The Last Good Paradise: A Novel

by Tatjana Soli

  “Not true.”

  “True.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “If it did, I would forgive you.”

  “So you forgive me hypothetically, and I’m supposed to forgive the real thing?”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “Exactly.” And like he had slapped her in the face, Richard stood and walked away.

  * * *

  The wedding party started early in the morning and went on relentlessly for three days. At first the food and the feasting, the dancing and the drinking, were welcome after all the nuclear showdown theatrics, and then, like other pleasurable things done to excess, it chafed and made one feel tired and bloated. The Tuamotuans never seemed to run out of energy—even the children were wound up like forty-eight-hour clocks—but the paparazzi were dropping off like flies. One had to be medevaced out for supposed alcohol poisoning, which ended up being mere exhaustion.

  Dex and Robby disappeared into rehearsals, joined by the native drummers for the wedding. It was promoted as a cross-cultural event, with hot dancers brought in from Papeete, fire-eaters, more drummers, etc.

  Wende, bored now with nothing to do, filmed parts of the wedding ceremony and parts of the music rehearsals, ending up with a mix of National Geographic rerun and a frat-house reality show. She and Ann filmed the traditional inking of his and hers wedding tattoos, the first few lines started with the traditional shark tooth and ink before a modern electric needle was used.

  Ann looked down at her own dismembered fish forlornly circling her thigh.

  “Can’t you finish?”

  “I thought you hated it.” Wende grimaced as a tiare flower was tatted on the inside of her ankle.

  “I need change.”

  “Change is good.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Some things are worth it, right? Let’s do it.”

  Wende took her time and carefully worked the needle as Titi and the other women looked on, impressed with her technique. “I considered opening my own tattoo parlor a while back.”

  There was no comparison—the back of the shark was much finer work than the earlier front. A new maturity was evident in Wende’s work as she bent over Ann’s thigh and asked for the flashlight to be brought closer. She had become a perfectionist. It had nothing to do with flesh, everything with spirit, as if she had lived through lifetimes in these last few days.

  When the tat was done, the women clapped, and Wende bowed her head.

  “You’re good to go and conquer.”

  * * *

  Wende cringed as the production values of the wedding/benefit concert began slipping. The problem with authentic was that it didn’t look the way anyone under the age of fifty had been conditioned by movies to think it should look. The grass anklets and arm cuffs looked stringy; the stumpy headdresses lacked majesty. Never mind the girls in nylon shorts and Pearl Jam T-shirts. Wende pursed her lips and drank some vodka-laced guava juice.

  The highlight of day two of the wedding ceremony was Cooked and Titi being carried in from a boat in the lagoon on thrones balanced on the shoulders of six men. The thrones were lowered onto a carpet of banana leaves on which tiare, hibiscus, and ginger flowers had been scattered. Combined with the flowered leis of the women, the crushed petals emitted a rich perfume into the air.

  At the height of the ceremony, Titi and Cooked kneeled facing each other and exchanged a single flower. The impermanence of the flower instead of something solid like gold rings was to remind the couple of the transience of their bond, and thus its preciousness. Do not waste a single minute of this love.

  Ann never cried at weddings, but now she did. She and Richard had squandered buckets of both time and love, and had only themselves to blame.

  The hope of their simple civil ceremony years ago, the small dinner party with only their parents and Javi, had seemed to portend such an exceptionally authentic life, lived on their own terms. Richard had made reservations at the best French restaurant in town, a small place with only ten tables. They got married on a Friday afternoon, and when they arrived at the restaurant with their party, they found fire trucks in front. There had been a kitchen fire. Impossible to get reservations anywhere else on a Friday night—they ended up eating at a Chinese place down the block. Ann’s parents had been appalled, especially since she had refused their offer of a country club wedding. Richard’s parents seemed bewildered. In the way such things rarely happen, near disaster averted itself. Javi tried to lighten the mood by ordering a round of Chinese beer. When the staff found out it was a wedding dinner, they started to cook specialties not on the menu. Richard still talked about some of those dishes, which they never found again. The owner of the restaurant came out and sang Mandarin wedding songs, accompanied by a waiter on an oboe. The brillance and oddness of the evening broke down barriers between the parents. They closed down the place at midnight. It ended up being exactly the wedding they had hoped for.

