Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

Hours later, Loren hosted dinner but left before dessert. Dex started the nightly concert, announcing he would play a new song he had just written. Richard sat alone with his beer, glowering as Wende bent over Cooked beating out a slow rhythm on his to’ere drums. Then she took his seat, latching the big drums between her lithe thighs, as Cooked bent over behind her, his arms over hers, virtual Polynesian nesting dolls, and they tapped out a rhythm together. Unbearable. He looked away, just in time to observe Loren rejoin the group. He leaned over Ann and whispered in her ear. Great. Ann broke into a huge smile and hugged Loren, reaching up to kiss his cheek.

His wife’s burgeoning affair.

Only later would he understand that success, even anonymous, could be a wonderful medicine.

Dex got into it like everyone else — for the girls. A license for pussy. Beautiful girls and ones tending toward plain, tall and short, fat and skinny, smart and slow, with every combination in between, and they had all become inexplicably available. Rock music was the last refuge of the misfit, which Dex considered himself at age sixteen; ditto, the unathletic. Musical ability was a ticket out for guys who were pale and thin-chested, smoked pot and skipped classes. Grow your hair, get some tattoos, and start learning to play that guitar that you cradled at first mostly as a prop, and magically, everything that formerly labeled you as a loser — lack of social skills, lack of education, lack of a good future — converted to cool. You didn’t even have to wash regularly.

Dex had lost count of the number of days they had been on the island. Northward of two months, he guessed, but he didn’t want to know. He had this idea of falling outside the confines of time, and avoiding the calendar and not wearing a watch were part of that plan. Loren was cool about not making them feel like they were on the meter. In fact, the astronomical charges that Dex got when he finally read the statements months later came as a kind of betrayal, showing just how unlaid-back the whole arrangement was in reality. The fine print stated categorically that “inclusive” included a two-bottle-per-day limit on alcohol, after which huge, nasty surcharges began to sprout up for such things as extra booze, as well as requests for special food or service outside of regular dining hours. Ditto for Cooked’s supply of pot, billed under miscellaneous.

“Just charge the Visa when you need a bump,” Dex instructed, and boy did they.

The six months before Dex arrived at the island had been a hell of touring town after town, or rather auditorium after auditorium, because after a while he didn’t bother finding out the names of the towns or even the states they were in. The band members, especially his lead guitarist, Robby, and he were fighting, arguing about the music, the schedule, the recording contract, even about the drug supply at each stop. They had turned from being the bad-boy conquistadors of rock into little old ladies bitching over the sandwiches at a bridge lunch. The only thing they did not argue about was the need to earn more money because the band had become its own animal and needed constant feeding.

It was the first time in twenty-five years that it felt like a job.

The usual high he got from playing had gone MIA. The songs tasted like leather in his mouth. As short of the true experience as jerking off was to making out with the love of his life, currently Wende. Or, rather, the pyrotechnics, the glitz and glam, the selling of CDs, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and hats almost made the real-live musicians beside the point. Although they refused, their label would have preferred Prospero lip-synching for a more foolproof performance. The goal was to imitate the record instead of improvising and keeping the music alive and changing. It had become de rigueur for many bands. Generic, zombie boy bands were drawing bigger crowds with their fake, manufactured, forgettable sound. Dex swore before he stooped to Milli Vanilli — ing his music he’d quit. Attitudes such as this led to the perception among corporate that he had grown “difficult.”

The audiences, disappointingly, did not seem to register the empty, hollowed sound in the music. They were enthusiastic as always. Grooving. In almost all ways, they were the best part of the concerts. Even when Dex insisted on throwing in a few blues pieces — moody fuckers — fans tasted it, then howled and begged for more. Maybe the change was just in his mind. So he compensated with the drugs, which left him totally strung out by the time they came off the road. The band members scattered in different directions immediately like opposing politicians who had been forced together for a photo op.

* * *

Wende and Ann had taken off in the boat for a shopping trip in town with Cooked, so Dex was alone for the first time in months. He didn’t like being alone, but today it was half okay because he was still riding high from the day before. He lit up his morning budski. He was proud of going cold turkey from the heavy drugs on arrival, and sweet Wende had nursed him through that ugly first week. Now he was on a rigorous regimen of alcohol and weed only, and he felt like a million bucks. Frisky as a teenager, and the song ideas had started coming again. He had not written a new piece in ten months, and he was in fear that he had gone dry, but no, he had simply abused the muse. Some roadie had given him a book of Buddhist teachings, and he had read it — proof he was going soft in the head, but it had forced him to see the error of his ways.

Yesterday in the boat, while Richard and Wende went off to check out birds, Dex had heard a whole damn song delivered entire in his head. A gift. It made him feel drunk, bottled up with magic, and he was in some artistic fugue state when he fell overboard. When he came to, he looked up into Richard’s eyes overjoyed that he hadn’t lost the song . Dex hardly talked on the trip back, scared that it would leak out of him. Without a word to anyone, he jumped out of the boat and ran to his fare , slamming the door behind him, and grabbed a pen and paper. For the next couple of hours, he was in heaven. The lyrics flowed in his ear, and he wrote like a possessed vodoun priest because one misplaced word and the whole shimmering house of cards would come crashing down. Then he grabbed his guitar and notated the riffs, the change-ups, not entirely but enough so that there was the skeleton of a song.

As he had with his former addictions, Dex now craved a phone for the first time since they had been on the island so he could play it for Robby. A peace offering. More than that, a golden egg because the band had had enough hits that Dex could smell one, and this was a winner. The lodestone to anchor a new album. He felt spent, expansive, like after the best sex, a high beyond where any drug could take you. Drugs weren’t for the music; they were for getting through the periods without the music. And yet …

Was creation just another addiction? Didn’t the Buddhist stuff talk about the illusion of all worldly success? Which turned out to be especially true once the band finished paying the label back their advances; gave another cut to their business manager, their producer; took care of rehab expenses (nonrecoupable), houses, wives, kids, mistresses, and shrinks. At forty-plus years old (he was as cagey about his age as some long-in-the-tooth soap-opera actress), hadn’t he been there, done that? Illusion, no shit. He had a deep suspicion of himself — that this detoxing, dropping off the grid, the monogamy with Wende was really just about process, like that of a boxer in training. Was it possible that all Dex really wanted was a new hit single? How could he prove to himself the purity of his intentions?