Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

At first Wende had considered uprooting the live cam to record the trip, but it quickly became apparent that the paparazzi had the situation more than covered. Her job changed now to one of staging. At the appointed time, the fanciest outrigger canoe was pulled in front of the resort, and all two hundred and fifty native guests went crazy as the drums pounded. They threw flowers in the water and sang. The “cannibals” in their new roles as ceremonial rowers, now sans masks but with palm headdresses (Wende thought they needed some oomph), stepped into the boat. After a suitably long pause in which the mad drumming reached such a crescendo that the idea of cannibalism became totally plausible to the burning, sweating paparazzi bobbing in their boats, Dex and Cooked walked out of the kitchen.

Wardrobe arguments had again raged, but the final decision was to dress nonnative (because a grass skirt looked kooky on Dex and undercut the seriousness of the occasion): subdued shorts and plain T-shirts. As the men left the shady porch of the kitchen and came into full view, the lolling paparazzi started snapping pictures and digitally recording, but it wasn’t till a third figure appeared — slighter than the other two, dressed similarly in shorts and baggy T and sporting a baseball cap pulled down low, but without a doubt a woman ( Look at the boobs, man! ) — that they collectively went into a frenzy.

* * *

Wende, discreetly headquartered under the shade of a palm grove, was outraged. This was her baby, and she’d emphatically said No! She was used to the backstabbing at home in Los Angeles that went along with being the woman associated, or hoping to become associated, with Dex and Prospero, but she had thought Ann was different. Ann was supposed to be her friend. If Wende ran out and confronted her now, the whole moment, the whole production, would be ruined. Damage-control time, and the same question was in Wende’s mind as in the multitudinous military and paparazzi’s collective psyche: Who was the mystery woman? Guesses were: (1) Dex’s hinted-at girlfriend (which, honestly, Wende thought not credible, especially the way Ann was dressed). (2) Another hostage/tourist (this possibility reignited the military because rescuing women got a lot more mileage in the press). But Wende beat them all to the punch when she tweeted the future tabloid headline from her iPhone: (3) It’s the Cannibal Attorney!

* * *

Ann had worn sneakers even though she would have preferred wearing her reef shoes and saving the others for the boat, but carrying luggage would play into Wende’s fears of looking like they were on a terrorist-adventure-eco-vacation. The sand was blisteringly hot. Going barefoot was not a good option since they were supposed to move in a slow, dignified procession, filled with the portent of their mission. It wouldn’t have been a bad compromise to stop at the water’s edge and slip off her shoes, but, again, squatting in the sand and messing with her shoes could be photographed unflatteringly and diminish the voyage’s gravitas.

An hour before in the kitchen with Dex, Cooked, and Richard, she had taken Dex aside and asked to go.

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Hey, I’m all for women’s rights and being equals. But you sure you want to go get microwaved?”

Ann paused. “I think I know why you’re doing it. I have my reasons, too.”

She had been confused these last days, or rather weeks, or really these last years, holding all these potentially interesting ingredients to a life that weren’t coming together. It was like Richard’s legendary hollandaise sauce: The ingredients looked watery at first, it took forever to whisk over heat, and there was that breath-holding moment when the lemon juice was added. It either curdled or transformed into a fluffy, velvety miracle. This once, she was the exact right person to play this part. She blushed at the ego of it, but she had been born to do this thing she was about to do, whatever the consequences.

Dex nodded. “Okeydokey. Hope you don’t get seasick.”

Ann had never really been on a prolonged ocean voyage, so she didn’t know if she had sea legs or not. She would deal with it. The hardest part of the voyage had been telling Richard.

“I’m going, too,” he said when he heard.

“You can’t.”

“Both of us or neither.” Maybe it took a crisis like your wife being microwaved to realize that life without her was unthinkable.

“No. This is mine.”

He frowned. Even the possibility of Ann getting hurt made him faint with worry.

“Things could get tricky out there,” she said. “Dex and Cooked aren’t exactly grounded individuals. An attorney might come in handy.”

“What would you say if I said no?”

“The man I love wouldn’t.”

“No fair.”

“I’ll still need protecting from thunderstorms when I get back.”

Wende was wrong once again. The secret glory of middle age was the discovery that when you loved, compromise was painless.

* * *

During boarding, the metallic-insect-whirring of paparazzi and their various machines filled the air. Cooked gracefully climbed into the outrigger without any help. Next came Dex, struggling and making a little hop, accidentally stepping down on a piece of sharp coral underwater and cutting his toe. He refused to show pain, just boarded and hid his bleeding foot. The drops of blood dispersed in the water, and sharks two miles away turned and snuffed the intoxicating waterborne blood scent.

A motorboat floated very close by, but Ann ignored it as she trudged through the water, pleased with her sneaker choice after watching Dex’s struggle. She figured she could take her shoes off and dry them once they were aboard the yacht. She had one leg in, one still in the water, straddling the side of the outrigger when it sloshed sideways in the wake of the passing boat. She had to hop after it. One of the “cannibals” rose and held out his hand to hoist her over. Just as she was about to grab it, a familiar voice cried out.

“Ann, is that you?”

She blinked, light-headed from the heat and all the attention, the potential of bashing herself against the skittish side of the boat and drowning in the waist-high waters. Was she simply ill-suited for the heroine life? Was she hallucinating? The “cannibal” yanked her arm, almost dislocating it, and she flew over the side of the canoe, banging her shoulder on a crossbeam. Simultaneously rescued and crushed.

“Ann! I’ve found you!”

The boat had raced to shore despite Loren’s prohibition, and as it cut its rumbling motor, the voice became clearer. A voice she knew as well as she knew her own.

“Ann, it’s me. Javi!”

Titi watched as the outrigger canoe finally pushed away after another boat came alongside it. A man had jumped in the water and splashed after Ann. She didn’t seem happy to see him, so Titi wasn’t either. After a hug and some whispered words between the two, the outrigger continued to move off toward the pass. Amid the sound of drums and singing, arranged by Titi to give the voyage a worthy send-off, the man, accidental conqueror, waded through the flower-strewn waves and touched land as if all the hoopla were for him.

Ceremonies like this were rare nowadays, and Titi was happy that it was performed for Cooked’s sake. He had overcome his fear and gone. People would remember him for generations.

The last similar ceremony she had attended was one of welcome rather than departure. Six years before, press had come from all around the world to celebrate a group of Scandinavian boys crossing the Pacific on a balsa raft, the Tangaroa , reenacting their grandfathers’ victorious landing on the islands. Why did explorers only have white faces? As if her people existed solely to be discovered and rediscovered, over and over, to provide a backdrop for their exotic adventure. What if Cooked’s outrigger paddled all the way to their snowy fjords — would that be newsworthy? Could Cooked say he had discovered Norway and its people?