The Last Good Paradise: A Novel

by Tatjana Soli

  Finding herself in the quiet grove by Loren’s fare, she decided to hide out on his lanai to watch the stars. As soon as she was seated, she heard a shuffling inside. Thieves? The window covering pulled up.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” Loren said.

  “Why aren’t you at the concert?”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  Ann whimpered.

  Loren sighed. “I’ll bring the bottle.”

  When he came out with a lamp, she was startled by the new gauntness in his face—eyes hollowed out, dark circles underneath like he’d given up on sleep altogether.

  “How are you?” she said. She had been so caught up in the circus of Wende, Dex, Javi, and Richard she’d forgotten about him.

  “I long for this to be over.” He grimaced as the alcohol burned the sores in his mouth. He’d been inside, making order of his things.

  Ann nodded.

  He coughed. “I’ve been watching viewer hits. The sales numbers. Already this is one of the biggest concerts of its kind. They have done more good here than I did in all these years.”

  They drank down their absinthe in a single gulp, and he poured another round.

  “Accidentally doing good. You made a real commitment.”

  “Pretty Ann has the saddest face tonight.”

  “Richard is leaving me.”

  Loren shook his head. “Male pride. Eventually he will have to accept your apology. Otherwise he will lose too much.”

  “I’m not the same person I was when I first came here.”

  “I hope change includes burning that awful brown bathing suit.”

  “I lost it,” she said. “So what are the viewer numbers?”

  “Millions and millions.” Loren giggled. The giggle turned into a cough.

  “We should take you to a hospital.”

  “We’re way past that.” He shook his head. “Promise me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “They’re going to go after Cooked and Titi. You have to help them.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Finishing business I’ve neglected.”

  “Lilou?” Should she save Loren the hopeless trip? No. She was a coward. “I don’t know the laws here.”

  “There’s no one else I can trust.”

  Trust. No one at the firm had ever needed or trusted her. She had been interchangeable.

  “I won’t leave till it’s handled.” The idea that her staying could be construed as necessary cheered her up.

  The incongruous sound of an electric guitar ramped up and ripped the night apart. Then the sound of the audience screaming and clapping. The concert began, predictably, with “Best of Prospero” hits.

  “A few days from now everything will be back to normal,” Ann said.

  “No,” Loren answered. “Everything has changed.”

  * * *

  When Ann returned to her fare, Javi was sprawled out on the floor of the lanai.

  “Nowhere else to sleep,” he said.

  “Where’s Richard?”

  “Still signing autographs for his cake. Or hanging with his new pal Dex.”

  “Why did you tell him?”

  “Jesus, he was letting you go get microwaved.”

  “Dex needed me.”

  “A worthy replacement. I get it.”

  “Richard’s leaving me.”

  “Leaving us. No more restaurant. Can you imagine he wants to open a bakery?”

  She had the nasty feeling one gets when it’s obvious that others have moved on without you.

  “You two will be together,” Javi said unconvincingly. “Do you have an extra pillow I can borrow?”

  “I’m going to be a divorced thirty-eight-year-old ex-lawyer.”

  Javi, as usual, only heard himself. “I don’t even blame you guys hanging out here on vacay while I went through hell back in LA. Could you put in a good word for me with Wende? I sense interest.”

  Ann went inside and slammed the door.

  * * *

  The next morning the wedding guests, tech people, and leftover paparazzi readied themselves to depart. The island was trashed. It would take a week or more to clean it up to its former state. Mounds of garbage had been piled in the back against the palm groves. Debris floated in the water—paper, flowers, rotted food, and the occasional condom. Along the pristine white of the beach were smudges of soot from fires like blackheads across formerly flawless skin.

  Again, there was singing and crying, hugs and kisses. The resort guests came down to the beach to wave off their new friends, promising to visit on other islands. Javi already had invitations from a dozen females to other villages, and a lucrative offer to be head chef at a resort in Mooréa.

