White Oak, Tennessee was 4,500 miles from Lanai City. It had taken less than a day to get there, but only because the day was continuously and unnaturally elongated as she jetted west. Right now it was still afternoon in Hawaii, but was six hours later in Tennessee. Phoebe threw herself down on the bed, intending to doze for only a few minutes, but went sound asleep instead.
After ninety minutes of near coma, she woke up and staggered to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face until she felt awake enough to drive again. She consulted her map, looking for the place where she was supposed to pick up the Professor. It was near the beach at the end of a long dirt road through what looked to be a barren, empty zone.
Only now did it occur to her to question why she’d had to come all this way to pick the guy up. This little rendezvous on Pineapple Island added 9,000 miles to her travels. Couldn’t they have met up in New York? Maybe the Boss thought she’d enjoy getting to see Hawaii. He was right of course. It was wonderful. But how long would she be here? She thought about it and realized she’d be in the air flying to and fro longer than she’d be in Hawaii!
* * *
Phoebe drove away from the tiny jungle town heading toward what looked like a No Man’s Land, or a Hawaiian Empty Quarter. In about three minutes the pavement ended and became a dirt road. She slowed down to about fifteen miles an hour as she passed through an expanse filled with boulders and bright orange-red dirt. There was almost no vegetation. Then she came to an area where randomly placed vertical stacks of small stones lined both sides of the road.
The stones were obviously chosen with a preference for naturally flattened shapes to make it possible to stack them. They were anywhere from the size of a Frisbee to a pebble, piled one atop the other in teetering towers. Phoebe guessed it was an Hawaiian tradition, perhaps a type of handmade altar.
Dozens of these knee-high or waist-high cairns stood out in eerie relief against the red dirt, blinding blue sky, and myriad shifting blues and greens of the ocean. They were the only visible indication of human existence on the otherwise bald ground.
The place was absolutely silent except for the sound of the wind as it blew past her ears. She followed the map toward the beach and came to a small house painted in a faded green that seemed typical of Hawaii. The little cottage was raised a couple of feet off the ground, built of a lightweight wood in a board and batten style, and topped with a rusting tin roof.
She parked and walked around toward the ocean side of the house and the front door. A man was sitting on the steps that led up to a porch shaded by a deeply overhanging roof. Phoebe wondered if she was seeing the origin of the word lanai.
She could hardly make out the man from where she stood in the full sun, because he sat in the dense shade, but she saw beautiful white teeth when he smiled at her. “Ms. McFarland, I presume?”
Phoebe laughed. “Professor?”
“You’ve come to the right place.” He slapped the wooden step next to where he sat and said, “Please, have a seat.”
Phoebe sat down beside him and looked out at the unobstructed view of ocean. She could hear the waves hitting rocks and see the spray being tossed into the air. There was a small area of sandy beach, but the coastline was mostly dangerous looking jagged rock.
“How much time do we have?” he asked.
“Our tickets have us leaving tomorrow morning at nine, but if you want to adjust the schedule, Arabella can probably arrange things to suit you.”
“No doubt,” he laughed. Obviously he knew her. “Tomorrow’s fine. You must be tired from your trip. You can get a good night’s sleep and we’ll start our adventure in the morning.”
They fell silent for a few moments. “What an amazing place,” Phoebe said as she looked out at the shimmering blue, green, and turquoise ocean.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m very lucky. During the academic year I live on O’ahu, near the main campus of the University, but I come out here as often as I can.”
Phoebe glanced at him. He seemed to be about her age or maybe a couple of years older. He had a tan and weathered face. His silver hair was tousled by the breeze. He was barefoot, wearing baggy khaki shorts, a faded t-shirt, and large, dark tortoiseshell sunglasses.
“I haven’t been to France in over a year,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it. Have you been before?”
“Only once, and very briefly.”
“And now Le Seigneur wants us to find and retrieve for him?”
“Yes.”
