Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

“You lying bastard!”

“Can I help you?”

“I can’t believe that you would do something like this.”

“You will tell me any minute what ‘this’ is?”

“Robinson Crusoe island? Back to the primitive? While you have a camera setup like some creepy reality show? You are a perverti .”

“You did venture far today.”

“So you are responsible? Leaving it all behind. Mr. Buddha here.”

“ You called me those things.”

“You accepted being called those things.”

Ann had been in a transcendent state when she came to that particularly picturesque cove, and it didn’t register at first sight — the six-foot aluminum pole or the camera bolted at its top. After futilely searching for her bathing suit, she had snuck through the trees and watched the camera’s movement — it seemed stationary, rotating neither left nor right but focusing straight ahead on the last fifteen feet of sand and the ocean beyond it. When Ann literally turned tail and ran, she had not been filmed in all likelihood, but the spell had been broken. She felt violated. On the way back to the resort, she no longer communed with the sand, water, and sky; no, she was looking for likely hiding places of more cameras because the reality of one presaged the likelihood that the whole island was being surveilled.

Loren sighed. “It’s a very long story.”

“I have time.”

“It was started for my daughter. It’s become popular. A million regular viewers around the world.”

Ann’s eyes grew big as the implications sunk in. As she looked around the room, her glance stopped at the door papered in watercolors. She moved toward it.

“No, Ann. Please.”

She gently opened it. Inside was a desk upon which sat a huge Apple monitor. File cabinets lined the wall. Computer, printer, modem, cell phone, everything a tech geek could desire to hide out on an island and still be totally plugged in . Above the desk was a large world map with little colored pins stuck all over it. Was there a term yet for technological infidelity?

“Bastard! You are such a supreme hypocrite!”

Loren said nothing.

Ann came back, stood at the footboard, hands on her hips.

He sighed. “Aren’t we being self-righteous? What do you think — that this is a real experience? Ann? Talk to me. This fantasy of escape that comes with premier cru French wine and vegetables flown in from Australia? You’re sleeping on Frette sheets, for Christ’s sake. Vous êtes une femme folle. ”

“You’re right.” Anger leaked from her quickly.

What was her grave disappointment about? Loren had called her out. Meek Richard let her get away with more than was good for either of them.

“I run a resort. I need to contact Papeete, the parent hotel across the lagoon, potential customers. Emergency services if need be. I have to live in the modern world, non ?”

“Of course.”

She felt defeated, and worse, her fantasy shattered. She needed the island to be pure to validate her choice in coming there. Truth was, her confidence at the wisdom of having dumped her job was crumbling. She was scared. She was burning through money like no tomorrow. If she flew back and begged the senior partners, went on her hands and knees to that windbag Flask, would they take her back? She had a crush on a gay hotelier who might be a pervert and certainly got off on spycraft. She was probably not going to have a baby. Her husband might have stopped loving her in favor of an uncomplicated nymphet. Une femme folle , indeed.

Ann was hardwired into the American dream, and, by necessity, she saw every tick downward as a temporary aberration, a pit stop, a state from which she would roar back to triumph. Unthinkable that she would go down in the world and then stay down. Un-American.

“Tell me the truth about one thing: Do you have cameras on us? In our rooms, on the beach?”

“I swear … just the one.”

“So what’s it for?”

Loren broke into the sly smile of a ten-year-old boy playing a fast one. “It’s my masterwork. During my best years at the gallery in Paris, maybe a few hundred people saw my work. Too avant-garde, too obscure, too expensive. It appealed only to snobs — and people too embarrassed to admit they didn’t understand it so they praised it instead. It’s like those nightclubs that are exclusive only because of who they keep out. I’ve finally done something that reaches hundreds of thousands of people.”

“Are you making money?”

“No, no,” he said, as if the idea was distasteful. “It’s anonymous. It’s a website of nothing except the empty beach. It’s on all the time. The only interaction possible is to leave comments. There is a visitor counter. Thousands of repeat visitors. Some people go regularly every day. Some go only when they are in crisis, to calm themselves. Death of a parent, spouse, child, or pet; divorce; loss of job; illness. Ended romances. Like the Buddhist explanation of the universe — Indra’s net. It’s like the most fantastic dream — to be part of all these lives.”

“I’m … speechless.”

Loren sat back, pleased. “Imagine a spiderweb with drops of dew along each strand. Each drop reflects all the others. Then each reflected drop reflects all the other reflected dewdrops. On and on forever. Pour us some absinthe.”

“How do people find out about it?”

“Word of mouth. I will not do press. No ads. I want no one to find out where the actual beach is or about me. The privacy and anonymity of the experience are essential. That’s part of the magic. Promise?”

“But you could charge.”

“I don’t want to profit — it’s a memorial.”

“To who?”

“I don’t wish to say.”

Ann nodded at the incongruity of an anonymous memorial. “Show it to me.”

It was a huge relief to sit in front of a computer again, staring into a screen. In reflex, her hand curled itself around the mouse like holding a lover’s hand as Loren brought the site up. There it was. Kind of. A strip of sand and then the ocean. There was sound so that you could hear the surf. Ann watched it a few minutes and had to admit it was peaceful. But one didn’t see the beautiful palms behind the camera; one couldn’t feel the burn of the sun or the silk of the breeze. No bite of salty ocean. No way to convey that infinity of space.

“Did my visit get recorded?”

Loren wagged his head and scrolled down the comments.

“People thought they heard footsteps, then a woman’s voice cursing, then running that faded away. It caused a bump in viewership. People asked to have it replayed. That’s against the rules.”

“Whose rules?”

“Mine.”

“Unbelievable.” Ann paused. “What do you call it?”

“ Plage . Beach.”

“That’s imaginative.”

“It’s about pure experience. Not my interpretation of that experience.”

“How do you know it’s not accidentally visited by people looking for beach party videos? Or bikini watchers?”

“They’ll get bored.”

“But you want to attract the people the site was meant for? Right? Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“How would that happen?”

“Call it ‘Robinson Crusoe.’ If you put ‘South Pacific,’ they’ll be looking for hula girls.”

Loren frowned. “Too much like Mickey Mouse. Disneyland. They’ll want some castaway staggering around on the sand, eating a live fish.”

“No. It’s the solitude. That’s the experience people want. That’s what we spent the money to come here for. That’s why I’m here. Give them that gift.”

As frail and tired as Loren had looked before, now his eyes lit up. The prospect of bringing new life to the webcam got him out of bed. When Titi came with fruit juice, he drank his down without a thought and shushed her away. He jostled Ann out of his chair, then went about purchasing his new domain name, waving to her as she left to get ready for dinner.