Terese Svoboda: A Drink Called Paradise

The sun is late. When his shadow covers the beach part of the distance between us, I tell him it’s coral he’s digging, it grows there, he’s trying to pull out a tooth that’s rooted and not rotten.

I wonder why no one’s come to check on me this afternoon, he says.

It’s the boat, I say. They’re all getting ready for the boat.

He glances out into the dusk, where there’s no light, no sign of anything anymore. Come on, he says.

He takes my hand, brushes off the sand that I have clenched in it, and leads me down the beach into the dark, step by step, slow and slower. I can smell his sweat when he catches me teetering off an outcrop. It’s not here, he says. Get used to it. They tell you it’s coming because they think that will make you happy.

I don’t think that’s why, I say. But I don’t know why.

We walk along. More tiny crabs move invisibly in front of us. Things can live here, I say. We could start a pig farm, I say. Show these islanders how to raise them right.

You are insane, he says. He pulls me with his arm around my waist and then kisses me, moves his mouth over me from start to finish, sand and palm trash all over us. It is dark enough now to do that. But it is not so dark that I don’t see confusion in how he looks at me — or collusion? Don’t ask, he says, so I know what I’ve seen.

So what if I did imagine the boat, I say as we near the lagoon. I imagine my son every night, how he gets tucked into bed.

Women are always thinking of bed one way or another, he says as we round my spit. I’m sorry, he says.

My dreams are all dark.

We walk along.

In ads, all dreams are dark, I go on. Or swirly. Or at least badly lit. Good night, I say. That’s how it is.

He drops me off at my hole in the sand.

Hey, if there really is a boat out there, he says, remember me in the cigarette department, okay?

I hit him hard with the side of my hand, my best fake karate.

I am on Ngarima’s porch devouring the taro she put out for me, licking the tin of mackerel. She is wearing red because ghosts can’t see her when she wears red and it helps her cough. I had a dream your son’s boat came back, I lie to her. Ngarima is not like me, she likes to hear about her son any way she can. After I lie to her about the dream, she looks up from the taro she’s mashing for Temu, she coughs and says, That boat is Barclay’s.

Now I haven’t looked around to check on the boat. When the sun got too bright to keep my eyes shut, I rolled out of my hole and made my way through the cool dark of the bush toward food, a simple motion, the kind I can manage. I didn’t go back to where I saw that dot in the distance.

I couldn’t bear to.

She doesn’t say more about Barclay’s boat, and Barclay’s not around to ask I’m here because if he were, then there would be no boat. But since he’s elsewhere, I’m beginning to gather my hope, scattered and slow-walking away like all those small shells I tried to string.

An outboard cuts the island quiet.

Excuse me, I say, and I run, I trip over car parts, I run all the way to the end of the wharf, where I almost fall off, looking and running.

A boat, a real boat.

It’s not the boat I came on. Even while it’s wallowing outside the breakers I can see that, even after two months of not seeing a big boat, even after only a week’s passage. But why be so particular? If I wanted a boat, this is it.

There’s a staff and a snake on the smokestack. I make that out because it’s the same as the one on the lighter, the boat with the outboard that now guns through the reef with its shocking roar, unearthly or at least not-of-this-island loud.

Someone in a gray suit and hood holds binoculars in the lighter, trains them toward us, a clump of islanders with bags, and me all shaggy and staring. Beside the suit with binoculars sits Barclay, who holds a parcel out of which sticks an antenna.

I turn back to run and get my stuff. I’m not fast enough, who could be that fast, with the boat waiting or going or gone?

My bag I’ve hooked to a twisted branch over my hole. I scoop up shorts and sand and shells and papers with my name on them and fit them in. I don’t know whether that’s all there is, but it’s enough for the bag. I run back to the other side of the island, and I’m about to break from the bush to the wharf all out of breath, slashed raw from my run, when I see four men in gray suits, moonsuits I guess, the kind with hoods and plastic to see out of in front, securing the lighter with big mittened hands. On their moon-suited fronts these men wear big smiley faces behind white plastic tags that turn what other color? and on their moon-suited feet they wear slumber-party slippers, the kind that should be fluffy and pink but are smooth and the color of rats.

The sand is sifting out of my bag onto my bare feet while the moonsuits move in their suits like figures in cartoons — even their clipboards are hard to grip with fists in gloves — when Barclay leaves them for me.

You must not get on this boat, says Barclay quickly. The boat you came on will be here soon. Don’t take this boat. You must stay.

Stay? I back away, I am so surprised.

This is not the boat for you, says Barclay.

He moves as close to me as a dancer. Stay, he repeats with a smile that’s threatening it’s so close. I walk even farther backward, I back into the needles of a bush.

You see, we must find out exactly how bad things are here, he says, shifting his new antenna. You can go to your own doctor and tell us, he says. They won’t tell us. He lifts his chin toward the moonsuits, who are now giving out handfuls of batteries to anyone who holds out a hand.

You made me miss the boat? You told Ngarima to delay me? I hold my bag tight to my front as if he is going to take it to make me stay.

That first time. He looks through a lock of his hair the way he does for women. A week here is not enough. But the boat was supposed to come back, he says, stepping in front of me to keep me as long as he can. The boat is coming back.

Should I tear out his lock of hair, scream, and run in a circle? Well, here’s a boat now, I say. I start for it.

He catches me by the arm so I won’t trip on a bush in front of me — so I won’t run? They just make tests, he says. If you go with them, they will not let you go, they will test you and keep testing you. Our boat will come.

A few islanders line the beach’s shade, ready with their bags, ready with their families.

I pull my arm away. The moonsuited men are coming toward us.

I don’t like it, I say, my voice rising as if I am making a decision, as if I can with all this. I am taking this boat, I have to go home, I’ve got to get off this island.

You like our island? Barclay glares at me. You will not like theirs.

I wave. Over here.

Barclay lifts his arms as I walk away, as I skip over to them.

The girl who sold me the soy sauce, who’s always so hot, is taking a seat next to the young woman who bore the jelly baby, who’s now carrying a sandy package, and a very old man who smells like that smell from the house with all the bottles in front, and a half-dozen others get in, almost filling the rest of the boat. Ngarima’s last, arriving with Temu and a small suitcase.

She has nowhere else, says Barclay, as if I have asked. I try to say, At least she has this, but Ngarima coughs hard as Barclay pries Temu off her, then Temu beats on the boat with his loose arm as she boards. When Barclay hands her the suitcase, the moonsuits push Temu’s fist away, a push that rocks the boat deep.

I’ll take care of her, I say.

Barclay turns his face from me.

I look to the horizon, where the big boat sits, as small as one of my son’s from so long ago. One of the moonsuits radios that boat, another stretches his hand toward the lighter, gestures toward where I could sit, pats that place in fact with a Sit here .