“It must seem quite strange that they would partner you with me.”
“No stranger than anything else that’s happened lately.”
His white teeth flashed again in the shade. He had a gorgeous smile.
“I got only the briefest description of you,” Phoebe said. “It was a short sentence saying that you taught French Literature. Do you mind telling me about yourself?”
“It’s actually much safer for us both if you don’t know any more about me than strictly necessary.”
“Oh,” Phoebe said. That was unexpected. It took her a few moments to figure out how to proceed after the rebuff, “I’d like to see the island while I’m here. Do you mind showing me around?”
“Not at all, happy to. The most comprehensive version of the tour takes about thirty minutes. It’s a very small island.”
Phoebe laughed. “Then how about right now?”
He stood. Now Phoebe could see that he was really muscular. Obviously he was being sent as her bodyguard. For a moment that made her feel safe. Then she realized she must be about to attempt something that would provoke the need for a bodyguard. That was worrisome.
Phoebe went to the rental Jeep and got in on the passenger side. The Professor followed her and stopped when he got close to her door. He was smiling broadly.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Phoebe said. “I’ve been travelling all day, and my nerves are jangling. Do you mind driving?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to try it, but I must warn you that this is probably not the wisest time or place for that sort of experimentation.”
“What?”
“Le Seigneur,” he laughed, slapping his meaty thighs, “such a comedian.” He tilted his face up toward the sky and said, “Apparently they were excessively discreet and failed to mention that I’m blind.”
“Blind?”
“As a bat.”
“Legally blind or …. ?”
“I had an accident and then an infection when I was eight years old. Both of my eyes have been removed.”
“Oh,” said Phoebe. That was really blind.
“Don’t worry, I have other skills, but I’m afraid I’m not much help as a chauffeur.”
“Ahhh,” Phoebe said.
“If you’ll let me have your seat, I’ll direct you around the island.”
Phoebe got out and went around to the driver’s side. He got in without difficulty and fastened his seatbelt. She was in shock, but trying to normalize the situation with her new partner, so she said blurted out stupidly, “So you’re blind like Stevie Wonder?”
She managed to stop speaking out loud, but continued in her head, or Ray Charles, or Andrea Bocelli, or Jose Feliciano ….
“Not really. I’m a terrible singer.”
Phoebe didn’t start the car. She sat staring straight in front of her trying to adjust to the news that her bodyguard was blind. What kind of bodyguard was blind? Then she turned toward him. He was facing her with a worried expression. She couldn’t formulate anything to say.
“I may be blind,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t see anything.”
Okay, here comes the weird part, Phoebe thought. She’d been bracing for it ever since she’d heard she had a partner.
“I have unusually well developed inner vision, spiritual vision. Everyone has it, but most people never notice it because normal vision is so overpowering it drowns out the more subtle visual sense.”
“You’re a seer, a vo
yant?” She used the French term because it was one of the few she’d learned recently.
“No,” he shook his head slowly, “I can see … through things. Sort of.”
“Like Superman?”
“It’s a little like x-ray vision. But without the x-rays.”
Good, Phoebe thought, I won’t have to wear a radiation badge when I sit next to you. Then it hit her. “Can you see my underwear?” she blurted.
“No,” he said, rubbing his face in frustration. “And I can’t fly or shoot energy beams out of my eyes.”
“Thank God,” Phoebe said. “About the underwear, I mean.”
He was struggling not to laugh. “What are you seeing now?” she asked.
“Nothing. I swear.”
“Let’s get it all over with right now,” Phoebe said, “What else don’t I know about you?”
“That would be the part that’s the need to know stuff.”
“Forget about need-to-know. I’m asking you to tell me right now the stuff that if you don’t tell me now I will want to kill you for later, because you didn’t tell me now.”
“Wow,” he said. “Is that Appalachian sentence construction? If so, it’s amazing. Nevertheless, we’re not gonna go there ever.”
