“I had a terrible case of the trots myself,” Gwendolyn continued. “Truly epic. In Irian Jaya. Those pills were a godsend.”
Larry gave a finishing lick to the joint and lit it. He inhaled, looking up at Mitchell, then said in a smoke-tightened voice, “We’re here to make you take your medicine.”
“That’s right. Fasting is all well and good, but after—what has it been?”
“Two weeks almost.”
“After two weeks, it’s time to stop.” She looked stern, but then the joint came her way, and she said, “Oh, lovely.” She took a hit, held it, smiled at both of them, and then launched into a fit of coughing. It went on for about thirty seconds. Finally she drank some beer, holding her hand over her chest. Then she resumed smoking her cigarette.
Mitchell was looking at a big stripe of moon on the ocean. Suddenly he said, “You just got divorced. Is why you’re taking this trip.”
Gwendolyn stiffened. “Almost right. Not divorced but separated. Is it that obvious?”
“You’re a hairdresser,” Mitchell said, still looking out to sea.
“You didn’t tell me your friend was a clairvoyant, Larry.”
“I must have told him. Did I tell you?”
Mitchell didn’t answer.
“Well, Mr. Nostradamus, I have a prediction for you. If you don’t take those pills right now, you are going to be hauled away on the ferry one very sick boy. You don’t want that, do you?”
Mitchell looked into Gwendolyn’s eyes for the first time. He was struck by the irony: she thought he was the sick one. Whereas it looked to him the other way around. Already she was lighting another cigarette. She was forty-three years old, getting stoned on an island off the coast of Thailand while wearing a piece of coral reef in each earlobe. Her unhappiness rose off her like a wind. It wasn’t that he was clairvoyant. It was just obvious.
She looked away. “Larry, where are my pills now?”
“Inside the hut.”
“Could you get them for me?”
Larry turned on his flashlight and bent through the doorway. The beam crossed the floor. “You still haven’t mailed your letters.”
“I forgot. Soon as I finish them, I feel like I’ve sent them already.”
Larry reappeared with the bottle of pills and announced, “It’s starting to smell in there.” He handed the bottle to Gwendolyn.
“All right, you stubborn man, open up.”
She held out a pill.
“That’s OK. Really. I’m fine.”
“Take your medicine,” Gwendolyn said.
“Come on, Mitch, you look like shit. Do it. Take a goddamn pill.”
For a moment there was silence, as they stared at him. Mitchell wanted to explain his position, but it was pretty obvious that no amount of explanation would convince them that what he was doing made any sense. Everything he thought to say didn’t quite cover it. Everything he thought to say cheapened how he felt. So he decided on the course of least resistance. He opened his mouth.
“Your tongue is bright yellow,” Gwendolyn said. “I’ve never seen such a yellow except on a bird. Go on. Wash it down with a little beer.” She handed him her bottle.
“Bravo. Now take these four times a day for a week. Larry, I’m leaving you in charge of seeing that he does it.”
“I think I need to go to sleep now,” Mitchell said.
“All right,” said Gwendolyn. “We’ll move the party down to my hut.”
When they were gone, Mitchell crawled back inside and lay down. Without otherwise moving, he spat out the pill, which he’d kept under his tongue. It clattered against the bamboo, then fell through to the sand underneath. Just like Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest, he thought, smiling to himself, but was too genuinely exhausted to write it down.
*
With the bathing suit over his eyes, the days were more perfect, more obliterated. He slept in snatches, whenever he felt like it, and stopped paying attention to time. The rhythms of the island reached him: the sleep-thickened voices of people breakfasting on banana pancakes and coffee; later, shouts on the beach; and in the evening, the grill smoking, and the Chinese cook scraping her wok with a long metal spatula. Beer bottles popped open; the cook tent filled with voices; then the various small parties bloomed in neighboring huts. At some point Larry would come back, smelling of beer, smoke, and suntan lotion. Mitchell would pretend to be asleep. Sometimes he was awake all night while Larry slept. Through his back, he could feel the floor, then the island itself, then the circulation of the ocean. The moon became full and, on rising, lit up the hut. Mitchell got up and walked down to the silver edge of the water. He waded out and floated on his back, staring up at the moon and the stars. The bay was a warm bath; the island floated in it, too. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing. After a while, he felt all sense of outside and inside disappearing. He wasn’t breathing so much as being breathed. The state would last only a few seconds, then he’d come out, then he’d get it again.