Haole Wood

by DeTarsio, Dee

  Mrs. Hokama’s red, swollen eyes widened before she hauled off and slapped me full across the face, knocking off my hat. I grabbed my cheek. “Please! I’m sorry. My grandmother had nothing to do with this and I just wanted you to know . . . Ooof.” Mrs. Hokama flung herself at me, and knocked me back into the sand. I twisted and turned, trying to evade her punching fists, especially the one with the giant diamond ring set in deadly prongs. Her legs scissored wildly, like a crazed high-school wrestler, trying to trap my body.

  Mr. Hokama and Jac rushed forward to pull us apart. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I had taken a self-defense class before but the Tasmanian She-Devil pummeling me didn’t have any nuts to kick. Who would ever have expected some middle aged woman to attack? I’ve never been in a fight in my life, not counting fisticuffs with my sister when we were little. Or teenagers. I’m sure I stopped punching Josephine when I was in my 20s, although she did have a genius middle-knuckle maneuver guaranteed to cause a Charley Horse. I wish I would have strong-armed her into teaching me how she did it. I sure could have used it on that beach.

  I had no offense and just rolled around in the sand trying to dodge Mrs. Hokama’s blows, as Jac stepped between us. Brave man. Mrs. Hokama reached around him and pushed my face down into the sand. I flung out my arms to push myself away. The gritty grains scraped my pink skin like sandpaper.

  Jac helped me up and Mr. Hokama held Mrs. Hokama tightly from behind as she continued to claw and fight. She was spitting mad, spewing hate at me. We stared at each other, panting.

  “Whore! Did you kill my son? Did you? Whore?”

  “What? I’m so sorry about your son. My grandmother—”

  “Your grandmother probably put you up to it!” She heaved.

  “She didn’t put me up to anything. I only met your son once.”

  “I know that.” Mrs. Hokama bared her teeth. “He would have nothing to do with someone like you. Haole! He had more class in his little finger than you have in your whole disgusting, white body.”

  “Come on, Jaswinder. Let’s go.” Jac pulled me close.

  I started to back up as a group of people gathered behind the Hokamas. They all looked at me like I was some sort of criminal. So much for getting to know local folks and looking for clues. If I observed this whole scene from a puffy cloud above or watched it on TV, I would point to the hatless blonde woman with the bent sunglasses and say, “She done it.”

  I needed to make amends. “Please, accept my sympathy for your loss. I wanted to come and pay respects for my grandmother.”

  “Haven’t you done enough?” Mr. Hokama spoke.

  “I haven’t done anything.” I said, watching Mr. Hokama turn back to someone in the crowd. He swiveled back to face me, holding a newspaper. He threw it at my feet.

  “What do you call that?” he asked.

  I tugged on the hem of my dress as I bent down to pick up the paper. It was that morning’s Maui News. I heard the noise of the crowd churl as if I had my ear pressed to a seashell.

  I scanned the top story. The headline screamed: “Liquor Licker—Clues to Killing?” There was a huge, four-color photograph, featuring me, wearing the very same, recognizable sundress I was wearing right that instant. In the photo, my blonde hair spilled over my shoulder as I leaned toward Mike Hokama. My tongue, looking very long and curled, like the tail of a seahorse, was poised to lick his hand. I swallowed. Oh, this was not good. The angle of the shot made my boobs look like they were about to fall out of my dress. I looked like a woman up to no good. The caption didn’t help: “Could this be the final picture ever taken of local developer, 35-year-old Mike Hokama? Nebraskan tourist Dustin Smith was taking photos when he captured this shot Monday night at The Coconut Shack, mere hours before Mr. Hokama’s body was found. Sources say the woman may be involved.”

  I scanned the rest of the article, which also highlighted the arrest of my grandmother, making the pair of us sound like a gang of hoodlums. I looked up at the Hokamas. Mrs. Hokama sobbed, not fighting any more, but repeating, “Call the police. Call the police.”

  “I am so sorry. I just met your son briefly the other night, and he got a business call and then left. He seemed like a wonderful man and I am truly sorry for your loss.”

