Faradise

By D H Weiss

Down and out Criminal lawyer Michael Faraday has just come home from rehab and is ready to rock. There's only one problem: he has no money, no clients and no likely job prospects, All he has is one hot, kinky red-haired playmate and a handful of bills. He is horny, hungry and desperate when he gets a phone call from mysterious Asian investors who are seeking someone with proven negotiating skills and nothing to lose. He takes the bait, and they fly him halfway around the world to an oddball island in the South China Sea where he is drawn into what no one would imagine impossible.
Concluding the tale that began with his debut novel, From Seven Till Dawn, D.H.Weiss’ Faradise is a darkly funny tale of sex, morality and human excess that will keep you up until sunrise. It is writing on a par with that of top-flight surrealist novelists from Haruki Murakami and Kurt Vonnegut that deserves to be read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D H Weiss
• Release date: Jan 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311744494

D H Weiss

Possibly the world's longest living survivor of HIV, D.H. Weiss (David Herbert Weiss) is an expat New Yorker who has been living and traveling in Southeast Asia and Sweden since 2008. After contracting the virus in 1979 or 1980, he went on to practice law in the U.S. District courts in Manhattan and the Eastern Districts of New York, where he won the only acquittal at trial of an extradited foreign national in the history of the United States. He published his first novel, "From Seven Till Dawn" in 2011, followed by "Faradise", in 2014. His most recent work, a novella, entitled " Pirouette", was published in 2016.

Book preview

One

"Longanisa, Longanisa," screeched a voice so impossibly wretched that Faraday prayed for the dream to end. He sat up to bolt for the door. But there was no door – not in the conventional sense, anyway. There were two openings from the room that led to other rooms, but the first one he saw – the one to his left, and curved like the body of an overripe jigsaw woman, only led to an empty chamber with a single hole cut in the ceiling. The second opening (which evidently led to the exit that one would use if he or she were so inclined,) consisted of a simple, perfect isosceles triangle cut into the polished, whitewashed cement, with a three or four foot wide base and sides that tapered up to where one’s head and shoulders might pass through, although not without some difficulty. Longanisa, Longanisa, the voice said again. Faraday looked to his right, where a fat, overfed parrot - an African Grey by the look of it, was perched on a branch outside one of three, circular openings that faced outwards, to an impossibly clear, pale turquoise sea. Odd, thought Faraday, that there would be any African Greys on this island.

He fell back onto the bed, and through the haze of a bone-deep fever, caught sight of a pale, translucent house lizard, frozen in place on what might have been a wall, while a larger, ring-tailed gecko eyed it hungrily, flicking its reptilian tongue as if deciding whether it was worth moving in the dense heat, and imagined Chloe’s amazing, almost tantrically expert human counterpart, polishing the underside of his very stiff hardon, until a clear, perfect drop of pre-cum formed at its tip.

Chloe knew how to tease him that way. Keep him hard. Stop and then start again, until he couldn’t hold it anymore. And when he did come, he’d hold his cock, and squeeze the muscles around his prostate, sending his cum in fountain waves onto his own stomach, or when she was in the mood, into her mouth and down onto hers.

Unghh, not now, Chloe. I have to watch the gecko. I’m sorry, he said as she held up a nipple so pink, so perfectly, centerfold air-brushed pink, that it begged for his attention. And then she was gone, replaced only by the gecko. Well, we all have to eat, he thought.

Sorry about what? came the answer. And who is Chloe? Is she your girlfriend? You sound like a crazy person. I have no idea what you’re trying to say, but here – drink this, it’s a special tea that we make from tawa tawa leaves. It won’t cure the dengue but it should bring down your fever a little.

She seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

Faraday managed to focus his eyes and saw a slender, brown girl with eyes as gold as the midday sun, just budding into womanhood, holding out a glass tumbler containing a vile-looking decoction of grasslike leaves mixed with god-only-knew what else was in it. She was almost brushing the side of the crude bamboo bed. She apparently had no fear of strange men.

