Almost Paradise

by April Hill

  And then, something very odd happened to Robin Farrell. She surrendered—not just to the whipping, or to Jack’s superior strength, over which she had no control, but to the unaccustomed feelings she had begun to notice in herself during the last week or so. Feelings that maybe—just maybe—she had been wrong about Jack, and about a lot of other things, as well. Her conscience, perhaps? The fact was, he was right about the lagoon, and she had been wrong. With a deep sigh, she stopped struggling, and put her head down on her arms.

  At this point, Jack dropped the kelp and walked away into the trees. Robin got up, pulled up her bikini bottoms, and went inside the hut—to cry a little, and to think. It was two hours before she emerged, and Jack was sitting by the fire, roasting something on the spit. He glanced up, but said nothing as Robin came out and sat down carefully on the rickety chair, wincing slightly with every move.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said quietly. Jack stopped what he was doing and sat in the sand, waiting for her to speak. Robin took a deep breath. “Okay, here it is,” she began, hesitantly at first. “I owe you an apology. I’m not especially good at apologies, so you’ll just have to bear with me while I try to get it right.”

  Jack shook his head. “No,” he said. “Don’t apologize. Yes, you did something stupid, and dangerous, but I overreacted, and I overdid … what I did.”

  Robin gave a weak little laugh. “I won’t argue that point, and I hope you’ll keep it in mind the next time I do something stupid and dangerous. But I still owe you an apology, and a lot more. You’ve been terrific, doing everything around here, and putting up with my…well my behavior. But I owe you for more than just that. It seems like every time I turn around, you’re saving my life, and I hate to break this to you, but I’m probably not worth it.” When he started to object, she raised her hand to stop him. “No, don’t ask. It’s true, and it’s a very long story.”

  “We may have a long time,” he observed.

  “Maybe, but it’s a pretty boring story, as well. Anyway, I guess what I wanted to ask you is, could we maybe start again, you and me? Could you just try and forget, or forgive, if you can, how I’ve behaved up until now, and go on? I can’t give you a gilt-edged promise that I’ll never act like a jerk again, but I will try my best. That much, I can promise you.”

  Jack nodded. “Look, Robin, I know this has been tough. Being here is probably a lot harder on you than it has on me, and…”

  Robin shook her head vigorously. “No excuses, please. Even I’m bored with the excuses I’ve made my whole life—mostly to myself. I’m still the same kind of person, Give me an inch, etc, etc. But, if you could just try not to hate me for being such a …okay, such a spoiled brat. Dumb word, but it’s the one that fits.”

  Jack smiled. “I’m willing, if you are. I have to tell you, though, I can’t agree that it’s been boring, up until now.”

  Robin squirmed on her chair, and rubbed her backside gingerly. “Amen.”

  “One other thing,” he said. “And we need to get it straight now, while all this ‘humble pie’ is on the table.”

  “Yes?” she asked, hesitantly.

  Jack smiled. “If I ever catch you in the lagoon again, or swimming beyond the breakers, I’m still going to blister your ass so hard, and so long, you won’t be sitting down for a week. You got it?”

  “I got it, Skipper.” She nodded toward the mystery item roasting over the fire. “What’s for our late-night dinner? My catch of the day got away, sort of.”

  “It’s a seagull,” he said a bit sadly. “Basted in coconut milk. My own recipe. I’m turning into Wolfgang Puck.”

  Robin sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to start killing birds. I hope you didn’t do it just for me.”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t do it, at all. The damned thing committed suicide. It crashed into the tree, there, just as I got back to camp, and broke its neck. I turned around to see what the noise was, and that’s when I saw you in the lagoon, with your…problem.”

  “So a seagull I never even met sacrificed its life, to save mine?” she said, laughing.

  “Looks that way. So we have to eat it. There are rules about these things, you know. When an Alaskan Inuit kills a seal, he thanks the seal for its sacrifice, and then chows down without having to feel guilty about it.”

  They had consumed every guiltless, stringy morsel of the seagull, and the fire was burning low by the time they finished talking. Jack told her about his attempted trek around the island, aborted when the path around the cliff simply disappeared into the ocean.

