Here Today, Gone to Maui

by Carol Snow

“Yes,” I said, meaning no. “I should not have bought that dress.”

  The video had, thankfully, zoomed away from the crap in my teeth, providing a full-length shot of my Safeway couture. The dress was too straight, I saw now, too loose. It made me look like I had no shape whatsoever. Even a pear has some curvy contours.

  “I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” Beth said. “I can’t believe he lied like that, and that you never even suspected—” She stopped herself before saying how lucky she was to have married Sal. “What did Mom say about it?” she asked.

  “Mom? Do you think she knows?” I pictured my mother in her cramped kitchen, sitting at her oversize table. She read the paper first thing every morning, the various sections spread out in front of her, her big coffee cup filled to the brim.

  “You haven’t called her?”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Janie? Is that you?”

  “Yes. I’m in Maui.”

  “I know! Everyone knows!”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner, but—”

  “You were on the news this morning! They’d gotten hold of your high school picture—you know the one where your hair was all one length, the way I liked it? They said your name and where you’d gone to high school. They didn’t actually mention me, but enough people know I have a daughter named Jane to make the connection.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

  “The phone has been ringing off the hook! All morning! I’m surprised you were even able to get through. My supervisor at Home Depot said I could take today off if I needed, but I said, no sir, I’m a team player.”

  “Oh, wow, Mom, I hadn’t really thought about how it would affect—”

  “You remember Adele Pritchard? From when we lived on East Lane?”

  “Sort of,” I said, meaning not really.

  “I hadn’t spoken to her for, what? Eighteen years? And she calls, out of the blue, says she’d seen you and didn’t know you were in California and how awful this whole thing must be for our family. And she told me how brave she always thought I was, soldiering on after your father left me with two young children.”

  “We weren’t that young.”

  “And so, anyway, we’re going to have lunch next week, probably Tuesday, and Adele’s going to call Barb Reilly, too, see if she can make it.”

  “Well, I’ll still be here for a few more days,” I said. “Just in case Jimmy shows up—or floats up, or whatever.”

  “No great loss,” she said.

  “What?” Surely she hadn’t said that.

  “Better you find out what he’s really like now rather than after wasting twenty years of your life with him. Oops—I gotta run if I’m going to make it to work on time. I know everyone is going to have lots of questions!”

  “Do you want to talk to a reporter from People magazine?” Mary asked me an hour later. This was after I’d talked to Lena (“The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Mr. Wills hasn’t left his office all day”). After I’d watched the special reports on television (“credit-card fraud . . . pornographic pictures . . . multiple lovers . . . poi . . .”). After I’d read the local paper (Although police haven’t officially named the two women as suspects in the case . . . ). After I’d talked to Sergeant Hosozawa (“We still think he’s alive, but we’re not ready to say that to the press”).

  “People magazine?” I said to Mary, feeling slightly hysterical. “Is this about me carrying Brad Pitt’s baby? Because it’s not true.”

  “You shouldn’t joke,” Mary said somberly. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “It’s a nervous tic. If I don’t joke, I’ll—” A sob escaped my lips, followed by another and another. “Lose control,” I finally managed to gasp.

  “I’ll tell the reporter that you are too overcome by emotion to talk right now,” she said.

  “Good thinking,” I said.

  I thought Tiara would be thrilled about the news crews in the parking lot. I expected her to throw on her pretty silk dress and sprint out the door.

  “I can’t go out looking like this!” Tiara said, practically in tears. Her hair was all pouffy on one side, flat on the other. Her eye makeup had finally smeared. While she still looked better than I do on my best day, she wasn’t up to her usual standards.

  She turned on the shower (leaving the door open) and dug through her suitcases. “My product! The Hyatt people didn’t pack my product!”

  “Your—what?” I asked.

  “My hair thickener, and the polishing milk and the spray. And the—oh my God, they didn’t pack my makeup, either!” Once again, she was more hysterical than she’d been when Jimmy disappeared, and this time she was sober.

