More Than Paradise (10 page)

Her plan had been to get the misunderstanding about her gender out of the way right off the bat just in case Charlotte actually hadn’t Þ gured it out. Instead she said, like she was a channel for the world’s twenty worst pick-up lines, “So, tell me. What brings you to PNG, Charlotte?”

“Well, I can’t be explicit, since I’ve signed all kinds of

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nondisclosure agreements. But I work for an organization helping develop a new generation of pharmaceuticals. I’m here to gather samples of certain plant species.”

“You’ve come to the right place. There’s nothing that can’t grow here. And if you want bugs, we’ve got a shitload. Cockroaches the size of rats, for starters.”

“I noticed.” An elegant shudder. “There was one walking along the counter at that bar. I’d swear it was drunk.”

“It was. They crawl inside the glasses. You have to watch out if you put your drink down for more than Þ ve minutes.”

“Yeech.” She glanced around in dismay. “Surely they don’t have them in a place like this.”

Ash didn’t want to think about walking into the hotel kitchens in the dead of night and hitting the lights. In a place this size the usual scramble of gleaming beetle bodies would be something to see. She offered a more comforting image. “Not a chance. I’m guessing they have the exterminators in here every week.”

“It could be cleaner,” Charlotte conÞ ded after the waiter had set their drinks down on frilly white bar napkins. “I mean, it’s supposed to be the best hotel in the city, but you should see my bathroom. I had to scrub it myself after I checked in.”

Ash chuckled. “Something you need to get used to here is lowering your expectations.”

“You’ve been in PNG a while?”

“Ten years in paradise,” she replied cynically. “I don’t live in Pom anymore. I just keep an apartment here for when I have business in town. My home is in Madang.”

She promptly did what she never did and took out a couple of the photos she carried in her wallet. Looking at her house was the only thing that kept her grounded sometimes. That and Emma. But she didn’t get her sister’s picture out. She only wanted to cry when she saw it, and tonight she was trying to get her mind off that unhappy subject.

“It’s stunning.” Charlotte examined the closer shot of the house at length. “I love it. The wooden porticos and that long balcony with the white pillars. Those huge palm trees. It’s like something from a novel.”

She pointed to a Þ gure standing on the balcony, leaning against the railing. “Is that you?”

“Yes.” Ash had bought her houseboy, Ramon, a Polaroid camera

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a while back and he’d lost his mind and taken pictures of everything.

“You can see the ocean from up there.”

“Amazing. Do you have land?”

“Sixty acres. It’s a coffee plantation. Kind of run down, but it provides the locals with some work. We just had our main harvest back in September.”

“Coffee. I had no idea.”

“It’s one of PNG’s biggest exports. Most of it ends up in Germany.”

“Not in Starbucks?”

“Funny thing. We actually prefer to sell our crop for more than thirty cents a pound. It’s hard to pay wages when you’re giving the stuff away.”

“I thought Starbucks had programs supporting small producers.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been reading their propaganda over your morning hit?” Ash teased gently.

“God, no. They’d have to pay me serious money to drink a latte in any place that uses rBGH milk. I can’t believe we’re the last country on the planet to ban that crap.”

“I think they still serve it in Kazakhstan.”

“What an endorsement.” Her face grew earnest. “You know what’s happening back home? Our bought and paid for senate is about to pass the Monsanto laws. That means no more state regulations about food labeling. By all means, avoid telling the consumer about toxins and growth hormones. They know people are getting cancer from their Frankenfoods. That’s why they want to hide the information for as long as they can. Just like the cigarette companies.”

Ash didn’t think she’d ever been so idealistic that hard truths could disillusion her. She said, “Down here we’re so undeveloped no one can afford pesticides and antibiotics, so we only have organic foods.”

“Lucky you.” Charlotte’s grave little face took on a brooding cast.

“Maybe it’s because of my work, but this really bothers me. I mean, genetic modiÞ cation is in its infancy as a science. No one has any idea of the impact of these foods. But they’re putting them on our tables and releasing GE crops into our environment like it’s nothing.” She fell silent. “Okay, gag me. I’m talking like a crazy person.”