  “It looks like the only way over the mountain is just that—over, not around— at least to the west. I can try heading east, but chances are it won’t be much different.”

  “What about the signal fire?” she asked.

  “Well, we burned it for over two weeks, with no luck. I’ve got the wood stacked up and ready to light, in case a ship or a plane comes within range, but for now…”

  “We wait,” she finished.

  “We wait, or try crossing the mountain. Do you remember that dumb kid’s song, ‘The Bear Went Over the Mountain’?”

  “To see what he could see?” she added.

  “Yeah. Remember what the song said the bear found?”

  Robin sighed. “The other side of the mountain, wasn’t it?”

  “Exactly. I’m afraid the song may be right. So, we wait. Who knows? There might actually be somebody else on the island.” He grinned. “Maybe we should clean house, in case they decide to drop by.”

  * * *

  Midway across the mountain, and almost at the crest now, Andrew McLean and the two women struggled through the trees and snarled underbrush, each of them wondering what they’d find on “the other side of the mountain.” They had fought the mountain for three days and nights, often pushing through the brush with their bare hands. Progress was slow, primarily because Meredith tired easily, and whined constantly. Four times in the three days, she had sat down and refused to go on, claiming: A) A horribly sprained ankle; B) She had seen “something huge and hairy” following them; C) Man-eating mosquitoes; and D) She didn’t fucking want to climb another fucking step up this fucking mountain.

  Reason “D” was delivered full volume, and accompanied by a full-blown, throwing herself to the ground, refusing to budge, turning blue in the face tantrum. McLean dealt with the tantrum with admirable swiftness and efficiency by upending the wailing Meredith over a convenient low-slung tree-limb, tearing off a switch from the same tree, and striping her squirming, bared bottom with “twelve of the best.” (An English expression, he explained cheerfully.) Afterward, Meredith soldiered bravely on, sniffling, rubbing her stinging backside, and swearing under her breath to “cut the SOB’s balls off.”

  They reached the top, and started their descent with Meredith approaching another meltdown because of Emma’s refusal to “take her side with that dickhead for once.”

  “Pipe down, Merrie,” Emma warned when they stopped to rest for a few minutes. McLean had gone on ahead, scouting for the best way down to the beach. “I’d think you’ve had enough for one day.”

  “He never yells at you!” Meredith complained, “Let alone spanks you like some little kid!” This was true. McLean seemed, if anything, mildly protective of Emma in Meredith’s presence. “He acts like he’s trying to hit on you, or something.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Emma snapped, blushing at her friend’s assessment. “He’s just being polite.”

  “Polite, nothing! Anyone can see that he wants to screw you, but to me, he’s just a fucking pain in the ass!” Meredith hissed.

  Emma smiled. “Well, the pain in the ass is coming back, now, so you’d better move it and quit bitching. He does seem a little short-tempered, today.”

  “No kidding,” Meredith said sullenly. “I just wish he’d never shown up. We were doing all right without him, weren’t we? God! If I knew where to go, I swear I’d run away and live by myself until someone came to
get us off this shithole island!”

  “By yourself?” Emma repeated. “Of all the dumb ideas you’ve had, Merrie, that may be the dumbest. You’d starve to death by yourself. There’s not a 7-Eleven or a Neiman Marcus anywhere. Where would you shop?”

  “Oh, yeah?” Meredith sneered. Not the brightest response, she thought to herself, but the best a girl could do with her hair in a mess like it was.

  * * *

  Late the following afternoon, Jack and Robin were working on building a second chair and a matching table when they heard a distant crashing in the woods behind the hut. (The original chair, never sturdy, had sustained a fair amount of damage during last night’s “episode,” and was undergoing a bit of rehabilitation.

  “Maybe it’s a wild boar!” Robin cried, leaping to her feet. The sudden move brought with it a sharp reminder of last night’s spanking, and Jack smiled a bit sadly as she reached back to massage the sorer spots. Despite Robin’s apology, and her offer of blanket amnesty for what he’d done to her in their short time together, he was still feeling guilty about a lot of it. It wasn’t easy for Jack to admit to it, but he was growing inordinately fond of this difficult lady, and his gut reaction to almost losing her had probably surprised him even more than it had her.

