South Pacific Affair

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For those—and they are but a tiny few—who never even think of buying a return trip ticket

Chapter I

In the sharp moonlight, Ruita's skin was a creamy brown framed by the jet-black blur of hair crumpled beneath her head. Her loose cotton print blouse probably was made in Japan, and the tailored walking shorts had come all the way from the French Riviera. Her hands played with the tiny white flower in the dark hair, and she seemed to be studying the tender gully her neat breasts made pushing against the blouse.

I sprawled beside Ruita, smelling the exciting perfume of her body—trying not to remember other perfumes I'd known. My eyes were also on the jutting molds of her bosom, and I wasn't listening to her small talk about methods of increasing the mother-of-pearl mussels in the lagoon. It didn't matter I wasn't listening... she really wasn't hearing her own words any more than either of us heard the wind in the palm trees, the sea thundering and hissing over the reef before us, or the small, clean noises of the busy crabs and rats in the sand and bush.

We were there neither to talk nor to listen—you don't take mats and lay in the moonlight to chatter about mussels. She talked to cover the awkwardness as she waited for me.

I closed my eyes and wondered what the hell to do—with women I cared about I always played the fool. Why couldn't I make love to Ruita and marry her? Or love her and forget her? Probably hundreds of popaas had sprawled on this very beach during the last century with “native” girls, and I was the only clown making a problem, a “thing” out of it. All the greedy popaas—bastards to their teeth.