  Cooked, moved by the leave-taking, stood on a rock and blew the conch in good-bye. How could Loren explain that this was not a dignified thing for the new owner of a resort to do? If it wasn’t dignified now, why had he been told to do it earlier? Yes, Loren definitely had done his own share of playing big kahuna.

  Titi was a whole different story, as women always were. Even though she was the age of his daughters, Titi commanded a maternal authority over Loren. All he ever felt from her was a potent combination of patience, disappointment, and, once in a great while, bad temper. Last he’d seen her earlier that morning, she was ensconced behind a large table in the kitchen, processing applications from almost every single wedding guest. Many of the guests also filled out applications for family, friends, or people to whom they owed a favor. Titi looked tired. No matter who or how many she hired, she would make more unhappy than happy. Chips were being called in: Remember when I did this for you? For Cooked? For your auntie, cousin, grade-school teacher? Your mother said … She was offered bribes ranging from free food, to junkets to Papeete, to outright cold, hard francs. Titi still had not fathomed the extent to which her life had changed.

  When Loren informed her he was taking off for the main resort to talk with Steve, she frowned.

  “I need you here.” A long line of applicants snaked out the door and around the building. Just like a man to take off when everything was at crisis stage. “We need to hire workers for cleanup. We need to draw up supply lists. I’m thinking we should look into those solar generators someone mentioned. When do we go back to pre-electric conditions? What’s our new policy on WiFi?”

  “You’ll figure it out, Titi.”

  “At least take your cell phone so I can get hold of you.”

  Alone, Loren took a large piece of rolled-up paper and made his long, slow way around the island till he reached the camera. It had been put back in its exact spot and resumed its regular scan of the beach. Standing behind it, Loren looked out at the view that had so hypnotized him long ago, and found that, unlike him, it had not diminished a bit from its former glory. He stepped forward in front of the camera for the first time. Anathema to his aesthetic that an artist appear in his own work, but finally emotion and human need must outweigh art. While he knew there was sound available, in his imagination this was strictly a silent film act. So often the restrictions of art come from within the creator rather than from the outside world. This was simply the only way he could do it. He unrolled the paper and held it up across his chest.

  * * *

  I’m sorry, Lilou.

  Your father loves you.

  * * *

  * * *

  They stood on the trash-strewn beach, wilted flowers studding the sand, watching the last group of paparazzi pack up to leave. Loren looked at the small group assembled before him with the delicate sadness one reserved for children one was hiding a terrible truth from, but the terribleness was all reserved for him: these people, recent strangers, sudden family, would be his last guests. He already felt the nostalgia of their departure and his own.

  “I’m going to hitch a ride to the main resort,” he said. “I’ve got business with Steve about the new boat.”

  Everyone nodded and moved off, preoccupied with plans of leaving. Non
e of them had slept much in days; most were contemplating taking naps for the rest of the afternoon.

  Still, Ann hung back as Richard left for their fare, and Javi chased Wende to the kitchen.

  “What?” Loren said. He’d packed a small bag with his mask and flippers.

  “Maybe I’ll come along?”

  “No.”

  She smiled uneasily, studying him.

  “Do you want me to bring back something for you?” he asked.

  “Yourself.” She kissed his cheek. “Bring yourself.”

  “Our time together has been special.”

  Ann was crying. “No. Yes. No.”

  She had been monitoring viewer numbers from the concert and was idly watching the regular day’s broadcast (thinking with a heavy heart of when she would be watching it from back home) when Loren walked on camera and held up his sign. What were the chances that Lilou would be watching for that scant thirty seconds? The sight of his desperation undid her. Quickly Ann hit the record button. Maybe she would send the clip to Lilou? Maybe the direct message would accomplish what she herself could not?

  * * *

  He got the dive boat from Steve with the promise to return it in the late afternoon. The story that they were underequipped after the festivities was a plausible enough one. If there was one bit of unfinished business, it was Steve, and Loren briefly considered sinking the boat in revenge, but he didn’t. It was important to be bigger than that in the end.