  I was about to find out how sorry.

  Chapter 13

  Blonde Leading The Blind

  Jac took my hand and led me away. The picture in the paper shocked me. “My sister and I always used to joke about all the random tourists in other people’s pictures,” I told Jac. “We always thought it would be funny to be immortalized in some total stranger’s vacation scrapbook. Like they would notice us and wonder, ‘Who’s that girl?’ How freaky that I actually turned up in a tourist picture, licking a man who ends up dead?” I stopped and pulled my hand back. “Jac. What am I going to do now?”

  “You’ll get through this. It will die down as soon as they solve this case. You have an alibi,” he reminded me. “Me.”

  “But what about Halmoni? My grandmother could take the fall for this. I didn’t talk to one person at that memorial who could help me. They all looked at me like I was guilty. How am I ever going to help try to find who did it? If the police think they have the killer, they won’t spend much time looking for anybody else. I’m not sure what to do next.” I continued walking side by side with Jac. I knew what I wanted to do, though. I wanted to run home and hide. I wanted my mom. I wanted my grandmother. I wanted a do-over of my guardian angel.

  I looked at Jac. If only we met under different circumstances. I pushed my hair behind my ears. “Jac, I bet you’re sorry you got mixed up with me and all of this. But, it looks like I’m going to be stuck here for a while, and I’m not really prepared for it.” I sighed.

  “What about your parents?”

  “It’s time for me to grow up and take care of things, as best I can. My parents are really good people and they will come as soon as they can, but right now, my dad is healing from his knee surgery and can’t really walk very well. My mom’s not doing that great either, plus, she never goes anywhere without him. If I know my family, and I’m pretty sure I do, they are holding their breath, waiting for me to mess things up. Believe it or not, I’m not known for my common sense or grace under pressure.”

  “Aw, I find that hard to believe,” Jac said. The sparkle in his eye nearly made me trip. He looked down at me and took my arm, guiding me over a cracked sidewalk.

  I stared up at him, probably with the same kind of look I saved for a root beer Hawaiian shave ice. A nervous giggled slipped through my lips. “I’m not flirting with you,” I said. Though my pants officially belonged hanging on a telephone wire, I wasn’t consciously flirting at the time. Walking, talking, and being horrified about getting clocked on a public beach by the mother of a man who was murdered, that I just so happened to appear with in a lewd and lascivious photograph, while my grandmother rotted in jail for the crime, pretty much encompasses my multi-tasking abilities. Lip-licking, eyelash-fluttering, and boob-squishing would have to wait.

  “I’ll do anything to help my grandmother.”

  “You’ll figure it out, Jaswinder. I think you’ve got a beautiful head on those sunburned shoulders.”

  I laughed. “Thank you.”

  “I mean it,” Jac said. His blue eyes mesmerized me with a swirling kaleidoscope of azure, aquamarine and cornflower crystals. I stared for at least seven seconds longer than was socially appropriate and looked down.

  I hated to ask for help, for anything. “Do you know anyone who’s looking to hire?” I asked. “I’ve got to get a job. I tried the TV stations this morning, but they are all based on Oahu and just have small bureaus here, with no openings.” Not that I could give them a good reference anyway, I thought. I already told Jac how I got fired.

  “I do,” he said. “If you’re serious. My friend, Vaughn, is an optometrist and he needs an assistant.”

  “I don’t know anything about optometry. Besides, won’t my reput
ation precede me?”

  “Not to worry. He’s cool, and I will vouch for you. Trust me, it’s an entry-level job. You are head and shoulders over-qualified for this position. You should hear the stories he tells me about the assistants he’s put up with. He’s desperate. I’ll call him for you. It’s just temporary. You’ll be helping him out, and he can help you out. Even if you work part time, you can make some money and still have time to help your grandmother.”

  For the first time since I arrived in Maui, I felt like I had a handle on things. I had a plan. I would be earning money and getting to know the islanders. And maybe, I could help figure out more clues about this murder. I couldn’t wait to call my parents and let them know that everything was under control. I could do this.