A mental snapshot of a fetchingly gagged Charlotte played havoc with Ash’s senses. Nothing hard-core, just one of those playful satin

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accessories. She wrestled the image away and tried for the pensive response that was called for.

“You’re talking like someone who knows depressing facts, that’s all.” She could relate. There were topics she never allowed herself to discuss because she knew how she would sound.

“I can get overly opinionated.” Charlotte’s tone suggested this characteristic sometimes exasperated her. “I grew up with two older brothers. It was competitive.”

Ash didn’t think any woman should apologize for being strong-minded. Wanting to put her at ease, she said, “I don’t have a problem with people showing they care about something. But tell me, don’t you Þ nd it a dilemma, working in your Þ eld?”

“Not at all. I believe what I’m doing will help people and if I have an ethical problem with anything, I won’t do it.”

Ash smiled inwardly. She made such rationalizations herself, drawing lines in the sand that made it possible for her to look at herself in the mirror every morning. She did not carry out political executions and she refused to provide operational support for the Indonesian rape and death squads that cleared the path for foreign investment and Javanese transmigration. She would only work on resettlement projects where the New Guineans were not physically harmed.

In the dirty business she was in, making those choices had cost her a lot of money and some powerful friends. But she never kidded herself that she was doing anything noble. She was just clinging to some ß imsy moral high ground on a slippery slope that was no place for any truly decent person. A woman like Charlotte would never have to choose the lesser of evils that were truly evil, and that was a good thing.

Ash’s thoughts veered to the small truth she still hadn’t mentioned.

Hiding her gender wasn’t a matter of safety anymore, so it wasn’t right to keep up the pretense, and if Charlotte had guessed, the least Ash should do was acknowledge it. As soon as the opportunity arose, she was going to do just that.

Charlotte had taken refuge in her cocktail, clearly embarrassed.

They’d broken the Þ rst rule of pleasant socializing—don’t talk about issues. “Maybe we should head over to the restaurant,” she suggested, apparently determined to rein herself in. “Didn’t you say our reservation is for seven thirty?”

“I sure did.” Ash signaled the waiter to collect their drinks and they crossed the lobby. She caught a whiff of Charlotte’s perfume as

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they walked. Shalimar. Ash would know it anywhere. Utterly delicious.

The perfume of the classy woman who liked to get physical. Was that Charlotte?

As they settled at their table, Ash said, “How about this? I won’t talk politics if you won’t talk environment.”

“I can live with that. And, between you and me,” Charlotte’s smile hinted at mischief, “if one more foreigner asks me when we’re going to invade North Korea, I’m going to be arrested for doing grievous bodily harm.”

“We’re invading countries?” Ash marveled with mock innocence.

“I don’t get out enough.”

This raised a giggle that made Charlotte’s breasts bounce slightly.

She sipped her cocktail and asked, “Do you have family back home?”

Ash hesitated. She was cautious with personal questions. “Just my sister. I get back home to visit her several times a year.” That was all she could say without her throat closing up.

“Where are you from, originally?”

The trouble with inane social chitchat was that it meant talking about family and job, topics Ash preferred not to get into. She said, “I was born and raised in Boston. You?”

“Greenwich, Connecticut, but I’ve been living in Boston since I graduated. Where did you go to school?”

“BU.” Ash didn’t explain that she’d dropped out in favor of West Point. Smart women like Charlotte always wanted to talk about sexual harassment in the military, and that conversation was old. “Harvard, right?”

Charlotte’s dark hair bobbed slightly as she shook her head.

“Stanford.”

Their waiter arrived to explain the menu. Thankful for the diversion, Ash said, “I’ve had the barramundi here. It’s decent if you like freshwater Þ sh.”

“I always worry about eating Þ sh when I’m overseas. Refrigeration is such an issue. And the salad is a concern, too, don’t you think? I hate to imagine the bacteria count given the water they must wash their lettuce in here.”

