Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

The smell of cigarette smoke woke her. She sat up so abruptly, spots flew before her eyes like flushed-out birds.

Dex was shuffling along the back shelves, puffing away as usual.

Claiming to be suffering a serious case of island fever, Dex had begged to join Loren on a grocery-buying trip to town once he verified that Cooked was going along also. At least for those hours, Dex was free from imagining what Cooked and Wende might be up to. He also wanted to sneak an hour at an Internet café.

“Sorry I woke you.”

She moved to get up.

“Stay.” He came and sat down on the sofa next to her.

“You okay?” she asked.

He didn’t look okay. His skin was waxy; dark circles pooled under his eyes. He didn’t look like a guy who had been on vacation for the last two months. The trip to town had undone him.

He shrugged.

She lifted the book he had laid down. “Shakespeare?”

“I think it’s here for The Tempest . The plays soothe me. They were my best subject in school.”

She took a moment to absorb the unlikeliness of this. “Your new song is great. Are you looking forward to recording it?”

“I’m thinking of burning it up again.”

“Why?” She didn’t bother pointing out that the threat’s impact was considerably lessened by the fact that it already existed on Robby’s recorder in California.

“Richard saved my life. I should give something up for that.”

“Why not look at it from another angle? Did you ever think you were saved to play music?” Why was it so easy to see destiny in others’ lives but not one’s own?

His face twisted. “I’ve been betrayed.”

“I don’t think Wende—”

“Robby.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“My lead guitarist. ‘Who having into truth, by telling of it, / Made such a sinner of his memory / To credit his own lie, he did believe…’In other words, I got fucked. Robby was supposed to take over business for a while so I could go off to write songs and recuperate. I was burned out. I’d done the same thing for him a few years ago. But now he acts like I’ve died. Instead of ‘and’ for a contract, I agreed to change it to ‘or’ to make things easier. His word is enough.”

All the legal alarms were ringing in her head. “Why would you agree to that?”

“I trusted him like a brother.”

The 101 of law school: In business, you have no friends.

Dex was inhaling so hard on his cigarette, she thought any minute he’d suck the whole thing in.

“He did a long interview. It’s on the Internet. I watched in town. Said I had personal problems, drugs and stuff. That I’d gone into hiding on an island.”

It was like someone falling off the wagon in AA, the tech binge.

“So go and take back control.”

“The band’s over.”

Ann thought the most diplomatic response was no response, but then couldn’t help herself. “You are hiding on an island.”

“I should have hired a lawyer like you.”

“You should have.”

“Could still.”

“I’m a recovering lawyer.” Ann was silent. “A freebie: You shouldn’t have played that new song for him till you dissolved the band. Since it was created under the umbrella corporation of Prospero Inc., he’s entitled to it. He has artistic control over its licensing, I’m guessing?”

Dex’s face had grown longer and longer. He looked at Ann now almost as if he were in a trance. “Fuck.”

“You’ve got to dot those i ’s and cross those t ’s before you have your tantrum.”

“Richard said you were a cold one.”

“Just saying.” It stung that she had been talked about.

* * *

Another perfect day. Flat blue despite the fact that rain was forecast.

As was her new habit, Ann got up early and walked to the far side of the island where the camera was. She sat behind it and stared at the view that it stared at, a veritable Alice behind the looking glass. It was reality and virtual reality simultaneously — or, rather, it was both the real thing and its abstraction. She felt she was on the verge of some grand truth while being suckered at the same time. She could have gone to another stretch of beach almost identical without a camera, but somehow the very act of the scene being recorded made it easier to concentrate. Immensely restful to be alone but at the same time with thousands of other alone people staring at identical waves. It had the same swampy communalness as sitting in a matinee movie theater crowded with strangers. Of course she was privileged to be there in person, but she imagined when she got home she would also log on to this view. It represented a kind of genius on Loren’s part.

She was sorry to admit that while waiting for Cooked and Wende’s delayed return in town, she had bought a blue pareu for its camera worthiness. In every way that mattered, the spell of escape was broken. It was broken for others also.

* * *

“I’ve had it here,” Dex said. “I want to go back to the main hotel. Get back to LA.” Visions of Robby hijacking the band haunted him.

Panicked, Wende looked around for Cooked. She had thought they’d have weeks, if not months, to settle plans.

Ann decided to say nothing about seeing him take off with Titi earlier. She worried that if the other couple left, Richard would want to leave as well. That would effectively close Loren down.

“Anyway,” Dex complained, “the food’s going downhill.”

Richard agreed. “Loren’s not up to his duties.”

“He’s not feeling well,” Ann said. She knew how to press Richard’s buttons. “Why don’t we take over cooking? Don’t you miss it?”

It was an old lawyer’s trick — never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.

“Maybe I could whip something together tonight.” Richard grabbed at the chance to investigate the kitchen that Titi so zealously guarded. Returning from a quick reconnaissance, he announced there would be a feast that night to use the supplies in the refrigerator that were about to spoil. “Instead of snacks, we could have been eating like kings these last days. What’s needed is a little know-how.”

* * *

Something was up with Wende. That afternoon, she appeared wearing a sensible one-piece from her high-school swim team. When not in the water, she covered up in T-shirts and shorts. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. For the first time, she looked like the girl from Idaho she was. She volunteered as sous chef for Richard and chopped vegetables. To Ann she confided that she felt guilty about Cooked and would not sleep with him again.

“I’m not some kind of home wrecker, you know.”

“Did you give Titi your WILD pendant?”

“Reparations.” Wende frowned. “I’ve matured. There are terrible injustices in the world. Not everyone lives in a resort, Ann.”

“That’s true.”

“There are oppressed people,” Wende said under her breath. “I want to make a difference.”

What surprised Wende the most after all these years playing muse was how much spare time she had when she was no longer under the onus of being “hot.” While she wasn’t going to make a federal case out of it, everyone underestimated what it took to be her, or the former her: the WILD hot young thing, muse, groupie, aspiring actress/singer/model of her ex-Wende incarnation. An unimaginable relief to be rid of that burden. For example: the hair. On the island, she allowed it to go au naturel, but back in LA she had a standing semimonthly appointment for highlights with her colorist to get that perfect sun-kissed carefree look. Then there were the hair extensions, which cost a fortune and only looked right when styled by a professional, so she went in every other day to her hairdresser for a shampoo, blow-dry, and finger-curl. Then the face. Facials involving equipment with electrodes, lasers, and pulsed-light gadgets out of Star Trek , and expensive antiwrinkle treatments because even though, obviously, she didn’t have wrinkles yet , they were coming and had to be preempted. So that involved injections of fillers and Botox, and believe her, there was a long line of under-thirty-year-olds waiting for those services. Then there was eyebrow threading and eyelash dyeing, tooth bleaching, not to mention professionally done makeup for special occasions. On really important nights, she had false eyelashes glued on a single hair at a time. And that was just the face. The body required endless trainers, treadmills, medicine balls, and swimming pools, Pilates, yoga, Tae Bo, and weight training. All this while never getting to eat enough of anything, perpetual starvation while attending parties that featured tables weighed down with delicious, fattening food. Thank God she’d never had her boobs done — they were real, though no one believed it — but how long would they look like that? Endless waxing of underarms and legs, and of course the maximal torture that put Brazil on the map, not soccer or nuts or carnival but the tortuous waxing of the privates, Hollywood style. Manicures and pedicures and spray-on tans, and that didn’t even get one out the door dressed. Sometimes she worked so hard on how she looked that by the time she was ready she was too tired to go out and be seen.