Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

“The kidnappers’ demands: In addition to reparations, which have been promised but are still being stalled, they want open health records. Access to the 114 pages of blacked-out declassified Ministry of Defense documents. Open access to the supposedly ‘safe’ atolls used for testing, which are now guarded by the military with a twenty-mile exclusion zone.”

Richard sprang up for his bit part, as if this was suddenly a press conference for tourists. “What about the American tests on Bikini Atoll?”

Cooked looked at him thoughtfully. “I do not believe two wrongs make a right.”

Ann clucked her tongue. Score.

The idea by bringing up Bikini had been Wende’s to forestall criticism of an American rocker attacking the French government. Forget movies, Ann thought. The girl should run for president.

“We should go,” Dex mumbled.

Cooked paused, looked at him. They had gone off script. “Huh?”

Dex looked up, and there was a wicked, crazed light in his eyes, like a fifteen-year-old discovering the keys to the family car. “We should go to Moruroa.”

The reasons came piling in like coins from a winning slot machine: Wende had dumped him, he was a burnout, Harry’s death, his father’s disapproval, the family scandal, his own banishment, all leading him to this one ripe moment of action. Why not?

No , Wende desperately mouthed off camera.

Dex looked her in the eye, then moved up next to Cooked.

“Captain Cook sailed to the islands to conquer, to take away. We will sail from the islands for peace.”

Dex put his arm over Cooked’s shoulders, and they walked off. The “cannibals” looked confused for a moment, then followed.

And now back to our regularly scheduled beach programming .

As soon as Cooked stepped off camera he broke down into tears, emotionally ripped, a changed man.

Wende patted his shoulder as she went by. “Don’t worry. It wasn’t that terrible.”

Dex had pulled a fast one, hijacked the hijacking.

“Now what?” Wende asked. “We were supposed to kick it down, and you just lit the thing back up.”

“You’re new at this game,” Dex answered. “Learn. We need strong visuals. Let’s take one of the traditional outriggers here for the wedding. Leave the lagoon and board a boat out on the open ocean. Then we record the trip heading to Moruroa. Take the live cam and a satellite feed.”

“It’s dangerous. Radiation and stuff.”

“It’s symbolic. Scientists visit there all the time … don’t they?”

Cooked shrugged.

“What about the police stopping you?”

“Wende, baby, the whole wide world will be watching. What can they do?”

“Okay,” Wende said, trying to not fall behind and sound reactionary. “First of all, we need a boat.”

“You’ll find one,” Dex said, and limped away.

Cooked stopped them. “I’m not going.”

“Really? You were going to blow up a building, and you won’t take a boat ride?” Dex asked. “How will it look for Polynesian independence and a safe environment for a local not to be part of it?”

“It’s bad juju , dude.”

“Come on, you don’t believe in that stuff.” As he said it, Dex realized that he himself did. “You’ll be the George Clooney of Polynesia.”

Cooked nodded, unsure yet pleased at the comparison.

* * *

The illusion irretrievably broken, Loren gave in and flipped the switch, and the whole resort was WiFi-enabled.

“You had this and kept it from us?” Ann asked.

“We use it when no one is around. Deprivation is part of the experience.”

It seemed like the cheapest hucksterism to have withheld it, but now that everyone had returned to his or her portable device of choice, their previous off-the-grid status was remembered with nostalgia.

And then CNN called.

Rather, the new star girl reporter Laura Vann called. She wanted to fly a charter that hour from NYC to do an exclusive hour-long interview with Dex and Cooked.

“This is it,” Wende said. “We need to clean up the island. Laura said, ‘This interview is of world significance.’”

“I wonder if she’ll wear a bikini,” Dex said.

“I won’t do it,” Cooked announced. He couldn’t stand going through the unbearable stage fright again.

“Remember when I said Clooney?” Dex said. “Clooney’s nothing. This will make you the Gandhi of Polynesia.”

Cooked nodded gravely. He understood that, beneath all the flattery, he’d become a pawn, no longer in charge of himself. All he knew of Gandhi was Ben Kingsley in the movie that he saw as a kid during a matinee one afternoon in Papeete, with Titi’s uncle, the wannabe stuntman Aitu. They were there only because the Jackie Chan one had sold out. He didn’t remember the story ending well.

Titi had already sped away to direct island maintenance, begging guests to pitch in with the lure that the most important reporter in the world was coming to interview Cooked.

“He’ll be famous,” Titi said. “He will save us with his words. So do your duty and pick up a rake.”

Cooked thought she was laying it on a bit thick and left to find something to eat. As he made his way to the kitchen, relatives, friends, acquaintances all slapped him on the back or hugged him. It was spooky. By the time he came out of the kitchen, holding a supersize ham sandwich, a crowd had gathered. Seeing him, they dropped down on their knees, leaving a path for him, so that he had the sensation of walking among dwarfs. It was kind of cool until he realized the significance of the act — they were counting on him to not fuck up.

“Hey, Fineeva,” he said to a first cousin kneeling by his left hand. “How’s it shakin’?”

Fineeva closed her eyes and lowered her head as if she were in the presence of a deity.

He was in a world of trouble.

Cooked hurried back to the deluxe digs Loren had bribed them with, and rooted around in his boxes of junk until he found a lid of his extra-potent skunk bud. He felt it was incumbent on himself to prepare for this meeting, and part of that involved a ritual cleansing. Besides, he just needed to get high. In the old days they had used kava, but that was expensive and hard to come by. Time was short; Mary Jane would have to do. The old ceremonies and priests had long been lost, but Cooked knew that it basically involved going off alone and being in an altered state of consciousness so that he could commune with the gods and ancestors and tap into a higher source of knowledge. Beyond a doubt, he was inadequate to the job being asked of him, but he was trapped. A tool. He was no Gandhi, just another poor sap in above his head. If nothing else, at least he’d enjoy being stoned for a few hours.

As he prepared to go off, he decided to start early and rolled himself a joint to calm down. He packed nothing more than a flashlight, bottled water, power bars, chocolate, fruit (he regretted he hadn’t thought ahead and made two ham sandwiches); then he decided to throw in his iPod, his iPhone, and a laptop for watching DVDs. What was he doing? He took all the electronic gadgets back out — he was going old-school — and replaced them with a book, Colossus , that Titi was reading. But he worried the book might bore him during the long, lonely night, so he sat on the bed and read the first few pages to make sure he liked it.

I sit here in the child gulag commonly known as second grade. The wooden top of my desk is sticky with the collective germ-ridden, grimy smudge-prints of hands from decades of inmates before me, going as far back possibly as my dad, who attended this very same school, only to grow up, lose his hair, and become a prick to my mother and me. I believe I appear alert and to be listening to Mrs. Cornish’s endless babbling …