Ash normally had no patience with fussiness, but it seemed germ-phobia was one of Charlotte’s personal quirks. Worryingly, she found this cute. “You spend too much time looking through a microscope,”

she said with a grin.

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As soon as they’d ordered, she was going to come right out and just say what she should have said in the Þ rst place. Pretending to read her menu, she framed the words.
There’s something I’ve been meaning
to tell you. I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want you to feel
embarrassed about what happened in the bar. But I’m a woman, not a
man. I wasn’t sure if you’d noticed.

“It’s weird.” Charlotte observed suddenly. “I haven’t done anything like this for ages.”

The intimate lull of her voice made Ash lean forward to catch every word. Shalimar ß ooded her nostrils again, reminding her how much she liked to smell it on a lover. “Like what?”

Charlotte pondered for a moment, her head fetchingly angled.

“Said yes to having an adventure, I suppose.”

“That stunt wasn’t an adventure. It was an act of madness.”

“I’m not just talking about that. I mean everything.” Charlotte swept a hand around. “I’m sitting in a restaurant with white linen and candelabras on the tables, and scary tribal masks all around the walls.

I haven’t read a newspaper in days. I’m in a place where people speak eight hundred languages, mostly not English. I don’t do impulsive things, normally, but here I am having dinner with a stranger who carries three guns and I’m feeling completely comfortable. It’s weird.

It’s like I’ve been cut adrift and all the rules have changed.”

Ash had to prod herself mentally to come up with a reply. She’d lost herself so completely in the sensual melody of Charlotte’s voice that she had barely heard the words. “Well, that’s not surprising. Nothing you do here has any social consequences. The people who matter to you are Þ ve thousand miles away.”

“Exactly.” Charlotte’s eyes were pansy purple in the candlelight.

They looked like windows to a soul. Ash knew her own were shuttered, by contrast. “It’s like there’s a whole new paradigm, a conspiracy you join without even knowing it. Just because you’re a stranger in a strange land.”

“I think most travelers experience what you’re describing. It’s part of escaping.”

Charlotte rested an elbow on the table and cupped her cheek in her hand. “Does it happen to you, too, when you come back here?”

That voice. It simply had to belong to her. Charlotte was from Boston and obviously hadn’t been in PNG for more than a few days. The bizarre coincidence was unlikely but not impossible. Ash contemplated

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asking her if she knew Dani Bush, then realized how stupid that would be. Did she really want this woman Þ nding out she was about to dine with the third person in the bedroom that night?

“Actually it’s the other way ’round,” she said, answering Charlotte’s question. “As soon as the plane touches down back home all bets are off.”

“I can’t imagine you doing crazy stuff. You seem so…

controlled.”

I’m doing crazy stuff right now.
She was sitting opposite a woman she knew spelled trouble, trying to persuade herself that she only wanted to sleep with her, yet knowing there was already more to it than that. She was actually indulging in fantasies about having a future with a woman she’d only just met and who didn’t even know her gender. As she’d driven to the hotel for their dinner date, she’d tried to see herself in a relationship. Then, when Charlotte was looking at the photos of the plantation house, Ash was picturing her on the balcony late at night, the two of them wallowing in the sunset, then going inside to make love.

Her stomach churned at the thought. That body, this woman, naked in her arms, belonging to her. An aching hunger clawed at her, making its familiar, restless claim on her senses. But there was something else, too, a yearning so profound, Ash was shaken by it. Comprehension ß ashed across her mind.
Love at Þ rst sight.
She instantly rejected the idea. There was no such thing. People who felt guilty about no-strings sex laid claim to that sentiment to justify their urges.

She sipped her whiskey and gathered herself. She was a disgrace to players all over the globe and a walking cliché. She should get up right now, burble some lame excuse, and get the hell out of here. How many warning signs did she need? She didn’t
make love
with women.

She didn’t
fall in love
. Normally at this point in a dinner assignation, her entire train of thought revolved around scoring as quickly as possible and planning an exit strategy that would avoid complications. Angry husbands and messy lesbian divorce dramas like the one in Brookline could ruin even the warmest afterglow.