Welcome to Paradise (7 page)

He winked at Zara, and she laughed in return. “We’ll do that,” she said. “See you in a bit. Come on, Melody. You’ll feel a lot better once you’ve rested and cooled off.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Maria-Elena said plaintively to Mira.

“Alma said there’d be a privy,” Mira said with a tired sigh. “Probably around back. Let’s look.”

When the men joined them again under the willows and cottonwoods lining the stream, Melody had recovered some of her spirits. All the women had their boots and socks off and were soaking their tired feet in the creek, drinking ice-cold well water from the enamelware tin cups that they’d found in the back of the wagon next to the lunch. And Danny was already set up across from them, taking in the scene with his camera.

“Saved the sandwiches for you,” Zara told Stanley as he sat down next to her. “We decided that getting cool came first.”

“That looks like a great idea,” Gabe said, taking a spot between Mira and Maria-Elena despite Melody’s inviting smile. All the men began stripping off their own footwear with eager haste.

“Ah,” Gabe sighed as his feet hit the water. “Cold. Beautiful.” He took the cup of water Mira held out to him and took a deep swig. “At least they gave us good boots,” he said.

“You’re thankful for these
boots?”
Melody asked with disgust.

“I sure am,” Gabe responded firmly, receiving a thick ham sandwich and an apple from Mira with a smile of thanks. “If they’d gone period with those, we’d all have had blisters by now, and I’d be busy doctoring you all up with my limited first-aid supplies, instead of relaxing. And imagine trying to do everything we have to do when your feet hurt. That would’ve made this a whole lot harder.”

“I guess,” Melody said doubtfully. “They’re so
ugly,
though.” She looked with disgust at the clunky brown leather things with their many rows of thick laces. “And we’re supposed to wear them every day?
One pair of shoes?
We don’t even get sandals?”

“How many pairs do you have at home?” Kevin asked lazily, lying back on the grassy stream bank. “Tell the truth, now.” He took a bite out of his apple and gave Melody a stern look.

“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred?”

“You have a hundred pairs of shoes?” Martin asked in astonishment.

“Maybe more,” Melody confessed. “Maybe two hundred. I haven’t counted.”

“Hey. Looking good’s serious business,” Kevin said at Martin’s snort of disgust. “Why, how many pairs do you have, Martin? Counting boots. Don’t forget those. Because I
know
you’ve got boots to do all your manly practicing in.”

“No more than seven or eight,” Martin replied proudly. “I make sure I really need something before I add to my possessions. A hundred pairs of shoes seems like excessive consumerism to me. Think of all the resources they use. Arlene doesn’t have many more than that either, so you can’t tell me that women need them.”

“Yes, but think of all the beauty Melody adds to the landscape,” Kevin pointed out. “It all balances out, surely. How about you, Mira? Got a hundred pairs of shoes?”

“No,” she smiled. “Twenty, maybe.”

“But here’s the $64,000 question,” Zara called out from her spot at the end of the line. “How many do
you
have, Glamour Boy?”

“Ah,” Kevin said, waggling his eyebrows, mischievous brown eyes dancing. “That’s telling. And I don’t want Martin to report me to the Resource Police.
More than Mira, fewer than Melody.
And that’s all I’m going to say.”

“Do you want a sandwich, Danny?” Mira asked once she’d finished distributing the lunch. “We’ve got a couple more here. More apples, too.”

“No, I’m good,” the cameraman said, taking a swig from his water bottle. “Just ignore me.”

“How are you eating, though?” she persisted.

He sighed. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.
But OK, just this once.
I’ll be switching off with the other guys. We
get our breaks and meals
,
don’t worry about that
. Union rules. We have everything we need back at the production base.”

The group of mobile homes housing Cliff and the numerous production
crew
, Mira knew. She’d never been sure where it was located. The cameramen just appeared and disappeared, seemingly at random. The only constant was that whatever they had done at the camp, there had always been someone filming. Except when they were in their own cabins, but she guessed that was about to change.

“How many of you are assigned to us?” she asked, curious about the logistics of it. “Are you going to be in the cabin too? And what about at night?”

“Eight for each camp,” Danny said. “Day and night, inside and outside, just about everyplace but the outhouse. It’s what Cliff said. If you don’t want us to see it, don’t do it.”

“Wow, all night?” Zara asked lazily, leaning back on her elbows and paddling her feet in the water. “What do you think is going to be happening? True confessions? Knife fights? Group sex?”

“You never know,” Danny said with a grin. “One can only hope.”

