Terese Svoboda - A Drink Called Paradise

What do I owe you? I shout to Barclay as they start the motor. He’s barely holding Temu back from Ngarima, dollars aren’t on his mind. I give him what I have, but he can’t take it, Temu knocks it from my hand into the water. I bend down to retrieve it, but a moonsuit grips me by the arm, steers me onto the boat to a seat just as it jolts into gear and we’re off.

It is not as if I am saved, not as I had imagined it. Sailors in angel white should have come, not men in moonsuits. An island chorus usually attends all island exits, Barclay, I’m sorry .

You farted, says the electronic toy the lone child sitting on the wharf presses over and over, loud with new batteries. No one’s singing and dancing. A few friends of Ngarima stand by, weeping and waving. Barclay waves, holding his package of antenna and the struggling, crying-out Temu. You’d think Ngarima was going forever, like me. In the slow circle the lighter makes as it turns away, I inspect the wharf around Barclay, where my money washes, where I spent so much time looking out to sea, wishing the boat into it. Now I wish that at least Harry stood somewhere close, up to his ankles in surf, his eyes on me.

But he’s happy.

The moonsuits shoot the reef with a clumsy grinding of gears, and the lighter heaves as if the outboard won’t make it, then they’re hauling us up a wall of boat, a toy boat grown nightmare huge, up a long spaghetti of ladder that trails the side of the big boat and onto the deck. They haul us up with their strong arms, they shove and push and pull at us, they even put down a basket for the little girl, until we’re all on board.

We stand on the deck in shock, wet with spray from the reef passage, the big boat still swaying so much you could be walking, but you’re not, you don’t even want to try, this is a big boat in a swell.

There is only one thing to look at. From where I stand, the island looks flat and small, almost amoeba-shaped at this angle, about to break in half and become two separate islands, mitosis, something to be glanced at under a microscope.

Welcome aboard, they say. Yes, they say when I ask about their boat going back. I like that yes. Then one of them slides a bracelet over my wrist with my name and birth date on it. How do they know that name and date? After the bracelet slides on, it won’t come off, the snap goes tight when I pull on it.

Then they have at us, needle, calipers, and scrapers. I give them what they need, then they need more, they wave their hands, Wait a minute, there’s something else, and I ask, For what? but they won’t say, they wave their vials and point out urinals, they hurry us out or in.

It’s important to do it fast, just off the island is what their answer suggests. Otherwise it might wear off.

I don’t think so.

They want to know how many coconuts I drank or ate, and I laugh. They repeat the question. The forbidden fruit, I smile, and try to figure.

Then they lead us to the showers.

It isn’t that I don’t want a shower. A shower with hot water, the comfort of soap not rendered from whales or tar — or whatever the yellow cakes they sell on the island are made of — this is what I want. I’m shot straight back to all of what my place in the world counts for with that first hot spurt of water, a little more than blood-hot, laving the soap and salt off my skin under fine spray. But in the middle of the shower, the water beating on my skull releases some kind of improved thought run.

It’s not as if they’ve given us stone soap. Too obvious.

I start to shiver under all that hot water, and I don’t stop even after I dry off, even after I use their big fluffy towel on myself and I’m wrapped in it. Maybe I’m sick is what I want to think about the shivers, then I don’t want to think that, not at all.

My clothes are gone. And my bag. All they leave is a gray shift and slippers.

Of course — when it’s all clean, I’ll get it back.

I put on their clothes. One of their smiley faces emblazons the left side of my gown. I wonder if the ones on the moonsuits were as white as this face, but I can’t be sure.

Still shivering, I step out of my cubicle. I can hear the others under their showers. Somewhere farther down the long row, a man with a medical bag walks toward Ngarima’s stall. I know where she is because she’s wailing again. She hasn’t wailed since I caught her with her plastic Jesus, but now she fills the hall with her wild, sad sound.

A sedative makes sense.

I get out of the way of that man, I walk away from him.

I need to walk.

Gray metal rivets, gray stairs, no signs except “Lifeboat This Way.” I skip that way. I turn toward a reindeer-and-dove-covered door on the left. I go through it, wondering at the season I had forgotten in the seasonless sway of an island. Maybe such decoration wipes time and place away, and the island is gone in a whorl of blinking light. I open the door at the top of a set of stairs, thinking this, and the island is still there, still small at such a distance, but there.

A woman comes up behind me. Can I help you, Clare?

Me? I say. I can’t get used to my own name, the one everyone here knows for no reason and can say. Who are you?

Someone with you on my list. She points to a clipboard filled with names.

I see. She has a Dr. in front of her name on her tag, that entitles her to my name, the way she checks my tag.

Where am I? I ask.

The answer she gives inspires hope, to go with the insignia of snake and staff. We’re a large health organization, she says.

With the UN?

Wouldn’t that be nice. No, not us. I see from your records that you spent a little time on this island. What brought you here?

Nobody was going there.

She could say with a professional smile, How adventurous. Instead she says, Nobody is supposed to go there.

I guess not, I say. Why did they let me?

Some mix-up, somebody’s second cousin was asleep, no doubt.

Why don’t they evacuate the island?

It’s not that bad, she says.

Oh, really? I smile, like her. What happened to the boat that was supposed to take me back?

Boats are always late or just a myth around here. You must be glad to see this one. The doctor moves her pens on her pen guard. Over six weeks there, wasn’t it?

The boat rocks under my feet, a slight left, a slight right, and I’m uneasy to match. Over this woman’s shoulder is the island, locked in incomplete reproduction. Can I make a call? I ask.

Sure. But why not get these out of the way? She turns her clipboard full of paper around. Just a couple more releases. Sign here, here, and here. She presents her pen.

I see, I say. I stare at the small print. Ngarima’s wailing increases from somewhere below. I slide my foot in and out of my slipper. Do you have children? I ask her.

Not yet, she says. We’re hoping. She smiles the way they do, the ones who hope.

Have you ever seen any of their babies?

She waggles the clipboard. This is my first trip out. But I’ve seen pictures, of course.

I nod. With her of course , we’re in this together. Well, I say, I guess you have to have one to really appreciate those pictures.

She flattens the paper with her finger where I’m supposed to sign. You’ve had a very slight exposure, ma’am, she says. You should be on your way within a day or two of reaching port.

When is that?

Given the weather, it should be in three days.

I see. Three days, that’s great. Where can I make my phone call?

Over there, in the poop deck.

I sign.

Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? I start away from the cool plastic at my ear. Echo is a girl in a nymph costume, a shreddable tissue of green, who leans forward on a rock with her hands cupped to her lips, and another girl on another rock — a veritable Pacific of rocks, rocks that run right up to my ex’s own cool-plastic-touched ear — leans forward with her hands cupped, and another. Every word echoes, so I must sound startled too, and strange. Does my ex notice?