10
MIKA
The call I’ve been expecting comes the next morning just as Albie and I are stepping off the bus from Diamond Head in front of the Bank of Hawaii’s Pearl City branch.
I sigh when I see Zahir’s name on my phone’s caller ID. Darnit, I was hoping I’d get a week in before getting fired for real.
“Hey, Albie, it’s Mr. Zahir, I’ve got to take this,” I say, handing him the backpack with all the components for the stolen Ninja food processor inside. “Do a few circles around the parking lot, but don’t get hit, okay? It’s not a good look.”
I don’t have to ask Albie twice. He shoulders the backpack and drops his skateboard and races into the credit union’s empty parking lot without a second of hesitation.
“Hey, Zahir. How’s it going?” I ask, trying to keep my voice sunny.
“It seems you have infuriated my cousin, Mika.”
I cringe. “Yeah, sorry about that. I was hoping he’d give it at least a week before calling you.”
“Well, he didn’t. In fact, not seeming to understand the time differences here, he’s awoken me several nights to complain of your behavior since you started. Apparently, he’s been forced to eat whatever you decide to prepare him because you’ve stolen his preferred food processor. And then he called again this morning to tell me you not only removed his blackout curtains while he was in the bath, but also opened all the retractable wall windows, and then disappeared with the remote? Is this correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” I admit. Then rush to assure him. “But I’ll close them all up tonight, I promise. It’s just you should have seen that house. It’s beautiful, but he’d made it so no light got in. And he was also on this weird diet of meal replacement shakes, so basically starving and isolating himself, which is only going to make his grief and resulting depression worse. I just couldn’t stand by and let it go on like that.”
“Yes, it would seem you couldn’t stand by, and now my cousin has called me four times in as many days, demanding that I officially fire you, since you’ve ignored his many edicts to get out.”
My stomach twists at his words. I’m torn between knowing I’m right and wanting to beg to keep my job. “I’m hearing that he’s really upset, and I’m sorry he keeps calling you. I really need this job, but if you want to fire me for upsetting your cousin, I understand. Just, please, don’t replace me with another lackey. That’s not what he needs if you want him to start going to that spinal cord center at PHU and make a full recovery like you said when you hired me.”
“And you believe you know what he needs?”
My mouth rushes in before my mind can come up with a more circumspect answer. “It’s pretty damn easy to see what he needs, actually. Because it’s the exact opposite of everything he says he wants. He needs someone to challenge him, get him so upset, he’d rather learn to walk again than put up with her for another day.”
My heart sinks when my declaration is met with a long silence. Great, Hayes, speaking of exact opposites, you just said the exact opposite of what you needed to tell your irate boss’s boss to keep this job.
“Do you know how many times my cousin has called me prior to my sending you to serve him at our grandfather’s vacation house?” Zahir asks, his voice somber and grave.
He tells me the answer before I can guess. “Zero times. I’ve received not one email, one text, and absolutely no calls. He also never answers the phone when I reach out to him. And now I have four calls from him, ranting about the woman who was merely supposed to take care of him until his housekeeper returned. I’ve only one thing to say to you, Mika.”
I clamp my lips and squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the official “you’re fired.”
“Good job. Keep up the fine work. I look forward to hearing from my cousin often this summer.”
I let out my breath, shock and relief flooding over me when I hear the amused admiration in his voice. “Are you serious? I can stay?”
* * *
And then he says, “Oh, I am very serious.” And he even promised me an extra bonus if I stay on through the end of summer as we previously agreed.
My parents’ house is within walking distance of the bank where the bus dropped us off, but I end up calling Jazz on my way there to tell her the good news.
“Shut the front door. So you basically drill sergeant this guy, and you end up getting a bonus for it?” Jazz asks, laughing.
“Exactly! I can’t believe it!”
I squint into the distance where Albie’s turned a corner on his skateboard. “Expect Albie any second now, by the way. He’s way ahead of me.”
