12 Hours In Paradise (17 page)

“Have you seen the zombie surfer?” Arash asked. “I’ve been keeping an eye out but haven’t seen a thing.”

The woman just shook her head.

“Nah,” the guy said. I noticed he had a man’s necktie laced through the belt loops of his pants and tied in a knot. His hand which used to be holding up his pants was now free. “You’re not gonna see that dude until the next full moon,” he said. “Come find us then and we’ll show you where to look.”

“We won’t be here for the next full moon,” I said sadly. “By the way, do you know when it gets light?”

I figured they must know, walking around all night the way they did. Sleeping on the beach whenever they slept.

“Soon,” the woman said spookily. “Real soon.”

“Do you know how soon? Like, what time?”

“Real soon,” she repeated.

Arash reached over and patted my knee as if trying to reassure me the night would never end. But obviously we both knew it was almost that time.

“Hey, how would you two like it if I drew a picture of you?” the guy asked. He seemed more serious, less loose than the last time we spoke.

“I wouldn’t mind that. How about you, Dorothy?”

“I wouldn’t mind. Could we talk while you’re drawing us? We still have to answer a few questions.”

“It’s no problem for me,” Zombie Guy said. He plopped himself down in front of us, blocking our view of the ocean. “Got any money? It doesn’t come free, you know. It’s how I make my living,” he said quietly and almost apologetically.

Arash reached into one pocket after another. He was clearly not the organized type. He pulled out a few bills from here and another from there. He counted them up once he’d emptied his pockets.

“I have eight dollars and…” he thumbed through some change, “…seventeen cents. You can have it all.”

“That’ll do,” the guy said, and the woman took the cash from Arash’s hand. She handed her man a notebook that I hadn’t paid attention to until just then. And five or six colored pencils. He went to work.

“‘Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life,’” Arash started the question in a normal voice but was almost whispering by the end.

“Umm…” I didn’t really want these two as an audience to my embarrassing moment.

“Go on,” the guy said. “I’m not payin’ attention and she don’t care.” He jutted his thumb toward his lady companion. “Whisper if you want, but try not to move around so much.”

He was totally focused on the page in front of him. Buster was snoring.

“You know I’m not going to tell you my most embarrassing moment, right?” Arash said.

“No fair.” I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow.

“Hey, hold still,” Zombie Guy scolded.

“It just said
an
embarrassing moment, not
the most
embarrassing moment,” Arash spoke quietly, trying not to move his lips too much or turn his head.

“Oh, hell, I’ll tell you my most embarrassing moment, if that’ll help grease the wheels,” the guy said without looking up from his work in progress. His lady friend was wading into the water about knee-deep. She held her long skirt up with one hand, revealing stick-thin legs. “I shit my pants once, now that’s pretty embarrassing. Anything else you two have to say can’t be that bad.”

I felt like throwing up, but I kept staring straight ahead with that posed smile on my face, trying hard not to move.

“Actually,” Arash whispered from the corner of his mouth, “mine was going to be the same thing.”

“What?” I involuntarily turned my head to look at him.

“Hey, hey! Hold still,” the guy admonished. I turned back to face him.

“I was only seven,” Arash went on in that corner-mouth-whispering way. “At a swim meet. I had to go, what can I say? I didn’t make it.”

“Give him a break, he was only seven.” The guy’s pencil seemed to fly across the page. He set one down and picked up another. So much for whispering. This guy could hear like a bat.

“Now you owe me a good one,” Arash said. “After what I just revealed.”

“The first day of school, my freshman year,” I started, “I walked into the wrong classroom. And I was spacing and nervous about being in high school, and I kept wondering why everyone seemed older than me and I didn’t recognize any of the faces. So after about twenty minutes, I realized I was in the wrong class and I got up and walked to the teacher’s desk to tell him what happened. And he stopped talking for the whole time it took me to get to the front of the class because I’d been sitting in the back. And everyone was staring at me. So when I told him I was in the wrong class and didn’t realize it until then, everyone started laughing.”

“That’s it? After what I just admitted to you?” Arash raised his eyebrows but otherwise kept his head perfectly still and staring straight ahead.

“Yeah, that’s not bad at all,” Zombie Guy said. “Once I forgot for a whole day what city I was in. Hold still, I’m almost done.”

“Sorry, that’s the best I can do,” I said. “Question number thirty.”

“‘When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?’”

“I cried in front of you when you told me the story about Benjamin,” I said. “By myself? A movie I saw on TV a few weeks ago. It was on one of those old black-and-white movie channels, and I was bored and flipping through channels when I came across it. Can’t remember the name, but it was really depressing.”

“Benjamin?” The guy looked up from his drawing with the first real interest I’d seen in his eyes. “Had a dog before Buster named Benny. Cried when he died. I cried in front of everyone, and I still cry about him sometimes when I’m alone.
She
cries all the time.” He jutted his thumb behind him in the direction of his lady friend, who was still standing, almost motionless, in the lapping waves. “’Bout her kids she never gets to see anymore.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Arash leaned forward toward the guy the way he did when he was making a connection with someone. It was a subtle but endearing habit he had that I was already in love with.

“Hey! Stop moving, you’re ruining the picture,” Zombie Guy snapped, and Arash settled back in position. “So what’s made you cry? I’m kind of curious to hear this answer, myself.”

“What’s made me cry?” Arash lowered his voice to direct his answer at me instead of the guy who’d begun to insert himself into our love experiment. “If you count tearing up instead of outright bawling, well I also cried tonight. A few times, in fact. By myself…” he lowered his voice even more, “…frequently. Almost every time I visit my dad. After I leave, of course.”

