South of Paradise: A Novel

By Douglas V. Maurer

On the verge of a break-up with his wife, and a break-down at the office, super salesman, Christopher Miles is invited on a corporate trip to Tahiti by his business partner. Almost immediately events begin spinning out of control, sliding, at if by some unseen fate, into the bazaar and the surreal. The novel opens with a near-fatal car accident, which occurs after a meeting with the private detective that has been investigating his wifes infidelities. A few days later hes on route to the South Seas.

Following a week of sleeplessness, tour mania, over-consumption of alcohol, jet-lag and the curse of a Voodoo tribesman hanging over his head, Christopher Miles disappears in the upper mountains of Moorea after becoming disoriented A post-modem love story turns into a psychedelic nightmare when he is abducted by a primitive cult of upper mountain tribesman, known as the Songmen, and is held by their chief as a captive.

Back at the resort in Moorea. the tour guides and other members of the group, which totaled some sixty people, become hysterical Their trip to paradise is ruined when after days of searching, they cant locate him , their protocol demands they leave him behind.

Months later, after being given up for dead by his business associates, and certain members of his family, Christopher Miles frees himself from captivity during a raging category five hurricane and begins his perilous descent back to reality, where on the verge of death he is transformed by a very unexpected ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781469102702

Douglas V. Maurer

Douglas V. Maurer lives in the heart of the Marshlandic Kingdom of Northeast Florida with his wife and ten cats. He is the author of South of Paradise and First Family, the first volume of the Marshlandic Saga.

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South of Paradise

A Novel

Douglas V. Maurer

Copyright © 2009 by Douglas V. Maurer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either

are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and

any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is

entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

1     

Friday the Thirteenth

2     

A Strange Turn of Events

3     

Long Distance Runaround

4     

The Arrival

5     

Bora Bora

6     

The Mountains of Moorea

7     

Abducted

8

In The Middle Realm

9     

The Heart of Darkness

10     

Approaching Storm

11     

The Descent

12     

Across Blue Latitudes

13     

Atonement

14     

Homeward

Tahitian Timeline

Glossary of Pictures, Maps, Illustrations, and Photographs

South of Paradise

Novel

By Douglas V. Maurer

*Lyrics from Tell me Why, reprinted with permission from Neil Young and Crazy Horse Records.

All the joys—animal and human—of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into the truth, into nature . . . free and beautiful, peace descends on me.

—Paul Gauguin, 1894

image1.jpg

Gauguin Imprint

Map of Tahiti

image2.jpg

1     

Friday the Thirteenth

Christopher Miles left the Capitol Club—with its stunning top-of-the-tower views—in a relative state of shock. Descending in a crowded elevator that stopped at every other floor, getting down from forty-two had agitated him even further. Out on the street, as a bright afternoon sun cast its blinding glare, he hustled to his car in a private lot overlooking the river. As usual, he was late for an appointment. Time had traveled on him again, what with his revelatory lunch meeting, and too much wine.

As he was fishing for his sunglasses under the seat, Miles’s neck ached from the continual stress of his schedule, which he felt was taking its toll. He needed a break, yet none was in sight. No relief for the wicked, he thought sarcastically, while dodging a UPS truck doing a U-turn into the circular driveway.

Once inside the car, he heard his cell phone ring. In between tones, the message center sent out digital waves to remind him to check his calls.

Chris Miles here, he answered tersely.

He nodded to the words filtering through the receiver. It was a call from an irate client complaining about paperwork that had not been completed and witnessed by his office in a timely manner; he’d already heard enough when he waved, then smiled wickedly at a woman he knew walking by.

Wanda should have handled those contracts by now, Charley. Let me check on them and call you back. He listened to some more verbal backlash. Yes, absolutely, he assured his client, I’ll call you back right away.

Miles feared another lawsuit. He and his partner had two pending already. They were innocent, of course, but had to defend themselves against recrimination from high-profile men like Charley Bracken, who often abused their personal power. He checked his messages—more obligations and missed opportunities.

