American Backroads
Running Away
7 October 2015
THE DAY HAD COME. I could no longer avoid it.
I’d spent most of September around Seattle getting my necessary checkups, spending time with Maddie and even with Treasure, meeting with friends. And writing. I kept looking at my outline for Becoming the Storm, which I had originally titled Sins of the Father. I knew what was going to happen and I hated it. I kept putting it off. It wouldn’t be this chapter. But then I saw the writing on the wall, as it were.
It was about to happen.
I left Seattle and towed my trailer out to the Oregon Coast. I was camped where I could hear the Pacific crashing against the shore. It was time and I knew who was going to die. I’d known since I introduced the character. It was why I introduced her. It was how I’d built her character. Only there was a problem.
I’d fallen in love with her. And so had everyone else.
I was camped in a rustic park that was all but closed for the season. Power and water were still connected and I chose the site farthest away from other campers and the host site. I would need a place where I could scream and cry without being interrupted. I was plagued by nightmares. Samantha frowned at me in my dreams, unwilling to have someone else make her sacrifice. Hannah turned her back on me. Even Valiant Endeavor looked mournful. I woke up each morning in tears and even set the manuscript aside before I finished the chapter. I couldn’t go on.
I went for a long walk on the beach listening to the crashing waves and letting them drown out my sobs. People don’t really understand what it means when I say my characters are more real to me than some of the people I know. I remembered writing the scene in The Prodigal in which Kate left Tony and disappeared. I’d been a wreck for a week, even though I knew she was coming back. I’d fallen in love with her, too. Losing her reflected the final days of my marriage to Treasure. Only after three impossibly heartbreaking chapters, Kate came back. This time, there would be no miraculous return.
Dead was dead. I’d proven that in For Money or Mayhem. A fellow author I’d met told me her book club read it and argued most of the evening until they finally agreed she had to die. But writing that scene had hurt enough to trigger the events that left me out here on the shore alone.
Thursday morning, October 8, I wrote the scene and then continued for another five thousand words so I wouldn’t have to stop and dwell on it. A miracle had happened. Someone else had died. It was still sad. I still hated it. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t kill my love. She was far too precious to me.
I closed my computer and didn’t write again for two weeks. I sat in that wilderness where I could hear the ocean crashing against the shore and watched my fire. Even writing it as ‘just’ a memory makes me want to open another bottle of wine and live in it.
A Long Time Ago: Not Just Sorrow
I don’t know when or why I became such an emotional person. I guess I always have been and my emotions are nearer to the surface with each year that passes. Having read one of my sad scenes, a fan wrote to me and said, “A man’s face is a garden. It needs to be watered regularly.” But that is not to say that all my emotions are sorrowful.
Treasure and I were ‘older’ when we got married. More experienced. Wiser. I’d been married twice before and couldn’t remember ever being so much in love. Treasure had one behind her and a couple long term live-ins. The smile on her face matched the one on mine. Dan, one of my groomsmen, said I looked drunk. Nikki giggled each time she looked at me.
Being older and wiser, we rationally discussed our relationship—especially, whether or not we wanted children. We agreed we did, but we shouldn’t rush into it. We used protection for the first year while our bosses pushed us to move to Seattle. Treasure thought it was a temporary move and we’d be back in Minneapolis in a year. I thought I’d never shovel snow again. We were both wrong.
We stopped using protection.
And nothing happened.
I mean, even when we were making love and trying to get the baby started, nothing was taking. Since we were older and it didn’t seem to be happening, we pretty much resigned ourselves to not having children and had ‘the talk’. That’s the talk that says, ‘I’m getting too old to safely have a baby. We should stop trying and make sure we don’t get pregnant by accident.’ It was serious. I was going to go get snipped.
An old friend visited town that summer and, of course, we wanted to show him all the wonderful things in Seattle. That meant taking him for a walk. Three miles up the side of a mountain. It was a little more rigorous than we’d planned. He did fine and took the lead. When I got to the top of the trail, he was sitting under a tree reading a book. Next to him was a beautiful, crystal clear lake.
“You been in?” I asked. The temperature was in the 80s and we’d been climbing for two hours.
“Huh-uh.” He shook his head. This was supposed to be an adventure. I stripped off my clothes and dove into the beautiful water.
And died! Not literally, but I thought I was going to die. It was like diving into an ice bath. My heart stopped. My balls crawled up next to my liver. I turned blue. I managed to get out of the water just as Treasure was arriving at our stopping place.
“You swam?” she asked. I nodded. I couldn’t say anything. Treasure stripped off all but her bra and panties and dove into the water. “Ack! Fuck!” she screamed. “You bastard! Get me out of here!”
We had makeup sex that night. It had been a couple of weeks because I’d had a project I was on and then my friend came to visit. The next day, Treasure had to fly back to Minneapolis for a family meeting. Then, when she got home, she was sick. I nursed her back to health and she complained that she thought she was going into menopause. She’d missed her period.
The doctor gave us the real news. She was pregnant. It wasn’t difficult to fix the exact date and time of conception. I’d even made a mention of the incredible sex we’d had after our hike in my journal. I almost never mentioned sex in my journal. We figured our bodies had suddenly woken up screaming, “They’re going to kill us! Quick! Reproduce!”
Nine months later, I held my beautiful daughter in my arms.
I tried to write about the experience in the last chapter of The Prodigal where Tony holds his children for the first time. There simply are no words that I can think of that describe the intensity of that moment. Every single emotion that I’d ever had in my life rushed through me when I cradled her in my arms. Every synapse in my brain exploded. Tears and laughter and love and fear and fierceness all competed in my shrunken brain. There was room for nothing but to marvel at the tiny miracle in my arms.
It’s not just sadness and despair that make me cry. I’m wiping the tears away now as I remember that moment and look forward to when she’ll visit me for Thanksgiving.
Back to the Flight Time
I stood back and looked at my truck and trailer. Everything had been emptied out of them. They were parked on blocks. I had canvas covers sealing them up. I was leaving the home I’d been in for twenty-eight months. I stopped in the office and told them I’d be back in somewhere between four and eight months. I’d let them know.
I was going on an adventure.
“You’ve got your ticket,” I said. “I’ll meet you in Hilo and we’ll have ten days to just run around and explore the Big Island. Don’t forget your bathing suit this time like you did in Florida.”
“Dad! Take it easy,” Maddie laughed. “It’s you who’s flying out tomorrow. I’ve got a month yet.” My daughter was driving me to a cheap hotel next to the airport from which I would begin my great Hawaiian adventure in the morning. In twenty-eight months, I’d been in forty-four states and three Canadian provinces. I’d traveled 55,000 miles. I’d had nine lovers. And suddenly it felt like I was just starting out. Everything I needed was in my backpack and computer bag.
Maddie hugged me and kissed me on the cheek in front of the hotel.
“Someday, I’m going to be just like you, Dad,” she said. I groaned. “What?”
“Don’t grow hair on your chest, honey. It’s just not fun,” I said. We both laughed. She got in her car and waved as she drove away. Hawaii beckoned.
Waikiki
I arrived in Honolulu and took a room in the least expensive hotel I could find downtown. Which is not to say it wasn’t expensive, but it was still half the price of the hotels two blocks away on the beach.
Waikiki.
My flight got in too early to check in, but the concierge checked my bag and I headed to the beach. In my rush to get the trailer buttoned up and under cover, I’d left my Panama hat on the bed. It would still be there when I got back, but that meant I could buy a new hat. One of the first shops I saw had various beachwear, souvenirs, and hats. I grabbed a white raffia trilby and I was ready for Hawaii. It cost $12. I could replace it with a good Panama later if I needed to.