  “You can borrow my makeup,” I said. “And I’ve got a can of mousse.”

  I don’t want to describe the disdainful look she gave me because it’ll just piss me off all over again.

  While Tiara showered (squealing when the people next door flushed their toilet, turning the spray burning hot), I called the airlines to see if I could get an earlier flight home. Tonight there was an available seat on a red-eye for a price so high I paused to consider my credit-card limit. Still, I was about to book it when the reality hit me. Going home wouldn’t solve anything. Instead of news vans in the Maui Hi parking lot, there might be news vans outside my condo. And if I wouldn’t talk to the reporters, they might interview my neighbors, or my coworkers, or maybe even people from my past.

  Oh God.

  Mary called on the room phone. “I’ve got Michael James on the line. I’ve been holding all your other calls.”

  “Have there been many?” I asked.

  She paused for a second, counting. “Twenty-three.”

  “No!”

  “But a lot are repeats. One guy, he called ten times, probably. I know it’s him because he says his r’s funny. But each time he uses a different name.”

  “Like Wobert?” I said.

  “No joking,” she said, though she couldn’t help chuckling.

  “Maybe the luau wasn’t a great idea,” Michael said over the phone.

  “You think?”

  “You’re a good dancer, though,” he said.

  “So are you.”

  “Not really.”

  I pictured him on the stage. “Yeah, but it’s polite to say so.”

  He laughed softly. “Anyway, I know you’re stuck in your room.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because they keep showing your door on TV. And saying you and Tiara are in there.”

  That made me feel creepy. I’d seen the shots myself, of course, but it felt different to know that other people were looking at the pictures of my door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the two tramps who had been caught partying with a new man so soon after their shared boyfriend’s disappearance.

  “Where I’m staying, there’s plenty of room,” Michael said. “And it’s very private. So, if you guys want to crash here, it’s really fine.”

  I peeked between the venetian blinds. Someone had brought pink donut boxes and cardboard cups of coffee. The news crews showed no signs of leaving.

  “We’ll be there within the hour,” I said.

  Chapter 20

  A door on the back wall that looked like a locked closet turned out to connect my condo to the much nicer waterfront unit on the other side.

  “For fire safety,” Mary explained, coming in from the other unit.

  “But the door’s kept locked,” I said. “If there was a fire, no one could open it.”

  She shrugged. “So you burn. But the guy who owns this building, he doesn’t get in trouble.”

  Mary, diplomatically carrying Jimmy’s bag and one of Tiara’s (leaving each of us to carry one of our own), led us through the attached unit and along Maui Hi’s waterfront rock wall. We scampered over the patchy grass in front of the condos next door to the concrete walkway of the complex beyond that. We rounded a corner and came upon a par
king lot slightly larger than Maui Hi’s, where Albert was waiting in a blue van, the engine running.

  “What about my rental car?” I asked, shoving my suitcase in the back.

  “We can drive it over to you later, if you want,” Mary said.

  “I should get it back to the airport,” I said. “It’s on a stolen credit card or stolen miles—I can’t even remember.” Suddenly I felt very, very tired.

  “Albert and I get off at four,” Mary said. “We’ll take care of it.”

  I shook my head: they had done enough. “I can’t let you—”

  She put up her hand: stop. “It’s decided,” she said kindly.

  I nodded. “There’s a dive bag in the trunk. You can keep it, if you like.” Suddenly, impulsively, I squeezed her tight. “Mahalo,” I whispered.

  Albert took a left out of the parking lot. I glanced to the right, afraid I’d see photographers trailing us, but we turned onto the pavement without incident. The road was bumpy, windy, and shady, lined with dingy condos that soon gave way to gates on the ocean side. Across the street, big houses with large windows loomed on the hill.

  When the road curved inland, Albert turned left onto a short street and stopped in front of a black wrought-iron gate. There was a silver intercom box and a black mailbox that said Hollings-worth. Albert rolled down his window—Maui Hi’s management had managed to find the last vehicle on the planet without power windows—and pushed a red button on the intercom box.

