The Last Good Paradise (39 page)

Cooked stood up in the boat and said a prayer over the water, while Richard looked down into the waves, praying Loren would pop up at any minute, as if this might still be an elaborate gag. Richard was suffering the naïve but common belief that nothing bad could happen on vacation, that the ordinary realities of life were somehow suspended. The rocking of the boat had set off a rocking in his stomach that Richard recognized as the beginning of seasickness. Despite himself, even in the hot sun, his teeth chattered. Cooked yanked the shell necklace off his neck, breaking the thread and unstringing the pieces into his palm. He threw bits in all four directions while he said another prayer.

Richard looked down, blinked, looked harder.

In the depths of the ocean there seemed to be a milky swirling, like an underwater tornado. Richard was light-headed. He distinctly felt the possibility that he might pass out. He looked up at the sky to get his bearings.

When he looked down again, the milky shape had risen and was now much closer to the surface so that he could make out distinct shapes.

“Are those…?”

Cooked glanced down. “Sharks.”

Now Richard was sure he would throw up.

Thirty feet below the boat, the water was filled with the galaxy-like swirl of hundreds of sharks. They made a large lazy loop with the boat as their epicenter. The water churned as some darted up closer to the surface, a few even breaking above to snatch at the air.

“What are they doing?” Richard whispered, as if he might be overheard.

“Our people believe that the souls of our ancestors inhabit the sharks.
Aumakua.
They are protecting us. Or welcoming Loren. He was one of us, I think.”

“I’m going to puke.”

*   *   *

Titi’s immediate family, Faufau and thirty others, turned around and came back to the island for the funeral. Loren had not been a great benefactor to their village, he’d caused problems and love in equal proportion, but he had been family. The mourning was personal. Once everyone had gathered, they filled a canoe with dried bundles of cane, set it on fire, and pushed it out to sea. One of the elder uncles said a prayer:

You shall mount upward

You shall soar on high

You are Above

You are Below …

Ann stood on the beach, leaning on a long stick, and watched the boat make its fiery exit. The vessel stalled in the middle of the lagoon as it burned. She dragged the stick through the wet sand and made an enormous

to send off her friend.

Once the fiery funereal boat was mostly burned up, the mourners turned their backs to the sea and went to eat their sad feast. It surprised everyone when Steve stayed after the ceremony. They had not guessed at this unexpected display of feeling. Some of the kinder names Loren called him had been “
pute
,” “
gros con
,” “
fils de salope
.” As the mourners sat and reminisced, Steve sidled over to Lilou.

“As the only blood relative, are you going to make a claim on the resort?” he asked. “If so, we can help.”

Lilou looked at him through thick wet lashes. Although she was quite beautiful, her disdainful expression was all Loren.

“Tu es un vrai connard!”

“I see.” Steve nodded, moved on to Titi, who was sitting with Faufau and Ann. “Loren certainly left you in a bind.”

Titi looked through him as if he were a ghost.

Undeterred, Steve continued. “Corporate has okayed me offering you a check for the value that is here. Let me tell you, I had to twist arms to even get this. Poorly maintained grass shacks, outdated kitchen equipment, old generator—but corporate wants to keep the Atoll Sauvage in the family, so to speak. You and Cooked can keep your jobs, too. With a nifty little raise. I’m thinking of coming over myself to replace Loren as manager. Whip this place into tip-top shape.”

“You could never replace Loren,” Titi said.

“This isn’t an appropriate time,” Ann said.

Steve blinked, unaware that Ann had been listening. “And you are—?”

“The attorney for the new…”

“Mara ‘amu,” Titi whispered.

The old legends told that when the devil came, he would not be scary but would come disguised as a beautiful women or a handsome man. This Steve didn’t qualify as either, but he also didn’t have a tail.

“The Mara ‘amu Resort,” Ann repeated.

Steve smacked his lips. “You are a
guest
. This isn’t your country, and if I’m not mistaken, you have no right to practice law here.”

“Leave Titi alone or twelve of her ‘uncles’ will escort you back to your boat. A nighttime voyage can be perilous. Sharks.”

*   *   *

That night Ann sat up in bed unable to sleep.

“It hurts.”

Richard held her in his arms and allowed her to sob on his shirt. He was still her husband, and he could comfort her even if it was over the death of his rival. He stroked her hair.

“Nothing happened between us, in case you’re wondering.”

“I never thought it did.” Of course he had and was relieved to hear the contrary.

“And now Lilou. I feel so bad.”

“You cannot be responsible for a dish you did not burn.”

Ann sniffled. “Who said that?”

“I did.”

After the tears, Richard and Ann lay in bed, side by side, staring at the ceiling. Their suspended bag of money in the rafters was visibly collapsed.

“I miss the copper door, and the tables from the antique-wood place.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember…?” Dangerous territory going down that path but she continued. “That restaurant in Portugal?”

“The fish stew.”

“The candles in those pewter holders with the punched-out holes.”

“The walls turned out nicely,” Richard said. “I was against red, but you were right.”

“Rome was right.”

“I did learn how to make the deep-fried zucchini blossoms.”

“I miss
us
.”

“I lied about Wende.”

“I deserved it.”

How was it, Ann wondered, that everything that seemed to matter so much ended up mattering not at all?

*   *   *

The next morning, Lilou asked Ann to help her clear Loren’s hut. It wasn’t until Ann saw the rumpled sheets on the sleigh bed, the pile of books still to be read beside it, that she broke down. In three weeks, Loren had made a deeper impression on her than people she had known a lifetime.

Lilou’s eyes grew big when she saw the watercolors on the door. “Whose are those?”

“Loren’s.”

“He painted?”

