Rajaputra contemplated the request for a few seconds, then seemed to realize the gun gesture would work only if he himself were the shooter. I would steal his fire if he let me kill the dragon myself with his favorite.45. Mine would be the glory. Other staff might see the execution and think I was more manly.
“Fine, fine,” he said hurriedly. By now he was quite transparently afraid I might in fact cling to the firearm idea, which he himself had foolishly handed to me on a platter. “Yes. Injection. Do it today! And send the skin to Andre in Tokyo. I want a jacket and two pairs of boots. Size 26 men’s.”
Then he returned to Sharon Stone, who by this time was lying on her back on a towel and pulling up her legs one by one into vatayanasana, the wind-relieving pose.
I ducked into staff quarters to consult with the chief animal keeper, my confidant in matters of herp care. We did the math and decided on an appropriate dose of sedative; we made calls; I filled a syringe; we pulled on our protective legwear and, along with two assistant keepers, marched over to Komo’s indoor enclosure, where the lizard was by then slumbering. He had consumed about 40 percent of his body weight in a single sitting; seeing my patient was full of deer, I upped the dosage.
It took Sharon Stone almost a week to realize that her situation was less than ideal. The revelation came when Rajaputra presented her with a diamond ring hidden in a chicken pot pie (he was convinced the pot pie was a rare American delicacy, but his Japanese chef, annoyed to be asked to prepare such plebeian fare, had actually ordered the pies online from Marie Callender’s). When Sharon Stone remarked that the ring was beautiful but closely resembled a symbol of engagement, Rajaputra told her she was free to choose whether they married in four weeks or six. After a brief bark of laughter, Sharon Stone sobered up; she could see the billionaire was not joining in her merriment. She told him with regret that she had obligations back home, to her career, her fans and above all — remembering in the nick of time a tidbit from the tabloids — her adopted son Roan. He was still a toddler and was staying with his grandmother, she added quickly, at the moment.
Generously Rajaputra conceded her son Roan could be brought to join them. But perhaps the boy was not necessary? For he would give her many more sons, he said, and better ones too; she might be well into her forties, but his sperm were like superheroes. They could go anywhere and do anything.
“Well, you know,” said Sharon Stone distractedly, both amazed and insulted, now that she thought of it, that she was actually being seriously mistaken for a woman in her forties, “he’s my son, after all. I do love the kid.”
“You may have him, then,” said Rajaputra regally.
Sharon Stone wondered what else to say. Until now she had thought the billionaire highly eccentric, true; but she had not worried too much about it, for extreme wealth was well known to distort. The fact that he wore an unsheathed dagger tucked into his trousers at all times, the fact that he allowed no plants, vegetables or fruit to touch his skin and bathed in a solution of isopropyl alcohol, the fact that he kissed a laminated picture of Roy Orbison every night before bed and liked to pretend to be a mewling infant during sexual intercourse — all these had struck her as essentially harmless. She saw now that she had misjudged.
She felt it best to go along for the moment. There was no point in open conflict. So she smiled and chose late November for the ceremony.
That night she sought out Yang in his office in the east wing of the mansion and begged. He agreed to assist. He had foreseen this possibility. Relief flooded through her, for what if the billionaire’s staff had been loyal to him? She threw her arms around Yang and thanked him profusely. She would never forget his kindness.
This was how it came to be that Sharon Stone left the island in the middle of the night, first in a skiff, then in a large power yacht. She was smuggled out of the compound at 3:00 am by Yang and me, guided on foot through the backwoods of the property, the beams of flashlights bouncing around over tree limbs and vines and her Ked-shod feet, mosquitoes stabbing at the back of her neck. Finally we emerged onto a beach, where a few hundred yards from the shore the yacht was anchored, and rowed her out over the reefs in a shallow wooden boat. On the yacht she hugged us and shook our hands again, desperately grateful; she offered us a thick gold necklace Rajaputra had given her, as well as her engagement ring. Yang declined, embarrassed; I broke it to her that the diamond was a CZ.
She smiled sadly at us and promised to drop us an email when she reached home safely. Then she was ushered belowdecks into a dark storage room — a cautionary measure, lest a nearby police boat draw close and demand an inspection, for the authorities were in Rajaputra’s pocket.
The room had a porthole but through it nothing was visible save the black of the sky. Sharon Stone could make out no features inside, either, so she sat down on the foam they had laid out for her on the floor and soon curled up and fell asleep.
When she woke in the early hours of the morning she was conscious of a rank smell; it reminded her of the stale body odor caked into the blue floor mats at her yoga gym. Then she sat up and saw the mesh of the cage. Komo was crouched within, his large flattish head only a few feet from her face.
She stifled a cry. The lizard regarded her stoically. After a time he flicked out his tongue. He seemed to be drooling.
Rajaputra had informed her of the lizard’s death on the day of its ordering, and she remembered a pang of regret. She had suspected the demise of the animal was her fault, and she had tried to forget it. Yet she was confident this lizard was the same one. Sitting on the foam mattress, feeling a little queasy from the boat’s motion, she had time to study it. It wasn’t exactly cute, but there was something endearing about the big guy, she wrote me later in an email. He had a certain calmness she liked very much. He was sturdy.
She felt grateful he had not been killed. A sense of euphoria washed over her, for both the lizard and herself. She would never complain again, she told herself, would never measure herself against more successful people. Just living was success enough. She was the luckiest woman in the world.
Presently there was a knock on her door and a sailor entered with a plastic tray of food.
“Is it safe in here with him?” she asked, but the sailor only bowed and nodded. He did not speak English.
She put some of her rice noodles in the cage with the lizard, who looked hungry, but he did not touch them.
“OK,” she said, nodding. “I know you’re more of a meat guy. I just thought I’d offer.”
Later another sailor came in. He looked Indian to Sharon Stone, since he wore a turban. He bowed and smiled, then bustled around the cage, checking the door latches and the lizard’s water bowl. But maybe he was not Indian: Did Indonesians also wear turbans sometimes? It was too confusing. And though she felt exuberant in the knowledge of her happy escape, she was still too shy to ask him.
Before this trip she had barely heard of Indonesia, and then last night Yang had told her it was the fourth-biggest country in the world, people-wise. And India was over a billion strong. Along with China, it was about to take over the world, Yang had said, slightly apologetic. In just a few years America would be a minor country, with nothing left of its brief foray into world domination but mountains of plastic and staggering debt. Its national parks and forests would be sold off to richer countries, and what remained of its crumbling cities would be turned into theme parks for foreign tourists. Who knew? She had always thought India was a kind of quaint little place with spicy food, where everyone did yoga and the women drew red spots between their eyes, a shame because otherwise they were pretty. The men had cute accents but bad facial-hair stylings. A good makeup guy could do wonders with the entire country.