  Midafternoon he had just rounded the north end of Kokovoko Island, approaching his favorite diving spot in all the Tuamotus: the Great Shark Wall.

  The great howling silence had started with Bette’s death and never came to an end. A monolithic silence, inescapable, it became the most permanent thing in his life. The cliché was a lie—time did not heal; it just swallowed other things into itself. He could laugh at a joke, or flirt with a pretty woman, or gaze at a sunset, and suddenly the loss would come down on him like a hammer blow. One day, one week, one month, year, decade—it made no difference. It was as painfully raw as yesterday. He admired but did not trust those who moved on, remained unchanged, stayed optimistic. Unkindly, he judged they had simply not loved enough. Maybe it was a French thing.

  Solitude poured over him like balm, as naturally as if this had been the only life he’d ever known. As if he had been a fisherman, which in a way he had been, but the quarry was far more elusive than anything that could be caught on a hook.

  He cut the motor and dropped anchor. The sun beat down like a shiny brass drum, forcing him to the absurdity of putting on a hat and sunglasses. He couldn’t stand sun and heat like he used to. He ferreted out the bottle of absinthe at the bottom of his bag, nested like a poisonous green viper in his beach towel.

  The first couple of swigs burned his ulcers so badly that his eyes stung, his tongue curled up like a snail touching salt, but as the diabolical spirit worked its magic, he no longer felt pain in his mouth or, eventually, in the rest of his body. No doubt it was the exoticism of absinthe that had drawn Ann, although she couldn’t possibly have guessed that it was a seductor’s drink. It called out to those who wished to be enchanted. He drank it neat, which was the secret of all true absinthe drinkers—one did not need all the appurtenances. The ritual of the glass, the spoon, the sugar cube, and water was strictly for initiating newcomers. He had not told Ann the whole of the Oscar Wilde quote because there were some truths one wished to keep for oneself.

  The boat rocked softly. Emptiness had made him fall in love with the South Pacific. Until then, he had not fully realized the extent of his unease—how he always felt crowded by others jostling him in line, filling his ears with their thoughts. On the islands, he knew himself for the first time—the man who wasn’t defined by being father, husband, artist, lover, or even hotelier. The place allowed him to take his own measure. Before, he never had paid much attention to nature other than enjoying the sun on his back while on his way to somewhere important. On the islands, the sun on his back was the important thing. Nature exhibited its own personality: the deep serenity of the deserted coral beaches, the shallow dreaminess of the lagoons.

  He felt shame at his past years of debauchery, his cavalier attitude to the people who had taken him in as family. Despoiling his own paradise these last years, he had only wanted more tourists, more drink. The first real estate he owned in his whole life, an island won in a poker game, had corrupted him. Was his beautiful motu as lethal in its own way as Moruroa? It looked idyllic, one could pretend it was safe, but it poisoned one nonetheless. Maybe Titi was right. Maybe the islands had poisoned him just as much as the young men in his bed.

  He was halfway through the bottle and feeling dizzy. He had brought a little food to hold the alcohol down in his stomach. He nibbled roast pork from last night’s feast, as well as a few bites of French cheese. They might be brutal colonizers, but if there was one thing his countrymen did right, it was fromage. He had saved a piece of the wedding cake for last, washing it down with more absinthe. The cake tasted like the best kind of dream. A man capable of making a cake like that would never leave Ann. He tasted Richard’s love for her in it. Other people’s love gave him faith in the future, even if it was a future he would not share.

  He needed a cool swim, away from the hammering sun. His love of nature had grown in proportion to his hatred of rules and laws. They were man-made, arbitrary, prone to err; they didn’t accommodate reality. Nature could do nothing but be itself. Laws had caused him to lose his two girls even though in the end it was clear he would have been the best parent. Rules led to Bette’s death. The bureaucrats cleaned their hands of it. Tant pis. A sad incident. The death of one little girl didn’t matter as long as no one would be blamed. Loren preferred the regal impartiality of nature.