  “Yes?” came a tinny male voice.

  Albert cleared his throat. “I have the delivery from down the road.” He turned to face us and wiggled his eyebrows.

  The gates swung open like curtains on opening night. And what a show: the huge house looked vaguely Japanese, with a high-peaked roof and lots of glass. The lush yard overflowed with birds of paradise, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and a whole bunch of other plants that I didn’t recognize but that probably cost a lot more than the geraniums planted on the grounds outside my Brea condo.

  Albert parked the van next to Michael’s rented convertible. Behind us, the gates swung shut, soundless until a final jarring clang when they snapped back into place. “WD-40,” Albert muttered.

  Tiara and I climbed out onto the white shell driveway and stared at the house. Through the windows, I could see all the way to the ocean.

  Michael opened the front door, wearing black board shorts, a sleeveless white T-shirt, and a faded red baseball cap. Sunglasses hung from a cord around his neck. The front door opened onto the main room, an enormous space that encompassed a living room, dining area, and kitchen, the ceilings dotted here and there with lazy fans. The furniture was caramel-colored wicker with white cushions. Raffia rugs covered the pale wood floor. Directly in front of us the Pacific glinted through a wall of windows.

  “This is, uh, nice,” I said.

  Michael grinned. “Yeah, well, every time I stay here I send my friend one of those Harry and David fruit towers, so it comes out pretty even.”

  “Your friend lets you stay here for free?” Tiara asked, pulling off her oversize eyeglasses. She had major raccoon eyes from the smeared mascara.

  Michael shrugged. “I keep him pretty well stocked with dive gear, but, basically, yeah.”

  “You want me to get you anything from the store?” Albert asked. “Groceries or anything?”

  “I’d hate to put you out,” I said. “But it doesn’t look like we’ll be going out for many meals.”

  “You kidding?” he said. “This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s like Mission: Impossible or something.”

  I checked the kitchen pantry and the Sub-Zero refrigerator and jotted down a quick list.

  “Could you swing by the Hyatt?” Tiara asked Albert. “And see if they’ve got my makeup and my hair stuff?” She had pulled back her product-free, un-blow-dried hair. “Or maybe I should go with you,” she said, biting on an arm of her sunglasses. “So if they don’t have my stuff, we can swing by the mall.”

  “We don’t have a mall,” Albert said. “Not like you have on the mainland, anyway. The Cannery Mall has a Long’s Drugs, though. You wanna go there?”

  Tiara covered her eyes briefly, took a deep breath, and nodded.

  “Guess that means you get first dibs on rooms,” Michael said, once they had left.

  There were two bedrooms to choose from. Room number one was at the end of a corridor, a bit dark, with a window overlooking some dense greenery. There was a white wood bed covered with a nubby beige coverlet, a white wicker settee, and a tiny bathroom with a shower.

  Room number two’s high ceiling was paneled in some kind of blond wood. A ceiling fan with fat, rounded panels lent a pleasant breeze. The bed was large and comfy-looking, covered in a quilt of the palest green. There was an overstuffed easy chair and a little writing desk. A pitcher of water sat on top of the desk, circles of lemon bobbling among the ice cubes like a crowd of happy faces. (“The housekeeper came this morning,” Michael explained.)

  The room had an attached bathroom, of course, with sand-colored travertine tiles, a rainfall shower, and a Jacuzzi tub. And, oh—did I mention? Beyond a set of French doors was a kick-ass view of the Pacific, plus a lanai complete with a lounge chair and a tiny table for coffee or cocktails.

  “You didn’t want this room?” I asked in astonishment.

  “When Trey’s here—that’s my friend, Trey Hollingsworth—this is where he sleeps. So, I’m just staying where I always do,” Michael said. “So—which room do you want?”

  I drifted closer to the French doors. “Is that a trick question?”

