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might be having a heart attack that their shitty piecemeal insurance would not cover. So be it.
    Then Ann showed him the bag of their stolen, about-to-be-stolen-from-them money.
    “You could be disbarred,” Richard whispered.
    “I’m tired of the law,” she countered.
    *   *   *
    By bedtime the next night they were on a plane, hurtling over the vast light grid of Los Angeles, the plane flinging itself into the darkness of sky and ocean that was farther west. Ann knew enough about the law to know they weren’t worth pursuing out of the country. Criminal intent in this case was a comfortably gray area.
    Ann looked around and wondered, did other people have a fantasy of how life should be lived? Would any of them pick up and change their circumstances if given the opportunity? She had the fantasy part down, but did she have the guts?
    They clinked umbrella-stabbed cocktails at thirty thousand feet. “Think of it as our first vacation.” Ann took another sip of her drink.
    In the old days, California was the end of the line, but now, with the forces of globalization, one could just keep flinging oneself farther and farther west, hopefully landing somewhere that fulfilled one’s dreams of happiness before one ended up back in the place one started.

 
    Unnamed Atoll Somewhere in the Tuamotu Archipelago
     
    Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
    —M ELVILLE, Moby-Dick
    The water surrounding the atoll was the green that green would be if it were drained from a bowl and only its ghost residue remained against the white porcelain. The memory of green, a promise of green. From the plane, the water appeared so translucent as to be almost invisible. The concept of a desert isle became concrete in Ann’s mind. After all, that’s what she specialized in with her clients—turning emotions into concrete plans. Sometimes it was enough just to have a plan. Which this wasn’t. This was pure impulse.
    Looking down on the bleached, arid white of her doughnut-shaped future, conveying as it did a terrible sense of solitude, isolated and alone in its universe of water, she was afraid the concrete would not work for Richard and herself. What was this thing, the pursuit of happiness, that moved out of reach as you approached it? Was the emphasis on the wrong word? Was it simply about pursuit? Did said happiness evaporate when one got within proximity of it, moving off to lure one from yet another difficult, forward location? A fata morgana of the soul? Or, as in their case, did the chance at happiness just take a headlong dive off a cliff?
    They climbed out of the small plane and crawled unsteadily off the wing, cramped legs and aching backs from the long flight from the coast, the longer overnight stay in crowded, noisy Papeete, where they had sat in the sweltering cab, stuck in traffic on the lagoon-side road, diesel fumes spewing from the truck in front. The buildings were defeated and ratty, patinaed by weather. Oily and trash-strewn water lapped at the docks. Tourists moved in bored raids on the stores. It could have been a particularly ripe neighborhood around San Pedro or Long Beach. Paradise seemed very far away.
    As soon as they landed, Richard’s cell had begun ringing—Javi.
    “Don’t answer it,” Ann said.
    Richard looked miserably at the flashing caller ID screen, then switched to vibrate, and every time it did, he winced. Finally, Ann grabbed the phone and flung it out the window of the cab. It bounced on the sidewalk and plopped into the viscous water.
    “We can’t afford roaming charges,” she said.
    That night they couldn’t get to the restaurant the hotel chef had recommended (a matter of honor in the profession that he sent them to a true foodie place) because the main streets in Papeete were shut down, protesters clogging the thoroughfares, choking traffic to a standstill. They waved signs and banners in French