I got to the beach and walked in the sand until I reached a stretch where hotels were built right out to the water and you couldn’t cross their private section of beach. Then I turned and wandered downtown. My memory of Honolulu was considerably more rustic than what I found. The entire downtown looked like an upscale fashion mall. I suppose tourists buy crap they could get at home just to say they got it in Hawaii. At three times the price. I found a craft market that reminded me more of what I’d seen on that first trip. And, of course, being reminded of the first trip also reminded me of Allison.
A Long Time Ago: One Woman Show
I went to Honolulu in ’89. That sliver of time between Belle and Treasure when I was still trying to be a playwright becoming a novelist and earning most of my money as an editor and book designer. The truth was that I’d already quit writing plays, but an old friend tracked me down.
“Ari, I’m ready for you to write my first act,” she said when I picked up the phone.
“Who’s this?” I asked.
“How many women have ridden on a bus with your hand in her panties while she asked you to write a play for her?”
“Um… Oh! My god! Allison?”
“You are one hard dude to track down,” she laughed.
“I’m glad you found me. But how did you do it?” I asked. “It’s been something like ten or fifteen years.”
“Yeah. If anyone should ask, you are crappy at keeping track of your lovers. I called your high school. They had a really nice woman who wasn’t associated with the school give me a call back and listen to what I wanted. It turned out she was some kind of judge! I almost hung up and went into hiding. But she said she knew your mother and would pass along the message.”
“My god! Judge Carson is looking for me?”
“No. She said she knew your mother and would give her a message. Your mother is very nice. You should call her,” Allison laughed.
“I suppose you had to tell her how we met,” I sighed. My poor mother. Since Dad died, she’d become lonelier and more conservative. She was still teaching, but she said it made her tired.
“I didn’t tell her everything. Just enough to let her know that I really did know you. When I started talking about your one-man performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she started laughing and told me that you were single and I should get in touch with you right away.”
“My dear mother can’t believe that I’ve made two bad choices and is certain that the right girl is one I went to school with. I guess you are close enough. So, tell me what inspired this nationwide search to find a broken-down writer.”
“Ari, you promised to write the first act for my one-woman show. I’ve got a place to perform and even enough of a following that I should be able to draw an audience. As soon as the director heard my proposal, he jumped all over it. He kind of jumped all over me, too, but we worked that out. Will you do it, Ari?”
Hell, yeah!
We did a lot of long-distance work that spring. Allison was in New York and I was in Minneapolis. She had a sharp wit and could fire lines back at me almost as fast as I could write them.
“We need to work together where my shoulder isn’t cramping from holding the phone to my ear,” Allison said. “Ari, let’s get together and have some facetime.”
“I suppose I can come to New York, but I’m on a pretty tight budget, Allie. I don’t think I could afford a hotel.”
“Is that a way of inviting yourself to sleep with me?” she giggled.
“I hold our little time together as a treasured memory,” I said.
“After I reminded you. Let’s meet halfway.”
“What’s halfway between Minneapolis and New York?”
“Our Town.”
“What town?”
“In Chicago, Ari. Do you remember the Goodman Theatre School?” she asked.
“Yeah. It was on my short list of colleges to go to, but I couldn’t afford it.”
“I went there. Only it changed and was absorbed by DePaul University. I wasn’t happy about it, but it came out okay. Last year, they got a new theater and they’re performing Our Town this month. Just before I leave for Honolulu. I’ll spring for a room at the Blackstone,” she said.
“Are you suggesting that I come to Chicago and shack up with you?” I laughed.
“Yes.”
“Oh! Allie, I don’t even know what you look like now.”
“You’ll recognize me. I’ll be wearing a white dress and a veil.”
“Al-li-son?” I said.
“And I weigh three hundred pounds,” she laughed. “Just come and bring me a script, Ari. We’ll have fun!”
We did have fun. She didn’t weigh three hundred pounds. We enjoyed the show. We enjoyed Chicago. We didn’t get married. We worked on the script and made edits. I promised to have them finished and waiting for her in Honolulu next week.
And in that rather drab and worn hotel room, I listened to Allie present her version of the Molly Bloom speech in Ulysses. Naked. Lying on the bed. With me lying next to her.
I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
And I entered her. Yes.
A month later, I joined her in Honolulu for the final dress rehearsals and opening of her big show. That was where we were late on the night of November 8, 1989 when the house manager interrupted Molly’s speech to tell us the Berlin Wall was coming down. I’ll never forget.
Allie and I spent ten days together. Her opening got good reviews, though perhaps not the raves we were hoping for. I think people came just to see her lying on that bed naked. I know I could have watched it over and over.
It was only one weekend, but she fulfilled her dream.
And it was not for naught. Allie got a call Monday morning from a producer at a regional theater in San Diego offering her a prime role. We both packed our bags the next day and kissed goodbye at the airport. I wrote the character Allison Perkins in Model Student as a tribute to the beautiful actress I once knew.
Back to Honolulu
In my several trips to Hawaii over the years, there was one thing that I’d never managed to do. I’d never been to Pearl Harbor. I chose a tour that seemed to be reputable and early in the morning, boarded their bus in front of the hotel.
I have objected to violence, including but not limited to war, all my life. When I write about violence it is physically painful to me. War, especially, is a wasted effort in which old men thin the herd by sending young men to battle. At least the old bull elks in Yellowstone face their rivals in one-to-one combat. Our old and greedy men kill off the young, the disadvantaged, the deceived, and the uneducated with war. So, I knew I would have a hard time at Pearl Harbor.
Two things impressed me most. First, it is a monument that does not foster hatred. That surprises me. After all, it memorializes a “Day that lives in infamy.” In a surprise attack, 2,403 people were killed that day. Yet we are at peace with our enemies and both sides feel remorse. Our response killed between 90,000 and 130,000 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet both sides have apologized and become friends. How different that is from the Twin Towers, where 2,996 people died. According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, 210,000 Afghani and Iraqi civilians have died in our response—considerably fewer than the 1.5 million estimated by other sources. Yet the monument at the Twin Towers keeps hatred and suspicion alive and driving our political affairs fifteen years later.
The second thing that impressed me was that many veterans who did not die in the battle have had their remains interred on the USS Arizona with their comrades. We can speak of loyalty, comrades in arms, the depth of friendship. Or we can speak of the guilt felt by those who survived and believed they should have died with their fellows.
I don’t have an answer to either of the questions I pose here. Touring the monument, the ship, and later the cemetery, left me somber and even a little depressed. Such a waste of human life. Let us ban abortion for we need more fodder for our cannons.
I flew out to the Big Island the next day, happy to be away from the commercial center of Honolulu. I landed at Hilo and immediately looked for a rental car. $400 a week? For that? I paid a dollar and rode the bus to my hotel, then started looking for alternatives.
I found a cheap rental on Craigslist for $30 a day, which was still too expensive, but was closer to what a rental car should cost. Basically, as much per month as the cabin I was renting. An individual who kept three or four cars rented it cheaply. I used it to drive out to the cabin.
Lehani gave me a tour of the property and welcomed me to Hawaii. I was far more interested in welcoming her than in the cabin itself. She was very attractive for someone not all that much younger than me. She met me in a bikini top and a pair of shorts that barely covered the bottoms. Of the bikini. They did not fully cover other bottoms. But this was a business for her. She showed me where the lights were, how the shower worked, and gave me instructions for using the composting toilet. Her guidance was exactly as she’d quipped in our email correspondence. “Poop in the toilet. Pee in the yard.”