  Now Ann reached for Richard’s hand, and for a moment he allowed it.

  * * *

  Loren sat next to Faufau in the place of honor. He felt pleased looking at Titi, as if a great burden had been lifted. So this was what it felt like to make good. He’d been a cynical bastard these last years, but he had to admit feeling satisfied that night, as if he’d pulled off a slick heist. Titi and Cooked were his happy children; in the universe’s obscure system of checks and balances, some kind of amends had been made.

  Ever since Bette’s death, he’d lived with a dread that he would continue to fail people when they most needed him. It made him shy away from all connection except what was absolutely necessary. Fatherless Titi was necessary, and yet the tie to her and her family had driven him to even more irresponsibility. Don’t think you can count on me. In the back of his mind, he was waiting for that one time too many when Faufau at last would tell him to leave, when Titi would refuse to come to the rescue in the middle of the night, to places a nice young girl shouldn’t go. Thing was, it never happened. He was ashamed to say that he got far better than he ever gave back. And so this was most deserved.

  He looked around at the jubilant, hopeful faces and felt like doom. The deluded naïveté—believing that things would work out in the end—was as endless as it was maddening. Maybe that was the only way the human race could go on. Titi might as well have been wearing a “Happily Ever After” T-shirt. Cooked seemed dazed by his fast-approaching bourgeois future, resigned to it as only weeks ago he had been to the very different path of an outlaw. The world was a shark. One had to be ruthless, relentlessly moving forward; if forced to stop or move backward, one drowned. Loren fretted over these children of his, how ill-suited they were to the harsh realities of life. Titi felt his troubled gaze and blew him a kiss. Absolutely no rancor for how he had tested them these last years, no glee that now they would be calling the shots, proving his good choice.

  * * *

  After the feast was over, Loren sought out Ann. Time was running out. He needed to ask her a favor, but she would make demands in return.

  “Care for a nightcap?”

  In his room, he poured and they toasted.

  “It was a beautiful ceremony,” she said. “Be proud.”

  But Loren was all business. “You asked about my finger. That was so I would never forget Bette. But in my grief, I forgot about Lilou. A double sin.”

  He had gone back to France to court Lilou. He hated being back in his home country, hated the flat white sky, the muted colors of the land, and the crabbed people. Matilde’s pinched eyes, her sallow cheeks—how was it possible he had ever been married to such a woman? Each time Matilde answered the door, she was more dour, announcing their daughter’s wish to not see him. If Lilou had asked him to, he would have agreed to stay in France, even though it was like living in a sepulchre after his life in Polynesia.

  He remained in Lyon for two full weeks, staying at a threadbare hotel that turned his every waking moment into a tangible longing to return to
the islands. He shadowed Lilou en famille from school to grocery, from dress store to bakery, day after day. She only returned her mother’s stony look.

  Eventually Matilde was so exasperated by the gossip his presence caused that she forced Lilou to meet him at a café while she waited outside. This was labeled a major concession, in return for which he agreed to leave.

  Up close, Loren could hardly recognize in this gloomy, timid girl the happy child taken from him.

  “Titi and Faufau say hello.” Nothing. Could she have forgotten? “Why do you refuse to see me?”

  She looked into her lap.

  “I miss you, Lou.”

  She stifled a sigh. “Please go away.”

  “Why?”

  She looked up, and there was that old blaze of passion in her eyes, not dead but merely banked to allow her to survive childhood. “You let us go.”

  “I tried—”

  “She believed you would come—”

  “Blame your mother.”

  “I … blame … you.”

  After that, Loren left. He went back to the islands, never to return to France. Years later, when Lilou was an adult and Matilde passed away, the last link between them was broken. Until he got the idea of the webcam.

