The Last Good Paradise (17 page)

He bent over and blew in Dex’s mouth. His only practice before was on a rubber dummy. He had never had contact with a man’s lips; of course it was his fate that today, instead of Wende’s lips, he should be touching Dex’s. Now Dex opened his eyes, and they stared at each other for a long intimate moment before he turned away and retched out a cupful of lagoon.

*   *   *

Ann didn’t bother to shower off but threw a shirt over her sticky, burned skin, tugged on her khaki shorts, and stalked to Loren’s hut. When she reached his lanai, Titi was blocking the door by sitting in a lounge chair as she braided her long hair.

The sight was stunning. It made Ann want to ask if she might sketch her later. For a second, she wondered if Loren might have some pastels or oil paints to lend her, but then she remembered her righteous black cloud of outrage and pushed on by.

“He’s tired,” Titi said.

“Sorry, but I must.” Ann jumped over the end of the lounge and used her shoulder on the door, flinging it open. Loren was in bed.

“You lying bastard!”

“Can I help you?”

“I can’t believe that you would do something like this.”

“You will tell me any minute what ‘this’ is?”

“Robinson Crusoe island? Back to the primitive? While you have a camera setup like some creepy reality show? You
are
a
perverti
.”

“You did venture far today.”

“So you are responsible? Leaving it all behind. Mr. Buddha here.”

“
You
called me those things.”

“You accepted being called those things.”

Ann had been in a transcendent state when she came to that particularly picturesque cove, and it didn’t register at first sight—the six-foot aluminum pole or the camera bolted at its top. After futilely searching for her bathing suit, she had snuck through the trees and watched the camera’s movement—it seemed stationary, rotating neither left nor right but focusing straight ahead on the last fifteen feet of sand and the ocean beyond it. When Ann literally turned tail and ran, she had not been filmed in all likelihood, but the spell had been broken. She felt violated. On the way back to the resort, she no longer communed with the sand, water, and sky; no, she was looking for likely hiding places of more cameras because the reality of one presaged the likelihood that the whole island was being surveilled.

Loren sighed. “It’s a very long story.”

“I have time.”

“It was started for my daughter. It’s become popular. A million regular viewers around the world.”

Ann’s eyes grew big as the implications sunk in. As she looked around the room, her glance stopped at the door papered in watercolors. She moved toward it.

“No, Ann. Please.”

She gently opened it. Inside was a desk upon which sat a huge Apple monitor. File cabinets lined the wall. Computer, printer, modem, cell phone, everything a tech geek could desire to hide out on an island and still be
totally plugged in
. Above the desk was a large world map with little colored pins stuck all over it. Was there a term yet for technological infidelity?

“Bastard! You are such a supreme hypocrite!”

Loren said nothing.

Ann came back, stood at the footboard, hands on her hips.

He sighed. “Aren’t we being self-righteous? What do you think—that this is a real experience? Ann? Talk to me. This fantasy of escape that comes with
premier cru
French wine and vegetables flown in from Australia? You’re sleeping on Frette sheets, for Christ’s sake.
Vous êtes une femme folle.
”

“You’re right.” Anger leaked from her quickly.

What was her grave disappointment about? Loren had called her out. Meek Richard let her get away with more than was good for either of them.

“I run a resort. I need to contact Papeete, the parent hotel across the lagoon, potential customers. Emergency services if need be. I have to live in the modern world,
non
?”

“Of course.”

She felt defeated, and worse, her fantasy shattered. She needed the island to be pure to validate her choice in coming there. Truth was, her confidence at the wisdom of having dumped her job was crumbling. She was scared. She was burning through money like no tomorrow. If she flew back and begged the senior partners, went on her hands and knees to that windbag Flask, would they take her back? She had a crush on a gay hotelier who might be a pervert and certainly got off on spycraft. She was probably
not
going to have a baby. Her husband might have stopped loving her in favor of an uncomplicated nymphet.
Une femme folle
, indeed.

Ann was hardwired into the American dream, and, by necessity, she saw every tick downward as a temporary aberration, a pit stop, a state from which she would roar back to triumph. Unthinkable that she would go down in the world and then stay down. Un-American.