She left. There was no exchange of keys. There was no lock on any of the doors. There were no windows. The cabin had a roof and screened sides. The composting toilet was about twenty feet out the back door. The shower hung from a tree in the jungle about thirty feet out the other side. It did have hot water if you waited for it.
Inside, it was a twenty by twenty room. There was a small loft above the kitchen where I intended to sleep, but after a week there, I moved down to the sofa bed on the main floor. It was getting out of bed in the middle of the night and trying to negotiate the ladder down the stairs before I lost the battle of the bladder that drove the move. I had WiFi, but no cell connection. There was a small stove, a kitchen sink, and a refrigerator. It was isolated enough that no one could see into the cabin unless they were approaching it and even then, it was raised on stilts so they looked up at it. The back and side yards weren’t visible from either the well-concealed neighbors or the street that dead-ended in front.
I loved it!
I’d never felt so isolated. I immediately went to town and stocked up on all the groceries I thought I could fit in the limited storage space and then drove back to Hilo to return my rental car. It was an hour and a half bus-ride back to the cabin. The bus ran twice a day. The road had a sign that said, ‘Narrow curving road.’ It didn’t mention the roller coaster aspect. My stomach wouldn’t allow me to make that trip very often.
Lehani had mentioned that a neighbor was going to sell his car so I wandered around the area until I saw an old car for sale. I called up to the house and a guy came out to see what I wanted. The result was that by the evening I owned a 1989 Toyota Corolla with 215,000 miles on it. The total cost was $1,400. I figured that even if I had to give it away for $500 when I was done, it would be cheaper than any rental.
I opened my laptop and started writing.
A Long Time Ago: Lakeside Retreat
Not my finest hour. I’d just lost my teaching job for having an affair with a student. It was a very conservative university. It was also the end of any pretense that I was a Christian. They made that very clear. I was definitely going to hell and I was going to go there unemployed and penniless.
It made no difference to Anabel Lee. She was the student assistant that I’d become addicted to. I’d been out to see Carly in Denver in July, but in September she moved to LA and I didn’t know where. Rose and I had seen each other only a few times that fall. It seemed like she was on the road all the time. That’s why I was surprised to find her waiting in my living room when I got home with a bottle of scotch and a bag of potato chips, intent on drowning myself and hastening the trip to Hades.
“You look like hell,” she said.
“Gee, thanks. You look like heaven.”
“Planning a party?”
“No. I was planning to drink myself to death. I lost my job today.”
“Come here, sweetheart. Wouldn’t you rather drown your sorrows in me?”
“God, Rose! What am I going to do? It was that whole thing with Anabel Lee. The school frowns on it.”
“Relationships with students?”
“Sexual relationships. At all. I was doomed just for being with you. She’s going to hell, too, though they are keeping her on probation in hopes of redemption,” I said.
“Any chance?” Rose laughed.
“Not likely. We’ve agreed to lie low for a couple weeks.”
“Perfect. Then you can come with me for a long weekend. Pack a bag,” she said.
“Really? What will I need?”
“Warm clothes. I’m not sure if there is heat in the cabin. Bring your typewriter and lots of paper. You have to give my pussy a rest occasionally,” she said. “I’m going to go grab my bag. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Be ready.” I stood staring at her. “And Ari, it will be okay. You’ll see.”
It didn’t take all of ten minutes for me to pack. I grabbed up the necessary stuff for a long weekend in a cabin… somewhere. I even grabbed my Chemex and filters and the bag of Ethiopian Harrar coffee I had. I stepped out my door at the same time Rose did.
“Wait,” she said. “Back inside.” I stepped back. She spotted the bottle of scotch and bag of chips where I’d put them when I came in. “I knew you’d forget those. Now open that bottle and pour yourself a shot. Then we’ll load it and the chips in a bag and take them with us.”
“You want me to have a shot of scotch before we leave?” I asked.
“It’s a long drive and I want you relaxed enough to tell me all about it. If we need to, we’ll stop at Hinckley and you can have another shot. Or a blowjob. It depends on what you want.”
I downed my shot of The Glenlivet and shoved the bottle and glass in my bag before following Rose out the door. By the time I reached her car, I was feeling the effect of the whiskey.
We talked right past the rest area in Hinckley. I didn’t need any more scotch with Rose sitting beside me and she promised much more than a blowjob when we reached the cabin. We were in heavy snow by the time we reached Moose Lake. It was dark by the time we reached Duluth with the snow showing no sign of letting up. Rose pulled into a Rainbow Foods and we made a quick trip through the store gathering up everything we could think of that we’d need for a long weekend.
“It’s not far now,” Rose said as we headed north again on 61 toward Two Harbors. It wasn’t far, but it was still long. The weather reduced visibility and road conditions were worsening when she turned down a dark lane and plowed through a low drift to come to rest in front of a cabin. “We’re here.”
“You must be exhausted from that drive,” I said. “Let’s get inside where it’s warm and I’ll give you a nice massage.”
“I like the sound of that. My shoulders feel like one big knot. Let’s cart our supplies in,” she said.
The idea of a nice warm cabin exceeded the reality. It was freezing cold. The first order of business was to build a fire. There was a stack of wood next to the firebox. I checked and found a sheltered wood supply just outside the back door. I also heard crashing surf. We were on the North Shore of Lake Superior.
While I got the fire going and opened a bottle of wine, Rose heated a ready-made meatloaf dinner we’d picked up in the deli section of the store. It was simple, but we were so hungry and cold that it was a greatly appreciated meal. The cabin was slow warming up. There was electric heat in the baseboards, but it had been on only high enough to keep the water pipes from freezing. We finally got our coats off after dinner and went to the bed. The whole cabin was one big room with a bathroom off to one side.
“How did you ever find this place,” I asked. “Or happen to have it on a weekend that I needed it so much? I’m so happy to hold you in my arms, Rose.” We pulled a blanket around us, each having a hand out to hold our wine. The other hand was wrapped around each other.
“Well,” Rose said. “I was a bitch.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“There’s a coworker who thinks he is God’s gift to women. He has left a trail of broken hearts and he’s only beginning to understand that the path he is on is a dead end and there is nothing behind him to go back to,” she said. “This morning when I finished my presentation on the upcoming market year, he came up to me and put an arm around me. He pulled me close and whispered in my ear. ‘That was a great presentation. How would you like to spend a long weekend up at my cabin on the North Shore?’ I knew he was suggesting that I have the weekend with him and it disgusted me. I like to be kissed before I’m fucked. And he had the balls to make this suggestion where everyone could see us.”
“That is so gross! Are we expecting company?”
“No. God, no! He brought it on himself. He pinched my butt. I squealed. Everyone in the office turned to look at me. I started bouncing up and down like I’d just won the lottery. ‘Logan just offered me the use of his cabin for the weekend! My boyfriend is going to be so excited. I’m taking the rest of the week off and am going home to pick up Ari! Thank you, Logan! I really needed this.’ You should have seen his face when the women in the office started to applaud.”
“What would you have done if he’d told you to shove it?”
“He didn’t dare. When that kind of predator is endangered, he tries to show his innocence, not his anger. Believe me, I’ve had to deal with a lot of them when I travel. He just turned and smiled, then spoke loudly enough for all those close to hear. ‘Let me get you the map and directions. You’ve worked so hard lately, why don’t you take the whole week? No one else is using the cabin.’ Then he went to get the map. He has no idea yet how much that boosted his credibility in the office.”
