oh!” Ann said, her arms covering her breasts, an unequivocal confession of guilt. Was that Wende’s pendant dangling from Titi’s ear?
The whole world has gone mad, Titi thought. She was so furious she turned and stalked out.
* * *
The next day, Dex and Richard cannabized and played volleyball while Ann sulked in her hammock, depressed at the twinned dark fates of Loren and herself, and read Moby-Dick:
… that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
On the salty, hot wind she thought she smelled a coming storm. She felt the approach of a calamity: Loren’s slowly losing battle with his mortality made everything around her seem too fragile to be trusted. Every few hours she rose and made her pilgrimage to Loren’s hut to check on him. Each time she left, Richard smashed the volleyball into the net or into a nearby coconut palm. When it got stuck, Cooked had to shimmy up the trunk to lob it out. Dex had been forbidden to go near a tree. For differing reasons, each person pretended to not notice Wende and Cooked slipping away into an unoccupied fare.
Each night, Richard and Ann had to endure the awkwardness of being alone in their fare before going to sleep. Their early intimacy on the island had once again retreated. Richard, stoically virtuous after his dismissal by Wende, was boiling over.
“How’s Loren?”
“Fine.”
“You two are chummy.”
She blushed for him. “You’re not jealous?”
“No, of course not. Yes.”
She wasn’t going to tell, but then she did. “He’s dying.”
Richard felt a embarrassing mix of pity and elation. “Really?”
“I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.”
And then, like the well-oiled machine that was every long marriage, they effortlessly rolled on to their regular workaday argument.
“We’ve been here a week and a half. Ten days times how much per day?” Richard asked.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters because in a few more weeks we’ll be broke and back home. Then what?”
“I don’t know.”
That stopped him. Ann always knew, always had a plan B, if not C, D, and F. His only conclusion was her plan didn’t include him, and she was too polite to mention it.
“Are you sure you don’t know, or you don’t want to say?”
“Lorna said stay away.”
* * *
The island’s library consisted of a one-room building with glass walls on two sides facing the sea. The rusty jalousies stayed cranked open to catch the breezes and only were closed for rain. The back two walls were filled floor to ceiling with books. Five freestanding bookcases took up half the room, filled with discards from guests, mostly cheap paperback thrillers and romances, except on one shelf where Ann found four signed copies each of John Stubb Byron’s Colossus and Lunch, dated the day before he left. Ann frowned and took one of the copies to keep. One wall consisted of Loren’s extensive collection of history and fiction centered on the South Pacific. In the front of the room, facing the beach, was a rattan sofa, and here Ann spent long hours reading. She was alternating between a history of Captain Cook and Typee by Melville, but at the moment both were splayed in front of her while she napped.
The smell of cigarette smoke woke her. She sat up so abruptly, spots flew before her eyes like flushed-out birds.
Dex was shuffling along the back shelves, puffing away as usual.
Claiming to be suffering a serious case of island fever, Dex had begged to join Loren on a grocery-buying trip to town once he verified that Cooked was going along also. At least for those hours, Dex was free from imagining what Cooked and Wende might be up to. He also wanted to sneak an hour at an Internet café.
“Sorry I woke you.”
She moved to get up.
“Stay.” He came and sat down on the sofa next to her.
“You okay?” she asked.
He didn’t look okay. His skin was waxy; dark circles pooled under his eyes. He didn’t look like a guy who had been on vacation for the last two months. The trip to town had undone him.
He shrugged.
She lifted the book he had laid down. “Shakespeare?”
“I think it’s here for The Tempest. The plays soothe me. They were my best subject in school.”
She took a moment to absorb the unlikeliness of this. “Your new song is great. Are you looking forward to recording it?”
“I’m thinking of burning it up again.”
“Why?” She didn’t bother pointing out that the threat’s impact was considerably lessened by the fact that it already existed on Robby’s recorder in California.
“Richard saved my life. I should give something up for that.”
“Why not look at it from another angle? Did you ever think you were saved to play music?” Why was it so easy to see destiny in others’ lives but not one’s own?
His face twisted. “I’ve been betrayed.”
“I don’t think Wende—”
“Robby.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“My lead guitarist. ‘Who having into truth, by telling of it, / Made such a sinner of his memory / To credit his own lie, he did believe…’In other words, I got fucked. Robby was supposed to take over business for a while so I could go off to write songs and recuperate. I was burned out. I’d done the same thing for him a few years ago. But now he acts like I’ve died. Instead of ‘and’ for a contract, I agreed to change it to ‘or’ to make things easier. His word is enough.”
All the legal alarms were ringing in her head. “Why would you agree to that?”
“I trusted him like a brother.”
The 101 of law school: In business, you have no friends.
Dex was inhaling so hard on his cigarette, she thought any minute he’d suck the whole thing in.
“He did a long interview. It’s on the Internet. I watched in town. Said I had personal problems, drugs and stuff. That I’d gone into hiding on an island.”
It was like someone falling off the wagon in AA, the tech binge.
