Divine Fantasy

by Melanie Jackson

  There were no turtles on the horizon, but the view was breathtaking. The ocean is vast and by its enormity managed to make the small yet beautiful island feel terribly significant, even miraculous. It caused me to think about God for the first time in years.

  The islet’s main claim to fame is being the site where the eight semipornographic Lover’s Lagoon films were made. It is also unusual in that it has only twelve cottages—bures—and there are never more than twenty-four guests there at any given time. One can even rent the entire island, though my mania for quiet, crowd-free beaches hadn’t reached this stage. It is also quite expensive. Too expensive, even for me. Gretchen had also been correct. The small engraved card on the dresser said that the island was closed for one week every month while maintenance and restocking was done. No mention of moon cycles was made, so I was inclined to lay that bit of misinformation off on Gretchen’s astrological fixation.

  Though I had asked no questions before leaving on this trip, it seemed that the island offered a number of diversions I had never tried. The same card mentioned that there was scuba diving, deep-sea fishing, sailing and of course biking, and hiking through the mangrove swamps on the other side of the island. This would not be arduous because of the raised boardwalk the island’s owner had thoughtfully provided to keep us out of the muck and water on the southeast (wet) side of the island, which was everywhere on account of the island receiving over one hundred inches of rain every year. To get to the swamps I would either have to hike over the mountain that divided the island or walk the perimeter. I decided to put this pleasure off for another day when I was feeling more ambitious.

  I had also brought my portable computer, in case guilt drove me to work before the new year. At that moment it seemed unlikely that anything would motivate me to write about Max’s boring ancestor before I was faced with the last drop-dead deadline.

  I mentioned that I am a biographer. Trust me, you haven’t read any of my books. Really. Ever heard of Audrey Atheneum? No. See, I told you so. But I’m there on Amazon if you really want to know about Beethoven’s valet or the man who invented buggy whips.

  By the way, Audrey isn’t my real name but it’s my pen name and the name I was using on the island, so I hope you can tolerate it. I chose it long ago because it was the name of my grammar school best friend’s dog, which I actually liked way better than that human friend, with whom I sometimes spent weekends. What can I say? I was a user, a selfish child who wanted a dog that neither the boarding school nor her parents would allow, and got one the only way she could. For a space of five years, Audrey was the only thing or being I loved and was willing to share my dreams with.

  Unlike my more successful contemporaries, I don’t write biographies about obviously famous people. Instead I write about quirky people that Fame—or Infamy—overlooked. I can do that because of the trust fund that prevents my starvation, and because I had found a niche publisher who treats his business as a tax write-off and therefore doesn’t care if he turns a profit, so long as he produces “quality” books. It was to this man, Harold Webster, that I owed a final three chapters on the life and wild times of Graf von Faber-Castell.

  And he’d get it, no matter how angry I was with Max, I promised silently, fishing the last olive out of the jar and then flopping onto my back with a contented sigh. Eventually. A more conscientious writer would have felt guilty for taking an unscheduled holiday with a deadline looming, but I was not feeling conscientious. I was, in fact, wallowing in glorious irresponsibility. This was exactly what I had been needing: a reason not to slit my wrists for New Year’s.

  It was then that a human-sized shadow fell over me. Reluctantly, but with no real alarm, I opened my eyes and found myself looking up into the backlit face of a man who looked vaguely familiar. His body was lean, shirtless, unusually pale and efficient-looking. I choose that last descriptor because though he obviously had some muscles under that eerily white skin, he did not bulge with them. This man was more feline than canine in orientation; a cheetah, not a bulldog.

  He was also admiring my own rather pale but shapely body. It would be disingenuous to pretend that I didn’t see this immediately and make note of it. But since he wasn’t leering or doing anything that felt in any way threatening or disrespectful, I found myself smiling up at him instead of following my usual impulse to ask him to go away.

  It was only at that moment, as my cheeks twinged slightly, that I realized those particular facial muscles had fallen into disuse over the last few days.

  “Doctor Livingstone, I presume,” I murmured before thinking.

  “Close,” he answered. His voice was pleasant, West Coast American. His smile was likewise charming, and as open as a toothpaste ad. “Actually, it’s Ambrose Bierce. And you must be the biographer, Audrey Atheneum. May I join you?”

  He stepped closer. The hair on my arm raised itself, and for a moment I was alarmed. Then I recalled that I had booked under my pen name, since I was thinking it might be possible to write this trip off on taxes as a research expense. It would mean writing about an islet in Fiji that had never been visited by anyone historically famous, but I figured Harold might go for it since they had green turtles, which I had discovered were howlingly rare and on an endangered species list. This stranger’s knowledge of my name was momentarily surprising but not unexplainable. This was a very small island, and it was entirely possible that other guests could talk to the staff and would know who was visiting.

  Of course, that didn’t explain how he knew I was a biographer. I did not for one minute think that he was one of the five hundred people who had purchased my last book about Beethoven’s valet and somehow remembered me from my rather dreadful author photo.