  Would Ann find Lilou after he was gone? Tell her that he loved her and had never forgotten?

  Ann’s specialty at the firm had been her speed at completing an assignment. She was also good at intuiting a client’s wishes even if he himself had not stated it outright. With the information Loren had given her, she did a web search for Lilou as soon as she left his fare. It was morning in France, and using her sat-phone, she was connected to Lilou’s secretary and then was given her home phone. When Ann described the nature of her call, there was silence on the other end.

  Finally Lilou said, “That’s in the past.”

  “Understood. I’m the messenger. But I felt you should know now rather than later.”

  “You made a mistake.”

  “May I say one thing, personally, not professionally?”

  “If you wish.”

  “Whatever happened, that’s done and over. Soon, very soon I’m afraid, he’ll be gone. He’s one of a kind. A special man. You’re a young woman, but I have a little more experience.” Ann sighed. “At the end, it’s the things we neglected to do, rather than the failures, that haunt us.”

  “You were kind to call.” The line went dead.

  * * *

  By the third and last day of the ceremony, everyone on the island was in a state of perpetual hangover. The morning went by quietly with a breakfast setup of pancakes and fruit for two hundred and fifty, prepared by Javi.

  An interesting shift occurred during the wedding extravaganza—Richard had owned the kitchen.

  Although it was packed with Polynesian women doing their traditional dishes, speaking little English, Richard oversaw it all and commanded the place. Not a bowl or spoon, not an ingredient was touched without his okay. When Javi started working, Richard allowed it because the help was needed but only let him do prep. When Javi made one of his own inspirations without permission—a spicy raw fish ceviche—Richard tasted it, declared it excellent, then turned the whole plate over into the trash. The women tittered and shuffled off like a flock of beach sandpipers, averting their eyes. Men bumping noses like sharks. Javi’s eyes watered as if he’d been slapped.

  “Don’t do this to me,” he whispered. “You’re like my brother.”

  “A brother whose wife you fucked!”

  The women hurried out the kitchen door.

  * * *

  After finding out about the affair, Richard in his anxiety-ridden, wide-awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night, deepest, darkest self had to admit that he had suspected, maybe even had known, but said nothing. Why? As much as he had suspected it was happening, he also had sensed when it was over. He had married Ann because he could not imagine spending his life without her. He’d asked Javi to be his best man. It wasn’t like he was above wronging those he loved. He’d allowed Ann to sacrifice for his dream. He’d ridden Javi’s charisma toward success, suspecting that by himself he wasn’t enough. What Richard had done these last years was to go into cowardly hiding. Richard had lost Richard, and who in her right mind could love that? He almost didn’t blame Ann. Almost.

  Cooking on the island had made him see himself with more clarity than he’d had in years. So what if he was a modest man destined for modest success? It wasn’t so bad, accepting nongreatness, rejecting the siren song of fame, which required giving up the pleasures of the everyday for the possibility of existing in people’s minds. What else was fame other than that? What was this thing called greatness?

  Ann kept talking about Captain Cook this, Captain Cook that, from the book she was reading. When he came home to England a hero after two long voyages, his name synonymous with being the greatest explorer in the world, Cook quickly left his comfortable house, his family, and went out again on a third voyage. Richard would have kicked back, moved to the country, and taken up dairy production—come up with a killer sharp Cook Cheddar—and allowed himself to be feted by the minor gentry, agreeing to serve as headpiece at county fairs and the like. What about enjoying Mrs. Cook’s company, because surely she was almost a stranger? But Cook didn’t do that.

  What did Cook think on his final voyage as the wooden boat creaked out into the Thames, the wood bending and pleading in the water, that last dark morning, knowing at best he would not be back for years at best? Posterity knowing that he would not be back at all. Nope, that wasn’t for Richard. There would never be a Richard Island, or Richard Inlet, or even a Richard bridge or school. Or restaurant. He could live with that.