“Tell me the truth about one thing: Do you have cameras on us? In our rooms, on the beach?”

“I swear … just the one.”

“So what’s it for?”

Loren broke into the sly smile of a ten-year-old boy playing a fast one. “It’s my masterwork. During my best years at the gallery in Paris, maybe a few hundred people saw my work. Too avant-garde, too obscure, too expensive. It appealed only to snobs—and people too embarrassed to admit they didn’t understand it so they praised it instead. It’s like those nightclubs that are exclusive only because of who they keep out. I’ve finally done something that reaches hundreds of thousands of people.”

“Are you making money?”

“No, no,” he said, as if the idea was distasteful. “It’s anonymous. It’s a website of nothing except the empty beach. It’s on all the time. The only interaction possible is to leave comments. There is a visitor counter. Thousands of repeat visitors. Some people go regularly every day. Some go only when they are in crisis, to calm themselves. Death of a parent, spouse, child, or pet; divorce; loss of job; illness. Ended romances. Like the Buddhist explanation of the universe—Indra’s net. It’s like the most fantastic dream—to be part of all these lives.”

“I’m … speechless.”

Loren sat back, pleased. “Imagine a spiderweb with drops of dew along each strand. Each drop reflects all the others. Then each reflected drop reflects all the other reflected dewdrops. On and on forever. Pour us some absinthe.”

“How do people find out about it?”

“Word of mouth. I will not do press. No ads. I want no one to find out where the actual beach is or about me. The privacy and anonymity of the experience are essential. That’s part of the magic. Promise?”

“But you could charge.”

“I don’t want to profit—it’s a memorial.”

“To who?”

“I don’t wish to say.”

Ann nodded at the incongruity of an anonymous memorial. “Show it to me.”

It was a huge relief to sit in front of a computer again, staring into a screen. In reflex, her hand curled itself around the mouse like holding a lover’s hand as Loren brought the site up. There it was. Kind of. A strip of sand and then the ocean. There was sound so that you could hear the surf. Ann watched it a few minutes and had to admit it was peaceful. But one didn’t see the beautiful palms behind the camera; one couldn’t feel the burn of the sun or the silk of the breeze. No bite of salty ocean. No way to convey that infinity of space.

“Did my visit get recorded?”

Loren wagged his head and scrolled down the comments.

“People thought they heard footsteps, then a woman’s voice cursing, then running that faded away. It caused a bump in viewership. People asked to have it replayed. That’s against the rules.”

“Whose rules?”

“Mine.”

“Unbelievable.” Ann paused. “What do you call it?”

“
Plage
. Beach.”

“That’s imaginative.”

“It’s about pure experience. Not my interpretation of that experience.”

“How do you know it’s not accidentally visited by people looking for beach party videos? Or bikini watchers?”

“They’ll get bored.”

“But you want to attract the people the site was meant for? Right? Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“How would that happen?”

“Call it ‘Robinson Crusoe.’ If you put ‘South Pacific,’ they’ll be looking for hula girls.”

Loren frowned. “Too much like Mickey Mouse. Disneyland. They’ll want some castaway staggering around on the sand, eating a live fish.”

“No. It’s the solitude. That’s the experience people want. That’s what we spent the money to come here for. That’s why I’m here. Give them that gift.”

As frail and tired as Loren had looked before, now his eyes lit up. The prospect of bringing new life to the webcam got him out of bed. When Titi came with fruit juice, he drank his down without a thought and shushed her away. He jostled Ann out of his chair, then went about purchasing his new domain name, waving to her as she left to get ready for dinner.

Hours later, Loren hosted dinner but left before dessert. Dex started the nightly concert, announcing he would play a new song he had just written. Richard sat alone with his beer, glowering as Wende bent over Cooked beating out a slow rhythm on his
to’ere
drums. Then she took his seat, latching the big drums between her lithe thighs, as Cooked bent over behind her, his arms over hers, virtual Polynesian nesting dolls, and they tapped out a rhythm together. Unbearable. He looked away, just in time to observe Loren rejoin the group. He leaned over Ann and whispered in her ear. Great. Ann broke into a huge smile and hugged Loren, reaching up to kiss his cheek.

