Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

“It isn’t my birthday,” she said aloud, staring into the frosting that was so deep and thick one could drown in its curling rosettes.

“Of course it is,” Richard said. “Or maybe it’s the day I fell in love with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. In her pink satin dress, scared of the thunder. I’m celebrating that day.”

“No, it seriously isn’t,” Ann said.

“Chicks hate getting older,” Dex said.

“‘Chicks’?” Wende said. “You actually use that word?”

“We’re here on borrowed time. Time and money we don’t have,” Ann said.

“What about the money bag in your room?” Titi asked.

“We’re all here on borrowed time,” Loren said. “‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’”

“That’s original,” Richard said. “Put it in a song.”

“No, man,” Dex said. “That’s the name of Gauguin’s masterpiece.”

“Pass the cake, chick,” Wende said.

“Hey!”

“Don’t ‘Hey!’ me.” She ate big dripping forkfuls of coconut frosting. Dieting was another thing she had done away with since she had become politically sensitized. The cake was the final straw that broke the camel’s back as far as she was concerned. Look what Richard did for Ann, and look what Dex wouldn’t do for her. “Did you ever hear the joke about how dogs resemble their owners?”

The table was silent. Wende was in a dark place no one wanted to follow.

“These scientists want to test out the idea. They get these three dogs. One dog belongs to an architect, one dog belongs to an accountant, and one dog belongs to a rock star.”

“I don’t think—”

“Let it go, Ann!” Wende snapped (Ann, the one everyone loved; they only lusted after her). “So the scientists bring the architect’s dog into a room with ten bones, and he builds a pyramid. ‘Wow!’ the scientists say. They bring the accountant’s dog into the room and give him ten bones, and he divides them up evenly. ‘This is amazing!’ the scientists yell. Then they bring the rock star’s dog into the room and put ten bones in front of him.”

“Babe, let’s stop—”

Wende does not stop — the pitch of her voice cants higher. “They bring the rock star’s dog into the room and put the ten bones in front of him. He pauses, licks himself, crushes the bones up and snorts them, fucks the other two dogs, then ODs.”

Wende ran away from the table.

Dex coughed. “Wine does that to her,” he said.

* * *

The night wore on until Titi now counted three empty wine bottles per person, a mathematically impossible reality considering that included her, and she didn’t touch alcohol. Dex and Wende reconciled (apparently wine did do that to her because she held no grudge; she was riding a pendulum between the old and new Wende). Loren came out of his fare with a ring of small halved coconuts threaded through a piece of rattan.

“Birthday present. It’s a shark rattle. The noise, it reminds sharks of birds feeding on small fish. They rush to join the pleasure.”

“It never occurred to me to want to attract them.”

“Only call when you are ready.”

“It’s not my birthday,” Ann said, but no one seemed to care.

Wende wanted to dance, so Dex brought out his fancy satellite radio. Loren made a face at this breach of the rules, but he was in no position to police them. Dex tuned the radio to a local station, but instead of music there was an announcement:

“Tahiti and surrounding islands … preparing for a category one hurricane. The demonstration timed to coincide with the arrival of a French delegation set to hold hearings concerning reparations … canceled.”

“Hey, no fair listening to a radio,” Richard said.

Was he the only one, Ann thought, not electronically cheating? “A hurricane?” she asked.

“Listening to music is the only way I can sleep. I put earphones on,” Dex said. “Pacific Island radio has some good stations. Otherwise I tune into KROQ in LA.”

“What’s the difference between a tropical storm and a category one hurricane?” Ann asked.

“Nothing to worry about,” Loren said. “Storms hardly ever come this far. A couple raindrops.”

Dex put on some music and jumped on the table, playing air guitar. They all danced: Richard with Titi, Loren with Wende, Ann with Cooked. Perhaps the love potion had worked after all. Cooked brought out pahu drums made of coconut wood, and soon Dex, Richard, and he were beating out a syncopated rhythm on them. Titi did a native dance, and Wende joined. Finally, with much pulling, Ann got up. All three women, hips rocking back and forth, circled Loren, who sat blissfully in the middle of them. He closed his eyes with a smile on his lips, looking like a skinny, contented Buddha. Their hips tumbled and tumbled, keeping tempo with the accelerating and branching rhythms of the drums, faster and faster, unable to release from their grip, circling, circling, until with a great thumping climax of music, the women draped their arms around his neck.

“Now I can die,” Loren said. “I’ve reached heaven.”

* * *

Sometime during the evening, the wind stiffened and ruffled the palm fronds. By the time Ann noticed and looked out on the water, a gray woolen cloud was unfurling across the water. Wende and Cooked again disappeared, while Loren, Richard, and Ann played poker at the table. Of course Ann knew better, but still she was disappointed that the love potion did not seem to have worked.

“Where’s Dex?” Richard asked.

They heard a tussling in the undergrowth. There were no wild animals to worry about on the island, so Ann went to investigate. She found Dex crawling on his stomach with the kitchen rifle cradled in his arms.

“What’re you doing?”

He sat on his haunches. The farthest fare , Wende and Cooked’s probable love nest, was fifty feet away, and light shone out between the gaps in the matting.

“In the Gulf War. Did recon. Doing a little recon again tonight.”

Ann grabbed the rifle out of his arms. “What’re you talking about? You already were playing with Prospero then.”

Dex lowered his eyes. “None of your business.”

“You weren’t there,” Ann said. “What a stupid thing to say. You’re like a little boy.” She had the urge to hit him with the rifle. “Is this thing even loaded?”

She pointed it up to the sky and pulled the trigger. It exploded, the kickback knocking her to the ground. They both were in shock as everyone came running.

“I love her,” Dex whispered sloppily, drunken tears falling down his stubbled cheeks. “I can’t bear what she’s doing.”

“Oh,” Ann said — the possibility of his truly loving Wende had never occurred to her. How had she moved from potential groupie to den mother so quickly? “Poor you. I’m so sorry.”

* * *

For many years, Dex had imagined what combat was like, what moving around armed felt like, so when he actually did it that night, it was an unimaginable relief. Wende didn’t realize what she was doing to him, and the sadness that it had triggered.

His older brother, Harry, had been the smartest, the handsomest, the One Who Would Go Far. Dex was the ugly duckling in the family, tongue-tied and introverted. The one with acne; the one who got detention for smoking a doobie on school grounds; the one who drank too much at the school social and mooned the homecoming queen; the one who incessantly masturbated even after his mother told him it would make him go blind; the one who used raw liver for the family dinner to facilitate his bliss as an ironic literary homage, only to have his parents find out and then send him to counseling; the one neighbors thought was adopted because he didn’t look like his healthy, blond, outgoing parents, or his football player brother, or even his pretty baby sister. He was like a mongrel that got dumped in a litter of golden retrievers and had to pretend to their ways.