  “And what would we do if it was a wild boar?” Jack asked. “Five hundred pounds of vicious pork roast charging at me is kind of out of my league. I’m better at waiting around for seagulls with a death wish.”

  Robin laughed. “That’s okay. Besides, we don’t have any barbecue sauce. Or a refrigerator to keep the leftovers.”

  “That settles it,” he grinned. “I was afraid you’d expect me to do some macho Tarzan thing, with my sharpened bamboo skewer.”

  “Maybe pigs commit suicide, too,” she suggested wistfully.

  Jack chuckled. “And maybe they fly. Give it up. We’re having broiled octopus and brown seaweed for supper.”

  Robin yawned. “Sorry, dear, but I had octopus for lunch.”

  They went back to their furniture project, and fifteen minutes later, three extremely tired, dirty people walked out of the woods, and invited themselves to supper.

  Chapter Six

  The introductions were brief, but ecstatic. “Company for dinner!” Robin exclaimed, throwing her arms around the women. “At last, we can use the good china!”

  The two men shook hands and exchanged information. McLean told them that no, they hadn’t seen a sign of Charlie Engels or any other survivors, and then they continued talking over supper—broiled octopus, with dried fish on the side.

  “I used to like these blasted things,” McLean observed, studying the curls of dried fish on his leaf “plate.” “Kippers are a fine thing, with eggs and marmalade. You’ll have to forgive me if I decline them, now.”

  “Sorry. I’m not much at fishing,” Jack explained. He glanced over at Robin, and smiled. “Robin, here, is better, but she decided to give it up.”

  “Under duress,” Robin muttered. “Jack has been working on a net,” she added quickly. “The right materials are a little scarce, though”

  “Have you any of that curious long kelp on this side of the island?” McLean asked. “The one that looks like rope?”

  “Oh, we have it,” Robin noted dryly. “Too much of it, actually.” Even thinking about the kelp brought back in far too much detail the nasty sting she could still feel in parts of her rear end.

  “It’s extremely flexible when it’s wet, you know,” McLean added. “And unusually strong. I’ve found it handy for a lot of purposes.”

  “Same here,” Jack agreed, smiling. “Of course, it works better for some purposes than others, don’t you agree, Robin?”

  Robin agreed. “It seems to me you could even hang someone with it,’ she observed, “if you wanted to, that is.”

  McLean looked at her curiously. “Well, that’s one use I probably wouldn’t have thought of, would you, Jack?”

  “Of course he would have thought of it,” Robin said sweetly. “Jack is just endlessly inventive.”

  “I see,” said McLean. Then, with the sense that he was missing something, he changed the subject. “How much exploring have you done?” he asked.

  Jack drew a quick diagram in the sand showing where he had been thus far on the island, and Andrew McLean added his own details.

  “Assuming the island is roughly oval, which it seems to be, from what you and I have seen, and from what we could tell from the top of the mountain,” McLean observed, “it would appear that the only other area where there might be other survivors would be to the east of here.”

  “We’re on the lee side of the island,” Jack pointed out. “Unless I’m wrong, any landing there would be pretty hard.”

  Andrew nodded. “Yes, we could see from up there that there’s not much bloody beach, and the surf is enormous. I think we can all be grateful to be alive. We drifted a long way to get where we are, I suspect. With luck, the others were picked up where we collided.”

  “Not ‘collided’,” Jack corrected him with a bitter chuckle. “Cut in two. Do you think ship went down, or took any really serious damage? It was a hell of a lot bigger than the Sea Spirit.”

  McLean shook his head. “We saw it sail away—limping a bit, perhaps, but still under its own power, and apparently seaworthy. I hate to say this, but we may have been the only ones lost from the Orchid Princess.”

  “What I want to know is how people can just fall off these stupid boats and nobody even notices they’re gone!” Meredith cried.

