Now we move on to "Paradise--" "A Drink
Called Paradise" which--
it's a story about a woman who gets marooned on this island
and slowly finds out what it's like to be on an island--
post-nuclear island.
Most of the islands of the Pacific
have borne the effects of the 300 bombs
that were detonated there in the last 30 years.
And so I lived in the Pacific for only six months
in the Cook Islands, but I conflated that experience
with the Marshall Islands which is, of course, the hardest hit.
So the details in the book are all true, which I find to be--
I find it interesting that Amazon, for example,
one of the reviews said it was-- a couple of reviews
said it was an interesting fantasy.
We would all like to live in that interesting fantasy.
Anyway, I'm going to read to you from the middle.
Our heroine has just discovered what a jelly baby is
and there are children that are born without bones
in that part of the world.
And she's in shock about it.
And there's only a guy-- and there's
a guy named Harry who came off the ship with her.
And she's had hardly anything to do with him up to this point
because he's been surrounded by island women--
you find out why that is later on in the book.
But anyway, so she ends up running to him after this just
to talk about it.
"I'm reaching behind with both my arms,
holding my arms backwards, fingering the keys.
Or what would be keys of a piano stood in Harry's shack.
I'm humming all the parts to a melody I once liked.
Ghostly and grand--"
Oh, you get two stories with this.
So that's why I picked it.
Anyway, "that I know--" well, shit.
"I'm humming--"
[LAUGHTER]
"I'm humming all the parts to a melody
I once liked, ghostly and grand, that I know will impress.
I always impress when I play the piano
backwards humming or singing--"
Oh, she's drunk now too.
"Though less in parlors than in bars.
So few parlors with pianos, so few
pianos unless they're in bars.
I'm thankful for Harry.
Harry knows the tune.
He even knows the score.
He knows this is a piano I'm gesturing toward.
He can see I can finger.
Without a piano, no one can say you missed a note
or you play without feeling, mechanically like a parlor
trick.
Anyone else on this island without parlors
would want to lock me up for the strangeness of it or laugh.
People laugh at the strange first.
But maybe not at jelly babies.
Even Harry did not laugh at that.
But perhaps Harry would have laughed at my playing the piano
if I had not told him what I was doing.
Perhaps the others would understand
if I told them about it first, pianos
being the missionary's power band, the thumping
equivalent of salvation earned, those gold chords.
Perhaps old ivory from the missionary's piano
could be dug up, an F sharp sticking up
out of the coral with the car parts.
Harry has plied me with drinks and that
is how I begin to play.
To ply suggests I am pliable.
I play.
He empties the last of the bottle of scotch
into a pitcher.
No, a cracked coconut half.
All he ever drinks from.
He's scraggly-bearded now and all
around him lie playing cards from tricks and games
he's tried to teach his ladies.
But they won't play, he says.
They only want one thing.
That one thing, I repeat.
But my piano playing drowns me out.
I am drowned."