Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

* * *

Javi was allowed to cook their last meal.

He was totally stoked to try his hand at a Polynesian-Mexican luau featuring the sacrifice of a piglet he’d bought from the Aloha Pearl Resort kids’ petting zoo (the Aloha Pearl hotel guests complained that they didn’t want their kids stroking their dinners and creating future neuroses).

He had made special arrangements to have the piglet delivered on the supply boat, and had created a temporary pen for it in the center of the island that hopefully would lull it into thinking it had been moved to a new petting zoo rather than a stockyard. Earlier that morning, Cooked and he had taken off for the piglet’s pen with a hatchet. The resort had been awakened to bloodcurdling, desperate swine cries. The ensuing silence was even more sinister, but that evening, strangely, instead of pork, a chipotle-basted fish lay on each plate.

“Hey, where’s the roasted pig?” Dex asked.

Javi frowned.

Richard sat back in his chair with a twisted smile on his face and downed a copious number of mai tais, along with beer, wine, and champagne. Having Javi around again was like having a slick little brother who was destined to become a used-car salesman. While Javi treated his arrival on the island as the most-favored sibling’s return to his rightful place at the center of attention, Richard emphatically did not. He had developed a liking for being the boss and refused to vacate the position. Maybe one kitchen wasn’t big enough for the two of them.

Everyone was giddy at the luau, a bittersweet combination of the end of their time together on the island (with all the bathos of end of summer camp) and sadness from the events of the last few days. Of course, Robby, Javi, and even Lilou could not feel the somber absence of Loren at the head of the table as the others did. Cooked was drinking heavily, and Titi teared up and left the table at regular intervals, presumably from grief, although it could also have been from the too-spicy food.

“I put a little Yucatan, habanero spin on the dishes. I found a bag of dried chilies in the kitchen—”

“That I avoided,” Richard said.

They had finished a salad of lettuce, garlic, raw onions, and dried chilies in a balsamic vinaigrette and moved on to the basted fish with sides of spinach seasoned with Calabrian red-chili oil and sweet-and-spicy baked yams.

Richard avoided the fish, but ate the rest.

* * *

Even as one ghost came to rest, another replaced it. Ever since Loren’s death, Richard had started having seafood dreams that were so shameful he could share them with no one, especially not Ann, who would rightly view this as the final straw. Seafood — the last bastion of his cooking repertoire — and he’d gotten pretty inventive on the island. Thirty-six ways with grouper. Opah galore. Mahimahi forever. Tuna any way you want it. But Loren’s death and the boat trip with Cooked out to that lonely stretch of water had messed with him.

Loren had told them that the early European explorers refused to eat shark because of its man-eating reputation — it would be akin to cannibalism once removed.

Richard knew ; he’d been down there, had witnessed the sublime, mechanized violence of the ocean as eating machine. He could totally imagine it because every diver came up against the temptation eventually … It just seemed so natural, like a child believing he could fly after seeing birds in flight. Down below, surrounded, outnumbered by fish, one felt shackled by the mask, with its blinkered tunnel vision; the hissing, heavy tanks; the clumsy rubber flippers — all of it a barrier to being at one with the ocean. No wonder mermaids were invented; that’s what you fantasized being — breathing water in and out, having a fish tail, seemed marvelous possibilities that were in reach. Poor Loren had wanted to trade in his failing, aching body for that, and it made some kind of crazy logic, although Richard would never admit that. Officially, it was a Tragedy. Officially, Loren had drowned (and the fanciful wish that he’d metamorphosed into a merman was not even capable of being uttered, no). But if Loren had drowned, and if his body floated down and down into that all-encompassing darkness, well, the ocean was an efficient undertaker, and the fish would have done their biological duty toward him. By now Loren would have literally become part of the ocean he loved so much, and there was no way in hell that Richard was eating any freshly caught fish.

* * *

At the table, Titi was back but Lilou excused herself.

Dex downed glass after glass of water to get rid of the burn; giving up, he tapped his knife against a glass.

“I’d like to make a toast. To Titi and Cooked. You guys have been so cool about everything. We’ve shared the whole life cycle from marriage to death with you. We’re leaving you tomorrow but not leaving you at all. I will be back plenty. My accountants will be helping with the concert money raised. Your input will say where every dime is spent.”

Robby grabbed at his stomach and left.

Cooked belched but seemed otherwise unfazed. “Can I have another helping of fish?”

“I shouldn’t have,” Titi said, and again she left.

“Hey, it’s okay. Let your emotions hang out. We all miss our friend,” Dex called after her.

Javi came out of the kitchen. He grabbed a beer and raised it. “Should we announce?”

“Yeah,” Dex said. “Absolutely. So Javi’s been filling me in, and I’m ready to be a silent investor in the new El Gusano.”

“What?” Ann said.

“What’s this about?” Richard slapped his chair down flat from its cocked position, ready to fly at Javi’s throat.

“I told him what happened, bro.”

“You had no right.” Was it the fact that Javi had shamed him, or jealousy that he was stealing Richard’s new guy friend?

Dex held up his hands in his new role as peacemaker. “Dudes. This is good. Just being on this island, all that’s happened, has made me more money than if I’d been out on tour. I want to share some of that good fortune. Sprinkle a little fairy dust around for my friends.”

“We won’t accept,” Richard said.

“Look, no hard feelings, but Javi screwed you over. He is the worm. But I can fix it. All I ask is for free food and a table when I’m in town. I like the idea of being in business together.”

“It fixes things between us,” Javi said.

Titi had returned and drank down a glass of water in one gulp.

Richard looked at Ann.

Ann … had no one to look at. She felt ambushed. All the things she’d already written off as not worth having were now within her grasp again. Richard obviously thought that this would put things right between them. Did it mean that he’d also forgiven her?

“We can go back and take up where we left off,” Richard said. “But better.”

“To El Gusano,” Javi cheered and raised his bottle.

Wende got up abruptly. “Excuse me.” She left at a half trot.

Robby had returned but didn’t look well.

“Sorry.” Titi was breaking out in a sweat and disappeared again. Then it was Ann’s turn to leave, the sensation of a wave rolling through her stomach.

“Oh God.” Dex ran.

Confirmed. The food had given them painful, acid-spewing stomachaches. Horrendous gas. Instead of enjoying their last night talking or playing music, they spent it spread out across the resort, roosting atop each available toilet. In desperation, Titi tried drinking coconut milk, which helped. She loaded up a tray with glasses and toured all the island’s bathrooms.

* * *

Richard sat for long hours on the toilet in one of the unused fares as if he were doing penance, each hot, spitting explosion of spice in his gut punishment for his past inaction. These last weeks on the island that had supposedly been all about Ann had in actuality healed him. He discovered a man inside who was almost DOA, but still alive enough to be resurrected. Cooking on his own, he had rediscovered his joy, which had gotten buried underneath Javi during all those years.