She leaned closer, revealing through the gap between her tee shirt and her neck the curve of a very fine young breast that would one day make someone very happy, and extended the glass to Faraday’s lips.

Where am I? he croaked in a hoarse voice, taking the glass from her hand, and who are you?

You don’t remember?

If I could remember then why would I ask you.

They were right.

Who was right?

Absidy and Ella. They told me that they didn’t think you were very nice.

I’m not. So what is your name again?

Liv

That’s your name? Liv?

A steady gaze, no answer.

Right. Liv. I knew that, he answered sarcastically. Who are Absidy and Ella?

If you don’t know who they are then how do you know who I am?

I can’t remember.

It’s probably the fever. You were burning up. That’s what makes the dengue so dangerous. You’re obviously not yourself yet.

Faraday didn’t wasn’t sure what to make of this womanchild, but her face said that whoever she was, he didn’t like her and she didn’t like him, and that she was only there with the sour grass cocktail because she’d been told to bring it to him.

How long have I been here?

Five days. Maybe six.

But you didn’t know that my girlfriend’s name is Chloe.

No. They said it was Claudia.

Well, Liv, it just so happens that my girlfriend’s name is Claudia, but she hates that name, so she calls herself Chloe. And she isn’t really my girlfriend. But apparently you didn’t know that.

Whatever.

So when did, um, Absidy introduce us? I can’t seem to recall meeting you before.

Wow. You’re really out of it, aren’t you? He didn’t. I was visiting my aunt in Manila when you came to this island.

Okay, so we never met until just now. I take it that Absidy is your dad?

Absidy and Ella are my foster parents. My real parents are dead.

I’m sorry.

Are you?

Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?

Because you’re an asshole. Anyway. I gave you the medicine. If you don’t want to drink it then that’s your choice, but I have better things to do than watch you, so now you know my name, you have the tonic and I’m leaving.

Faraday watched her turn and walk away, dispassionately, through what was now just an ordinary, wood-framed door, the triangular entrance having disappeared, along with the curvaceous opening to the other chamber that he’d hallucinated in his fevered vision.

Suspicious that it might be some kind of exotic poison, he sniffed at the tea that Liv had brought him. Despite its bilious color, it smelled only of wheatgrass and honey. He drank it down, hoping that whatever it was, it might at the very least numb his terrible pain, and sank back into the sweat-drenched sheets into a restless, fevered sleep, and the memory of where he had been only days before.

Two

Almost dead center in the basin of the South China sea between eastern Malaysia to the south, the southern tip of Vietnam to the north, and the leeward Spratly Islands of the Philippine archipelago at its far east, Longyan Island was so far from land, and so useless to any, that few could even agree on its proper name. Some said that the island was the half-blind eye of an ancient dragon that rose from the ocean floor, and that it still blinked in the proper light. The Malaysians called it Mata Berkelip – the blinking eye. But others believed that it was not the dragon’s eye, but a tear that the dragon had wept when the gods cast all but a few of the dragons away, and that the tear, upon landing on the water, had turned to stone.

Longyan was the low peak of an extinct undersea volcano, with a now fertile caldera that rose a few hundred feet and sides that sloped into dense jungle to the shore. Thick lava jetties on opposite sides of the island split the shoreline in squarely in two, and in the millennia that the ancient volcano lay silent, a layer of jet black sand accumulated on the island’s west side, restrained only by the jetties, while seasonal monsoon rain, wind and waves pounded to dust the corals that grew offshore of the windward slope, leaving behind a white sand beach so fine that a man could walk barefoot in the sun and feel no heat.