  “Thanks so much, Jac. I feel a lot better.” I smiled, and for the record, did do a little hair twirling. “You’re right. I really think things are going to be okay.”

  I heard what I thought was the rush of roaring waves in the background. Little did I know it was really the gods laughing.

  I showed up at Island Eye’s the next morning and met Jac’s friend, Dr. Vaughn Galindo. He was a nice looking guy, married, with two kids, who fled life on the mainland seven years ago and started his optometry practice in Maui.

  “Business is good,” he told me. “Everyone needs their eyes checked sooner or later, and many of them need glasses or contacts, so we stay pretty busy. Your job is to answer the phone, make appointments, and just help out when patients come in. I have a tech who helps me with some of the computerized testing and patient care, but I do all the exams.”

  I began to relax. After the stress of my days in TV, it would be a nice change of pace to have a no-brainer way of earning money. The morning sped by as I learned the flow of the office and booked appointments. I enjoyed chatting with the patients who arrived, and would even sneak in a “have you heard about the murder?” Everyone heard, no one had any new gossip to add.

  Right before lunchtime, Vaughn left for an outside appointment. Not even five minutes after that, his tech, Ryan, told me he was heading out to lunch and would be back soon. Maybe he said sooner or later. Before he left, he introduced me to Mr. Abraham, a little old man, who, at the age of four-score and seven, decided to get contact lenses.

  “Just practice with him until he gets the hang of putting them in and taking them out,” he told me. I was not ready to trust an eye technician who wore hipster glasses the size of a snorkel mask and looked like he was trying to introduce a new goatee trend of hair question marks that framed his mouth.

  “Gulp,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m ready.”

  He waved me off. “It’s just a practice session. No biggie. You’ll be fine. Just spend time with him and let him practice. You’ll figure it out. See you later. Aloha.” With that he disappeared through the tinkling of the wind chime on the door.

  I stared at Mr. Abraham. He looked at me and blinked back behind heavy thick, yellowed lenses in black plastic frames. I sure wished I paid more attention earlier in the day when the tech taught some teenager how to put contact lenses in, instead of thanking my lucky stars that I didn’t have that job.

  “First and most important,” I said, trying to be professional, “we have to wash our hands.” That much I remembered. We both got up and washed our hands in the little sink beside the glasses display cabinet. Well, that took two minutes. I kept watching the clock, praying for Vaughn or the tech to come back.

  I commanded my fingers to stop shaking as I opened the box the tech gave me. “Just relax,” I told Mr. Abraham. Oops. I dropped the clear, dime-sized squishy disc. Fortunately, it landed in a bowl containing some sort of contact solution and it magically flowered open. I nodded my head sharply, with an air of expertise.

  “Pick it up,” I commanded the poor man.

  His magnified eyes behind his glasses lifted from the lip of the bowl to my face. I watched him dip his stiff, thick corn cob fingers into the bowl, chasing the elusive lens as if it were a goldfish.

  I babbled about my grandmother while Mr. Abraham hummed Tiny Bubbles. He was closer to piercing his own ear than ever getting that plastic lens inserted. At one point, we were ready to pop the champagne, thinking it was in, until he realized he still couldn’t see. We looked all over the table, in the bowl, on the mirror, until finally I found it, centered on his forehead like a clear caste mark. I gently peel it off and re-wetted it, trying not to sigh out loud or beat him about the head. He sweated and I pretended the wetness around his eyes was a natural response to futile attempts at cramming the foreign body into his droopy orbs. I wanted to cry, too.

  I placed the disc, (which actually was lens number four) onto my own finger. The first one ripped, the second one had some dark dot on it that I couldn’t get off, and the third one was just MIA and I prayed to God it wasn’t stuck somewhere in Mr. Abraham’s eye floating toward his brain.