“Awesome. Dad’s already up, so we’re ready for him.”
The thought of my dad dampens my previous glee. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s having a really good day,” Jazz answers. “These new drugs are seriously working. Too bad the VA is still refusing to pay for them.”
“Yeah, too bad.”
I generally try to stay positive when it comes to Dad’s muscular dystrophy, but lately, that’s been hard. He spent a year in a successful clinical trial, only to be told by the VA when the drug got approved by the FDA that they wouldn’t pay for it because it was still going through their internal approvals process.
Jazz is currently fighting to get their decision reversed, but meanwhile, that means we have to pay out-of-pocket with only the hope of one day getting reimbursed. And at four figures a bottle, the costs of refills every thirty days is getting pretty damn high. Not to mention all the other bills Dad racked up after taking medical leave to participate in the clinical trial.
“I’ll write you a check as soon as I get there,” I promise her. “That will tide us over until the end of….”
I trail off when I feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck. And I know where I am, even before I look up to find myself in front of the house where Alberto and I used to live before that fateful Christmas Eve.
But my breath catches when I see the person standing on the front lanai, with his arms folded. He’s dressed in a short-sleeved police officer uniform. Just like his father, and only still-living brother. And as soon as he sees me, he starts moving forward.
“What’s going on?” my sister asks on the other side of the line. “You went quiet.”
I’m too shocked not to answer. “Paco Lacerda is standing in front of my old house. And coming this way…”
Jazz groans on the other side of the line. “I meant to tell you he moved in. Such an asshole. He glares me down every time I pass him by and complains about you moving out of the state with Albie. Like he and his brother didn’t have everything to do with that. Is he bothering you?”
“No,” I lie, even as he continues to approach. “I’m hanging up, though. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
“Wait—” she starts.
But I hang up just as Paco reaches me.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming back here, whore,” he says, without so much as a hello.
I don’t answer. Can’t answer. Even after all the phone calls, I still don’t know how to respond to this open hostility. Alberto had been the black sheep of the Lacerda family, choosing to work a civilian job instead of becoming a cop, like his father and brothers. A civilian job that turned out to be a cover for a Chinese triad’s sex-trafficking scheme. But even though Alberto was the one who decided to turn to a life of crime, I’m the one they blame for his death.
“Was that Alberto Jr. who just whizzed by?” Paco demands now. He was my dead husband’s younger brother, but now he’s older and larger than his dead brother ever was. He has the familiar markings of someone who hasn’t re-enlisted. Huge muscles running to fat, along with a beer belly.
“He didn’t even know who I was! You ever even showed him a picture of his grandma? Or his grandfather, the police chief?” Paco asks me these questions, his meaty fists opening and closing.
Good job. You are doing fine work. Funny, how easy it had been to
channel my inherited drill sergeant all week. But now I back away from Paco’s questions. From the spite and wrath in his eyes.
I rush off down the street toward my parents’ house, and he doesn’t follow me. But why do I have the feeling I’ll be getting another Bible verse tonight?
When I reach the lanai, I find Albie already talking Jazz’s ear off. “I hear him yelling a bunch…plus, he’s got this butler, that’s, like, always up—seriously, I went downstairs last night to eat some of mom’s leftover Kahlua chicken—she can’t make pork on account of Mr. Rashid being a Muslim, but, you know, chicken’s okay—and there’s Mr. Faizan in the kitchen, just drinking a glass of water. I think he’s a vampire, but Mom says three a.m.’s not that early for some people, and he probably just likes to get up before everybody else. But the house is right on the beach and he doesn’t know how to surf. You’ve got to come over and help me teach him.”
“Maybe later in the summer, Albie,” I say, releasing Jazz from Albie’s hook of chatter as I come up the sidewalk.