  Unfortunately, even Polynesia was not immune—Cooked and Titi’s clan, the people on the other islands, lied to and poisoned and ignored. Where were the laws to protect them? Loren might not have been the most exemplary of men, he had tried to do right and failed, but at least he never knowingly did harm. Never profited from it. He only insisted on being free. The prospect of a hospital room loomed like a jail cell. His last will and testament was to live out his life on his own terms.

  He was about to throw the almost empty bottle of absinthe overboard when his cell phone rang.

  Unbelievable.

  He’d brought it along at Titi’s insistence, not wanting to raise suspicion, and then had forgotten it. The siren song of technology—he could not not look at caller ID: Titi. Absolutely not. His voice would give him away. He shut the phone off. But even so the interruption had its effect. He felt lonely where before he had felt at one with the universe. Maybe he should just head back?

  He sat miserably in his deck chair, swaying. He knew what he had to do, yet he was afraid. The distraction had done just that: distracted.

  Like a drug addict taking a last hit, he turned the phone back on and texted Titi:

  I LOVE YOU LIKE A DAUGHTER. NEVER DOUBT THAT.

  After he pressed send, he realized he had in all probability set panic in motion. The text would send off alarms. Ann already suspected something. His time must be measured against possible rescue. As he sat there, the phone rang again.

  Doomed, vain, insatiable man that he was, he looked. It was Ann.

  A tightness in his throat—he was loved more than he guessed.

  Ann, who would have been the kind of woman he might have married in a different life, was easier to disappoint than Titi. He lobbed the phone as far as possible into the ocean.

  * * *

  “He isn’t answering.” Ann frowned.

  They had all been napping when a boat arrived in the lagoon. Sleepy Richard and Ann came out of the fare and shaded their eyes to see what was causing the commotion. Steve, the manager of the resort, piloted in with a woman passenger in sunglasses and a large hat. Unlike Ann weeks ago, this woman still managed to be stylish after the long, windblown ride across the lagoon. S
he had to be French. Then Ann knew.

  Titi came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishrag, displeased. They would have to set up a system for reservations, no constant drop-ins like this. The resort was still a mess, and they were not open to the public beyond the public that now considered itself private. Why hadn’t Loren explained this to Steve? As Titi dialed Loren again, she read the text that had just come in from him, then immediately hit the call button. Instead of ringing, his phone went straight to voice mail.

  “Titi!” the woman yelled as she stumbled from the boat so that Steve had to leap out to help her. She glided through the knee-high water, oblivious of her hem, which was getting soaked. In her yellow summer dress, the scene looked like something out of a movie.

  Titi stopped as if she had seen a ghost. “Lilou,” she said. “You’ve come home.”

  * * *

  Loren was profoundly drunk and starting to feel sentimental about all he was leaving behind. He also had to piss. Maybe he’d just head back and put off the inevitable a while longer. What would be the harm? But when he lowered his bathing trunks to urinate over the side of the boat, the purplish bruises, the swollen lumps along the groin, shocked him again in all their goriness, their insistent mockery of his mortality. He had been handsome once. Desired. What would happen when he was no longer fit enough to do himself in? He didn’t want to burden Titi. He refused to be warehoused with the doomed in a hospice. Was it too much to want to be remembered as a man of dignity?

  He jumped over the side of the boat and adjusted the valves on his scuba tank regulator. This was his favorite location in the archipelago for diving—a reef shelf that extended from the island and then dropped off more than four thousand feet at an ocean wall. One could glide along the sandy bottom, forty feet from the surface, feeling snug and protected, and then swim to the edge and look down into the great abyss as if falling into the night sky. Looking into the far depths was like trying to see the center of the universe—an unyielding, lonely, liquid deep space.