“I guess I’m glad I got fired. I’d hate to have missed this.”
“You wouldn’t. I had it all planned out to kidnap you,” she giggled. “I’m getting warmed up now, Ari. I don’t think I need all these clothes on.”
Rose and I spent a weekend that stretched into a week. I delivered the promised massage, several times. I massaged her neck and her shoulders. I massaged her back. I massaged her legs. I massaged her butt. I massaged her breasts. I massaged her clit. She was the most relaxed and attentive that I’d ever seen her. She welcomed my cock in her pussy and wept when we came together.
That wasn’t every time. Biology just doesn’t work that way. I tried to make sure she had orgasms as frequently as possible, but I wasn’t concerned if I came before I’d succeeded. Nor was Rose. Even if I wasn’t ready for another round, I was happy to make love to her. She was just as happy to receive my fingers or my tongue as my cock.
We bundled up during daylight hours and walked out to the shore, careful not to get too close to the icy rocks. Lake Superior is a fresh water ocean. It has tides and surf. My family history told me that my grandfather’s brother or his uncle, not sure which, died on Lake Superior when his boat or ship sank. I’d found his name on the same tombstone as my great grandfather and great grandmother in Eden Prairie. In the middle of winter surface temperature of the water is in the low 40s. The deep parts of the Lake maintain a constant temperature of about 39 degrees. With the air temperature close to zero, when the waves crashed on the shore, the water froze before it hit the rocks. We could feel the sting of slivers of ice hitting any exposed skin.
But the sound was incredible. If it wasn’t so cold outside, I’d stand out there and listen to the waves crashing on the shore all day long. And all night. Holding Rose in my arms at night, I could still hear the waves outside. I was beginning to think that maybe my whole infatuation with Anabel Lee was just that. I could be happy with Rose. I’d need to find a job. I’d have to put up with her travel, but life could be good.
“Let’s see the story,” she said as we neared the end of our time up north.
“It’s fluff,” I said. “I don’t write humor that well. Even dark humor.”
“What’s the pitch?”
“I got to thinking about losing a job, obviously. This guy comes back from vacation and discovers that he’s no longer employed at the company he used to work for. The first sign is that he can’t find his coffee cup. The humor turns a little dark after that.”
“Clue. Make it the first clue instead of the first sign. Now let me read.”
I been carting this coffee cup from job to job to job for seventeen years, see? Not that I can’t hold onto a job, like, but you know the economy. Well, it’s a special two-cup cup, see? That’s the only way you can get enough coffee when it comes out of the pot fresh. I mean, because when it gets down to the last cup or so in the pot, nobody’ll drink it for a couple hours and it gets really putrid if you know what I mean. So, I try to get a lot of it as soon as it quits dripping. If I’m right on the spot, I just stick my cup under the coffee maker spout while it’s dripping and then quick as a wink slide the pot under when my cup’s full. Mmm mmm.
“You and coffee!” Rose laughed. She enjoyed the rest of the story, laughing out loud on occasion. “God! How did you ever find this voice? The grammar is atrocious! But it’s good, Ari. It was good that you could laugh at it, and make me laugh, too.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. A guy I used to work for while I was doing my PhD talked like that. He was smart, but he thought he’d be more down to earth if he talked like a thug. I don’t think there’s any place that I could publish it, though. I don’t know of any magazines that publish this kind of thing. But it was a good exercise. Maybe someday I’ll use it as the basis for a real story.”
“Would you make love to me one more time, Ari?”
“Just one more time?” I asked. “I’ll make love to you every day for the rest of our lives, darling Rose. I’ve fallen deeply and forever in love with you.”
“I’d like to believe that, Ari. Oh, how I wish.” We slipped our robes off. That was all we wore when we were inside. We kept the fire burning around the clock, both in the fireplace and in each other.
Rose was a mover and a shaker, both in the medical equipment industry and in bed. It was stupid of her co-worker to make a pass at the woman who would one day probably hold his career in her hands. She’d been rising fast. I’d probably never amount to more than a hack writer, but she’d make millions.
I kissed her and felt her passion rise. Before I could go down on her, she pushed me onto my back and straddled me.
“Not this time, Ari. This time I just want to feel you deep inside me for as long as I can hold you there.” She slid down my cock and held steadily there. It wasn’t like the pulsing and stroking that Jodie had given me on our one time together. This was far subtler. Rose wanted to keep me hard and inside her. That pleased me. I could spend forever connected to her like this.
“I love you, Rose,” I whispered.
“And I love you, Ari. Never forget that. That’s why you have to believe me when I tell you your college-age girlfriend is not good for you.”
“I’ll give her up. Tell me you will marry me and I’ll never see her again.”
“That’s the problem. I can’t marry you, Ari. And when I tell you why, you’ll run back to Anabel Lee and she will suck you down,” Rose breathed. My erection started to flag, but Rose focused on moving just enough to keep me hard. I didn’t want to think about the things she was telling me. I knew Anabel Lee wasn’t good for me. I suspected she had let slip the information that had cost me my job. But she was so… nineteen. “Younger women will be the death of you one day, Ari.” Then she laughed, sending delightful ripples through my cock. “The good news is you’ll probably die with a smile on your face.” Suddenly, there were tears in Rose’s eyes. She rolled and pulled me on top of her. “Fuck me, Ari! Fuck your love into me so I never forget it. I love you so much!”
She gave me no choice as she wrapped her legs around me and set the pace. We seldom fucked so vigorously and I took to heart her command to fuck my love into her. I could do this. I could leave the very thought of Anabel Lee behind me. We crashed together in our climax, both of us weeping with the intensity. She clutched me to her so tightly I was afraid I would smother her, but she resisted my effort to roll us to our sides.
“I’m leaving, Ari. That presentation I made… It was of my marketing plan for the new year. I have to travel to all the offices in January and get them onboard. While I’m gone, some men will come and pack my apartment. They’ll move it to Phoenix and I’ll go to my new home there as the Vice President of Marketing and Sales. I’ll be gone on Monday, Ari. I just wanted to believe that somewhere in this world there was a man who loved me.”
Anabel Lee moved in five weeks later and we were married in six months.
Back to The Big Island
The memory of Rose still brought a sad smile to my face, even after all these years. ‘I love you. I’m leaving.’ I thought of her as I listened to the surf crashing a few hundred yards from my little cabin in the jungle. I always wanted to live near the water.
I knew now that Brian wouldn’t make the same mistake. Rose was his Matrón. I wondered how many people would be surprised when I wrote the last chapter.
Remembering Rose, I had to think of her comment about that silly short story. A few years ago, I read about a short story competition for a new literary magazine called Line Zero. The magazine only lasted about three years, but when I saw the notice, I was reminded of ‘The First Clue is You Can’t Find Your Coffee Cup.’ It took me a while to dig it out. I’d been focused on writing novels for the past several years. It needed a little clean-up, but I sent it in. To my great surprise, it was accepted as one of the eight winning stories for the premier issue.
“All our editors read this and felt the same way. This is a fresh and mildly disturbing new voice that we want to bring to our readers.” I had to laugh. She should have read the story thirty years ago!
I was behind. I’d taken two weeks off writing after I created ‘the horrible scene’ and I wasn’t through mourning yet. But LNDtH Book 8: Becoming the Storm was set to start posting in a week and I was only half way through writing it. I’d made it my practice for the past several stories to have the story finished—or at least the part of the story—before I started posting it. Through Book 7, I’d had no difficulty keeping that up. But I was worried about reaching a point where I had to take a break from posting so I could finish the story.