  Emma laughed. “You get what you pay for. If there was anything lower than steerage on the Orchid Princess, we were probably in it. Maybe they didn’t miss us for hundreds of miles. I was probably invisible, since I ever did was sit on deck and read. Merrie flirted with every man aboard, though. You’d think somebody would have missed her, at least.”

  Meredith scowled. “In case you didn’t notice, sweetie, they had more single women on that stupid boat than cockroaches in the damned kitchen. Who’d miss a couple more?”

  “Well, in any case,” McLean said, “unless the two of you have some objection, we’d like to join you, here. Your side is a good deal more attractive, and out of the wind.”

  “You’re welcome to stay,” Jack said. “Of course, the accommodations are kind of crowded. We’ll have to enlarge the hut, or the ‘Rat Trap,’ as it’s called affectionately. Or we build an additional one. Maybe you and I can keep this one, and we’ll put up another for the women, how’s that? I’m sure Robin would appreciate a little less male companionship, after all these weeks of my snoring.”

  Emma noticed that while Meredith didn’t actually lick her lips, she was looking at Jack Garrison as if he were an item on a French pastry cart.

  “Ooh!” Meredith simpered. “Then, the two of you aren’t, like, together?”

  Robin ignored Meredith’s question, but smiled sweetly at her. “Ooh!” she cried. “Just think what fun we’ll have, all we girls tucked up cozy, in one, teeny-weeny little hut! Just like a slumber party! I can hardly wait!”

  “Yeah,” said Emma, rolling her eyes. “Neither can I.”

  Jack and Andrew exchanged glances.

  The condominium project was begun the very next morning, and took most of a week, during which Meredith developed a mysterious fainting condition that prevented her from doing anything more strenuous than reclining in the shade, fanning herself, and offering helpful suggestions.

  “You should put a big window, right there,” she said, pointing to an already completed wall.

  Jack shook his head. “Wrong angle. The rain’ll blow in from that direction.”

  “Well, then, put in a wooden door, silly! Like, with shutters we could lock. And a little sort of outdoor patio would be nice, with an awning and some chairs?”

  Jack turned to McLean. “Why didn’t we think of that?” he asked wearily.

  Andrew McLean smiled, wiping the dripping sweat from his brow. “You’ll get accustomed t
o it. It requires several days, but after a while, Miss Von Kessel’s voice becomes like a mosquito droning next to your ear. No words, just something you want to smack with a rolled-up newspaper.”

  From inside the new shack, where they were arranging the “beds,” Emma and Robin laughed in unison. “Or a two-by-four,” Robin suggested.

  “Merrie means well,” Emma said, unconvincingly.

  Robin grimaced. “Merrie would make good fish bait. How can you stand her?”

  “We’ve been friends for years,” Emma explained, wondering how many times she had spoken these same words in Meredith’s defense.

  “You’re a nun, or something, right?” Robin asked. “Aiming for sainthood?”

  Emma sighed. “No, really. She can be fun—sometimes.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  When finished, the new shelter was a spacious and airy improvement, with genuine windows, and an attached seawater shower stall made from a rusted five-gallon lard can that had washed up on the beach. The new residents immediately christened it “The Swamp Plaza.”

  “Ingenious!” Robin cried, studying the details of the showers design. “You have earned the title of ‘Professor,’ Mr. McLean. Jack, of course, is still the ‘Skipper,’ I think we can all agree that Meredith qualifies as ‘Ginger,’ and Emma can be ‘MaryAnn’.”

  Emma scratched a bug bite, and said nothing. She had watched “Gilligan’s Island “ as a child, and remembered very clearly that Ginger was a gorgeous and voluptuous movie starlet. Mary Ann., on the other hand, was sweet, freckled, afflicted with a bad case of wide-eyed innocence, and given to wearing gingham and pigtails. All she missed was pimples and braces.

  “I’d make an even better ‘Millionaire’s Wife’,” Meredith giggled. “Now, if only there was a millionaire around.”

  Robin smiled. “If there’s one hiding somewhere, I’m sure you’ll ferret him out,” Robin smiled.

  “But that only leaves the part of Gilligan!” Meredith cried. “I guess that must be you, Robin, sweetie.”