By some strange, mystical process that eluded science or reason, the sloping mountainsides above the crescent black and white beaches were graced with a peculiar, purplish black soil that nurtured an astonishing variety of colorful bromeliads and giant, perfumed orchids found nowhere else in Southeast Asia or anywhere but the most remote, untouched depths of the Amazon rain forest. The soil was even deeper inside the mist-shrouded crater, where ages of indifferent fog and passing rains spawned a central sweetwater lake. In the rainier months, when the lake grew wide and restless, it sent a misted waterfall that cut through the crater rim and flowed down the mountainside and on, where it vanished into the sea.

From the viewpoint of a hungry eagle flying over Longyan, the island looked like a perfect yin and yang of the black and white sand beaches. Even in the mornings, before the sun burned the mists off, the bird would see the crater lake, teeming with fat, rainbow colored fish and radiant dragonflies that left their shimmering, nacreous eggs floating like pearls on the water’s surface.

The abundance of fish and the sweet tasting pearls drew snow white egrets, mottled brown curlews and tube-nosed petrels from a hundred miles away, and promised an easy gourmet dinner. Had Longyan been elsewhere, closer to the mainland, it would have been a strange and wondrous paradise, irresistible to every Nikon toting tourist and money-hungry developer.

But nature had spared Longyan, and it rose up from the ancient seabed far from populated land - one of nature’s adolescent pustules that bore no significant strategic value to any of the nations that would claim the region half a billion years later. They all asserted sovereignty over it, but none cared to enforce its claim when challenged; it simply wasn’t worth fighting over. Whatever interest its striking geology might have generated was promptly extinguished by a freakish population of particularly savage mosquitoes that swarmed in clouds so dense that they might have been distant, carnivorous relatives of Pharaoh’s pestilential locusts. It was a bonus feature that inquisitive mariners unhappily discovered within seconds of setting foot on the beaches. And there was general agreement among those who even knew of Longyan, or seen it from passing freighters, that its only other inhabitants was a lost tribe of cannibals, and that no one in his right mind would go there.

As a result, a man by the peculiar, but officially recorded name of ABCDE Blanks, along with a few of his better friends, acquired all right, title and interest in the tiny island from each and every possible claimant, by spending nothing more than a few weeks time, and a handful of Ringgit, Pesos, Dollars and Dong, placed in the pockets of whichever official happened to have the right signature and official stamp lying around when Absidy, as he came to be called, or a comrade, dropped by the provincial land offices to buy it.

Apart from their simple, two or three room houses, a small commissary, and a well-hidden assembly hall, the only other man-made structure visible on the island was a small, unobtrusive wooden pier, a few feet from the south jetty.

But someone else wanted Longyan. And he wanted it badly. High above the busy streets of Kuala Lumpur, Colonel Ermit Peng gazed out the executive suite windows, looking not at the gleaming, glass and steel towers of the rapidly rising city, but out towards the sea, to the north and east. After a moment of reflection, he sat at the conference table and summoned his latest assistant, Mohammed Kumar.

The discussion was brief and to the point. This is our objective, he said brusquely, circling a fine laser pointer on the screen he’d called down from the ceiling. This island is very small, past the shipping lanes. Few go there, but it worth much to us. We need to send an effective negotiator to buy the island from its present owners. Someone who can convince these people to sell the island and move somewhere else. We can’t simply take it by force. That sort of thing is out of the question. There are too many of them, and they have their friends, just as we do. Our only hope is to buy them out before they know what they have."

Kumar guessed what was coming. While it was visually unusual, the seemingly insignificant island - a mere flyspeck on the screen, had more value than was generally believed, and Peng was determined to acquire it. If Kumar did not succeed, he would find himself peddling from a pushcart in the streets.

Colonel Peng had started what was now one of the wealthiest oil and gas consortiums in Malaysia as a young man, just out of the military, by utilizing all of his connections in the army and some help from his well-established family. The aging mogul was one of those wizened, Sun Tzu-quoting warriors who spoke in terms of ‘deception’, and ‘hidden strengths,’ as he consistently reminded his employees. "Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and The greatest victory is that which requires no battle, were two of his favorites. He had a fierce reputation for dismissing men who didn’t meet his expectations, with a commanding temperament that cascaded through his troops, as he called them. Those who failed to measure up to his standards were all but thrown out the high office windows. Kumar responded instantly. Perhaps one of our friends in the military, sir. An intelligence officer?"