Finishing Becoming the Storm became my NaNoWriMo project.
I’d never used a work in progress as a NaNo project before. It felt a little like cheating, but they’d created a category on the website for NaNo Rebels who were working on something besides a new 50,000-word novel. We were accepted. It would be my twelfth year to achieve my goal. Still, I changed my posting schedule to every four days instead of every three days when Storm’s first chapter went up.
How frequently a story posts affects its ranking on SOL. As a reader, I have my personal preferences. I dislike stories that post randomly. You never know when a new chapter is going to come out. The worst of those are stories I get into and then the author disappears for six to ten months before posting another chapter with a blog that says, ‘I’m Back!’ Then they disappear again for another six months.
My philosophy is based on the length of the story and the length of the chapters. I’d just posted my first ‘Damsels in Distress’ story, Sleight of Hand, to reasonably good reviews. It broke a few of the typical forms for the universe. Hero Lincoln was a cripple, never served in the military, was a theater major. Damsel was in a lesbian relationship with another damsel disguised as a man. It didn’t break the series like Old Man with a Pen’s did, but if it hadn’t been for him introducing me to it, I would never have read Lazlo Zalezac’s unique stories. My chapters were about 3,000 words each and posted every other day for two weeks. End of story. Neat and tidy. LNDtH chapters were between 6,000 and 7,000 words each. Posting every three or four days still gave readers enough to chew on to hold for the next chapter. Knowing it was coming in a specific amount of time was key. I would have to have chapters longer than 10,000 words before I reduced a posting schedule to once a week. And heaven help the author that only posts once a month. The chapters had better be 30,000 words long. Otherwise, I’ll just wait till the author gets his/her shit together and finishes the damn story.
I found something out about having a car in Hawaii. Hitchhikers. It was five miles to the tiny community of Kalapana and fifteen miles to Pahoa where there were restaurants, grocery stores, liquor stores, fast food, laundry, and propane. It seemed like only one in ten people living on this part of the island had their own transportation. I only drove into town once or twice a week, but I always picked up hitchhikers. In fact, I learned the most common times for people to be headed one way or the other and timed my trips so I could take people with me.
The most popular time was Wednesday afternoon from Pahoa to Kalapana. Wednesday night was market night at Uncle Robert’s.
Kalapana was mostly destroyed by the eruption of Kilauea between ’86 and ’92. Nearby Kaimū and Kaimū Bay where one of the Big Island’s most popular beaches was, were completely buried. The new land was immediately claimed by the Kingdom of Hawaii. Uncle Robert refused to evacuate his little homestead, even when the Painted Church was moved to safer ground. He insisted that he had prayed and the lava would go around him.
It did.
Now, Uncle Robert’s little bar is the center of the most popular weekly event on the island. Hundreds of people arrive as early as four in the afternoon to set up craft and fresh food booths, eat, drink, dance, and party long into the night. By midnight, people too tired or inebriated to find their cars on the lava flow or catch a ride spread out blankets on benches, sandy spots (black sand), under tables, and behind the johns. The second-best time to pick up hitchhikers is Thursday morning, headed from Kalapana north.
“You do pakalolo?” the Rasta-looking guy in the passenger seat asked me.
“Uh… what?”
“Weed,” he said.
“Oh. On occasion. Not lately.”
“Want some?”
“Not in the car, thanks.”
“No. I mean, I really appreciate the lift. Let me give you a couple buds for later so you can relax. This is good shit. I grew it myself.” He pulled a tiny baggie out of his backpack and handed it to me. It had two or three plump buds in it. Just enough for a few tokes. I thanked him.
Of course, that meant that I needed some way to smoke it. I didn’t carry a pipe with me. In fact, I was pretty sure that somewhere in the reduction of my life I’d given away my pot pipe. I stopped at the local smoke shop and picked up a pack of papers. In Hawaii, a tobacconist is primarily a place to buy cigarettes. He did have half a dozen nice little cigars, though, and I bought them all.
A Long Time Ago: First Toke
I moved to an apartment managed by a couple theater friends. I guess I was partly responsible for them getting together. Greg had directed my mime play, Bottom’s Ghost and Brenda had played the lithe and seductive Titania. The play was almost a scripted dance and I convinced a cute flautist I met, of all places, on a bus, to make music with me.
This story just got more complex as I remembered it. Let’s just assume that during the course of rehearsing and performing the play, Greg and Brenda fell in love, moved in together, and lived happily ever after. As my apartment managers.
The first thing Paula and I had done when we moved to Minneapolis for grad school was get rid of our car. We were going to be good citizens and use public transportation for everything. We probably would not have been such good citizens if it wasn’t for the bus stop across the street from our apartment and the bus that ran directly to the University. Even after Paula left, I didn’t buy a car. I kept riding the bus each day. That was when opportunity fell into my lap. Or Reese fell into my lap.
The bus was jammed. The weather was cold and everyone was bundled up in layers of winter coats. Slick roads combined with new potholes to make the trip dramatic. A car ahead of the bus slid cross-wise and the bus driver slammed on the brakes. We slid. The car ahead of us would have been toast if not for the pothole we slid into that brought the bus to a sudden halt. Several people standing in the aisle fell with screams and shouts. Reese fell on me.
The driver was a guy I’d ridden with for a couple of years and he was quick to put on his flashers and step into the aisle to make sure everyone was okay. Reese was shaking.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I just… didn’t mean to hurt you,” she struggled to get up, but the packed snow from people’s boots and shoes made the aisle that much more treacherous and her foot slid out from under her. She plopped into my lap again.
“Maybe you should stay put,” I suggested. “If you fall into my lap a third time, I think it means we’re married. We should get to know each other first.”
“You’re funny. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No. How often does a guy have an angel drop from heaven into his lap?”
“I think my virtue is in danger.” She didn’t move to get up. “I’ve seen you on the bus before. Why is this the first time you’ve invited me to sit on you?”
“Mmm. Whose virtue is in danger?”
“I’m a dangerous woman.” She waved her small case in the air. “I have a flute and I know how to use it.”
“Ahh. Perhaps you could blow it for me sometime.”
“You could at least take me to dinner first.”
The driver had stepped out of the bus to make sure there was no damage. The car that had cut us off had already regained control and left the scene. The driver got back on the bus.
“I’m going to pull back and then power forward to get us out of this little hole. There’s no damage and the hole isn’t that deep, but I want you all to hang on because it will definitely bounce,” he said as he returned to his seat. Reese hung on. To me. The bus bounced. Reese bounced. I put my arms around her and held her tightly. We were still in that position when we got to campus.
“Thank you for giving me a place to sit,” she giggled as I helped her up and then stood behind her.
“Anytime you need a seat, just let me know. I’ll be happy to get up for you.”
“I noticed. So…”
“About dinner,” I said. “Want to do Annie’s before we go home tonight?”
“I finish up at four. Where and when shall I meet you?” We made the arrangement.
“By the way, I’m Aroslav,” I said as we got off the bus. She grinned at me.
“Oh, yeah. I don’t usually accept a date from guys whose names I don’t even know. I’m Reese. See you later.” She turned and headed to whatever class she had and I headed for the library.