They all felt better after they’d eaten. “OK,” Stanley said resignedly, drying his feet off with his socks and beginning to pull things on again. “Break’s over, people. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Couldn’t we, like, camp out tonight and start work tomorrow once we aren’t so tired?” Melody asked. She was lying down on her back now, her blouse unbuttoned to the top of her chemise to reveal a generous amount of cleavage, her skirt pulled up past her knees to show off her shapely legs, and Mira could see that Danny had his camera focused on her. Well, no question she was the most photogenic woman out here. She somehow managed to look good even in these frumpy clothes. She even had pretty
feet.

“What would we eat?” Zara asked. “We’d have to set up a whole camp.
Just as much work.
And what about the animals? Let’s go. Up.” She gave Maria-Elena a look that had the girl fumbling with her own shoes and socks. Mira was already there, and the two of them went ahead with the men to check out the homestead, which Mira had barely taken in before in her haste to find the outhouse.

“We’ve got a well, and a privy,” Zara said practically to Mira and Gabe once they were standing in front of the cabin again. “And a cabin.”

“All the necessities,” Mira agreed wryly.

“Then let’s bite the bullet and look inside.”

Gabe reached for a piece of paper tacked to the cabin door, which hung a bit drunkenly from its leather hinges. “You’ve been fortunate enough,” he read aloud, “to find an abandoned cabin on your land, left by the last unsuccessful occupants, who failed to improve the land during their five years and forfeited their homestead.”

He raised his eyebrows at the two women. “Lucky us. After you.” He stepped aside for them to enter. Mira walked in behind Zara, and nearly gagged on the smell. She turned around hastily and cannoned straight into Gabe.

“Whoa,” he said, taking her by the upper arms to steady her, then pulling her across the threshold again, Zara close behind them.

“All righty then,” Zara said grimly. “We’ve got our work cut out for us. How did they manage to get it that nasty? That took some effort.”

Stanley came around from the back of the cabin. “Looks like we’ve all got some work to do,” he reported. “Lean-to back there. We fix that up, make some shakes and nail them over the holes, we’ll have us a chicken coop, storage for some feed. Partition it off, we can put the tools in there too,” he mused. “I’ll get going on that. Because if we don’t get those chickens into some good shelter by nightfall, they’re going to get eaten by the coyotes, dog or no dog.” He gave Daisy a quick thump on the shoulder. “Don’t want to give you too much to do, girl.”

“Want to give me a hand, Kevin?” he asked. “We have to start unloading the wagon anyway, find the tools, at least.”

“I’ll do that,” Gabe offered. “Find the tools, I mean. I want to get the axe, start chopping some wood so the women can get that stove going. Maybe you could help me with that, Martin. Because I think you’re going to be needing plenty of hot water.” He looked at Zara questioningly, and she nodded.

“If we’re going to be sleeping in there tonight,” she said, “we need to get to work on it. Can you pull out some cleaning stuff for us too?”

 
“Sure. Come show me.”

“You come too, Mira,” Zara ordered. “Help me figure out what we need.”

They left Maria-Elena and Melody standing disconsolately near the cabin and walked around to the back of the wagon with Gabe. He grabbed the side, swung a leg up, and vaulted inside in one smooth movement.

“Be still my heart,” Zara drawled. “That was pretty good. And let me just say, purely as a connoisseur, that’s one mighty nice body you’ve got there, Dr. Gabe. If I were twenty years younger, Hank might have to worry about me being over here with you.”

Gabe grinned down at her. “Maybe he still should. You’re a good-looking woman yourself. And I’m a sucker for a beautiful voice.”

Too bad she didn’t have one, then, Mira thought wistfully. Zara was right. That
had
been an athletic move, and he’d looked so good doing it. The dark brown canvas pants and long-sleeved blue work shirt suited him. He really did look like he’d stepped out of 1885.

“Right,” he said more seriously, beginning to sort through tools and hand them down to Kevin and Martin, who’d come up to join them. “What do you ladies need?”

“A shovel, first,” Mira offered. “And then a broom and dustpan.”

“Buckets, lye soap, rags,”
Zara
added. “Lots of each. Give me those masks and the bleach too. I’m getting the point of those now.”

He found them everything they needed after a bit of a search. “Westward ho,” Zara said, picking up the buckets with soap, bleach, and rags stuffed inside, while Mira grabbed the tools.

“Yep. That is one hell of an attractive man,” Zara mused as the two of them walked toward the cabin with their booty. She gave one last glance back at the wagon, where Gabe was still sorting through tools.

“Yeah,” Mira agreed cautiously. “His brother’s more handsome, but . . .”