“He was an artist,” Ann corrected.

“My father owned an antique shop in Lyon.”

“He did installations. Avant-garde stuff. The video recorders? The Cow?!”

“Not that I knew.”

“He had another life after he left your mother,” Ann said.

This woman had no idea who her father was. Opening the door to the computer room, Ann waved her in and turned on the monitor. There on the screen was the beach outside. “Did you know about this?”

“What is it?”

“For you. Before we commandeered it.”

She was grateful Loren had never found out that the communion with Lilou he had felt for years through the live cam was false.

“Who would this appeal to?” Lilou asked.

“He hoped you.”

Lilou sat down and stared at the screen. “After what happened to Bette, I never heard from him. I wrote him letters. He never answered.”

“He tried to see you.”

Lilou closed her eyes. “I need a drink.”

Ann went to the chest—the last two of Loren’s bottles made a thin, dusty line. She would never drink absinthe again after this day. She poured it into the special bell-shaped glasses, laid the slotted spoon with a sugar cube across, then added water.

“I didn’t think anyone drank this anymore,” Lilou said, wrinkling her nose at the first taste.

“He called it the green fairy. I have something to show you.”

She pressed play on the computer. The sight of Loren, even this sad and disheveled version, holding his sign, was a relief.

Lilou cried, sinking down to the floor, curled up into the little girl he had left.

“A part of me waited for him to come back and make things right, even though I knew better.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lilou sighed. “After a while, it was less painful to tell people I had no father. Then it became true.”

“So why did you come?”

“You. I thought if someone cared enough about him to find me, he must not be all bad.”

Titi appeared at the door. She moved around the room uneasily. Clearly their presence was an intrusion.

“Would you like a glass?” Ann asked.

“I don’t drink.” Titi wiped her eyes.

Ann kept pouring alcohol as they packed things away, skipping first the sugar, then the water, until they were taking it straight like pros.

Loren had left remarkably little behind, they discovered, as they went through drawers and cabinets.

“Why did he never answer my letters?” Lilou said, slurring her words.

Titi retrieved a shell that they had thrown away. “He found this years ago when we went on a picnic. I want it.”

“You were good to him,” Lilou said, and laid a sloppy arm across Titi’s shoulders.

In a drawer, Ann found her brown bathing suit.
That devil.
She smiled, quickly balled it up and stuck it into her bag.

Titi found a crude grass skirt. “He kept that! He made it to give me dance lessons. It wasn’t working so he hired a…”

“Dancer?”

Titi flushed.

“A prostitute,” Lilou guessed.

“She danced really good. I won the contest.”

All three were sitting on the floor, the packing forgotten, when Wende knocked.

“Where did everyone go?”

“We’re just…”

“We have turned this into a wake,” Lilou announced.

She regretted her decision to come, odd man out in the life of this stranger, who happened to be her father.

“Can I have a sip?” Wende asked.

An hour later, Wende was cradling a stone statue from Loren’s desk. “It made me angry. Windy, he called me, no matter how I corrected him.”

The other three were laughing, knowing that Loren had found it funny.

“One night Dex and I were fighting. He found me chilling out in the kitchen. He was so kind, so different when we were alone. He said, ‘You should be like my daughter.’”

“He didn’t,” Lilou said.

Ann closed her eyes.

“I didn’t even know he had a daughter,” Wende continued. “He said she had a hard time growing up, but never let it set her back.”

“How did he know?” Lilou put her face in her hands.

“He said, ‘Make your own life. Don’t let others do it for you.’”

Instead of their intended target, the words were affecting Titi.

“I read your letters, then burned them,” she burst out to Lilou. “He never knew.”

The three other women stared at her in astonishment.

“Why?” Lilou asked.

“I was afraid he’d leave. I thought he wouldn’t love me anymore when he had his own real daughter back.”

Lilou’s face was unreadable. The whole nature of the last twenty years of her life recast in an instant.

“Thank you for being brave enough to tell me now,” she said finally.

Each women gathered a keepsake. Ann already had the shark rattle, but she took Loren’s red pareu. Lilou had gathered all the watercolors off the wall for herself, and Ann stared longingly at the pile, not wanting to take anything from someone who had already lost so much.

Titi whispered to Ann, “I have something else for you.”

*   *   *

The men sat on the beach. Richard stared out at the innocuous waves as if they were obfuscating the fact that they could swallow up a person whole. His infatuation with snorkeling and diving was gone; he would never go underwater again. His recent experiences were irretrievably now forced into nostalgia. He would never forget Loren; literally, he was unable to stop imagining his floating, sunken body. Pure tragedy, both what Loren had done and what he’d missed by mere hours—seeing Lilou. Perhaps she would have changed his mind. Okay, Richard was being a little sanctimonious. He hadn’t really gotten to know the guy very well, other than being jealous of Ann’s affection for him, but now he felt embarrassed for his pettiness.

Dex came and clapped him on the shoulder. They clinked beer bottles.

“Rough one, huh?”

“I can’t believe how.”

Robby yelled from down the beach, “BBC wants an interview in half an hour,” then went back to his cell phone.

Richard did not like Robby, who treated the rest of them like nobodies, which they were in the rock world, but still. A man had died. Show some respect.

“I’ve known a lot of guys who died young. Best thing is to move on,” Dex said.

“It makes you think, though, doesn’t it?”

Actually it didn’t. Ever since the ship incident, Dex had been flying high. It was always great to volunteer oneself and then not have to actually bite the bullet. Take that, Grim Reaper. Personally he thought Loren should have stuck it out, but who was he to judge another man’s pain? The measure of a man’s happiness in life was unknowable to others. We have to go on faith.