That began a short and intense relationship. We didn’t go out and have a hamburger, then sex. I found out she was a history major. The flute was her respite from study. She simply loved to play. That was when my play was chosen for production and Greg became my director. I convinced Reese to work with me to record the music for the show. She was great and a delight to work with as well as to look at. Flautists have this way of breathing that makes it almost impossible to take your eyes off their stomachs and breasts. At least that’s the way it affected me when Reese was playing.
The first tech rehearsal was long and hard. You’d think that with no words in the play, we wouldn’t have a problem with lines. But the lights danced with the performers. The music had to be perfectly on cue. The costumes weren’t supposed to come apart at the seams and leave the leading lady standing naked in the spotlight.
That was the highlight of tech rehearsal.
“You guys want to come up for a drink?” Greg asked. He and Brenda had kindly given us a ride after rehearsal. I lived in the same building and Reese lived across the street.
“I don’t know how you guys stand it,” Reese said. “My work was done and I’m still ready for a drink.” That settled it. We went up to Greg’s apartment. A drink turned into two. Then Greg pulled out a strange looking contraption with a tall chimney, a little spout and water in the bottom. He packed the little spout with weed and lit it while sucking through the chimney. I realized that I was looking at a bong for the first time.
“Smoke?” he asked, holding out the bong.
“Oh, yes,” Brenda and Reese said as they both reached for it. They giggled and took turns as Greg held the flame.
“Ari?” he asked. I took a deep breath and exhaled.
“I’ve never done it before,” I confessed. “You just inhale?”
“That’s it.” Greg held out the bong and I sealed my lips on the end. He lit it and I inhaled. “Hold it in. You’ll feel it pretty soon.” Brenda and Reese were already getting giggly and were leaning against Greg and me. I didn’t feel a thing.
“I guess the stuff doesn’t work on me,” I said.
“I’ll make it work,” Reese said. Greg gave her the bong and held the lighter as she inhaled deeply. Then she turned and kissed me deeply. We’d had a few goodnight kisses, but nothing that lit the room up like this one did. It took my breath away. And then she replaced my breath with hers as she breathed the smoke directly into my lungs.
I choked. I’d smoked a pipe for years and a cigar on occasion, but I’d never actually inhaled anything. Tears sprang to my eyes and I pushed Reese away so I could cough.
The other three were laughing at my distress.
“I don’t think you got any the first time,” Brenda said. “No wonder you didn’t feel anything.”
“Well, I don’t feel anything but choking at the moment,” I groused. “All that coughing made me lightheaded. I did like the delivery system, though.”
“We don’t have to share smoke for that,” Reese said. She folded into my arms and returned to a kiss with the same breathtaking intensity, but not the lung-choking effect. This felt really good. I didn’t care about the dope. Just kissing Reese made me light-headed. I found my hand softly caressing her breast as we pulled away from each other and she smiled at me. Greg and Brenda broke and relit the pipe with deep tokes. He handed it back to me and showed me how to hold the flame for Reese. She sucked in another lungful and then we returned to kissing, exchanging the smoke back and forth. Apparently, my lungs had adjusted to the smoke and I didn’t choke this time. Reese moaned and I saw that her blouse was open and I was holding a beautiful bare breast in my hand.
Brenda’s costume had fallen off again. Greg was apparently preparing to give her his clothes as they pulled them off. Reese tugged at my arm.
“Let’s go to your place.”
I was staggering in the hallway when I realized that what I was feeling was my first high. I managed to get the key in the slot and by the time Reese and I got to the bedroom, we were both naked.
I’d been admiring her clothed body for a couple of months, but seeing it fully naked made me just stop to look at her. I was awed.
Even stoned, I had enough presence of mind to get a condom on before we made love, but that was all the mind I had left. I remember it as having been hours of moving together, kissing deeply, and being encased in the hot depths of her sex. When we both had crashing orgasms, we fell to our backs and were asleep in minutes. Maybe seconds.
I awoke to the strains of flute music. Reese was sitting on the bed, still naked, playing a piece we’d used in the show, Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun. I let the tones wash over me as I watched the rise and fall of her breasts, the expansion and contraction of her abs. I’d admired her torso every time I watched her play, but now it was so much better.
When finished, I held my hand out to her and pulled her back to bed. This time, I made sure I really did take the time I’d imagined the previous night. It took all the time I could give before she finally rose to a peak and I found a fresh condom so I could enter her.
We only lasted a couple weeks—through the production of the show. It was a busy week and even though we were new lovers, we spent most of our time together just sleeping and not making love. We got high again at Greg’s apartment after the cast party on closing night. I didn’t take as much and managed to keep my senses. I worshipped Reese’s body and tried to take my time, but she was impatient and rose quickly.
“It’s easier when I’m high,” she said after we’d made love the next day. She never did come that time. “All we need to do is have a couple tokes before we make love. Is that too much to ask, Ari?”
I bought a little from Greg and he kindly rolled it in papers for me. But I didn’t like not being fully aware of what I was doing while I was making love. It was almost like masturbating because I was totally immersed in my own feelings. Reese, on the other hand, couldn’t come if she wasn’t high.
We tried. We cried. We parted.
Back to the Big Island
I wasn’t sure when I’d get a chance to ‘relax’ with my gift. Maddie flew in the Saturday before Thanksgiving and we spent the week running all over the island to see black sand, green sand, yellow sand, and lava. A couple years earlier, Kilauea vented and the lava stopped a few feet from Pahoa. Literally. Behind the grocery store, you could see the black ridge where it just stopped flowing. In low lying areas, power lines had been strung on extra tall poles. The bottoms of the poles were wrapped in wire containers of rocks about ten feet across and fifteen feet high. If lava had made it that far into town, there was at least a chance the infrastructure would survive.
Kilauea had not vented in the past two years, but the lava bed in the main crater was rising. It was cold at the top of the overlook, but worth standing outside at night to watch and listen to Pele talking. As the lava rose, rocks on the edge of the pit would heat and loosen enough to fall into the lake. When they hit, splashes would fly up and the volcano would roar. The rangers at the park were pointing out several places lower on the volcano where they thought it might vent within a few weeks. Maddie loved it. So did I.
Our Thanksgiving Dinner was some kind of fried rice with Portuguese Brand sausage and egg. I don’t understand the terminology. Several companies make the stuff but it’s all called ‘Portuguese Brand.’ My little Toyota had made two or three circuits of the island by now and I discovered that I was getting 36 miles per gallon. In a twenty-six-year-old car! That was almost as good as we got in Treasure’s Prius. Don’t tell me we couldn’t have vehicles that use less fuel. We’ve had them for years!
Between going out to see the sights and trying to catch up on every little detail in her life, Maddie and I spent a lot of time writing. It was November, after all. She was rewriting her perennial novel and swore it was nearly finished. I’d added 62,000 words to Becoming the Storm and was nearly finished with that part of Living Next Door to Heaven. I’d add another 15k in the next four days. I needed to get this finished because I’d already outlined the next of my ‘Damsels in Distress’ stories, Romancing the Clown. I’d start on that as soon as Maddie flew back on Sunday.
While we were puttering around Thursday afternoon, Lehani glided into the drive on her electric bike. I discovered that she’d had some ‘difficulties’ and was on probation with no license. I didn’t probe to find out what the specifics were. Sounded like a DUI. The electric bike was legal, though, and she stopped by once or twice a week to do little maintenance jobs around the cabin or pick up her yoga mat from the storage under the cabin. It was always a delight to see her since her most common mode of dress was her bikini.
“Hi, guys,” she said. We waved from the front deck. “Have you been to the hot ponds yet?”
“No. Where are they?”
