Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

“I’m going to take a loss on everything I give you,” Steve squeaked out.

“I’m glad we have this understanding. If you ever get a lady friend, the stay’s on me. On your next pickup from the airport, I need you to give Cooked’s brother, Teina, a lift.”

“Where’s he been?”

“He just got out of prison in Papeete. Long story you would rather not know.”

“Wonderful. You want me to be your mule and run drugs, too?”

* * *

A beach ball rolled up and bounced against Loren’s ankle. He picked it up and tucked it under his arm while he finished talking with the manager, who appeared to be suffering sunstroke. The children in the pool waited in a hushed silence. Ann, too, held her breath, expecting … what? A deflating slash with a long knife? Before she could say anything to Richard, the teak face cracked wide again, flashing teeth, and Loren high-stepped like a comical bird straight into the water, holding the ball overhead. The children raced, joyfully screaming, to the other side as he lobbed it across and then proceeded to play catch.

Ann laughed.

“What’s funny?” Richard asked, deep into his study of the menu.

“Our host,” Ann said. “Get a lock for the bag.”

On their way through the lobby to the gift shop for the lock, there was a commotion at the front desk. A man was being carried out on a stretcher.

“What happened?” Richard asked.

Steve shrugged, restored from his run-in with Loren by a change of clothes and a stiff shot of whiskey. “Bends. He was an experienced diver, but he stayed down too long. Rushed the decompression.”

“That can happen?”

“They get carried away.”

“I had no idea.”

Steve gave his official smile. “We give a complimentary first diving lesson.”

“Not for this guy,” Richard said.

“Polynesia is all about what’s under the water. The land part is only a glimpse of her real beauty. If you’re careful, nothing will happen. This is the safest place in the world.”

Unless, Steve thought, you are unlucky enough to get tied up with grizzled old-timers like Loren. Steve liked this couple despite the fact that they came without luggage, which boded poorly for tips. They had not slipped him a hundred to get upgraded to the sunset side of the over-water bungalows. Besides that, he was being forced to comp their stay tonight and (if you factored in Loren’s discount) everything they ate and drank when they got to Loren’s motu .

“What do you think?” Richard asked Ann. “It is free.” It became suddenly imperative to squeeze every last dime of value out of this trip.

“Go,” she said, and to her surprise he did.

* * *

Ann escaped back to their air-conditioned bungalow and dropped on the bed shrouded in white mosquito netting. Alone. In the world’s honeymoon capital. Absurd that she was disappointed; they were as far from the circumstances of romance as could be imagined. It seemed impossible that their whipped-cream-seduction birthday dinner was less than a few days in the past. Why shouldn’t Richard be signing up for each and every thing that brought him a moment of escape? Still. In the old days, he would have eagerly followed her back.

On their first night together, Richard had inexplicably left the bedroom before they made love to go check that the doors were locked, the windows bolted, the gas on the stove turned off, and then he tested the smoke detectors. Odd, but Ann liked a guy who took care of things.

When she came out of his bathroom in his old T-shirt, he was lying on the bed, naked except for a towel neatly draped across his hips. She had giggled. Why the towel? Modesty? To protect her purity? Surely not. Nuzzling his ear, she decided it was more like those fancy restaurants where they bring your entrée under a silver cloche , set it down in front of you, and then fling the cover off before your eyes. Voilà! Even though you already knew perfectly well what you ordered.

She had never dated a man who fed her so well. Food was love, and Richard lavished it on her, brewing her espresso in the morning and making her freshly baked brioche. Sometimes Dutch pancakes, sometimes Mediterranean omelets. He packed her off with a lunch bag of Parisian-ham-and-arugula sandwiches with olive tapenade, pistachio cantucci .

Now, their life in tatters, he went off diving. Where had her protective, nurturing Richard gone? Amusing himself despite her torment. Ten years, every year since law school, lopped off. Ann worried because she knew from long professional experience that relationships only continued on some basis of parity, to be determined by the two parties. Where was that parity now?

The deep dark unspoken reason that she couldn’t entirely blame Richard was that she, Ann, ruthless lawyer to the stars, aspiring big fish, had not done due diligence on Javi as a business partner because he was Richard’s best friend, his best man at their wedding, the intended godfather of future children that they could probably no longer afford to have — and of course because of The Lapse, although she had banished it from being a factor in her thinking. Or had she? The 101 of law school: In business, you have no friends. She had known better, yet obviously she had not.

Richard came back hours later, lips and fingers pruned, exhilarated. “You have no idea! The fish!” He promptly lay down and fell asleep.

Ann dozed until midnight, then was wide-awake. Jet lag and worry made rest impossible. Perhaps she had been too hard on Richard — didn’t he deserve any break from the tension that he could get? What was so bad about being underwater, looking at Technicolor fish, if it helped you forget your problems? She tugged on him, nibbled on his shoulder, but he swatted her away, unwilling to rise back up to consciousness.

She rose and stepped out on the deck, closing the glass door behind her to seal in the coolness. Better that Richard didn’t wake, that she didn’t make her desperate effort at intimacy. The air lay hot and close, heavy as if she were in a sauna; the lagoon a pellucid blue under the moon, inviting as one of those azure martinis they served in the hotel bar. Richard had compared it to drinking pool water, but Ann topped him, claiming it was like drinking antifreeze. She climbed down the steps of the ladder and dipped her toes, surprised at how deliciously inviting it felt.

They had both known what a wild card Javi was — brilliant and passionate and petty and malicious and, on top of it all, careless. Was it even possible that she once had thought she loved him, that she had considered leaving Richard for him? That was years ago, in the way past. Javi and she had put it behind them, yet this betrayal stung all the worse for it. Wasn’t there still some love, some protectiveness for her? For Richard, whom he supposedly loved as a brother? But she knew deep down in her heart that Javi was hurting the worst of all.

The scariest thing was that a secret part of her rejoiced at the news of Javi’s profligacy, the restaurant’s demise, her professional ruin. It forced her to do what she had been too cowardly to do otherwise: crush family expectations, risk the censure of friends and colleagues, endure her own guilt over failing Richard financially. She might very well have plodded on until retirement on the unhappy path she had picked. That was all over now.

Ann pulled her nightgown over her head and slid naked into the water, which had a refreshing bite to it once she was fully submerged. Underwater, rocks and bursts of coral appeared like dark clouds in the distance. The world turned topsy-turvy. She went on her back — the stars overhead hung ripe and heavy like fruit. Time passed, unmarked, as if she had fallen asleep, dreaming of floating, or floating while dreaming, when something slippery, cold, and bone-crushingly powerful brushed underneath her bare back, lifting her ever so slightly up out of the water. Out of nowhere came the image of Loren, teak chest and narrow hips, pressing against her. She pushed the thought away, dutifully replaced it with the matrimonially sanctioned image of Richard, before she flipped over on her stomach, looking down into the water in time to catch the pound of something dark throbbing away through the water even as she reached out her hand to touch and caress the danger at her fingertips.