Page 24 of The Paradise Problem

“What?”

“Wouldn’t I have a ring? I didn’t even think to buy one!”

“Oh, right.” I reach into my pocket and pull a ring box out, setting it onto the console between us. “There you go.”

Anna stares down at it. “This is so surreal.”

“What’s that?

“This just—even as a little girl,” she says breathily. “This is exactly how I dreamed it would happen.”

“Are you ever serious?”

Her smile straightens and she gapes at me. “You’ve told me I’m supposed to be a married medical student on the way back from Cambodia. I’m wearing actual Chanel and two days ago had my labia waxed by a woman with hands bigger than yours. My fake husband just dropped a ring box onto the console between us and said, ‘There you go.’ And you want me to be serious?”

I have no idea what to say to this. My brain is still stuck on the word labia.

“If you’re wishing you chose someone else,” she says, picking up the box, “I know the feeling. I made the same wish two days ago while having my upper lip threaded.”

“It’ll be fine,” I say. “The point is, we’re getting divorced in a few months anyway, so we don’t have to seem very close. The more distant we seem, the better.” I look at the velvet box between us. “Are you going to put the ring on?”

She creaks the box open and then immediately snaps it shut, dropping it on the console between us as if it burned her.

“I can’t wear that,” she says, voice shaking.

“Why not?”

“That diamond is like… the size of my nipple.”

I find myself fighting a laugh. “Jesus Christ.”

“I thought the necklace was bad, but this is obscene. Like, if we crashed into the ocean that thing would drag me straight to the bottom.”

“What if I told you it’s fake?”

She looks at me. “Is it?”

“Yes.”

She narrows her eyes, and I hear it, too, the way I paused a beat too long. “Are you lying?”

“Just put it on, Green.” I lift my chin to the box. “We’re taking off soon and it could slide into the interior of your seat. They’ll have to disassemble the entire thing to get the ring out.”

“Why would they bother if it’s a fake diamond?”

I exhale a laugh, sending a hand down my face. It’s going to be a long flight.

Eight

ANNA

I think, across my lifetime, I’ve now spent less time in school than I have on this plane. And yet the flight from LA to Singapore isn’t even the longest part of this journey. In fact, when we land in Singapore, we are met with a private escort who drives us from the airport to the ferry port, where we take a boat to Batam, Indonesia. Unbearable is a relative term, but I think it’s safe to say that it is unbearably hot and humid in Indonesia. I’m used to living by an ocean, but this is like nothing I’ve ever felt, and by the time we’ve boarded yet another flight there, which is on an amphibious plane that takes off from land but descends onto water, both I and my adorable Chanel shorts set are showing prominent wrinkles of defeat. I’d love to change but I have no idea where my robot luggage is. I assume it’s followed us of its own volition somehow.

I was worried that we’d have to scrounge for food during rushed layovers and random bus trips, so for all the dummies like me out there, know this: the rich don’t travel like the rest of us do. West and I were fed and liquored up every moment of the flight we weren’t sleeping in our fully flat, first-class beds. The car to the ferry was stocked with water, wine, beer, sandwiches, and an enormous platter of fresh fruit upon which I descended like a vampire on a pulsing, nubile throat. The amphibious plane looks like a rubber duck from the outside, but inside it’s all smooth cream leather couches; low, polished wood tables; and yet more booze to lock us firmly into vacation mode.

However, for as much as I would say he could use a stiff drink, West barely had anything. He barely smiled, either, but that’s how he’s always been. And as much as I wanted to be sauced the entire time, I took it easy, too, because the closer we come to the gleaming white sand, the more aware I am that I’m on the job. Everything I’ve seen so far tells me that the money Vivi spent on the clothing in my luggage is a drop in the ocean for this family. The ten-thousand-dollar check that was life-changing for me is nothing to the Westons.

That realization is both intimidating and nauseating. The odds are very high of me spilling wine on an article of clothing that is worth more than my life. I can absolutely imagine I will, at some point, crack an inappropriate joke to someone who turns out to be the leader of a NATO country. I’m probably not going to like anyone there, but I must make them like me anyway. I simply don’t know if I possess that level of moxie inside my underfed, lower-middle-class body.

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