Phoebe shivered at the implications. She wondered what would happen if she tried to back out now. He turned to face forward and she looked at his handsome profile. It would be embarrassing to flub this mission. Phoebe was desperate to do a good job.
She sat there, frozen with indecision. Then, in the absence of any viable superpowers, she decided to go with her gut, which told her this was a good guy. He was no Christophe, but he was extremely good looking. And he couldn’t see that she was just ordinary looking. It was a unique situation. When she was with him, she would never have to worry about her hair, or anything connected with how she looked.
She decided that except for being secretive, he was darn near perfect. She started the car, and asked, “Where to?”
He pointed toward a dirt road that led toward the highest part of the island.
* * *
As they chatted Phoebe called him Professor and he said, “Call me J.J.”
She’d already forgotten his first name so she asked, “What does that stand for?”
“Jean-Jacques,” he said with an accent, so it sounded sort of like Zsa Zsa.
Jean-Jacques De Blackmere, she repeated to herself. It sounded like something out of a medieval romance novel. To be honest, he looked like something out of medieval romance novel—one of the time travelling ones if you needed to explain the shorts and the t-shirt.
Chapter 7.
The mysterious professor was a great tour guide. He directed her to all the best lookouts and filled her in on the history of the place. Because of its location and elevation, Lanai was cooler and drier than the other islands. Phoebe’s favorite stop was at the pretty stable where they kept horses for guests at the Lodge at Koele. There was something appealing about the notion of a Hawaiian cowboy.
At his suggestion they had dinner on the terrace of Manele Bay Hotel, overlooking the ocean. Eating perfectly ripe local tropical fruit was a new experience for Phoebe. The papaya was a revelation. There was fresh, expertly-cooked fish as well. It was all pretty fabulous, except for her partner being blind and having some gigantic secret.
When she took J.J. back home to drop him off, he invited Phoebe to follow him into his immaculate cottage while he got them a couple of light jackets. His house was small, but very well designed with a sleeping alcove and a bathroom off a charming central space that served as the kitchen, dining room, living room, and study. He had very few possessions there and everything was neatly arranged so he could find it easily.
They went back outside and sat on the porch steps in the dark, listening to the ocean. “After I lost my vision,” J.J. said. “I gradually realized I could still see, but in a different way. It’s not visual, it’s more of a sense of pressure. I learned to perceive shapes, and even landscapes, if I was still enough, and calm. And I could sense if things were solid or hollow.
“Then I realized there was another benefit to being blind. It meant that I had a lot of room for memory, far more than sighted people do. Without the massive bombardment to the senses from normal vision, I was left with a big warehouse that I could use for information storage. So, in retrospect, losing my sight turned out to be a blessing for me.
“I tell you this so you’ll know I can be of assistance to you. Unfortunately I’ll never be able to share the driving, unless you’re really and truly desperate.”
Phoebe laughed at that last bit, but shuddered inwardly at the feeling she got when J.J. said it. Really and truly desperate was not exactly a rare condition for her, and certainly not since she’d joined The School for Mysteries and Psychics.
The way her life had been going lately, she knew without a doubt that there would come a time in the not too distance future when J.J. would be driving and she would be the passenger in a car.
It was inevitable.
* * *
They sat on the porch for a while and enjoyed the breeze after the heat of the day. Then Phoebe went back to the Hotel Lanai where she slept peacefully in her cozy room, under a gently faded Polynesian quilt.
The next day was perfect. Of course it was. She was in Hawaii! Phoebe told herself to enjoy it while it lasted. Tomorrow, where they were going, it would be winter. The temperature would drop thirty to forty degrees. France would be freezing.
When she arrived at J.J’s cottage to pick him up, he was sitting on the porch in navy trousers and a blue oxford shirt with a medium sized black duffel bag beside him. “You travel light,” Phoebe said. “You know we’re going to the real world now. I hope you packed for the cold. Can I help you with your gear?”
