Almost Paradise Read online

  Jack came over to inspect the cut. “It’s just a nick,” he observed. “You’ll live.”

  She glared at him, and sucked harder. “How the hell would you know, Gilligan? Are you a quack doctor, as well as a bold sailorman?”

  Six hours later, working alone, Jack had constructed a simple lean-to of bamboo trunks against a large tree, and covered the frame on all sides with palm fronds. The “roof” was overlain thickly with thatched bamboo branches, and beneath the entire structure he had built a crude platform of splintered boards supported by several heavy boulders, so that the shelter itself was a good six or eight inches off the ground. Throughout the building process, Robin sat on a rock, unable to help, she explained, because of her finger, and a strained back.

  “I can’t help it,” she whined, when he commented. “My finger is throbbing, and I hurt my back when we hit the rocks. I’m sore as hell, do you mind? Besides, that ridiculous hut of yours looks like it’s already falling down. Not much of an architect either, are you?”

  Trying to ignore her, Jack stood back and admired his work. “Well, it’s not exactly the Trump Palace, but I call it home. I’ll drag back some more poles, tomorrow, and we’ll enlarge it. Maybe throw in a sauna and a pool. I’m going to sack out, now. We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, like find something to eat and build a signal fire. You ready?”

  It was dark now, and although they could hear the faint, faraway rumble of thunder, the threatened rain hadn’t appeared. Robin looked up at the moonless night sky, and declined the invitation.

  “I’d rather take my chances out here, thank you. All that palm crap is going to fall down in the middle of the night and smother you to death, and besides that, it’s probably crawling with bugs. Sleep tight. I’ll dig out your bug-eaten corpse in the morning.”

  He shook his head, and smiled. “Suit yourself. But you’re going to get drenched.”

  Robin laughed. “There’s not a cloud in the sky, Skipper. You’re about as good a weatherman as you are a sea captain or architect.” She pushed a pile of the fronds together into a semblance of a mattress, and lay down. “Nighty-night, now. Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite. I’ll see you in the morning, if you haven’t suffocated.”

  When Garrison left, Robin lay down on her back, listening to the sound of the waves rolling up on the beach, and wondering if she'd ever see L.A. again. Above her, a black sky glittered with more stars than she’d ever seen in her life. A gentle breeze rippled through the palm trees. Almost paradise, anyway.

  Two hours later, the storm blew in, announcing itself with a single, furious, ear-splitting boom of thunder and a bolt of lightning that lit up the beach like daylight. Sheets of torrential, wind-driven rain slashed at the trees, whipping them into a howling frenzy, and hurling bits of limbs and palm fronds against Robin’s body as she scrambled up from her flooded makeshift bed. For a moment, her pride kept her from running to Garrison’s hut, but when another clap of thunder shook the ground, she screamed and stumbled to the lean-to, her arm across her face to shield her eyes from the whirling debris. As she reached the doorway, she saw Jack Garrison, reaching for her arm to pull her inside.

  Robin sank gratefully to the dry platform and wiped her face. Above her head, the rain pelted the thatch mercilessly, and here and there, a small drip had appeared, but the hut remained warm and sound, and mostly dry.

  “I see you changed your mind about staying here,” he said. “The Marriott closed this time of year?”

  Robin shot him a dirty look.

  “You’re making a puddle on my floor,” he observed.

  Robin’s temper flared. “Jesus Christ! Who the hell cares? It’s nothing but plain water.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you just haul your useless butt back outside in all that plain water and try sleeping there?” he inquired affably. “House rules. Everyone cleans up his, or her, own mess. Here.” He tossed her the remains of a torn shirt.

  She thrust her middle finger in the air and delivered a sharp kick to one of the tall bamboo poles that supported the roof. The hut shuddered, but held firm. “If it bothers you so much, mop it up yourself, Gilligan.”

  Garrison hesitated for only a moment before hauling her across his thigh and delivering a solid, thumping whack to the seat of Robin’s tight shorts. She screamed in protest, pulled away, and swore loud enough to drown out the thunderous rain.