  “Please,” I said, sitting up and pulling my pareu over my legs in a belated gesture of modesty. I also smoothed a hand down my arm, if to little effect. My pale hairs remained on end. “I must say, Mister Bierce, that you are looking remarkably well for a man of your age.”

  “Aren’t I, though? I was one hundred and sixty-five last June. You might say that I’m well nigh immortal.”

  I couldn’t tell for sure at the time, because of the sun behind him, but I thought his dark eyes were twinkling. Perhaps this wasn’t the first time that someone had recognized his name was the same as a late great American storyteller.

  “Literally and literarily it seems.” One might also say he was crazy, if they were impolite. I was not. At least, not usually. When you are a little bit weird yourself it is best, or at least less hypocritical, if you pursue a “live and let live” policy with the other oddballs. And if my name were Ambrose Bierce, I might run with it too.

  Unlike many people, I actually knew a bit about the first Ambrose Bierce. He’d been born June twenty-fourth in eighteen-forty-two. I didn’t know this exact date because of eidetic memory or anything so impressive, but he happened to share a birth date with Henry Ward Beecher and Norman Cousins, two men that also interested me in my professional capacity, and I found this coincidence to be remarkable.

  I recalled from my college reading that Bierce had been involved in a horrible marriage with a socialite named Mary Ellen Day, that he had two sons who died young and a daughter who lived to adulthood. She was the last person to hear from Bierce before he apparently fell off the face of the earth, was kidnapped by Martians, or, more likely, was shot by Pancho Villa, though both men were trying to overthrow Victoriano Huerta at the time and should have been allies. “Bitter Bierce” had a knack for really pissing people off. He and William Randolph Hearst were steadfast enemies, though their publishing relationship spanned more than two decades. Apparently Pancho Villa hadn’t liked Bierce much, either, and hadn’t been blessed with geographical distance from him when their tempers flared.

  One of Bierce’s brothers blamed Ambrose’s ill temper on a fragmenting bullet he took to the head during the Civil War. His wife said he was simply born with a nasty, paranoid personality that made him a brilliant writer and a lousy hu
sband. Both may have been correct. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I doubt a bullet could confer acerbic literary genius where none existed. However, it could make him cranky if the fragments were moving around and pressing on nerves and causing headaches.

  Other than that, I knew Bierce was an ardent abolitionist and in nineteen hundred he was the literary king of San Francisco, a friend of H. L. Mencken, and probably the most famous writer west of the Rockies—though there are those who can make a good case for why both Mark Twain and Jack London deserve the title. I still stand by Bierce, though, because he wrote my favorite book: The Devil’s Dictionary. I keep a copy of it right next to the King James Bible on my writing desk. Both are valuable literary references, though The Devil’s Dictionary is miles more fun.

  His disappearance was also one of the most dramatic in literary history. No one knew for sure how he’d met his end.

  “A lot of people have been wondering what happened to you,” I said, playing along. What the hell. It was a bit loony, but I was on vacation and determined to have a good time.

  “I know. But it would have ruined the fun if I told them the truth…then,” he answered, sinking gracefully into a cross-legged squat that was called Indian-style before the political-correctness Nazis ran amok and neutered the language. His increased proximity amplified the number and size of goose bumps on my arms. “Now would be another matter. I’ve been thinking that perhaps people would like to hear about what actually happened. And it should be safe enough with all my nearest and dearest finally dead.”

  I stared at him for a moment. “You were right about keeping quiet, I think. People adore a good mystery. And just disappearing was so much more appropriate literarily given your choice of material. High school kids that might otherwise have forgotten you keep reading your stories as they look for clues about what happened.” I didn’t say anything about wanting to hear the true story of Bierce’s disappearance, since he knew I was a biographer and I wasn’t certain I wanted a possibly crazy person, however attractive, attaching themselves to me while they tried to convince me to write about them.

  Those flexible features arranged themselves into a grin, though the lips were slower to move than the eyes. I had the feeling that his mouth was also unused to the exercise of smiling. Maybe he’d had a bad year, too.

  “I’ve always thought so. The past casts shadows and, worse, it leaves stains and relics to clutter up our memories—especially when we love,” he agreed. This last observation seemed a bit insane, but in the delightful way that is captured so well by British literary playwrights. “One may pack up and move the body on its way, but all those stains and emotional shadows move along with us.”

  I nodded, still bemused. The image of Ambrose Bierce preserved in old photographs had always sported a luxurious mustache that I found a bit repulsive. Fortunately, of this soup-sieve today there was no sign. Otherwise, this man really did look a great deal like Bitter Bierce. I wondered if he was an actor. I had a friend who made a good living touring in a one-man show about Mark Twain.

  “What stains are you seeing this morning?” I asked politely.

  “The smell and taste of bitter coffee sweetened with condensed milk. It goes oddly with green olives.”