“It works best for me if I can take your arm and walk slightly behind you. It helps me anticipate how level the ground is by whether you’re stepping up or down. And this way people won’t notice anything unusual. The dark glasses at night used to be a dead giveaway, but I’m told it’s fashionable now.”
Phoebe smiled and agreed that this was true. Then she took J.J.’s bag and set it in the back of the Jeep next to her duffle. He got in and she drove them to the main dock where she left the keys under the mat as directed by the rental agent, and they boarded the boat that would take them to Maui.
* * *
Phoebe trudged slowly along the crowded jetway in the queue with a coupla hundred other people boarding the commercial airplane. Ugh. Honolulu to Newark in just under ten hours, then eight more hours to Paris.
She knew she was being ridiculous. She’d had one measly trip in a private jet and she was hooked. She craved them. She couldn’t go back in time and erase her knowledge of the fabulousness of a private airplane. Once you’d experienced it, you couldn’t bear to go back, but you had to.
On her way out to Hawaii, Phoebe had dreaded the long flights, but she had tickets in first class on the legs of the westward trip where the planes were big enough to have it. That had made things more pleasant. She felt truly sorry for everyone in economy. The same thing was true for J.J. and her when they flew back to the east, except the planes on the way back were bigger, so First Class was even better.
Her dread had been for nothing. Air travel was pretty fabulous when you had your own pod. Privacy, a bed, and your own television, transformed a cramped nightmare into fun. A couple of First Class pods and eighteen hours later they landed at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris.
Ain’t we a pair? Phoebe thought, mimicking Tina Turner’s line in a Mad Max film. Here they were—an old maid and a blind man, a late middle-aged Marion Ravenwood and Indiana Jones. Be afraid world, be very afraid.
* * *
As they shuffled through the long lines at customs, J.J. started up a conversation in French with a gentlemen who’d occupied a nearby pod during the transatlantic leg of the flight. Phoebe loved hearing the rapid speech. French was so beautiful,
even when you didn’t understand it.
She heard J.J. say, merci several times. The words for thank you were part of her microscopic French vocabulary. He turned a happy smile on Phoebe and said, “We won’t need to worry about catching a train and renting a car. Monsieur Brissac has kindly offered to take us to our destination.”
Being driven by a local guy would be a lot nicer than lugging their luggage through the airport, a train station, and to a car rental place. Phoebe mumbled a wobbly self-conscious, “Merci beaucoup.” Then she added, “I’m sure this gentleman’s car will be a lot more pleasant.”
“It’s not a car,” J.J. said. “It’s a squirrel.”
Phoebe looked at him with a puzzled expression, but of course he couldn’t see it. So she said, “A squirrel?”
“An Airbus Écureuil!”
It took Phoebe several beats to decipher what J.J. had said. She recognized Airbus as an airplane manufacturer, but had no idea what an Écureuil was.
“It’s a helicopter,” he explained. “Quite a famous type.”
“A flying squirrel?” She was picturing some mechanical version of Cinderella’s carriage made from a pumpkin, drawn by mice, and driven by a rat. She wondered what would happen if they were still in the air when their allotted time ran out. At least Cinderella had stayed on the ground.
“Don’t be afraid,” J.J. said. “They’re the best. They’ve landed one of them on the summit of Mt. Everest!”
Phoebe was afraid to ask how hard they’d hit the summit and whether they’d been able to successfully take off and get home safely.
Apparently Mr. Brissac was able to follow the main points of their discussion because he smiled at her and nodded to confirm what J.J. had said. As soon as they cleared customs, their luggage was magically picked up by two men in suits and transported to a Range Rover. They were then driven to an area reserved for helicopters.
They flew southwest from the airport, which took them over Paris. What a view. Mon Dieu, Phoebe said to herself, practicing more of the French she’d learned from American television. Pepé LePew cartoons in this particular case.
Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics Page 4