“About ten miles north along the coast. If you haven’t been up there, you should go.” I looked at her and saw that she had a towel rolled up and fastened to the back of the bike.
“Were you headed up there now?” I asked.
“I was thinking about it.”
“Why don’t we all go,” Maddie said. She was reading the situation as well as I was. Maybe better. “I need a break while I figure out how to kill this character.”
It was settled that quickly. We slipped into our suits and all loaded into the Toyota.
“Lehani, why don’t you take the front seat,” Maddie said. “I don’t mind the back.” I saw her wink at my landlady.
Ahalanui Park was great and a popular place on Thanksgiving afternoon. The main attraction, of course, was the tidal pool. My experience with hot springs was considerably different than this. This was spring fed and salt water, the basin filled partly by the waves that crashed over the sea wall. It was heated by thermal vents from the volcano. As we swam, and floated in the warm water, tiny fish came up to nibble on any dead skin peeling off our bodies. Occasionally, one would pinch hard enough to elicit a little squeal.
A Long Time Ago: Skinny Dipping
Our sports team had convinced Leslie that we wanted to try a more rigorous hike than the clean trails we’d walked on most of the summer. Sports at the college prep school in Colorado the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school were hiking, climbing, kayaking, and horseback riding. Hiking required the least equipment, so I could afford that.
“Okay,” Leslie said as we neared the end of our Wednesday afternoon hike. I loved Wednesdays at the school. No afternoon classes. We’d grab the lunches prepared by Schantzer and head for the truck for a hike. We were often late getting back for dinner. “You wanted something a little more rugged. This is about as far as I can take it without getting into technical climbing. It’s what we call a scramble. We’ve already come across the hard part. The boulder field got us hot and sweaty. Now’s the tricky part.” She led us to the edge of a slope of small stones.
“Whoa!” Jim said as he sat down hard. His foot had slid right out from under him.
“A foot farther out and we’d have met you at the bottom,” Leslie laughed. She didn’t sound like it was too big a deal. “This is called a scree run. It’s almost impossible to climb up, but it can be a blast going down. As Jim tried to demonstrate, you could step out on it and slide down on your butt. If you do that, lean back so you don’t get rocks up inside your lederhosen. And don’t try it in cotton shorts unless you don’t mind going naked back to campus.”
“You can’t walk down this,” Amy said.
“That’s right,” Leslie continued. “You have to run. It’s about two hundred yards long and the secret is to stay vertical while you take long controlled strides. You’ll feel like you are flying. Don’t lean forward or you’ll come down on your face. I’ll go first. Ari, you’re last. You need to hold people stable until they are ready to run.” She pointed to a rock I could stand on while I held people steady. “Don’t let anyone start until the previous person is all the way down. Ready?”
We all nodded and the fun began. A couple hundred yards doesn’t sound like much, especially when it only takes thirty or forty ‘steps’ to cover the distance. But man, do you fly. Jim took the lead and followed Leslie. He whooped and pumped his fists in the air when he reached the bottom. I held Amy steady until she was ready. She made it, but about thirty feet from the bottom of the run her feet flew out from under her and she made the last few yards on her butt. I waited until Leslie gave me the signal and set Sue on the path. She gave my hand a little squeeze before she took the first step and was gone. All seven of us made the run with little difficulty and a lot of hollering. Leslie and Jim caught people at the bottom before they could keep going across the trail and into the river about fifty feet away.
“You kids all stink,” she said holding her nose. “Oh. Wait, that’s me.” She looked at us closely. “Are you all friends now?” We nodded. Of all the kids I’d met at the school this summer, these six were the ones I considered my closest friends. We’d spent every weekend hiking and camping together. I was going to miss them when we left in a few weeks. “Okay. Boys, hike down this trail toward the truck. When you get to the milepost sign, stop and wait for me to call you back. Girls, you stay with me.”
We three guys had no concept of what was going on, but we headed down the trail. We’d barely made it to the milepost when we heard Leslie’s whistle. We turned around and walked back. We got to the scree run and didn’t see them.
“Leslie?” I called out. I heard giggling from across the trail near the river. We followed a deer path toward the noise and came out at the water’s edge where we saw five piles of girls’ clothing. Looking out into the water, we saw five naked girls. Well, we assumed they were naked. We could only see bare shoulders.
“No staring and no touching,” Leslie said. “Strip and get in the water. This is called skinny dipping.” We were all a bit embarrassed to be on the shore undressing while the girls were in the water pretending not to stare. There were a lot of giggles and three good-sized chubs when we got to the edge of the water. “Jump in!” Leslie commanded. We jumped.
“Holy shit! It’s cold!” I screamed. So much for that hard-on.
“Swim over in this direction,” Sue said. “It’s not bad.”
Not bad was an understatement. It was nice. Like bath water. And the glimpses of the girls’ boobs were nice, too. It was a good thing I’d have to cross the cold part of the stream again before I got out.
“There’s a thermal hot spring that vents in three locations on this part of the river. One is in the middle just upstream of us. It will keep the water warm for about fifty feet. Most of us are enjoying the effects of the vent against the shore next to us. The combination of the two makes this part of the little pool pleasantly warm. The third spring is downstream along the right shore. It’s hot. I’ve been told it is about 120 degrees. Don’t get in it. You’ll be scalded.”
The water was only about waist deep in the little river, so we were all crouched down with just our shoulders showing. Most of the time. I noticed that occasionally a girl would bob up high enough to show her cleavage. I was sure Sue showed me her nipples on purpose. She was turned away from all the others. I was surprised, though when Leslie just stood up.
“Okay, guys. Get out and grab your clothes. You can go off in the trees to get dressed. Just put everything on. Don’t bother trying to dry off. Everything’s going to be wet.” We swam across the cock-shrinking cold water of the other side of the river and grabbed our things, listening to the tittering of the girls and knowing that as soon as we were out of sight, they’d be coming out of the water stark naked. The three of us policed each other and as soon as we were dressed stepped out onto the trail to wait. The girls showed up a minute later. They hadn’t dried, but pulled their shorts and T-shirts on over their wet skin. It was obvious that all but one had forgotten to put her bra on. Even Leslie’s headlights were on high beam. It was almost more distracting than seeing them naked in the river.
Sue gave me a light punch in the shoulder and when I turned to look at her, she started play slapping my face. It wasn’t hard enough to sting, but more of a tease.
“Pervert,” she whispered. “You’re just staring at all these girls’ nips. See anything you like? Perv.”
I had to wonder if I was more of a perv for looking or her for showing.
Back to Lehani
I took Maddie to the airport Sunday and returned to find Lehani rummaging in her bins under the house. Maybe I didn’t mention that the cabin was built on stilts and was nearly six feet off the ground in front, though scarcely a foot in back. Lehani had explained that it was cheaper to build on stilts to do the leveling than it was to level the lava flow it was built on.
I had a couple of steaks in the fridge that Maddie and I didn’t eat. She’d insisted that she was taking me out to dinner on the previous night and we’d had some exquisite Italian food at a little restaurant in Pahoa. I had a very cheap hibachi I’d picked up at the local hardware and thought I’d grill tonight.
“Aloha, Lehani,” I said. “Would you like to stay for dinner? I’ll grill steaks and we’ll have a salad.”
“Ari! That’s so nice of you. Are you sure you have enough? You must be nearly out of food with having your daughter here for the week,” she said. She smiled and her cheeks dimpled. I knew for a fact that she was around fifty, but the ever-present bikini top and dimples made her look like a teen.
“I’d love to have your company.”