  I got up, came around the table and decided to take matters into my own hands. I stood behind him, grabbed his chin with my left hand and forced his head back into my stomach. I kept the half-nelson stranglehold on him, propped my right leg up on the table for better traction and reached my fingers up to stretch open his right eye, which was horror-movie red. I was just about to trick him with the ol’ one-two-three, intending to shove the lens into his eye at the second count, when Dr. Galindo and the tech walked in.

  “So, I guess you have no visions of grandeur in the field of optometry,” Jac said, seeming like he was trying hard not to laugh. I squeezed my cell phone tightly, hoping I wouldn’t cry. Jac must have sensed my panic.

  “Jaswinder, I’m just teasing. Don’t worry about it.”

  “How could I have screwed this up? Oh wait, don’t tell me. Because I screw everything up.” The word pathetic officially belongs on my resume. “Sometimes I just don’t know when to quit.”

  “Come on,” Jac said. “Nothing to get upset over. It was only a temporary thing anyway. You tried it, it didn’t work out. How’s your grandmother? Have you heard anything new on the case?”

  “Halmoni is doing pretty well, considering. I meet with the attorney again this afternoon just to try to get her out of jail. Jac, I just feel so helpless. I wish I knew what to do to help.”

  “Let me take you to breakfast tomorrow morning,” Jac said. “Maybe it will help to talk things out. I’ll pick you up at nine, if that works for you?”

  “Thanks,” I said, hanging up the phone and wondering how in the world I could smile when my whole world was falling apart.

  Chapter 14

  Sun$hmina

  As I crawled into bed that night, I heard a noise. “I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a contact lens to enter the eye of an old Hawaiian.”

  I took my pillow and threw it at the bed across the room, burying my head under my covers to drown out the laughter. I poked my head back out from under the blanket.

  “Some guardian angel you are. I got fired from my job today. Shortest career I’ve ever had. I’ve had orgasms that have lasted longer than that.”

  I stared at him as he shook his big head back and forth. “No you haven’t,” he said kindly.

  I plopped back down on my pillow. “What do you know about it anyway? Guardian angels have sex?”

  He laughed. “We have love.”

  “Oh, brother. Give me a break.”

  “If you only knew how many breaks I have given you.”

  “Oh, really?” I sat back up on the bed, in the dark, and hugged my knees. “The fact that I can see you, and by your own admission, I’m not supposed to, leads me to believe I was at the end of the line when they were passing out guardian angels. I also find it hard to believe that my sex habits are even up for discussion here. And with you. A so-called angel. This is kind of creepy.”

  “What do you want to talk about?

  “Shouldn’t you be meeting with your supervisor or something and trying to correct this big fat mess?�
��

  “Which mess would that be, exactly? That you want longer—”

  I groaned, cutting him off. “I’m trying to change the subject. Stop talking about me and my, you know.” I waved my hands around.

  He nodded. “You do very well in the sexual satisfaction department.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. I am agreeing with you. Supreme Being, what does it take to make you happy?”

  I stared at him. I believe my mouth hung open.

  “Why are you arguing with me? You rate very high on the sexy time survey, even if you sometimes have to take matters into your own hands.”

  My hand was over my mouth. I dropped it to yell at him. “Please don’t ever say sexy time again.” I paused. There’s a survey? Damn, he was too all-seeing for my comfort. I was as competitive as the next girl. Who wouldn’t want to get high marks in something, seeings as how I was pretty sure I skewed the curve when it came to career, relationship, beauty, retirement planning . . . oh, dear God, I could go on and on.

  “That is your problem,” he said. “You have no job and you waste space,” he tapped his head, “worrying about retirement. That is why—” He leaned toward me.

  I leaned toward him. At last, some answers. “Yes? What? That’s why what?”

  “That is why orgasms are so important.”

  “Stop it.” I shivered.

  He laughed. “They are a little something He Who Must Be Obeyed threw in to sweeten the deal.”

  “What deal?”

  “The deal of living your best life.”

  I had nothing. “I have nothing.”

  “Think about it,” he told me. “Or, stop thinking, I should say,” he added. “You need to quiet your mind. A perfect example is when you—”

  I interrupted him. “Please stop talking. And don’t say that word again.”