“So go and take back control.”
“The band’s over.”
Ann thought the most diplomatic response was no response, but then couldn’t help herself. “You are hiding on an island.”
“I should have hired a lawyer like you.”
“You should have.”
“Could still.”
“I’m a recovering lawyer.” Ann was silent. “A freebie: You shouldn’t have played that new song for him till you dissolved the band. Since it was created under the umbrella corporation of Prospero Inc., he’s entitled to it. He has artistic control over its licensing, I’m guessing?”
Dex’s face had grown longer and longer. He looked at Ann now almost as if he were in a trance. “Fuck.”
“You’ve got to dot those i’s and cross those t’s before you have your tantrum.”
“Richard said you were
a cold one.”
“Just saying.” It stung that she had been talked about.
* * *
Another perfect day. Flat blue despite the fact that rain was forecast.
As was her new habit, Ann got up early and walked to the far side of the island where the camera was. She sat behind it and stared at the view that it stared at, a veritable Alice behind the looking glass. It was reality and virtual reality simultaneously—or, rather, it was both the real thing and its abstraction. She felt she was on the verge of some grand truth while being suckered at the same time. She could have gone to another stretch of beach almost identical without a camera, but somehow the very act of the scene being recorded made it easier to concentrate. Immensely restful to be alone but at the same time with thousands of other alone people staring at identical waves. It had the same swampy communalness as sitting in a matinee movie theater crowded with strangers. Of course she was privileged to be there in person, but she imagined when she got home she would also log on to this view. It represented a kind of genius on Loren’s part.
She was sorry to admit that while waiting for Cooked and Wende’s delayed return in town, she had bought a blue pareu for its camera worthiness. In every way that mattered, the spell of escape was broken. It was broken for others also.
* * *
“I’ve had it here,” Dex said. “I want to go back to the main hotel. Get back to LA.” Visions of Robby hijacking the band haunted him.
Panicked, Wende looked around for Cooked. She had thought they’d have weeks, if not months, to settle plans.
Ann decided to say nothing about seeing him take off with Titi earlier. She worried that if the other couple left, Richard would want to leave as well. That would effectively close Loren down.
“Anyway,” Dex complained, “the food’s going downhill.”
Richard agreed. “Loren’s not up to his duties.”
“He’s not feeling well,” Ann said. She knew how to press Richard’s buttons. “Why don’t we take over cooking? Don’t you miss it?”
It was an old lawyer’s trick—never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.
“Maybe I could whip something together tonight.” Richard grabbed at the chance to investigate the kitchen that Titi so zealously guarded. Returning from a quick reconnaissance, he announced there would be a feast that night to use the supplies in the refrigerator that were about to spoil. “Instead of snacks, we could have been eating like kings these last days. What’s needed is a little know-how.”
* * *
Something was up with Wende. That afternoon, she appeared wearing a sensible one-piece from her high-school swim team. When not in the water, she covered up in T-shirts and shorts. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. For the first time, she looked like the girl from Idaho she was. She volunteered as sous chef for Richard and chopped vegetables. To Ann she confided that she felt guilty about Cooked and would not sleep with him again.
“I’m not some kind of home wrecker, you know.”
“Did you give Titi your WILD pendant?”
“Reparations.” Wende frowned. “I’ve matured. There are terrible injustices in the world. Not everyone lives in a resort, Ann.”
“That’s true.”
“There are oppressed people,” Wende said under her breath. “I want to make a difference.”
What surprised Wende the most after all these years playing muse was how much spare time she had when she was no longer under the onus of being “hot.” While she wasn’t going to make a federal case out of it, everyone underestimated what it took to be her, or the former her: the WILD hot young thing, muse, groupie, aspiring actress/singer/model of her ex-Wende incarnation. An unimaginable relief to be rid of that burden. For example: the hair. On the island, she allowed it to go au naturel, but back in LA she had a standing semimonthly appointment for highlights with her colorist to get that perfect sun-kissed carefree look. Then there were the hair extensions, which cost a fortune and only looked right when styled by a professional, so she went in every other day to her hairdresser for a shampoo, blow-dry, and finger-curl. Then the face. Facials involving equipment with electrodes, lasers, and pulsed-light gadgets out of Star Trek, and expensive antiwrinkle treatments because even though, obviously, she didn’t have wrinkles yet, they were coming and had to be preempted. So that involved injections of fillers and Botox, and believe her, there was a long line of under-thirty-year-olds waiting for those services. Then there was eyebrow threading and eyelash dyeing, tooth bleaching, not to mention professionally done makeup for special occasions. On really important nights, she had false eyelashes glued on a single hair at a time. And that was just the face. The body required endless trainers, treadmills, medicine balls, and swimming pools, Pilates, yoga, Tae Bo, and weight training. All this while never getting to eat enough of anything, perpetual starvation while attending parties that featured tables weighed down with delicious, fattening food. Thank God she’d never had her boobs done—they were real, though no one believed it—but how long would they look like that? Endless waxing of underarms and legs, and of course the maximal torture that put Brazil on the map, not soccer or nuts or carnival but the tortuous waxing of the privates, Hollywood style. Manicures and pedicures and spray-on tans, and that didn’t even get one out the door dressed. Sometimes she worked so hard on how she looked that by the time she was ready she was too tired to go out and be seen.
