Each night, Richard and Ann had to endure the awkwardness of being alone in their fare before going to sleep. Their early intimacy on the island had once again retreated. Richard, stoically virtuous after his dismissal by Wende, was boiling over.
“How’s Loren?”
“Fine.”
“You two are chummy.”
She blushed for him. “You’re not jealous?”
“No, of course not. Yes.”
She wasn’t going to tell, but then she did. “He’s dying.”
Richard felt a embarrassing mix of pity and elation. “Really?”
“I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.”
And then, like the well-oiled machine that was every long marriage, they effortlessly rolled on to their regular workaday argument.
“We’ve been here a week and a half. Ten days times how much per day?” Richard asked.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters because in a few more weeks we’ll be broke and back home. Then what?”
“I don’t know.”
That stopped him. Ann always knew, always had a plan B, if not C, D, and F. His only conclusion was her plan didn’t include him, and she was too polite to mention it.
“Are you sure you don’t know, or you don’t want to say?”
“Lorna said stay away.”
* * *
The island’s library consisted of a one-room building with glass walls on two sides facing the sea. The rusty jalousies stayed cranked open to catch the breezes and only were closed for rain. The back two walls were filled floor to ceiling with books. Five freestanding bookcases took up half the room, filled with discards from guests, mostly cheap paperback thrillers and romances, except on one shelf where Ann found four signed copies each of John Stubb Byron’s Colossus and Lunch, dated the day before he left. Ann frowned and took one of the copies to keep. One wall consisted of Loren’s extensive collection of history and fiction centered on the South Pacific. In the front of the room, facing the beach, was a rattan sofa, and here Ann spent long hours reading. She was alternating between a history of Captain Cook and Typee by Melville, but at the moment both were splayed in front of her while she napped.
The smell of cigarette smoke woke her. She sat up so abruptly, spots flew before her eyes like flushed-out birds.
Dex was shuffling along the back shelves, puffing away as usual.
Claiming to be suffering a serious case of island fever, Dex had begged to join Loren on a grocery-buying trip to town once he verified that Cooked was going along also. At least for those hours, Dex was free from imagining what Cooked and Wende might be up to. He also wanted to sneak an hour at an Internet café.
“Sorry I woke you.”
She moved to get up.
“Stay.” He came and sat down on the sofa next to her.
“You okay?” she asked.
He didn’t look okay. His skin was waxy; dark circles pooled under his eyes. He didn’t look like a guy who had been on vacation for the last two months. The trip to town had undone him.
He shrugged.
She lifted the book he had laid down. “Shakespeare?”
“I think it’s here for The Tempest. The plays soothe me. They were my best subject in school.”
She took a moment to absorb the unlikeliness of this. “Your new song is great. Are you looking forward to recording it?”
“I’m thinking of burning it up again.”
“Why?” She didn’t bother pointing out that the threat’s impact was considerably lessened by the fact that it already existed on Robby’s recorder in California.
“Richard saved my life. I should give something up for that.”
“Why not look at it from another angle? Did you ever think you were saved to play music?” Why was it so easy to see destiny in others’ lives but not one’s own?
His face twisted. “I’ve been betrayed.”
“I don’t think Wende—”
“Robby.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“My lead guitarist. ‘Who having into truth, by telling of it, / Made such a sinner of his memory / To credit his own lie, he did believe…’In other words, I got fucked. Robby was supposed to take over business for a while so I could go off to write songs and recuperate. I was burned out. I’d done the same thing for him a few years ago. But now he acts like I’ve died. Instead of ‘and’ for a contract, I agreed to change it to ‘or’ to make things easier. His word is enough.”
All the legal alarms were ringing in her head. “Why would you agree to that?”
“I trusted him like a brother.”
The 101 of law schooclass="underline" In business, you have no friends.
Dex was inhaling so hard on his cigarette, she thought any minute he’d suck the whole thing in.
“He did a long interview. It’s on the Internet. I watched in town. Said I had personal problems, drugs and stuff. That I’d gone into hiding on an island.”
It was like someone falling off the wagon in AA, the tech binge.
“So go and take back control.”
“The band’s over.”
Ann thought the most diplomatic response was no response, but then couldn’t help herself. “You are hiding on an island.”
“I should have hired a lawyer like you.”
“You should have.”
“Could still.”
“I’m a recovering lawyer.” Ann was silent. “A freebie: You shouldn’t have played that new song for him till you dissolved the band. Since it was created under the umbrella corporation of Prospero Inc., he’s entitled to it. He has artistic control over its licensing, I’m guessing?”
Dex’s face had grown longer and longer. He looked at Ann now almost as if he were in a trance. “Fuck.”
“You’ve got to dot those i’s and cross those t’s before you have your tantrum.”
“Richard said you were a cold one.”
“Just saying.” It stung that she had been talked about.
* * *
Another perfect day. Flat blue despite the fact that rain was forecast.
As was her new habit, Ann got up early and walked to the far side of the island where the camera was. She sat behind it and stared at the view that it stared at, a veritable Alice behind the looking glass. It was reality and virtual reality simultaneously — or, rather, it was both the real thing and its abstraction. She felt she was on the verge of some grand truth while being suckered at the same time. She could have gone to another stretch of beach almost identical without a camera, but somehow the very act of the scene being recorded made it easier to concentrate. Immensely restful to be alone but at the same time with thousands of other alone people staring at identical waves. It had the same swampy communalness as sitting in a matinee movie theater crowded with strangers. Of course she was privileged to be there in person, but she imagined when she got home she would also log on to this view. It represented a kind of genius on Loren’s part.
She was sorry to admit that while waiting for Cooked and Wende’s delayed return in town, she had bought a blue pareu for its camera worthiness. In every way that mattered, the spell of escape was broken. It was broken for others also.
* * *