  “Just who in the hell do you think you are?” she shrieked. “Captain fucking Bligh?”

  Jack groaned, and waved toward the palette of palm fronds in the opposite corner. “Just go over there and go to bed, will you?” he asked wearily. “I’d like to get some sleep tonight, if I can.”

  She pushed open the woven bamboo branches that served as the shelter’s door. “I’m hope your goddamned hut washes away, with you in it!” she shouted. “I wouldn’t stay in here if you paid me!” When she kicked the bamboo pole a second time, it tilted ominously to one side. “There!” she cried, sneering. “You see? I told you this fucking thing wouldn’t–”

  She was still in mid-sentence when Jack grabbed her arm and pulled her face down on his own sleeping palette. And before she fully understood what he was about to do, he had yanked both her shorts and her panties down to her knees. It was the kind of situation Robin Farrell had never encountered before, and the first resounding crack of a strong male hand across her bare buttocks was more surprising than painful. It was the very first spanking she had ever had in her thirty-one years, but within seconds of the first shocking swat, she knew without question that if Jack Garrison had anything to say about it, her very first spanking was going to be one she wouldn’t forget.

  “You bastard!” she wailed. “If you think I’m going to let you …”

  And then, Jack remembered the fragment he had saved from the wrecked skiff. The “paddle.” He allowed her to rave on, but held her firmly in place as he reached under the sea grass palette and found the short piece of splintered wood he’d rescued from the surf. Armed with the fourteen-inch long section of good western ash, he landed another dozen painful smacks, alternating cheeks, while the outraged victim kicked and squirmed, and howled with frustration.

  Determined to make his point, Jack held her arm twisted uncomfortably behind her back as he continued to spank with quick blows, up one side, and down the other until both cheeks were blotched a pleasantly deep pink. Humiliated, and with her backside on fire, Robin wailed lustily, and finally, when he paused for a moment to take a deep breath before starting on her upper thighs, Robin shrieked an apology.

  “OW! I’m sorry!” she pleaded. “Oh, GOD! Please, stop! Oh! Oww! I’m sorry! Really, really sorry! Please!”

  After his hard day’s work, Jack was tired and out of breath, so he did stop, allowing her to get to her feet very cautiously. Under different circumstances, Jack Garrison would have had excellent reason to be careful, for Robin was not the kind of woman to take being man-handled cheerfully. Now, though, she was in too much discomfort to give much thought to retaliation, and focused instead on hopping about inside the little hut, rubbing her blistered bottom in a desperate attempt to relieve the sting. Suddenly aware that she was exposed, she struggled to pull her shorts and panties up, wincing with pain as the fabric touched her chafed skin.

  Jack took a good, long look at the job he’d done. Satisfied that her remorse was genuine, he pointed once again to her side of the lean-to. “Now, shut up and go to bed!” he barked, trying to sound stern, and to hide his amusement at her predicament. “Or go back out there and sleep in the damned rain. I don’t care which, but if you say one more word tonight, I swear I’ll whale the daylights out of you. You got it?”

  Robin opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it. Instead, she sniffled, and nodded. “Yes.” She crawled onto her palette, turned on her side, and began to plot revenge.

  Jack grinned, and feeling like the Master of the House, he tucked the paddle in a conspicuous spot between the woven bamboo leaves
on the hut’s wall. A little reminder, he thought smugly. And then, he went to bed, listening to the rain on his roof, and feeling an annoying drip-drip-drip beginning to fall on his forehead. Tomorrow, he’d have to do a few roof repairs.

  * * *

  Several miles away, on the opposite side of the island from where Jack and Robin slept, two tired figures trudged up the steep beach through the slackening rain and tide pools of shifting sand, trying to escape the howling wind and the surf that swirled around their ankles. Each new wave pulled the sand from beneath their feet, making walking difficult, and slowing their progress up the darkened beach. Behind them, they dragged the torn remains of a large, round, tent-like inflatable raft, and a compact but very heavy metal box. On the side of the box, tall white letters read, “Orchid Princess: Property of Hadley Cruise Line.”