“Maybe,” Zara acknowledged. “But I’ve always gone more for that rugged look, myself. And the quiet, intense type, too.
Mmm
, all
that focus
. Not to mention all those anatomy classes. He knows how to do a thing or two, bet you anything. He could show a woman a
real
good time. But what, you like Alec better? Too much of a pretty boy for me.”

“I have a boyfriend,” Mira reminded her.

“Honey,” Zara said firmly, “if God hadn’t meant you to look at good-looking men, He wouldn’t have made them that fine.”

“All right,” she added resignedly, bracing herself outside the cabin. “Let’s get to this. You ready?” she asked Danny, who had been following the two of them with his camera since their first entry into the cabin. “Got your mask on?”

“You’re supposed to ignore me,” he reminded her. “Pretend I’m not here.”

“OK,” Zara said. “If you pass out from the stink, we’ll step over your body.” She climbed the wooden steps to the cabin, untied her sunbonnet and, after looking around, laid it over the rail of the small porch. Then pulled one of the masks over her head and handed one to Mira along with a rag. “Tie this over your hair too. No point getting any dirtier than we have to. Hey, Maria-Elena! Melody!” she called. “Come on over here.”

“You two go find some kindling, some branches we can burn till Gabe gets firewood chopped,” she instructed. “We’re going to want a fire first thing.”

“Where?” Melody asked. “And what are we supposed to get?”

Zara sighed. “In the woods. Dry wood on the ground.
Little pieces to start the fire, and bigger pieces.
Come on. You’ve been doing this for a week.”

“How do we bring them back without that carry-
thingie
?” Melody objected.

“We could put them in our apron,” Maria-Elena decided, lifting one large white end.

“That’s thinking,” Zara said approvingly. “Go do that, while Mira and I get started in here.”

“Ready?” she asked Mira as the others set off. “Once more into the breach, then.”

They propped the door open with a branch to begin to air the cabin out and add a bit more light to the dim interior, took a deep breath of outdoor air, pulled the masks over noses and mouths, and stepped inside.

Mira disengaged her mind and began to attack the piles of animal droppings, gnawed bones, and debris with bleach and shovel, dropping the trash into her bucket, then carrying each load outside and dumping it among the stand of trees at one side of the cabin. Meanwhile, Zara was sweeping cobwebs and dirt from the rough
log
walls. By the time the others came back with the wood and dropped it into the big box nailed into the floor by the stove, the worst of the mess was gone, the little cabin wasn’t smelling quite so foul, and Mira and Zara had decided it was safe to remove the masks.

“
Eww
,” Melody said, looking around. “Gross.”

“You should have seen it before.” Zara turned the handle on the large cast-iron stove and opened the door to look inside. “Full of ashes,” she said resignedly. “Go see if Gabe’s pulled out the stove tools, would you, Mira?”

“I’ll go,” Melody said brightly.

Zara laughed. “I know you would. But I want you to go up there into those lofts and sweep down the ceiling. And Mira needs some fresh air.”

All four of the men were standing around a pile of large felled logs that stood in one end of the clearing, Daisy sitting to one side with her big head cocked as if she were supervising. Mira watched together with the cameraman as Stanley and Gabe took their places on either end of one of the logs, then bent deeply from the knees and hefted it into place on twin stumps.

“Considerate of them to give us all this seasoned wood, and a way to set it up to start sawing it,” Gabe said as Mira approached. “We would’ve had a job, otherwise.”

“We’ll still have a job,” Stanley corrected. “Give me a hand with this saw, Kevin. Start taking some chunks from this thing for those shakes, and for firewood, too.”

“What can I do for you?” Gabe asked Mira, taking his work gloves off and tossing them onto a log.

“Maybe she just came over to admire good-looking men doing manly things,” Kevin said, picking up the other end of the big two-man saw. “No, wait. That would be Melody.”

Mira couldn’t help laughing
,
he was so dead-on
. “I need a few more things from the wagon. I’m not sure what you’ve unloaded yet.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Gabe said. He smiled down at her, reached out with a thumb and wiped a smudge from her cheek. “You look like you’ve been playing in the dirt.”

Her hands flew to her face. “I must be a mess.” She picked up the edge of her apron, used the clean underside and scrubbed it over her nose and cheeks. “Better?”

“Better,” he agreed. He set out for the wagon. “What do you need?”

“Umm . . .” She was still a little rattled, her heart beating faster from his touch. She was going to have to get over this stupid crush. It was one thing for Maria-Elena to follow him with her eyes like a lovesick puppy. Mira wasn’t eighteen, and she should be past this. And if he caught on, she’d be mortified. Or if the cameraman—Steve, she thought his name was—did. That might be even worse.

