The Wilds (20 page)

“You folks up from the spa, I reckon.” He sinks down into the pool.

“How’d you guess?” says Red, and the old man chuckles.

“And you?” I say.

“I’m from around. Got a little cottage up over the way.”

Winter tells us he keeps goats, sells cheese and yogurt to Mukti, plus fruit from his orchard and assorted herbs. He asks us how the healing’s going. Inquires about the new post office. Wonders what’s up with the pirates who’ve been plaguing the Venezuelan coast.

“Pirates?” says Red.

According to the old man, pirates, who usually stick to freighters, have recently drifted up to fleece Caribbean cruise ships.

“Thought I heard something about yachts getting hassled near Grenada,” Winter says.

“This is the first we’ve heard about any pirates,” I say, imagining eye-patched marauders, dark ships flying skull-and-crossbones flags.

“Probably just talk,” says Winter.

Red checks his watch, says our soak has exceeded the recommended span by four and a half minutes. We say goodbye to Winter, speed off on our
ATV
.

Seventy-five percent humidity, and the boils on my inner thighs have fused and burst, trickling a yellow fluid. My neck pustules are starting to weep. Choice ecthymic sores have turned into ulcers. I spend my downtime pacing the tree house naked. I shift from chair to
chair, daybed to hammock, listening to the demented birds. A plague of small green finches has invaded the island. They flit through the brush, squawk, and devour berries.

This morning I’ve neglected my therapies. I’m due for nanotech restructuring in thirty minutes, and the thought of putting on clothes, even the softest of silk kimonos, makes my skin crawl. But I do it, even though I know the fabric will be soaked by the time I get to the Samsara Complex. I slip on a lilac
kosode
and dash down the jungle trail, gritting my teeth.

I pass a few fellow Crusties. I pass a dead turtle, its belly peppered with black ants. I pass an island assistant lugging her sea-grass basket of eco-friendly cleaning chemicals. Though she, like all the assistants, is a broad, plain-faced woman, the beauty of her complexion startles me. But then I remember that in a few weeks, my sores will scab over. I’ll crawl from my shell, pink and glowing as the infant Buddha. I’ll jet to the mainland and buy an array of stunning clothes, get my hair cut, meet Red for one last rendezvous before we head back to our respective cities. We’ll revel in our sweet, young flesh, and then—well, we’ll see.

Another evening in paradise and I pick at my grilled-fig salad. The ocean is gorgeous, but what’s the point? It might as well be a postcard, a television screen, a holographic stunt. Red’s pissy too, grumbling over his lobster risotto. And don’t get me started on Lissa.

Lissa won’t shut up about the pirates. Keeps recirculating the same crap we’ve heard a hundred times: the pirates have attacked another Carnival cruiser; the pirates have sacked yachts as close as Martinique; the pirates have seized a cargo ship less than ten miles off the shore of our very own island. Angered by the poor resale prospects of boutique med supplies, they’ve tossed the freight into the sea.

“I always thought pirates were the epitome of sexy,” says Lissa, crinkling her carbuncular nose at Red.

“They won’t seem so sexy if you run out of Vita-Viral Plus,” says Red.

“Unless you think keloid scars are the height of chic,” I add.

“But medical supplies are worthless to them,” whines Lissa. “What would they gain from another attack?”

“They might attack out of spite,” I say.

“Mukti keeps emergency provisions in a cryogenic vault,” says Lissa, “in case of hurricanes and other potential disasters.”

“Or so the pamphlet boasts.” Red gazes out at the ocean, where a mysterious light beam bounces across the water.

“You think they’d lie to us?” Lissa widens her enormous eyes and runs an index finger down Red’s arm. She’s a touchy person, I tell myself, who hugs people upon greeting and pats the hands of shy waitresses.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Red smiles at her and turns back to the sea.

Both Red and I are in the latter stages of fibroblastic contraction when the pirates seize another cargo ship. Our flesh has crisped over with full-body scabbing. We’re at that crucial stage when collagen production stabilizes, when full-tissue repair and dermal remodeling kick into high gear. Although the patients can talk of little else, the powers that be at Mukti have not acknowledged the pirate incident. The powers that be have given no special security warnings. They’ve said nothing about waning provisions or shortages of essential meds. The therapists and medical staff carry on as usual, but I detect a general state of skittishness—sweat stains in the armpits of their white smocks, sudden jerky movements, faintly perceptible frown lines on faces hitherto blank as eggs.