Jazz laughs when she sees me and draws me in for a hug. She’s the kind of gorgeous that can’t be defeated by her messy top bun, refusal to wear makeup and the steady rotation of board shorts and baggy surf championship sponsor t-shirts that she calls a wardrobe when she’s not in the water. She’s still rocking that look that makes our mom often lament she’s “too pretty to be such a tomboy.”
But now, she also looks tired. The kind of tired coffee can’t fix. The kind of tired that would make Sylvie ask, “You okay?” as soon as she walked into the room.
“Aw, mom…” Albie whines. “I want her to see the house and tell me if Faizan is a vampire.”
“Ooh, I want to see the house and the vampire too!” Jazz says, taking his side with a mischievous grin. Apparently, sleep deprivation and stress aren’t enough to keep the fun aunt down. “Tell you what, I’ll bring my surfboard by on my next day off, and we’ll teach that vampire how to catch some waves.”
I continue to eye Jazz worriedly as we enter the house, but she’s right about Dad looking better.
He’s on the couch, reading a Tom Clancy book when we enter, a thinner and slightly shakier version of the man I grew up with. Large and in-charge black drill sergeant at work, quiet black gentleman reader at home—at least as long as you didn’t dare to try to sleep in or complain about being bored. Then we got to see the same version of him as every other grunt in basic training.
“Grandpa!” Albie calls out. Though he’s ten now and supposedly off hugs, he goes running to enclose his arms around the beloved grandfather he hasn’t seen in person since we moved to Connecticut.
“You’re almost as tall as me now!” Dad tells him, hugging him back with a delighted laugh.
“Only when you’re sitting down,” Albie answers laughing.
But he has grown a lot since my parents saw him last. My heart pangs when I see he’s now a few inches taller than my little Filipino mother. Her hair’s longer these days, I notice when Albie rounds the couch to hug her, with a lot more gray. Dad’s diagnosis has really taken a toll on both my sister and my mother.
But mom acts like Albie’s stick-like body is the only tragedy in the room. “Look how skinny you got up in Connecticut! Like nobody’s feeding you,” she laments, pinching at his bones like a starving child from one of those UNICEF commercials has just walked through her front door. “Here, let me get you a bowl of adobo.”
Of course, Albie accepts her offer like he didn’t shovel down a huge serving of my Loco Moco this morning.
“Did I tell you Mom’s making her new boss eat all the Hawaiian food because he’s so skinny on account of him being sad about his whole family dying?” he asks as they disappear into the kitchen.
“Also, I brought you a Ninja mixer,” I call out after her, holding up the stolen appliance as I follow them into the kitchen.
“Anaak, if he’s too skinny, you should start making him my Filipino recipes,” my mother tells me, not even beginning to fall for that subject change. “And did Albie say his whole family died?”
So yeah, by the time Albie’s done talking, my family knows all my business, down to me and him depositing the blackout curtains at the dumpster behind Leonard’s Bakery. But other than that, it’s a great visit. Mom makes us all guava smoothies in her new state-of-the-art mixer. And Dad shows Albie the latest model plane he’s working on, exhibiting a lot more steadiness and energy than he had before the clinical trial.
“You’re right the drugs are really working,” I say, handing Jazz a check. “This should get us through the summer, right?”
Jazz takes the check, but her face falls when she sees the number in the box.
“That’s not enough?” I ask. “That’s all but a few hundred dollars of my half upfront pay.”
She frets her lip but then seems to decide to smile. “It will definitely make a dent,” she answers. “Thank you.”
I frown because that’s not exactly an answer to my question. “Jazz…”
Jazz shakes her head. “Seriously, no worries. I’m going to take care of it.”
“Take care of it how?” I ask, seriously alarmed. If five figures only makes a dent, I have to ask, “Just how much debt is Dad in, right now?”
Dad comes back out with Albie before Jazz can answer, and I guess we really are cut from the same cloth. We both automatically paste on “everything’s okay” smiles for the little boy and old man. Just like our mother pretended everything was okay until Dad collapsed at Christmas Dinner two years ago.