* * *
Preparing for the feast, Richard took a mollified Titi out to collect coconuts. Surprisingly, she was docile about the kitchen takeover and made no protests.
Dex and Cooked shook hands (no hard feelings) and smoked pot on the beach. Ann sat on the sand and watched the sunset while she dabbed oil over the burning wound of her tattoo. The unfinished shark had the look of an initiation rite gone bad.
At sunset they gathered for mai tais made by Dex. Loren came out of his fare, resplendent in a dark-red sleeveless T-shirt and a black pareu knotted around his bony hips. He had a tiare flower behind his ear, carrying off the whole Polynesian mixing of feminine with masculine while still looking hot. He cradled a magnum of vintage Burgundy that Richard took charge of decanting.
“In thanks for the patience of my friends. No charge for the last three days.”
Titi flinched as if she had been hit with a stick.
Ann and Richard exchanged looks, the first they had dared in days. Free changed the whole equation, at least for the last three days. Ann wished that she had known in advance so that she could have enjoyed the time more. At the steep price they were paying per day, all inclusive, including the two bottles of alcohol a day (which meant not inclusive enough by half), even paradise could appear parsed and open to criticism: Is this worth it? This hut, this beach, this meal, this sunset? Happiness commodified?
The meal started with an amuse-bouche of tuna sashimi, garnished with a salsa of mango and Maui onion. At first, Titi and Wende served, but as the flow of food increased, Ann pitched in. Giddily she had worked out the math to convince Richard that the three free days should be added to rather than deducted from their allotment of escape. Why couldn’t she get herself to do the responsible thing, pack her bag, and go back home?
As she waited at the stove for the final touches on yet another dish, she noticed Titi in the corner stirring a small blackened iron pot over a stone fire, trying to hide it from Richard’s prying eyes.
“What’s that?” Ann asked.
“Shark fin … other ingredients.”
“A local dish? Are you making it for us?”
Titi gave her a long appraising look. She liked this unhappy woman whom she heard crying at night more often than making love. “Keep a secret? It’s a love potion.”
A couple of weeks before, Ann would have burst out laughing, but her world had been turned upside down. She could accommodate the possibility of this. “For Cooked?”
Titi nodded.
“But we all need it.”
Two thi
ngs had become clear in Ann’s mind since they had arrived on the island: one, she did love Richard; two, she was done with their previous life. She could only guess at what he was feeling. She supposed he loved her, but he had come back to life when he returned to a kitchen. He, like Dex, had his vocation. Memo to future child: Find something or someone that makes your heart sing. Passion made you like Teflon against life’s disappointments.
Ann ladled Titi’s potion into demitasse cups, then put them on a tray. She would make sure each person drank his or her portion.
“What is it?” Richard asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Consommé. Don’t hurt Titi’s feelings.”
He reached over her and grabbed a cup, critically sipping it. “Needs salt.”
“Finish, or she might kick you out of the kitchen.” Ann watched till his cup was empty.
More appetizers appeared: greens dressed in wasabi vinaigrette, caprese salad of heirloom tomatoes and burrata, tuna carpaccio with giant capers, shrimp in a silky coconut-milk curry. Loren, Cooked, and Dex slowed their eating, but the main courses came at an accelerated pace, a stillborn restaurant’s worth of food: maa tinito, a mixture of red beans, vegetables, and rice that Titi had taught Richard to make; grilled calamari with marinated scallions; tempura zucchini with miso-vinegar dipping sauce; sautéed mahimahi with seared pineapple.
In a state of bliss, Richard stood at the kitchen door, watching his delirious diners. He held a bottle of wine and periodically took a deep slug. “The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star.”
He would not tell Ann until the night was over, but he, too, had done some soul-searching over the gas-ignited flames of the six-burner stove—like Dex and Wende, he also would leave tomorrow. His time on the island had been a reprieve, but it proved what he already knew—cooking was his life. Hopefully Ann would follow, or she would not. Now that his decision was made, he felt relief mixed with sadness.
This had been the only thing resembling a vacation that he and Ann had ever been on. His previous boredom, worrying, marking time, was now replaced by impatience that he had not enjoyed himself properly. Even as he cooked his swan song of a last meal, he wondered if he should agree to another three days since technically, as Ann argued, they would be free. He had not gone drift diving yet. Since he was cooking, contributing, getting inspiration for a whole Polynesian-inspired series of dishes, perhaps he could justify staying a bit longer? But then he thought of Javi mired in all his problems. Self-inflicted, but did that hurt any less? What kind of friend, what kind of family, abandoned his own in time of need? He was a little chagrined by Ann’s callousness toward Javi. No, he would go home tomorrow.
