Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

“I’m sorry,” Wende said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I don’t think he’s doing it for you,” Ann said.

Titi made her stately way down the path from the kitchen to the water. Cooked ran to her and fell on his knees, burying his face in her billowy dress. Had the love potion worked after all, albeit slowly, painfully, like all true love?

Wende turned away, her face pale. “Okay,” she yelled. “I’ll do it.”

Ann was confused. Events were unspooling like a bad drug trip.

With difficulty Loren pulled the boat around in the choppy waves. The wind from the coming storm was pulling at every surface so that one had to hunch one’s shoulders against it. Dex appeared with a duffel and his guitar case.

“Do you have to go?” Ann asked, more a whine than a question. The night before had been special, the whole group finally bonded, and now just as quickly it was falling apart. “We could all hang out a while longer. Our little paradise. What about the free nights?”

“Are you speaking as my attorney?” Dex said.

Ann shook her head. “As your friend.”

“I don’t want to lose her,” he whispered.

They hugged and exchanged good-byes. Wende and Dex held hands sitting in the boat while Loren and Cooked argued; finally Cooked yanked on the hotel’s official yellow shirt and got behind the wheel. The shirt soaked up his blood like a cocktail napkin, a Rorschach of heartbreak.

“I didn’t think she even liked Dex,” Richard said.

Thankfully, Richard appeared to be staying for now.

“Life’s strange that way,” Ann said.

Richard watched as they boarded and the boat pulled away.

Ann felt sorry for him. It was so easy to forget one’s husband could be a hurting human being also.

Cooked was mournfully staring at Titi as if he were going away on a many-years-long sea voyage, with the possibility he might never return.

Titi and Richard turned away as the wind kicked up sand, but Ann kept watching the boat as it made its way into the deeper part of the lagoon. She alone saw Wende rise, holding the small valise, then lift her free arm for balance as she gracefully stepped over the side like a modern-day Ophelia.

“Man overboard! Woman!” Ann screamed as the others turned around and Loren ran out of the kitchen.

There was a loud cracking sound as the boat hit an underwater coral reef.

Loren grabbed his head. “I’ll kill him!”

Both Cooked and Dex jumped overboard to rescue Wende. In the panic all three almost drowned. For a weird moment in the choppy waves, Cooked appeared to be yelling at Wende, and she submerged again. A miracle that they made it back to the boat, and that the boat returned to the shore before it was logged with water and sank. Their own twenty-first-century shipwreck. The luggage, including the valise, lost.

* * *

By the afternoon, rain pelted down so hard that they had no choice but to stay sequestered inside their fares . Even a quick trip to the kitchen punished one with a drenching. At dusk a howling began, like a never-ending freight car roaring overhead. Loren beat on each of their doors and ordered them to evacuate to his fare , which was the highest point on the island.

“How much higher?” Richard asked.

“One meter. Three feet. Maybe enough to save you.”

Outside, the island’s transformation was spellbinding. Water that had been fifty feet away, now surrounded them, and they sloshed barefoot through it. Debris floated in the sand-heavy liquid, knocking into their shinbones. This was way beyond any thunderstorm. When Richard and Ann got to Loren’s, everyone else was already inside. Titi sat in the corner, chanting to herself. Cooked thumbed through a sports magazine. Dex had his arms around Wende, who was shivering and teary-eyed.

“We should have left,” she said. “It’s my fault.”

Cooked looked up sharply at her, but she ignored him.

“The other resort would have been no different,” Dex said.

“The other resort is steel-fortified,” Loren said. “It can easily withstand a hurricane. Plenty of food, medicine, boats there.”

“What’s the safety plan here?” Richard asked.

“If the storm surge floods the island much more, the buildings will go. You don’t want to get hit by debris. Put your life jackets on and head for the boat.”

The stack of neglected yellow life vests sat piled in the corner. Ann did not mention the obvious — that there had been no boat since that morning.

A storm went on so long into the night that intermittent sleep finally overcame their fear. The sole light came from a battery-operated lantern, which threw attenuated, spooky shadows on the ceiling. Alternating from prayers that sounded more like plea bargains to self-recriminations (why hadn’t they gone to Alsace?), Ann fell asleep on the floor and woke to the startling sensation of sitting in water. She whimpered.

“I hate storms,” she said.

“I know,” Richard whispered, and wrapped his arms around her, forming a Richard blanket.

It was true — Richard was the one person in the world who knew she preferred earth tones, that she liked anchovies on her Caesar salad, that she absolutely detested and loathed thunderstorms. How had she forgotten all this?

“I’m sorry,” Ann said. “For everything.”

“I’m not sorry for a minute of it,” Richard said, and kissed her hair.

Minutes later, the water pooled up to the undersides of the rush-bottomed chairs. They would literally drown in the Pacific, their leaky life raft of an island sinking beneath them.

And then the waters retreated. Within ten minutes, the floor was no longer underwater. The force of the hurricane passed to the west.

“I’ve never been so hungry in my life,” Wende said.

“Food,” Richard agreed.

* * *

Although it was still raining hard, the howling had subsided the slightest degree in intensity. Celebratory after two close calls, feeling very much alive, they shoved the wet table and chairs into the kitchen. Richard cooked a large pot of linguine frutti di mare and served family-style.

At Richard’s insistence, Titi and Cooked joined the table for the first time to eat with them. Something had been settled between the two. They only had eyes for each other and the food, which they ate with gusto. At the beach, after the near-drowning, they’d had a passionate, seawater-sputtering reunion when Cooked staggered back to solid land.

“Today I saw my life passing by,” Dex said. “It’s good to be back.”

“You were only one hundred meters out.”

“I was already checked out here.” Dex tapped his ear, which in his case might indeed have been the seat of all desire. “I’m taking it as a sign.”

“It’s only a sign,” Loren said, “that Cooked is an imbecile.”

Through this exchange, a subdued Wende sat silent. Ann had been the only witness to her act.

“What does it mean?” she muttered, but so softly they could pretend not to hear her.

“The boat sinking was a gift,” Titi said.

“Of course. No guilt, no remorse at all,” Loren said bitterly. “It would be different if the boat was yours.”

Cooked dropped Titi’s hand. “Yes, it would be different. But it isn’t.”

The table fell into a funky silence.

Richard broke the impasse by serving a huge platter of cheeses and fruit. “‘A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.’”

“Whoa, I like that,” Dex said. “Did you just make that up?”

“That’s the master — Brillat-Savarin.”

“Cool. I think I’ll use it.”

Wende looked on the verge of crying. “I almost died out there. No one cares!”

Dex put his arm around her. “Clumsy honey bunny, you fell overboard. We had you covered.”