“I’ll run to Richard’s and see if he has a papaya or a mango,” she said. Richard was the nearest neighbor and had several attractive fruit trees. Occasionally, he would leave fruit on a little table in front of his house in the morning with a jar for donation. I watched Lehani’s tight little backside as she ran down the drive. I grabbed the two tomatoes I had ripening in the kitchen window and sliced them in half. They’d been incredibly expensive and I didn’t want them to go to waste. I sprinkled salt and pepper on the halves and parmesan cheese over that. When Lehani got back, I had the grill just about ready to cook.
“That’s a huge papaya!” I said. “We wouldn’t need anything else.”
“It gets better,” she said. She held out a carton of yogurt. “Greek yogurt. I’ll cut this up and we can have it for dessert.”
“Glass of wine?” I asked.
“Yes, please.” After we’d toasted with an ‘aloha,’ I went to the back deck to tend the grill. There was barely enough room on the tiny grill for two steaks and four tomato halves. Lehani lit a bug-repellent coil and set it on the table in front along with the placemats. “Oh, look! My favorite little gecko is going to join us for dinner,” she called. I went to the front lanai with the plates to see a small green gecko peeking around the porch support. Lehani placed a bit of papaya on the railing and gradually, the gecko approached and began licking the papaya.
We sat to eat and enjoy each other’s company. She was very complimentary about my grilling prowess.
“What did your daughter enjoy most on her visit?” Lehani asked.
“Well, it’s hard to beat the volcano,” I said. “We went up there three times, first in daylight and twice at night. She was certain it would erupt at any moment,” I said. “We could hear her talking.”
“It won’t be long. The kahuna has said there will be more land for the native Hawaiians soon. The island will get bigger.”
“It’s pretty amazing. I think the thing that moved us most, though, was the Puuhonua O Honaunau. We must have walked around it for two hours. It’s not that big, but Maddie kept wanting to return to the shore and think what it was like to be a fugitive seeking mercy.”
“You are old souls,” Lehani said. “I could see strong mana in Maddie when I met her. Her eyes have a depth of knowing.”
“I’ve noticed that before myself. More wine?” I refilled our glasses and Lehani served the papaya and Greek yogurt. Absolutely heavenly. The conversation kept us entertained, though I had to strain a little to understand her. She had a Hawaiian accent and spoke softly. I’m mostly deaf in one ear, so I found myself asking, “What was that?” all too often.
“I said it was too bad we don’t have pakalolo. I feel so mellow and relaxed it would be perfect,” she laughed.
“As a matter of fact, I do have some. A hitchhiker gave me a couple buds and I have some papers. It’s been so long since I rolled a joint that I haven’t tried it yet. Can you do it?”
“You can’t grow up on this part of the island without learning how.” She looked around. It was fully dark out. “Ah. I should go home. I don’t have a light on my bike. The road gets dangerous at night. Or maybe I can crash at Richard’s. He might want a toke, too.”
“You can just stay here tonight,” I said without thinking. She looked at me and I realized what I suggested. “I mean, there’s plenty of room. I haven’t washed the sheets in the loft yet, but…”
“I could sleep here,” she said, pointing to the bed in the corner that I used. She looked at me sternly. “Just sleep.” I nodded. She held out her hand for the buds and papers and busied herself preparing the joint while I washed the dishes and poured more wine.
I seemed to remember, from my youth, that everyone tried to contain the smoke in a closed room so it wouldn’t escape. I’d heard you could get high in the room without ever taking a toke. That wasn’t going to happen here. All four sides of the cabin were screened. There was no enclosed space. What we got in our lungs was strictly what we sucked from the joint. I wasn’t very good at it, but had enough to get a little buzz. Lehani was grinning broadly. She really enjoyed it.
“Listen!” she commanded suddenly. With the shrill whistling of the coqui in the trees, it was hard to even hear Lehani. Gradually, I heard the gentle rustle and could smell the dampness in the air. “Rain is coming. I need to move my bike under the shelter.” She ran out the door to move the electric bike under the cabin. She’d barely left the porch when the first large spatters hit the roof. It was a downpour by the time she got the bike under shelter. I had the yellow porchlight on and saw her flash by to the toilet, twenty feet beyond the house. I grabbed a couple towels to meet her when she came back onto the porch.
She was soaked when she got back. The storm was fully on us and the roar of the water coming off the eaves was loud enough to drown out the coquis. Lehani skimmed out of the little terrycloth shorts she wore over her bikini and dried her legs.
“Do you have a T-shirt I can borrow?” she asked. I grabbed a clean shirt and turned to hand it to her just in time to see her top come loose. She reached over to hang it on the coat rack to dry, displaying her breasts to me as she did so. She smiled at me and I held out the shirt. Before she took it from me, she closed the distance and raised her lips to mine for a kiss. As it deepened, my hands drifted up and down her bare back and naturally around to cup her breast. She sighed and pulled away.
“Maybe a little too fast,” she said as she pulled the T-shirt over her head.
With the yellow porchlight off, the only light in the room was from the tiny bulb hanging over the table. It was one of those Christmas tree type lights that lit a pool about two feet across. Lehani picked up the stub of the joint and lit it, inhaling deeply before it burned her finger and she dropped it in the ashtray. We didn’t have a roach clip. She turned and kissed me again, this time sharing the smoke.
We moved to the bed—the only piece of furniture in the cabin you could sit on other than the kitchen chairs. I turned off the little light and we cuddled together, lazily making out as we listened to the rain. It gradually lessened and we could hear the coquis over it again. In the distance waves crashed against the cliffs. We drifted and eventually fell asleep.
My shirt was practically under my armpits when I woke in the morning. Soft warm flesh was spooned against my back and a gentle hand stroked my chest. I rolled in her arms and we kissed good morning. Her T-shirt had also been pushed up under her arms and her breasts pressed against my chest.
“Eia au, eia `oe,” she said.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“Here I am, here you are,” she answered. “It describes the obvious when two people are intimate together.”
“Mmm. Are we intimate together?” I asked, kissing her again.
“Our bare flesh is touching. Our tongues touch. There is a step more intimate, but not today. I heard you brag about how good your coffee is. Care to demonstrate?”
“Maddie and I picked up some of the natural dark roast at Ka`u Coffee Mill last week. It’s the best I’ve found so far.” I got out of bed and offered her my hand as she rose. I watched the T-shirt fall over her breasts as she stretched. She went out to use the toilet while I prepared coffee.
I did not transport my Chemex with me on this trip. I’d packed everything I needed for the four months in Hawaii in a backpack and my computer case. Certainly, I’d made some purchases once I got here, but they were all things I’d leave behind. Like the plastic laundry basket. Or the fluffy pillow I’d bought for the bed. They were to make my life easier while I was here, but I wasn’t attached to them. Lehani’s cabin was equipped with a two-cup French press. It made a pretty decent cup of coffee if you wrapped the pot in towels while it steeped. Otherwise, it tended to cool too rapidly. Lehani sipped appreciatively while I made up a breakfast casserole on the stovetop.
“It was nice to cuddle together last night,” she said. “I miss just holding and being held by a man. The kissing was pretty good, too,” she giggled.
“I hope you will visit here often,” I said. “I miss the cuddling, too.”
“Your ku`uipo will be here in three weeks. I know you said you were not exclusive with each other, but until we have met and she nods, there will be nothing more than we had last night. Can you cuddle without…?”
“Not to worry,” I laughed. “I have things well in hand.”
My ku`uipo. My sweetheart. Alice would be here for Solstice.
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