  When they reached the shelter of the trees, both figures dropped to the sand and sat silently for some minutes, relieved to be alive, and wondering if they would ever be found.

  * * *

  Three Weeks Later

  “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Meredith groaned, shaking the sand from the long ash-blonde hair she was trying to comb with a stick.

  Her friend, Emma, nodded. “Could be. And then, years later, some multi-billion dollar company will build a fabulous resort hotel on this very spot, find our bleached bones buried in the sand, and wonder who we were. Maybe we should be putting our nickels together right now to buy this place. You can bet your ass it’ll be overrun with tourists, someday. We’ll make a killing.”

  Meredith lay back and gazed upward at a cloudless blue sky. “How long has it been, anyway? I keep forgetting.”

  “Twenty-three days. I cut a little mark each morning on that coconut tree we hung the awning from.”

  “You know what I really want?” Meredith asked plaintively.

  “Yes, but the nearest man is a couple thousand miles away, and you need a manicure and a bikini wax.”

  “Well, you’re wrong,” Meredith said sullenly. “What I really want is a huge, supersized Coke, with chipped ice.”

  “And fries,” Emma agreed hungrily. “With ketchup. On the other hand, we could just have some of that brownish seaweed crap we both love so much, and a couple of nice, plump rats.”

  “Big talk, ” Meredith pouted. “You’re supposed to be the Great White Hunter, here, and we haven’t had a nice rat on our table all week, even a skinny one. Do you think maybe we already ate them all?”

  “Fat chance,” Emma replied. “There’s more rat-life on this island than anything else. They’re just hiding out, terrified of my awesome hunting skills.”

  Meredith sighed. “Maybe they’ve all deserted, like they do from sinking ships. Do islands ever sink? With our luck, this one probably will,” she said glumly. “Just when you start thinking things can’t get worse, they usually do.”

  Emma punched her friend’s arm. “Cheer up, Merrie! What’s wrong today?”

  “That is the dumbest question I’ve heard in my whole life! We’re shipwrecked on an island nobody in the whole world probably ever heard of, we’re wearing disgusting rags, probably getting skin cancer, we’ve got almost no water, and we’re sitting here getting really excited about having a goddamned rat for dinner! I don’t know about you, sweetie, but stuff like that just shoots the hell out of my mood.”

  “Well,” Emma said, grinning, “if you’re only going to look at the negative side of everything…”

  “You know what I’m really in the mood for?” Meredith whined.

  Emma could guess. “Shut up, Meredith!”

  “What if we’re stranded here forever?” Meredith asked plaintively. “We may have to become lesbians.”

  Emma laughed. “Or just be celibate. Think you could do that, Merrie? For a month or so, at least, until the fleet comes in?”

  Meredith frowned. “What’s celibate? Whatever it means, it doesn’t sound like much fun.”

  Emma sighed. “Take the word of an expert, Merrie. It’s no fun at all.”

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, Emma and Meredith tried their hand at fishing, again, and when that failed, they took sharpened sticks and wandered up and down the beach, looking for rats. The little bluish crabs were plentiful, but they had both found the taste of the first ones they ate revolting, and then been ill for several days.

  Emma gave one of the ugly creatures a tentative poke. “You know, Merrie, maybe these things aren’t really poisonous—just nauseating. We could have gotten some bad ones, last time. I’ve been watching the birds eat them, and they don’t seem to die.”

  Meredith made a face. “Maybe they wander off and die somewhere else, like elephants. Anyway, I’d rather die than be that sick again, thank you. We could just eat the damned birds, though, if we could ever catch one.”

  “No, we can’t!” Emma cried indignantly. “Remember the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’? It’s a curse to kill an albatross.”

  “What?”

  “It’s this long poem, by Coleridge. Didn’t you have to read it in high school?”

  Meredith snorted. “I never read it, but if I see anything that looks like an ancient mariner, I’m going to stab it to death with my stupid little stick, and eat it. Besides, how do you know for sure these birds are albatrosses? They all look like regular seagulls to me.”

  Emma shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I don’t want to take the chance.”

