As he had with his former addictions, Dex now craved a phone for the first time since they had been on the island so he could play it for Robby. A peace offering. More than that, a golden egg because the band had had enough hits that Dex could smell one, and this was a winner. The lodestone to anchor a new album. He felt spent, expansive, like after the best sex, a high beyond where any drug could take you. Drugs weren’t for the music; they were for getting through the periods without the music. And yet …
Was creation just another addiction? Didn’t the Buddhist stuff talk about the illusion of all worldly success? Which turned out to be especially true once the band finished paying the label back their advances; gave another cut to their business manager, their producer; took care of rehab expenses (nonrecoupable), houses, wives, kids, mistresses, and shrinks. At forty-plus years old (he was as cagey about his age as some long-in-the-tooth soap-opera actress), hadn’t he been there, done that? Illusion, no shit. He had a deep suspicion of himself — that this detoxing, dropping off the grid, the monogamy with Wende was really just about process, like that of a boxer in training. Was it possible that all Dex really wanted was a new hit single? How could he prove to himself the purity of his intentions?
He didn’t even want to go there with the fact that, besides Wende’s most excellent boobs, what really turned him on was her most excellent ear. Untrained, she could pick out a particularly sweet riff in a sea of demos. She intuited the real players from the pretenders. It didn’t hurt that she also fell into their most important demographic. After six marriages, two to the same woman, Dex swore that he had finally found his soul mate.
* * *
With Ann’s suit gone, she had borrowed one of Wende’s bikinis. Richard’s eyes narrowed as he watched her walk across the sand and into Cooked’s waiting craft for the trip to town. She skipped her usual sunblock and instead greased herself up with Wende’s monoi oil. The men had not been invited and would stay behind.
Outcast, Dex and Richard stood on the beach, waving to the women as they sped off across the lagoon. Richard thought he saw Cooked place his hand on the small of Wende’s bare back, but he said nothing. Titi moaned and returned to the kitchen.
In the small tourist trap of a town, Wende led Ann to a tattoo parlor and convinced the sullen staff to let her work on her friend. The owners were unsmiling, but not nearly as unsmiling as Ann. Wende gave Cooked a hundred and told him to get beers for everyone, and the mood lightened.
“I’ll make sure all the sterilization procedures are done,” Wende whispered.
“You should be a diplomatic envoy … someplace that needs it, like the Middle East. Your talents are wasted here.”
“I’m a semi orphan,” Wende said. “I’ve learned to be resourceful.”
“You said you had a mom.”
“I do. She was living on a commune when she met my dad. She never really got over being a hippie. We kind of self-raised. Then dad froze to death in his car. David Copperfield kind of stuff.” Wende swabbed down the needles with alcohol. “Where do you want it?”
“On my shoulder?” Ann asked.
It had seemed a good idea the night before when they all got drunk celebrating Dex’s new song, but now she wished she hadn’t agreed to it.
“I know just where. And what. Trust me.”
As Wende worked on the inside, tenderest part of Ann’s thigh, Cooked joked with the workers who stood watching and drinking beer. He regularly stole looks at Wende. After what seemed like hours, Ann couldn’t stand the pain any longer. “Enough! We’ll finish it later.” She looked down and saw the front half of a shark — looking either as if it were cresting out of the water or as if it had been bitten in half. When it was done, it would appear to be circling around and around her thigh.
“What do you think?” Wende asked.
A slow smile spread on Ann’s face. “I’m not the kind of woman who does this.”
“Maybe now you’ll have to become her.”
“It burns.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go have a drink.”
Wende and Cooked exchanged looks. “Cooked wants to take me on a tour for a couple of hours.”
* * *
Along the main street of the place, Ann found a shabby café with outdoor tables, and she rested in a chair, nursing her stinging thigh by drinking down a carafe of house white. It had not occurred to her to find a phone or computer to contact anyone. Only when she read over the care brochure from the tattoo parlor, which clearly read Do not drink alcohol during or immediately after, did she begin to feel paranoid. When had she become this reckless woman?
In front of her was the turquoise lagoon. Across the street between two low-slung buildings, the violet pounding ocean. Could such cutting beauty become mundane? The locals passed through it with hardly a glance. What was it that Loren found here all those years ago? Perhaps as easy an answer as that it was the furthest thing he could imagine from his former life.
Without Richard the beauty of the place would crush her.
She knew his little infatuation with Wende had ended, but what if it hadn’t? She was too mature to say that she couldn’t live without him, but life without him would lose its flavor. Why was it that while separated she felt her love most clearly? He was her pain au chocolat.
On the beach, fishermen stretched their nets, knotted tears, shouting back and forth to one another, laughing so much that the progress regularly came to a stop. A man paddled a pirogue, the brown curved hull cutting through the pale green water like a blade. A woman, draped in a coral muumuu, walked down the sidewalk, stopped, and clucked to a scabby, nut-colored dog trailing behind her. The scene could be a painting by Gauguin.
Ann felt a pang of remorse that she was not brave enough to leave everything behind as the great artist had. Would he have been as great if he had stayed in Paris? His life was mythologized because it was such a hard thing to do. Wasn’t Gauguin’s renunciation of everything what finally had allowed him to paint as he had? In Paris he had been a stockbroker — almost as bad as being a lawyer. Easier that he was in a loveless marriage. She still loved Richard, but was love enough? Gauguin left behind five children. He took up with a fifteen-year-old Tahitian girl and had four more. He painted a paradise that was more fantasy than reality. Fantasy for all the poor saps back home not brave enough to make the leap. He was a selfish bastard and a genius. Ditto Picasso, Pollock. Women didn’t act like that. How much damage was Ann willing to wreak on those around her? How dare she — lowly associate at FFGBBP — think she could ever remake her life at this late date?
* * *
The summer before law school started, Ann’s mother insisted on going to Paris before chemo. Her father opposed the idea. He pleaded a heavy workload, but then he always pleaded a heavy workload. The one time her parents had gone to France had been a disaster, and Ann suspected that was his real reason. Usually, if he traveled at all, it was on educational/cultural tours arranged through his alma mater. Trips that were an endless round of lectures, museums, and hard drinking with alums. Kind of like being back in the frat house. Ideally, he liked spending the entire time speaking English, minimizing his contact with local people. Her mother hated these trips and refused to go. Her idea of travel was to wander, to get lost, to talk to strangers, to live life spontaneously, every last thing her father disliked.