An excellent suggestion, Kumar, but from what I am led to understand about this Absidy Blanks fellow, he has a rebellious nature and keen instincts about people, and he would undoubtedly know almost instantly if we used a government agent of any kind.

Then perhaps someone who is used to dealing with criminals, sir? After all, we know that many of Blanks’ friends are either fugitives or religious extremists who believe in neither Mohammed nor Jesus. And while Blanks is not presently the subject of any criminal prosecutions, we also know that his cultish beliefs have angered many deeply religious Muslim clerics and priests in the Catholic church.

Peng stroked his short, neatly trimmed grey beard as he considered the idea. Then it would have to be someone connected to the criminal justice system. Not here in Malaysia or one of our other neighbors. A European, or perhaps even an American. But where we find such an individual?

I believe I know someone who can help us, said Kumar, one of our friends who worked with the American Judge Advocate General in the old days. With your permission I will reach out to General Trinh in Saigon. He owes us a favor or two and will be happy to establish contact.

And Trinh will have other friends, who will have certain questions about the transfer of title, suggested Peng, raising an eyebrow in conspiratorial agreement. The old man nodded and leaned back in his chair, satisfied. Yes. That is an excellent idea. Thank you Kumar, you are proving yourself to be most useful. You may place the call to Trinh immediately. He will be happy to hear from us.

Kumar bowed politely, spun a brisk turn in his precious, mirror-buffed thousand dollar Testoni shoes, and exited the room.

Three

Michael Faraday was happy to be home. The thirty day vacation (as some of the other patients described it) that he had taken at the Silver Lake Recovery Center had cleared his thinking. He’d packed on a few pounds and looked healthy again. He was eager to return to a reasonably normal life.

As fate would have it, what was normal for Faraday consisted of getting through his day with only a minimal amount of pharmaceutical intervention. On the one to ten scale of emotional weather, Michael Faraday was a solid twelve.

There were more than enough good reasons for his turbulent state of mind. Jean’s decision to finally give up on him was the merely the icing on a very, very shaky cake. Their marriage had long been the victim of mistakes that he’d made before they’d ever met; his chosen occupation was largely comprised of the care and feeding of scumbags, sharks and idiots, and his liver was the battle-scarred host to a notoriously virulent, sexually transmitted strain of virus that left him a most unattractive potential match for any woman with more than half of a fully-functional brain.

He and Jean loved each other, but his condition – as he preferred to call it, had made sex with Jean a touchy affair that they’d never managed to resolve. He had no need for condoms. Not for their sake; Faraday’s doctors had assured him that his disease was well under control, and that it posed no threat to Jean. But Jean had always been the cautious type. She knew the facts – that he simply wasn’t infectious now. Not within reason, anyway, but reason was never enough. He’d tried to explain it to her. He’d even offered to try other means of intimacy. But Jean was simply too fearful.

The whores were the spread-eagled, spit-lubricated icing on the cake. In order to satisfy his predictably overactive sex drive, Faraday resorted to what he uncharitably referred to as prepaid pussy, some of which resided between the thighs of less-than-sweet, young co-eds just trying to pay off their student loans, while most of it belonged to the kind of late thirties or even forty-somethings with a future, if any, of answering phones and sending out new girls. He rarely bothered trying to understand them, much less like them as people; if there was one underlying principle that kept Michael Faraday out of even more depressing trouble, it was his understanding that they were all professional liars, and probably even more fucked up than he was.

And it was always about the money. He’d leave it there, on top of a bureau for them, in the hope that it somehow wouldn’t be part of the picture, but it always was. He’d even caught one of them once, looking out of the corners of