  He hated to prepare meat—he admitted it. He also hated deracinating vegetables in the torture known as French technique, and frankly, one of the loveliest things on the face of this beautiful earth was a fresh, medium-crumb yellow cake. He licked his lips. And sabayon. He’d be making a lot more of both in the future.

  The resort kitchen had been cleaned, and everyone had left for the concert. Dinner service had gone off like a charm. Richard put the finishing touches on the colossal wedding cake. He was never hungry for what he cooked for others, but always made a private little dish for himself; in the double boiler, he heated up egg yolks, sugar, and red wine, plus his secret ingredient that made it out-of-this-world. The beauty of sabayon was its simplicity and temperament—if one didn’t get the exact right temperature and whisk constantly, one ended up with curdled eggs instead of wine froth from the gods. This batch turned out sublime—velvety and perfumed. Richard ate the whole thing out of the pot with a wooden spoon.

  Someone once told him it was foolish to love something so temporary, so destined to quickly disappear, as food, and his answer was, find me the thing to love that will last forever. He was going out on a limb here, but didn’t loving the creation make more sense than loving its mortal creator? All these star chefs—wouldn’t their tarte tatins outlast them, one and all?

  It broke him up in a thousand ways, but he would leave Ann because it would be impossible to endure her disappointment in him and the man he planned to become.

  * * *

  To Loren’s despair, Wende had turned the live cam off again and relocated it to the stage to film the concert. The period of blank screen on the Internet would only increase eagerness, she claimed. The new songs that were being donated—“The White Whale,” “One-Eyed Woman,” and “Tuamotuan Melody”—were already recorded and ready for purchase and download for 99 cents each online. But before they went live, the wedding cake had to be cut.

  The beach was lit by oil lamps and torches, although a very expensive light set was ready once the concert started. Wende had finagled an Australian production company to donate it, hinting at future Down Under tie-ins with Prospero. Now, in the last minutes of firelight, a palm-festooned pallet was carried in and set down in front of Cooked and Titi. On it blazed the most gorgeous creation of Richard’s
career. At the last minute as it made its way out the door, Richard took Javi’s unorthodox (but inspired) suggestion and set the cake ablaze with the long, slender candles left over from Ann’s birthday.

  The cake was in tiered rectangles like the stone ceremonial platforms on the islands; the base was frosted to resemble a white sand beach, with bits of sugar candy molded into seashells; the upper layers were studded with tropical flowers to form miniature jungles; on top was a thatched fare made out of chocolate. Inside, each bite was a treasure of custard and fruit.

  “That’s your masterwork, bro,” Javi said.

  “You’re right,” Richard said, not tempted in the least to be humble. He snapped pictures with a borrowed cell phone for his future bakery’s menu.

  Cooked cut the first piece with a sword that had been in his clan for more than a hundred and fifty years, traded from the first Europeans to land on their shores, and he fed the cake to Titi. After each piece had been put on its individual plate the pièce de résistance came: a puddle of coconut-milk rum sauce poured over it.

  The concert audience, which numbered almost three hundred with press and tech help, was quiet, only a murmur of gluttony and clinking of forks audible. Besides the main cake, there were four more sheet cakes set out to feed everyone.

  Ann ate her slice and knew that Richard had reached a place of inner peace.

  When he walked behind her seat, accepting compliments like his own kind of rock star, she nodded her head in appreciation.

  “This is delicious,” she said.

  He bent down and took her arm.

  “I slept with Wende. When we went out snorkeling? She offered, and I accepted.”

  * * *

  Ann left before the concert started.

  The rest of the island was as deserted as it had been when they first arrived. The palms were like tall, dark back-scratchers leaning against the sky. She pushed out of her mind the knowledge that she would soon leave this place. Richard was leaving, going back to dismantle their old life. All the things in their house that she had taken such pride in, that she’d been so sure she’d miss—the wire egg baskets and chintz sofa and antique mirrors—the reality was she hadn’t given a thought to any of it since she’d been away. The idea of losing things no longer bothered her, but she had never considered that Richard would be among the things gone.