  “Well,” Meredith said. “I don’t care if they’re one of those endangered pterodactyl things—the last of their species, protected by the EPA and the United States Congress—if we can catch one, I’m going to eat it.”

  For supper that evening, they had coconut meat, and boiled seaweed—again.

  They had finished eating and were trying to shore up their sagging shelter when a tall, bearded man carrying a burlap bag and a long bamboo walking stick simply strolled up the beach, and calmly introduced himself.

  “Good evening, ladies. Allow me to introduce myself, if I may. My name is Andrew McLean. I’ve come from the other side of your island.”

  Meredith and Emma stared in disbelief at the male apparition before them, and then stumbled over to greet him.

  “The other side?” Meredith shrieked. “You mean the side with the Hyatt Regency, and the Starbucks and the shopping mall, right?”

  The man smiled wearily. “Ah! You’re American, I see. No, I’m very much afraid that the accommodations there aren’t a great deal more elaborate than they are here. I’m sorry to be the bearer of unpleasant news. Good God!” he cried, pointing to the shelter. “Is that where you sleep?”

  “Maybe not tonight,” Emma conceded. “I think it’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The wind is too strong here, and it never stops! Are you the only one?” she asked eagerly. “Or are there more people where you were?”

  “Just myself, I’m afraid—that I know of, at any rate. I’m assuming that you ladies are not part of a larger contingent, either?”

  Meredith sighed. “We’re it,” she said. “Our ship, or boat— whatever it was—sank about three weeks ago. Twenty-four days, to be exact. There was a collision. We ran into another boat, I think.”

  “Were you aboard the Orchid Princess?” he asked.

  “Yes!” Meredith cried. “Were you on it, too?”

  “Yes, and I’d begun to think I was the only survivor. In retrospect, the very name, Orchid Princess, should have been an omen. Ridiculous name for a seagoing vessel.”

  “You get what you pay for,” Meredith said glumly. “It was the cheapest cruise we could find in the damned phone book.”

  “How did you end up on the other side of the island?” Emma asked.

  “It was a bit of a miracle, actually. At the first impact, I simply toppled over the rail, like a child’s toy.” He chuckled. “Possibly because I’d just downed my third single malt whiskey of the evening. Someone must have heard me shouting, and threw an inflatable raft down on top of
me. I was barely able to climb into it in it when a large object apparently fell from the deck and struck me on the head. I awoke a few hours afterward, still afloat, but the raft was losing air at an alarming speed. With no oars, I simply drifted this way and that until the wind drove the inflatable onto the rocks. I was able to drag the battered remains ashore, but I don’t believe it’s reparable. I’ve been using it as a sort of tent, actually. And you?”

  “Pretty much the same thing, only our life raft sank completely when it hit the rocks. We had to swim ashore.”

  Finally, Meredith broached the subject that all of them had thought about for the weeks they’d been on the island.

  “What about the others?” she asked weakly. “Do you think everyone else died?”

  He shook his head. “I hardly think so. Ours was quite a large vessel, and from the force of the impact, I believe the other boat was probably considerably smaller—a private yacht, perhaps. In the few minutes I was in the water and still conscious of what was going on, I saw the ship moving on, without me, alas, but apparently without serious damage. I didn’t see anyone else in the water, so it’s entirely possible that the three of us are the only casualties—from the Orchid Princess, anyway. What became of the passengers aboard the smaller boat is the real question.”

  “We were both asleep,” Emma said quietly. “There was only one, big thump, but hard enough to knock Merrie out of bed, and when we got on deck, there was total confusion, everywhere. Some guy in a uniform started screaming that we were going to sink, and to jump, so we jumped. For all we knew, the guy was in the ship’s band, but we still jumped. The raft we got in was huge, but we were the only two people in it. And when we looked up, again, the damned ship was sailing off into the sunset. ”

  McLean nodded. “The whole operation was reminiscent of what I’ve read about the chaos at the sinking of the Titanic. No one appeared to be in charge. I don’t know how many passengers were on board our ship, but I only saw one other inflatable in the water—you ladies, presumably.”