“Okay, I’m done here,” Zombie Guy pronounced. “Care to see the finished product? Sorry, no refunds.”

He peeled the sheet of paper from its pad and thrust it toward us. After maintaining a fixed position that whole time, my back and legs were stiff and it felt good to move at last. I took the paper and held it so we could both see the result.

Maybe I was expecting two stick figures and I didn’t really mind. They’d still be representative of Arash and me, and that’s all I cared about. But I was surprised. The etching was simple and sweet. The likeness was good enough anyone would have known it was us. And somehow he’d managed to infuse it with feeling. The attraction I felt for Arash and that I hoped he also felt for me seemed obvious when I stared at the drawing. Would it be obvious to a stranger? Was it obvious to Zombie Man?

“I love it,” I said.

“Thanks,” Arash said. “I mean it, really. Thanks, this is great. I wish I had more money to give you for this.”

“Nah, no problem.” The guy stood up and whistled to Buster, who perked his ears, going from deep sleep to full throttle in seconds. They wandered off to collect his companion and then to who knows where. I wondered where the money would go, the measly eight dollars and change. Breakfast? Drugs? I missed Buster already.

“Who should keep it?” I asked.

“Why, you of course,” Arash said. “I commissioned it just for you.”

“But I want you to have it. Please.”

I secretly hoped it would be a reminder to Arash. A reminder of us and that night. For me, nothing could pry those memories from my brain. And I did have our picture in my now-dead cell phone.

“Well in that case, thank you very much. Sure you don’t mind?”

“No, I really want you to keep it. Seriously.”

I thought I saw the faintest pink stripe on the horizon even though it was still quite dark. The palm trees rustled behind us. The waves were growing larger and louder. Everything seemed in a hurry to get started with a new day.

Everything except me.

“And for the next question,” Arash said, “‘Tell your partner something that you like about them already.’”

“I’m almost a hundred percent sure we answered this already.”

“It says question number thirty-one. I’ll start. Wait, now I remember we
did
answer this already because you got mad when I said I liked your freckles.”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“I guess they want us to answer again. Hey, it’s not like I’ve run out of things that I like about you.” He thought for a minute. “I suppose I can’t just elaborate on the things I like about you physically, because there are plenty of those.” He grinned and pushed his glasses up his nose. “So I’ll say that I love the way Buster is drawn to you. I know animals intuitively sense things people don’t. It seems like a good thing that Buster senses an unnamable quality in you, even if I don’t feel so good about Buster himself.”

“My turn? Do you mind if
I
elaborate on something physical?”

“Be my guest,” Arash said. “I promise I won’t feel at all demeaned as long as it’s something you like.”

“You have a really nice body.” I knew I was blushing bright red, and I hoped he couldn’t see it. I could feel it from the heat in my face.

“Ah, hey thanks.” He was smiling at me like he was more amused than grateful. “I’ll take it. And I don’t feel degraded, debased, or humiliated in the slightest. In fact, I don’t even want to proceed to question number thirty-two. Everything else has to be downhill from here.”

“Proceed,” I said.

“‘What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?’”

“Mmmm…plenty of things. Bullying. Murder. Rape. I could probably go on and on. How about you?”

“Nothing. I don’t believe anything is too serious to be joked about. Sometimes that’s the only way people have of coping with the most awful things in their lives. Sometimes if you can’t joke about something, you’d go mad instead.”

And I guessed he was right. At least for himself. I was made a different way.

“Should we go somewhere? Are you getting tired of sitting? Maybe we should start walking back toward your hotel,” he suggested.

A man came from behind us and stood off to the side, looking out at the waves. He was wearing a uniform, and I thought he might have been a bellhop for one of the hotels. He was smoking a cigarette, maybe his last before starting the morning shift.

“I want to stay here until we finish. I feel like this is where we’re supposed to be. But let’s hurry. Next question.”

“‘If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?’ If you want me to answer, I’ll go first.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve been thinking about it since I first told you about my father. I visit him every day when I’m home, and I talk to him about school and whatever I’m doing at the time even though he can’t talk back. Music. A book I’m reading. A movie I saw. But I’ve never told him that I forgive him…not in those words exactly. When I go back, I’m going to tell him just like that. ‘I forgive you, Dad. And I love you just the same.’” He stopped to clear his throat. “I’d feel bad if I didn’t get the chance to say that to him.”

“It’s awesome for you to realize while you still have a chance to do something about it.” I hoped I played a small part in his coming to that realization. “Should I say mine now? It has to do with you.”

He looked at me with keen interest, snatched back from that place in his mind where he’d opened himself up to his father. I went on. “Remember the question about our perfect day? And I said it would be riding my horse on a white, sandy beach? Well, I think the truth is this has been my perfect day. Only it happened at night.”

He smiled and put his hand over mine. “In that case, I’d like to revise
my
perfect day because I feel the same way.”

He picked up a handful of sand and let it drizzle onto my bare foot. It felt sensual and sexy. It felt intimate and playful.

It reminded me of an hourglass.

It reminded me of the passage of time.

“Do-overs are okay, then?” I asked.

“Do-overs are even encouraged,” he said. “Always. Always in life you get a do-over whenever you need one.”

The bird that came down to visit earlier came back with a friend. This time they stayed for more than a few seconds. The man finished his cigarette and turned back toward the hotel. The birds pecked at the air space between them and then flitted away.