Rumors spread through the spa like airborne viruses. And one day, a day of high humidity and grumbling thunder, the kind of day when your heart is a lump of
obsidian and you wonder why you bothered to get out of bed at all, it becomes common knowledge that the pirates have seized a freighter that was bound for Mukti, that they’re negotiating a ransom, asking a colossal sum for the temperature-sensitive cargo.

Red and I are on the Lotus Terrace eating zucchini pavé with miso sauce, waiting for poached veal. Our waitress slinks over, apologizes, tells us that the dish will be served without capers. Red and I exchange dark looks. We imagine jars of capers from Italy stacked in the belly of a cargo ship, the freighter afloat in some secret pirate cove. And deeper in the bowels of the boat, in a refrigerated vault, shelves full of biomedical supplies—time-sensitive blood products and cell cultures in high-tech packaging.

All around us, scabby patients whisper about the pirates, reaching a collective pitch that sounds like an insect swarm. Hunched in conspiratorial clusters, they flirt with scary possibilities: spoiled meds, botched stage-five healing, full-body keloid scarring, an appearance that’s the polar opposite of that promised by
Regeneration at Mukti
. “Shedding your pupal casing,” the pamphlet boasts, “you will emerge a shining creature, renewed in body and spirit, your cell turnover as rapid as a ten-year-old’s. Skin taut, wrinkles banished, pores invisible, you will walk like a Deva in a pink cloud of light.”

I’m in the Samsara Complex for cellular restructuring. There’s a problem with the nanobot serum. They keep rejecting vial after vial, or so I’ve gathered through several hissing exchanges between the biomed doc and her technicians. When Tech 1 finally shoots me up, he jabs the needle in sideways, apologizes, then stabs me again.

I stagger into the Bardo Room, where a half-dozen Crusties mill among orchids, the floor-to-ceiling windows ablaze. Nobody speaks. The endless ocean glitters beyond, a blinding queasy green. The light gives me a headache, a kernel of throbbing nausea right behind my eyes. I collapse into a Barcelona chair. My skin tingles beneath its husk. I stare down at my hands, dark with congealed blood and completely alien to me. I wonder if I should have stayed as I was—blowing serious bank on miracle moisturizers, going to yoga five times a week, dabbling in the occasional collagen injection.

Of course, it’s too late to turn back now. I must focus on positive affirmation, as Guru Gobind Singh so smugly touts. I must not allow my mind to visualize a body mapped with pink puffy scars. With such an exterior, you’d be forced to hunker deep in your body, like a naked mole rat in its burrow.

Red, fresh from bee-sting therapy, joins me under the shade of a jute umbrella, our eyes protected by wraparound sunglasses. It’s too hot to eat, but we order smoked calamari salads and spring rolls with mango sauce. Red’s incommunicative. I’m trying to read
Zen and the Art of Aging
on my iPad, but the sun’s too bright. We don’t talk about the pirates. We don’t talk about our impending Shedding. We don’t talk about the chances of scarring, or the jaunt to the mainland we’ve been planning. I tell Red about the monkey I spotted from my tree-house porch last night. I try to discuss the ecological sustainability of squidding. We shoo jhunkit birds from our table and decide to order a chilled Riesling.

More and more Crusties crowd onto the patio. Waitresses hustle back and forth. They no longer inform us when some ingredient is lacking. They simply place incomplete dishes before us with a downward flutter of the eyes. Certain therapies are no longer offered—sensory deprivation and beer baths, for example—but we strive to stay positive.

Although we keep noticing suspicious changes in medical procedures, we prevent cognitive distortions from sabotaging our self-talk. When a bad thought buzzes like a wasp into the sunny garden of
our thoughts, we swat the fucker and flick its crushed corpse into the flower bed. And most importantly, we spend thirty minutes a day visualizing our primary goal: successful mind-body rejuvenation and an unblemished exterior that radiates pure light.