  The answer was surprising. I looked down at my jar as he added: “I shared a pot of it every morning in the winter of nineteen-thirty and ’thirty-one with a woman who called herself Amorosa.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “The same thing that happens to nearly everyone.” Ambrose shook his head. “I’d have married her, but she was already dying of what they used to call consumption. I told her I could save her, but she refused me—for my own good, she said.” He smiled wryly, and I found myself fascinated with the mobility of his features. He also reminded me a bit of the actor, Jim Carrey.

  “Have you ever noticed,” he asked, “that when someone tries to do you a kindness, it is only rarely actually kind?”

  “Yes.” I naturally thought of Max, unwillingly opening the memory of his most recent “kindness” of throwing everything out from the nursery while I was still in the hospital so I wouldn’t have to “deal” with it when I came home. Was the spot too tender, too bruised to endure exploration with a stranger? I decided that it was not. Sometime in the last few days that hurt had healed. The change in geography had given me mental as well as physical distance. That was good. Experience had shown me that sometimes seemingly unrelated things are actually like plants in a garden: separate entities above, but underneath the roots have all grown together in a solid mat. Try to pull out a dandelion and you get a daffodil as well. Which is a poetic way of saying that for a long time I couldn’t think about losing Max without thinking about losing our baby. It had been impossible to look at one without thinking of the other. But the roots of that relationship had died and withered into nothing, and I could now extract Max’s memory and not pull out anything else painful with it.

  This meant I didn’t have to stop talking with this rather strange man so that I could run and have a long hard cry in my cottage. That made me happy.

  “Are you my neighbor?” I asked him, not commenting on the death of Amorosa by what they used to call consumption in 1931. Nor did I volunteer any thoughts about my own so-called stains. As a loner, if you lose an arm, a leg, an eye, people notice. Even losing a baby or a boyfriend, someone—if only your doctor or the nosy women down the hall—will comment. But lose yourself—your spirit, your will, your soul—and there is a good chance that no one will ever know. Maybe not even you. People form an opinion, an impression of what you are, and it becomes hermetically sealed in memory, resisting revision or updating, especially when we refuse to see ourselves for the flawed creatures we actually are. That was convenient. I didn’t need anyone seeing me as vulnerable until I got my psyche sorted out.

  “After a fashion,” he said. “I own the island. Or, my corporation does. Once in a while I come to visit. Normally I’d be gone by now, but I saw that you were coming in today and decided to stay on for a bit.”

  “That’s nice,” I said sincerely, pulling my thoughts back to the conversation at hand. “I think I’d like to own an island. And be an eccentric millionaire.” Technically, I was a millionaire, but nowhere near his league of eccentricity or wealth, assuming he was telling the truth. I think that I might best be described as a pragmatic upper-middle-class loner.

  “Yes, it is very nice. Convenient even,” he agreed, though not specifying whether he referred to owning the island or being rich. “You like these olives? They are a new product for us. Most of our produce is grown locally, but we’ve had no luck with olive trees.”

  “I like all olives,” I said. “In that, I am not entirely particular. But these are exceptionally good.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be sure to see that we get more on the next supply ship. They go well with yellowfin tuna, which is on the menu tonight. I can tell the kitchen to send some to the table if you like.”

  This was a weird but thoughtful gesture. Still, I declined. It was too soon for him to be doing me favors.

  “That’s okay. Let’s not upset the chef with special requests on the first day. I also try to limit myself to one jar per diem. Too much sodium in them,” I added. “It’s bad for my blood pressure.”

  He nodded again, and then hesitated an instant before speaking. Perhaps he was out of practice making small talk. When he did speak, I had the feeling that he had decided not to share whatever was really on his mind.

  “Well, I will leave you to your olives and to the turtles. I want to visit the mangroves this morning and make sure that last storm didn’t do any damage. A lot of endangered species nest over there. You should bring your camera when you come. There’s lots to photograph.”

  “Have the turtles finally made it?” I asked, rolling onto my left side out of his shadow and propping myself up on an elbow. I squinted at the Sylph’s Hole. For a moment it seemed that shadows in the water danced away from my view. Were they m
ostly nocturnal creatures, afraid of observation from the enormous land animal that had staked out their space?

  “Yes. They are here.” And he was right. I could finally see some nickel-sized emerald turtles with grayish shells paddling about in the frothy water.

  “They’re cute!” I exclaimed, sticking a finger in the water and waggling it at them. “Not giants at all.”

  “We aim to please. Have fun on Cannibal Island, and perhaps I’ll see you at dinner.” There was a hint of smile in his voice.

  “Cannibal…,” I began, and then recalled that this was the old name for Fiji. I had read about this on the airplane. Thanks to the onboard magazine, I also knew that the country consisted of three hundred and twenty-two islands, and over one hundred of them were inhabited. Also it is smack-dab in the middle of the ocean, midway between Australia and Tahiti and due north of New Zealand. This is the long way of saying that it’s one hell of distance from anything.

  I turned back to look at my companion but he, like the real Ambrose Bierce, had disappeared into thin air, leaving not so much as a track in the sand, unless the deep gouge in the silky white beach some eight feet away could be considered a footprint. He might have been a hallucination for all the sign he left of his visit.