His wife’s burgeoning affair.

Only later would he understand that success, even anonymous, could be a wonderful medicine.

Rock ’n’ Roll Will Save Your Life

For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

—M
ELVILLE,
Moby-Dick

Dex got into it like everyone else—for the girls. A license for pussy. Beautiful girls and ones tending toward plain, tall and short, fat and skinny, smart and slow, with every combination in between, and they had all become inexplicably available. Rock music was the last refuge of the misfit, which Dex considered himself at age sixteen; ditto, the unathletic. Musical ability was a ticket out for guys who were pale and thin-chested, smoked pot and skipped classes. Grow your hair, get some tattoos, and start learning to play that guitar that you cradled at first mostly as a prop, and magically, everything that formerly labeled you as a loser—lack of social skills, lack of education, lack of a good future—converted to cool. You didn’t even have to wash regularly.

Dex had lost count of the number of days they had been on the island. Northward of two months, he guessed, but he didn’t want to know. He had this idea of falling outside the confines of time, and avoiding the calendar and not wearing a watch were part of that plan. Loren was cool about not making them feel like they were on the meter. In fact, the astronomical charges that Dex got when he finally read the statements months later came as a kind of betrayal, showing just how unlaid-back the whole arrangement was in reality. The fine print stated categorically that “inclusive” included a two-bottle-per-day limit on alcohol, after which huge, nasty surcharges began to sprout up for such things as extra booze, as well as requests for special food or service outside of regular dining hours. Ditto for Cooked’s supply of pot, billed under miscellaneous.

“Just charge the Visa when you need a bump,” Dex instructed, and boy did they.

The six months before Dex arrived at the island had been a hell of touring town after town, or rather auditorium after auditorium, because after a while he didn’t bother finding out the names of the towns or even the states they were in. The band members, especially his lead guitarist, Robby, and he were fighting, arguing about the music, the schedule, the recording contract, even about the drug supply at each stop. They had turned from being the bad-boy conquistadors of rock into little old ladies bitching over the sandwiches at a bridge lunch. The only thing they did not argue about was the need to earn more money because the band had become its own animal and needed constant feeding.

It was the first time in twenty-five years that it felt like a job.

The usual high he got from playing had gone MIA. The songs tasted like leather in his mouth. As short of the true experience as jerking off was to making out with the love of his life, currently Wende. Or, rather, the pyrotechnics, the glitz and glam, the selling of CDs, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and hats almost made the real-live musicians beside the point. Although they refused, their label would have preferred Prospero lip-synching for a more foolproof performance. The goal was to imitate the record instead of improvising and keeping the music alive and changing. It had become de rigueur for many bands. Generic, zombie boy bands were drawing bigger crowds with their fake, manufactured, forgettable sound. Dex swore before he stooped to Milli Vanilli–ing his music he’d quit. Attitudes such as this led to the perception among corporate that he had grown “difficult.”

The audiences, disappointingly, did not seem to register the empty, hollowed sound in the music. They were enthusiastic as always. Grooving. In almost all ways, they were the best part of the concerts. Even when Dex insisted on throwing in a few blues pieces—moody fuckers—fans tasted it, then howled and begged for more. Maybe the change was just in his mind. So he compensated with the drugs, which left him totally strung out by the time they came off the road. The band members scattered in different directions immediately like opposing politicians who had been forced together for a photo op.

*   *   *

Wende and Ann had taken off in the boat for a shopping trip in town with Cooked, so Dex was alone for the first time in months. He didn’t like being alone, but today it was half okay because he was still riding high from the day before. He lit up his morning budski. He was proud of going cold turkey from the heavy drugs on arrival, and sweet Wende had nursed him through that ugly first week. Now he was on a rigorous regimen of alcohol and weed only, and he felt like a million bucks. Frisky as a teenager, and the song ideas had started coming again. He had not written a new piece in ten months, and he was in fear that he had gone dry, but no, he had simply abused the muse. Some roadie had given him a book of Buddhist teachings, and he had read it—proof he was going soft in the head, but it had forced him to see the error of his ways.