After Ann downed the full glass in a few gulps, Eve continued.
“I’ll have to use tough love with you two. I’m sending you on a trip alone together. Tell me the first thing that pops into your mind, Richard, for a romantic place.”
“Romantic?” Richard repeated, seemingly stumped by the meaning of the word, as if he were on a quiz show. “Something French?”
“Good! Now, Ann, a landscape that speaks to you.”
“A desert,” she said, to be contrarian. Fat chance they were going anywhere with the restaurant about to open. They had no money to go on vacation, but she wasn’t about to admit that either.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Eve was so excited she clapped her hands. “You’re building a vision of the future together. Let’s refine. Richard?”
“Desert? You hate the desert—”
“No, Richard, please,” Eve said. “No judgment.”
But both of them knew judgment was all that was left.
“Okay,” he said, narrowing his eyes in an effort to undo Ann’s choice. “Ocean.”
“That pretty much leaves Algeria,” Ann said.
“Okay, okay. You’re making it tougher,” Eve conceded.
“A desert island!” Richard yelled.
“That’s it! Perfect!” Eve shouted. “I know just the place. Picture water the palest blue. Sand blinding white. The breeze is warm and caressing. No crowds, no kids. It’s like the world has disappeared, and it’s only the two of you. With thousand-count Sferra cotton sheets and the best French wine. Here,” she said.
“What?”
“Open your eyes.”
Ann saw a brochure with pictures not unlike the tropical screen savers she drooled over in her office. “It’s lovely,” she said.
“It’s required. Don’t come back till you’ve gone.”
Ann and Richard never went back to therapy.
* * *
It was the beginning of high season in the South Pacific. Although there were still plenty of vacancies at the bigger resorts, Ann had her own reasons for seeking out the most isolated, lonesome destination she could find, preferably sans telephone, WiFi access, or electricity.
She had been obsessed with islands since she was a child. Had it started with Treasure Island, continued through Gilligan’s Island reruns (while her friends debated whether they wanted to be Ginger or Mary Ann, she had always wanted to be the Professor)? Had it ignited with that treacly remake of The Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields? All the endless incarnations of Mutiny on the Bounty? Had it solidified through multiple viewings of Swiss Family Robinson and Island of the Blue Dolphins (she preferred the book)? Her obsession wasn’t even diminished by the depressingly realistic Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, although the relationship with Wilson, the volleyball, was a disturbing glimpse into the void.
Sure, she had the same triad of tropical island screen savers as everyone else, except for everyone else it represented a vacation, with the promise of alcohol and mindless sunbathing. For Ann, it was something without which her life would remain unfulfilled. These were not the ideal circumstances to live out this fantasy, but really, when would it be ideal? No man was an island, but maybe a woman could be.
She charged the whole trip on their last credit card that still had room on it and then went out shopping for the most expensive flip-flops she could find — beautiful Italian ones with jewels and buckles sewed on the thin, butter-soft leather straps. That she couldn’t afford them seemed even more reason to have them now.
When Richard came home from the restaurant and saw the sales receipt, he pounded his fist on the desk till his skin was bruised.
He was at the vertigo-inducing, ruthless edge of defeat that he’d stepped back from so many times before. It had finally gotten too hard. Richard was tired to death, his body going rogue on him, exhausted by the relentless, penny-pinching life that had befallen them. He revolted from the cheap therapist psychobabble optimism of Eve: things would probably not get better. They were screwed. He would not utter the lie that things would work out because actually it looked like the Dark Horseman of the Apocalypse himself had ridden up. Richard clutched his chest, worried that he might be having a heart attack that their shitty piecemeal insurance would not cover. So be it.
Then Ann showed him the bag of their stolen, about-to-be-stolen-from-them money.
“You could be disbarred,” Richard whispered.
“I’m tired of the law,” she countered.
* * *
By bedtime the next night they were on a plane, hurtling over the vast light grid of Los Angeles, the plane flinging itself into the darkness of sky and ocean that was farther west. Ann knew enough about the law to know they weren’t worth pursuing out of the country. Criminal intent in this case was a comfortably gray area.
Ann looked around and wondered, did other people have a fantasy of how life should be lived? Would any of them pick up and change their circumstances if given the opportunity? She had the fantasy part down, but did she have the guts?
They clinked umbrella-stabbed cocktails at thirty thousand feet. “Think of it as our first vacation.” Ann took another sip of her drink.
In the old days, California was the end of the line, but now, with the forces of globalization, one could just keep flinging oneself farther and farther west, hopefully landing somewhere that fulfilled one’s dreams of happiness before one ended up back in the place one started.
Unnamed Atoll Somewhere in the Tuamotu Archipelago
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
The water surrounding the atoll was the green that green would be if it were drained from a bowl and only its ghost residue remained against the white porcelain. The memory of green, a promise of green. From the plane, the water appeared so translucent as to be almost invisible. The concept of a desert isle became concrete in Ann’s mind. After all, that’s what she specialized in with her clients — turning emotions into concrete plans. Sometimes it was enough just to have a plan. Which this wasn’t. This was pure impulse.
Looking down on the bleached, arid white of her doughnut-shaped future, conveying as it did a terrible sense of solitude, isolated and alone in its universe of water, she was afraid the concrete would not work for Richard and herself. What was this thing, the pursuit of happiness, that moved out of reach as you approached it? Was the emphasis on the wrong word? Was it simply about pursuit? Did said happiness evaporate when one got within proximity of it, moving off to lure one from yet another difficult, forward location? A fata morgana of the soul? Or, as in their case, did the chance at happiness just take a headlong dive off a cliff?
They climbed out of the small plane and crawled unsteadily off the wing, cramped legs and aching backs from the long flight from the coast, the longer overnight stay in crowded, noisy Papeete, where they had sat in the sweltering cab, stuck in traffic on the lagoon-side road, diesel fumes spewing from the truck in front. The buildings were defeated and ratty, patinaed by weather. Oily and trash-strewn water lapped at the docks. Tourists moved in bored raids on the stores. It could have been a particularly ripe neighborhood around San Pedro or Long Beach. Paradise seemed very far away.
As soon as they landed, Richard’s cell had begun ringing — Javi.
“Don’t answer it,” Ann said.
Richard looked miserably at the flashing caller ID screen, then switched to vibrate, and every time it did, he winced. Finally, Ann grabbed the phone and flung it out the window of the cab. It bounced on the sidewalk and plopped into the viscous water.