She pulled the rag from her head, saw with horror that it was dark with dirt and smeared with cobwebs. Shook it out and retied it hastily. “Um, stove tools. And kettles,” she realized, “to heat the water.
 
That’ll do for now, but we’ll need kitchen stuff as soon as we get the cabin clean.”

“We’ll unpack everything and bring it in for you,” he promised. “Whatever you need.”

“Oh, good,” Zara said when Mira returned with the stove tools, Gabe following in her wake carrying the two heavy kettles. “Put them on the floor, please, Gabe. I’m going to have to scrub this stove down before I set anything on it. Thanks for bringing them in.”

“No problem,” he said, setting the kettles to one side of the stove. “Anything else you need, just send Mira out to me, and I’ll get it.”

“Mira, huh?” she said dryly.

A scream from overhead had them all looking up. They heard the
clunk
of Melody’s broom falling to the floor, her agonized yells.

“
Ack
! Ick! Spider!” she squealed. “Oh, my
God!
It’s
on
me!”

Zara sighed. “Go up and take over from her, Maria-Elena.
Unless you’re scared of spiders too.
We need to get them out of those logs, or they’re going to be falling on all of us, all night long. And don’t worry, I’ll find something equally nasty for Melody to do,” she added with a smirk.

Mira was already on her knees with the small shovel and brush, cleaning the ashes out of the stove and dumping them into her refuse bucket. “OK,” she said. “We can start a fire now.”

“Need any help?” Gabe asked.

“Nope. What we need is more firewood,” Zara said pointedly.

He laughed and turned to leave. “I’ll get to it, then.”

“Here, Melody.” Zara handed the bucket of ashes to the girl, coming down the ladder now, her face tear-streaked and as grubby as the rest of her. “Go dump this down the privy.”

“Why?”

Zara sighed. “Because it keeps the smell down, remember? Just go do it.”

“Why do we all have to do what you say?” Melody asked mutinously. “I don’t remember electing you the boss.”

Mira hadn’t thought of Zara as a celebrity since that first day, but now she saw the diva coming out as the older woman stared Melody haughtily down. “Do you want to take over?” Zara challenged. “You think you know what needs to get done?”

“Well, no, but I still don’t see why . . .” Melody began to argue.

“You choose, then,” Zara ordered. “Want to dump those ashes, or go back up and sweep spiders?”

Mira picked up the clean bucket. “I’ll go get some water,” she said, fleeing the scene.

By the time they saw Melody again, Zara had the stove scrubbed and a fire laid, and Mira had filled both kettles and set the water to heat. Even Maria-Elena had finished with her sweeping, and Zara had set her to work on scrubbing the grimy windows. Meanwhile, the ripping sound of the saw outside had given way to the
thunk
of the axe.

“That’s so disgusting,” Melody said, coming back with the empty bucket and a shudder.

“You must have taken the scenic route. That was the longest privy visit ever. And it’d get a lot more disgusting without the ashes,” Zara said. “Or going in the woods. Now
that
would start to get disgusting. Just be thankful they gave us a privy.”

“What about toilet paper, though?” Melody asked. “Shouldn’t we get that out of the wagon? I used some Kleenex I had in my pocket, but . . .”

Zara laughed. “I didn’t think you were listening much back there. You weren’t supposed to bring anything with you. And there’s no toilet paper.”

“What?”
Melody looked even more horrified.

“That’s what that Montgomery Ward catalog is hanging there for,” Mira pointed out.

“I thought that was, like, reading material!” Melody shuddered. “I’m supposed to use that to wipe . . . to wipe with? Pages from a
catalog?”

“Better than leaves,” Zara pointed out.

“Leaves,” Melody moaned. “Catalog pages. Oh, yuck. Oh, gross.”

“Let me just ask you,” Zara began, opening the stove door cautiously to create a draft, then wider to add more of the deadfall wood. “It’s going to take forever to heat this water,” she muttered. Then looked at Melody again. “Let me ask you,” she repeated, “what exactly did you think it was going to be like out here? Had you ever seen one of these shows?”

“They don’t show them going to the
bathroom,”
Melody complained. “Not being able to wear any makeup is bad enough. Anyway, I didn’t think it was going to be this . . . this . . .”

“Authentic?” Mira asked with a smile. “Yeah. That’s kind of the worst, isn’t it?
Look at it this way
,
they gave us tampons
. Now, you want to talk about gross . . . What would they have used, back in those days?”

“Rags,” Maria-Elena said with a shudder, turning from her task. “My mom told me, when I . . .” She blushed. “When I needed them.”

“That’s one I don’t have to worry about, anyway,” Zara said with satisfaction. “Age has its privileges.”