But everything isn’t okay. I can tell. And later on, as Jazz gives us a ride back to Diamond Head, I cast worried looks at her from the passenger seat of her old Wrangler Jeep.
“Whoa, I’m definitely coming here on my next day off,” she says when she stops the Wrangler in front of the house. “This place is totally sick.”
“I told you!” Albie says as she helps him take his old R2 Chemistry surfboard down from her roof rack.
“And you told me right,” Jazz agrees with a laugh. But then her eyes widen at something in the distance. “Wait, is that the vampire?”
I look in the direction of her gaze, and sure enough, there’s Faizan standing in the open doorway with his arms folded.
And he does not look happy.
11
RASHID
I am not sure where to go now that I’ve achieved phase two of the three-step plan. The truth is, I spent so much time on phase two—breaking into Faizan’s safe, that I hadn’t properly thought out how to execute phase three.
Should I do it out on the back lanai, so accessible now that Mika has retracted all the house’s window walls? Perhaps I should roll out to the beach-facing portion of the house and drag myself down the steps. As close as I can get to the water.
But no…I dismiss that option right away. All beaches in Hawaii are public by law. Usually, it is empty at night, but just in case, I don’t want to risk witnesses.
I tip my head toward the bathroom. The tub in there might be the perfect place to—
My thoughts cut off when a quick knock sounds on my door, and Mika comes through the door with a tray without waiting for me to give her permission to enter.
This has become the standard ever since she decided to “nanh” my dismissal. But…
“It is your day off. Why in the world are you bothering me tonight?” I demand.
“It’s so great to see you too, Mr. Zaman,” she answers with a sunny smile.
Those dimples again…
Dark desire pools in my stomach, and I have to fight with myself to keep the monster inside my joggers from rising right in front of her.
“I’m starving and I thought you might like to eat, too.”
Not a double entendre for the hungry feeling that awakes inside of me whenever she enters the room. She sets a tray on my desk. There are two white bowls filled with some sort of stew, featuring large chunks of chicken. I had no wish to eat dinner tonight, but it smells divine.
And my stomach once again grumbles with a recently reawakened desire for real food.
“It’s Filipino chicken adobo,” she says, sitting across from me. “My mom always makes way too much so she sent us home, with, like, a full L&L Mac Salad container full of it.”
I hesitate, wanting to protest about her once again forcing food on me, even if Zahir is still refusing to fire her for going against my commands and wishes.
But then I remember. This will be the last time I have to put up with her behavior. One last meal. What is the harm?
I pick up the fork and eat her mother’s dish. It tastes even more delicious than it smells, tangy with hints of soy sauce, garlic, and vinegar, and so perfectly balanced that none of the flavorful ingredients overpowers the dish.
Before I know it, I’ve eaten the entire bowl with the big spoon she’s provided.
“Want the rest of mine?” she asks, holding up her own bowl.
My heart stops beating altogether, and I look at her, stunned by the offer.
But then I remember that we’re not in Jahwar. Also, she’s American and therefore, doesn’t realize…
“What? Why are you looking at me like that,” she asks, when I don’t answer.
I shake my head.
“No, tell me, please, I want to know. Is offering somebody the rest of your food considered offensive in Jahwar?”
“No, not offensive,” I answer. “But we do have a custom, dating back to ancient times when the original native Jahwari were still a simple desert tribe. When two fathers agreed that their children should marry, the girl was told to sit next to the boy, eat, and then offer him the rest of her bowl. It is the Jahwari way of saying what little I have, I give to you. And no matter what your background, if you were and grew up in Jahwar, it’s a prominent feature of most engagements.”
She scrunches up her nose. “Wait, so I just proposed to you?” she asks with a giggle.
Heat lights up the back of my neck, burning my ears at the thought. “Only in Jahwar,” I answer, working to keep my voice neutral. “I’m aware there is no such custom, here in the states.”
RASHID: HER RUTHLESS BOSS: 50 Loving States, Hawaii Page 8