He pulled to the end of the drive in his sleek black Jaguar and hesitated a few moments, opening the file with the pictures he’d just purchased from a private detective over lunch. They were photographs of his wife and her lover. He had hoped it wasn’t true; but now, staring blankly at the truth, he suddenly had all the proof he needed, and it made him sick to his stomach.

The red wine he’d had at lunch, usually a bad choice for him, seemed to blur his vision. Even the slovenly brittle-haired woman at the Driver’s License Bureau said he needed glasses when he failed the eye exam. Consequently, with an eye toward regulations, she curtly refused to issue a new license with a more recent picture ID. People had begun questioning and making wisecracks about his driver’s license. He didn’t even resemble his own ID anymore.

A guy he knew from the twenty-second floor jogged by, and Miles gave him the finger in jest. Only it wasn’t in jest. He honestly regarded him as an arrogant prick.

He hesitated before pulling out, as his cell phone had slipped between the seat and the console. With his left hand on the wheel, Miles tried to retrieve the phone with his right when it slipped under the seat, and he said, To hell with it. Thinking all was clear after a brief glance both ways, Miles whipped out across four lanes of traffic. He didn’t make it past the third lane when he was slammed by a Ford F-250 pickup barreling down the street that had been camouflaged by a sport-utility vehicle.

The impact was like a bomb going off in his face. The Jaguar rode close to the ground, and the nose of the truck punched through his passenger window, splaying him with cubes and shards of shattered glass. Miles blacked out at the wheel. When he regained consciousness, he realized his beloved Jag had been pushed in the opposite direction, having jumped the curb onto the sidewalk. He found himself sailing headlong for the front doors of the Arcane Building. He tapped the brakes lightly, as if he were in a dream. People resembling the wild-eyed man of Edvard Munch’s nightmarish painting The Scream had congregated around the front entrance. When he brought the vehicle to a halt only a few feet away from the large glass doors, their terror subsided, and they started cheering and clapping and high-fiving each other.

No more glass, he thought, trying to shake off the hit.

Miles looked around for the source of the blood that was dripping onto his shirt and pants. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw a half-dozen small cuts on his face; otherwise, he felt okay—a little dazed but no major pain. His legs and arms were all right. His head rang, but he seemed fully conscious. All he knew was that somehow he had been saved from certain death—for what final purpose, he had no idea. He was back on bonus time.

Digging for the phone under the seat, he grabbed it tightly this time and put it into his top pocket, then he got out of the car and wandered into the street. Strangers, mostly women on cigarette breaks, rushed up to him.

Are you okay? they asked in unison.

Best as could be expected, he replied somewhat formally under the circumstances. He wasn’t used to being addressed by strangers on the street, in broad daylight. It was a jolt to his integrity having them observe him in this state of guilt and utter disarray. He looked warily over at the other guy now stumbling out of his vehicle, and dropped his head in despair, knowing he was at fault. Those damn photographs, he thought, his latent anger on the edge of erupting. If I hadn’t come here today to meet with that sleazy private dick, this never would have happened. Where’s my head at? I just pulled out in front of a fucking truck!

Exposed like a common workingman without his high-class wheels and the plush transportation that separated him from the masses, from the streets, and the ever-present danger lurking at every corner, he felt disoriented. Panic set in, and the nerve endings in his brain ignited. Without a car you were good as naked in the street, an object of ridicule and suspicion. Was he getting delusional?

Other people who had seen the crash, or heard about it, came out of the building and stood around in circles, summing up the situation like ancient soothsayers—and just about as reliable. They stared at him as if he was some sort of madman, and he felt the conviction of his soul like never before.

He crossed the street to where the pickup had come to rest. The engine was smoking. The owner of the vehicle, who didn’t happen to be driving it, came running over to meet him. Miles recognized the man. He was the VP of a rival agency on 25. Apparently, he had been waiting for the driver to deliver his truck. The man was half an hour late, which explained his excessive speed.