  After Michael left, I spent a moment standing in the middle of my room, smiling stupidly. The room was all mine—at least for a couple of days. I poured myself a glass of lemony water and took it out to the lanai. The wind was strong today. It whipped my hair into my eyes. The air felt damp, heavy. Sweat gathered on my upper lip.

  There were trees behind the house and a narrow path that led to the water. There was no sand beach, just a jumble of lava rocks.

  Below me, Michael stood on some rocks near the water’s edge. He tossed his faded red baseball cap behind him and then pulled off his shirt.

  I stepped back into the shadows of the lanai to watch him. He was just going for a swim—nothing private—but I felt like I was spying, somehow.

  Michael looked skinny when he was dressed, but now I could see that his shoulders were squared and muscular. Below his brown neck, his back was pale. I hoped he wouldn’t burn.

  There are two ways of entering the ocean. My preferred method starts with one toe and then moves on to a second. Michael chose the other route, standing tense and poised for just a brief moment before plunging into the water. With broad, fluid strokes, he sliced through the surface, away from the shore, his dark head getting farther and farther away until—

  “Michael!” I was at the railing of the lanai, my heart pounding, my voice shrill. “Michael, come back!” I screamed into the wind.

  He didn’t hear me, of course, but continued to move through the water, farther into the bay. I clutched the railing and leaned forward, refusing to let him out of my sight. Far out, he stopped swimming and peered around: at the horizon, the shore, up at the birds.

  I was being ridiculous, I realized, my heart still pounding. My hands were shaking, my palms damp. It was a nice day for a swim, if a little windy. Michael wasn’t Jimmy. Michael wouldn’t drown. And besides, Jimmy didn’t drown anyway, right? He’d faked his death, plotted his disappearance. Isn’t that what the police had said?

  I’d clung to that belief for the past couple of days. It was what allowed me to feel angry, to steal moments of joy, to write Jimmy off. But now, looking at the vastness of the ocean, feeling the force of the wind, I wasn’t so sure.

  Michael began to swim back in. When he reached the rocks, I retreated into the room, unpacked my clothes, and put on a swimsuit: the floral-patterned one with the flirty skirt that I’d intended to wear fo
r Jimmy.

  A short while later, I found Michael sitting on a large rock, drying himself in the sun. What the beach lacked in sand, it made up for in seclusion. Only a few large houses shared the water access. On either end, jagged rock outcroppings went far enough into the surf to prevent people from strolling over.

  “No sign of Albert and Tiara yet.” I set my heavy floral tote on the rocks. The refrigerator had been reasonably well stocked; inside my bag were two sandwiches and a couple of bottles of iced tea—some brand I’d never heard of. Apparently, superrich people don’t drink Snapple.

  “I made lunch,” I told Michael, reaching into the tote. “There’s Brie and tomato on a baguette or turkey with cranberry chutney on whole grain.”

  “Thanks,” he said, surprised. “Both sound good.”

  “There’s iced tea, too.” I gave him a half of each sandwich along with a napkin.

  Something about Michael struck me as different—and it wasn’t just that he was in wet swim trunks. “Hey—where’s your phone?”

  At first, I thought he hadn’t heard me. I decided to drop the subject.

  “The Brie should be softer,” I said.

  “No, it’s good.” He reached inside my tote for a bottle of iced tea, twisted off the cap, and took a long drink.

  We were quiet for a short while, and then he spoke. “A couple of years ago, I had a girlfriend.” He drank some more iced tea and squinted at the shiny ocean.

  When he didn’t continue, I said, “And let me guess. She wasn’t who you thought she was. Plus, she was seeing someone else. And, she disappeared in a bizarre diving accident.”

  He smiled, just barely. “Nothing so exciting. She was always telling me to lighten up, stop being so obsessed with work. Then one day we were at the beach—not here, this was in California—and I was talking to one of my biggest customers. She was lying on a towel, looking perfectly happy, I thought, and then all of a sudden she sits up, grabs the phone out of my hand, runs to the water, and just thows it in. And then she strolls back and lies down on her towel as if nothing had happened.”