If he’d been doing the speed limit, Kevin—as Miles remembered the man’s name from years of elevator small talk—the accident would have never happened, he said quietly, confidently, so the driver of the truck couldn’t hear what he’d said. Considering the circumstances, with me not getting across the goddamn street fast enough, the boy did all he could. But, son of a bitch, the law is the law, I’ll buy the ticket. Speeding or no speeding, he had the undisputed right of way.

Okay . . . I’m really sorry, Chris. I can’t believe this happened.

It’s my fault, obviously, but amazingly enough, I feel fine—just late, as usual. The daily grind is eating me alive. I need to make a few phone calls, if you’ll excuse me, Kevin.

Sure, no problem. I need to call my insurance company anyway.

Miles returned to the mangled vehicle to fish out his wallet from the glove compartment, which he pried open amid the wreckage of broken glass and twisted steel. He could have cried. This was critical. It signaled a turn in his luck. He lived on luck, and most of all, he couldn’t live without it. Looking up the numbers he needed, thinking suddenly of clients he was supposed to meet this afternoon that he’d now be forced to stand up—one of them for the third time. Oh crap, he thought, I can hear that complaint coming.

The driver of the truck stood erect. His arms were pushed forward, and he seemed unable to move them. He was young and tall and appeared stoned—his glassy, watery eyes looking away from eye contact and into the immediate future. The air bags had nailed him good. He had on short sleeves, and both arms were extremely red and swollen. He told the paramedics who came whirling onto the scene that he couldn’t move his arms. They cleaned him up and gave him something for the pain. At least, in this case, the driver got what he deserved . . . some wake-up pain, thought Miles as he saw the four young paramedics heading in his direction. They asked him if he was okay. Not believing him, however, due to the severity of the wreckage, they formed a circle around him with their butch haircuts, and asked a series of consciousness questions: name, Social Security number, home address, etc. When they offered to clean up his face, he declined treatment and walked away.

Miles called a cab, rather than trouble his wife or daughter. Both had cars, but tracking them down would be too time consuming. He didn’t have the energy to explain his situation. He worried about interrupting some important shopping mission and the verbal wrath he might incur for his imposition into their busy afternoon. Regardless of the circumstances, their agenda would come first.

At home, Christopher Miles told his wife, Luana, how the accident happened. His rage simmered, but he suppressed the urge to expose the photographs confirming her infidelity. At first, she seemed sympathetic to his plight, which he appreciated. She brushed her dark hair back and soothed his conscience with a few soft-spoken words. However, by her third martini, she mocked him with belligerent gestures and told him he deserved to be hit because of the way he drove. Giving up his weak defense in self-pity and self-disdain, Miles watched her pour a double whiskey on the rocks, and light another cigarette. She smoked with a devotion, a passion that applied anywhere else might have made her rich and famous, which is what she secretly felt entitled to be, anyway, and quite possibly could have been, if only he hadn’t gotten in her way. She’d been a singer in a popular band before they met, and regretted ever letting her all-consuming love for him get in her way of stardom, riches, and power; the same power she felt so powerless to exercise against him—the madman of history and philosophy with a tunnel vision to the world outside his precious business so narrow, so binding, he had literally squeezed the lifeblood right out of her.

On his way to the master bath to take a shower, Luana blew smoke in his face. That’s for good luck, you bastard. She smiled her slanted don’t fuck with me smile (which really meant in her cosmic mind, take all you want of me), and yet he walked away.

At that moment, when a comic reply might have gone a long way toward easing the tension between them—possibly even inducing a pent-up storm of passionate intercourse in the candlelit privacy of their courtly bedroom—Miles said nothing. He probably despised his unhappy wife more than he ever had. Was it her deriding tone that tormented him so deeply, or the fact, now revealed in pictorial format, that she had taken a young lover? That ingratiating tone—these days anyway, when the pressure of the world seemed loaded on his shoulders like the stone pillars of an ancient ruin—made him erupt as if he were an ammunition depot of emotion, a neutron bomb just waiting to detonate. Hidden in the caustic light of the bathroom, he dredged up memories of drunken, violent interludes induced by that not-so-timorous slurred voice, that arrogant, prideful, cocksure tone that he just wanted to slap right off her face. Then his evil mood would pass,