by Sadie Rabbit
“When the visitor presses a button, the lights will come up, and a door will open into a common reception room where all the guests can mingle and look at larger versions of the photographs they saw in the corridors. There will also be a digital screen that keeps a time-delayed count of which levers have been pulled and how often they’ve been pulled.”
How devious! Olivia thought, smiling to herself. After jotting all her ideas in her notebook, she typed them up in an email for the museum director. She clicked send before she could start second-guessing her idea. She knew it was weird, but weird seemed to be exactly what the other Olivia wanted.
Not even an hour later, Olivia got a response:
Olivia,
I love this idea. Love, love, love it! I think people would come even if your photographs were terrible — which, of course, they’re not! :) I’ll work with our construction crew to start drawing up plans. Hopefully we’ll be ready to sit down with you and review them when you return from your trip!
Olivia
Olivia was basking in the museum director’s response when her phone rang. It wasn’t a number she recognized. Normally, she wouldn’t have answered, but just then she felt up for talking to anyone — even a potential telemarketer.
“Olivia,” a man said on the other line, “my name’s Dun Fletcher. I’m an attorney representing your husband, Mike, and I have the unfortunate task of letting you know he’s filed for divorce.”
∞
Time stopped. Olivia sat down on her bed, dropped the phone without bothering to hang up and stared through the window at the palm fronds waving in the wind. She felt like she should be screaming, crying or raging. Instead, a numbness settled over her.
She stood and paced the room.
Why didn’t he have the balls to call me himself? she wondered.
She picked her phone up off the ground and hung up on the attorney. She dialed Mike’s cell number. It went straight to voicemail. She hung up and dialed the landline at their house. It rang and rang and rang, but no one came to answer, not even a maid. She tried Mike’s office but was told he’d left for the day. It was as if he’d fallen off the face of the earth.
That son of a bitch, she thought, surprising herself with the ferocity of her anger. I’ve been trying to work things out for months, years maybe, and he doesn’t even have the balls to call me and tell me he wants a divorce?
Olivia stomped out the door and crossed the deck to Charlotte and Kenneth’s cabana. Her friends were sprawled out on the couch in their living room — Charlotte laid flat with her head resting in Kenneth’s lap.
“Mike filed for divorce,” Olivia said.
Charlotte sat up quickly. “No fucking way,” she said. “No way.” Her best friend stood and wrapped her arms around Olivia. “I’m so sorry.”
Olivia felt numb in the embrace. “He didn’t even have the courage to tell me himself,” she said. “I got a phone call from his lawyer.”
“Uh oh,” Kenneth said. “That’s not a good sign.”
“Of course that’s not a good sign,” Charlotte said to him. “It’s a sign that Mike’s a heartless bastard.”
“I know,” Kenneth said. “I’m just thinking it might be a sign that he’s planning to fight you for money.”
“Mike wouldn’t do that,” Olivia said.
Would he? She hadn’t thought Mike was the sort of man who would give up on his marriage so easily either.
“It’ll be fine,” Kenneth said. “You haven’t worked in years, and it’s not like he has any dirt on you. You’re not a drug addict, you’re not dangerous and you don’t have any secret lovers.”
Olivia’s breath caught in her throat. What if Mike found out about her correspondence with Thomas? Would that amount to much? She stole a glance at Charlotte, and she could tell her friend was thinking the same thing.
“I just want to hear it from him,” Olivia said, “hear what it is that he doesn’t love about me anymore.”
“Hey, honey,” Charlotte said softly, guiding her onto the couch. “It doesn’t work like that. You got married young and people change over time. I’ve known Mike almost as long as you have, and I can say beyond a doubt that he’s a different person. Sometimes I can’t even see the old Mike in there at all. He’s like some sort of corporate drone. He’s turned into an asshole.”
Olivia couldn’t meet her friend’s eye.
“I think I need to be alone,” she said.
Charlotte nodded. She looked like she was about to break into tears, and Olivia wondered why she didn’t feel the same. Am I in denial?
Back in her cabana, she thought about catching an early flight back. It wouldn’t do much good, though. She wasn’t sure Mike would let her back in the house and without Charlotte and Kenneth back in Dayton, she’d have to find a hotel room.
She picked up her phone to try Mike again. A voicemail was waiting for her. It was the attorney’s office, so she played the message first.
“Hi Olivia,” the man said. “This is Dun Fletcher. I wanted to tell you this when we spoke earlier, but I know it’s a big shock for you, and I completely understand. Mike’s agreed to pay for an apartment for you during the proceedings. We’ll just need copies of all your expenses — everything, your food, phone bills, whatever you spend money on — and we’ll reimburse you through an account Mike set up. For the moment, your belongings are in a storage locker off Keowee Street in Dayton. When you get back, you can give us a call, and we’ll get you a key and all the information you need. We also have a debit card that you can use for immediate needs. Again, I’m sorry that we’re speaking under these circumstances. Please give me a call if you need anything. One other thing that I have to mention: Mike’s asked that you don’t try to reach him.”
Olivia deleted the message and dialed Mike’s number. Again, it went straight to voicemail. Olivia started to hang up but couldn’t.
“Mike,” she said, “I’m not sure what’s going on. I’ve been trying to reach you the whole trip, and I get this call from your goddamn attorney. I need to talk to you. I’m scared and confused, and I don’t know what’s happened to us.”
When she hung up the phone, she felt caged and restless. It was like her cabana had been transported to a tiny island where she was the only inhabitant. In the span of 30 minutes, she’d journeyed from euphoria to being the loneliest woman in the world.
∞
The tears came long after midnight. Olivia sat on the beach with an uncorked bottle of Merlot in the sand beside her. The lights were off in the cabanas, and it was just Olivia and the stars.
Sitting there, she thought of her honeymoon. Mike was a salesman at Verizon then; nothing glamorous, but he was livelier, more carefree. He looked at Olivia when he spoke, and his eyes were affectionate. The third night, they snuck onto the beach at St. Augustine with a bottle of wine. Half-drunk, they walked hand-in-hand to a deserted pier and made a pact to jump off together.
Olivia remembered how hard her heart was thumping when they climbed over the railing. She could feel the ocean spray when the waves crashed against the pier below.
“We don’t even know how deep it is,” she shouted over the sound of the waves.
“It’ll be deep enough,” Mike said.
Olivia looked down at the inky black water. It mixed together with the night sky, so she wasn’t sure where the sky ended and the water began.
“It’s like our wedding,” Mike said. “It’s a leap of faith.”
They counted to five and jumped. The sound of rushing air filled Olivia’s ears before the ocean swallowed her. It was so shallow, though, that she slammed into the sand with her rump. She popped up out of the water laughing. The water they’d jumped into was barely chest deep. Mike wasn’t so lucky. Instead of landing on his bottom, he’d kept his legs straight as corn stalks and managed to sprain both of his ankles. He spent the next day of their honeymoon with a hangover in the hospital.
Looking back now, Olivia wondered if it was an om
en: their leap of faith was doomed from the start.
∞
She woke to the sound of knocking. Olivia groaned and covered her eyes against the sunlight. The room was impossibly bright. Even with her eyes closed, it was too bright.
“Wake up, Sleepyhead!” Charlotte called out from the other side of the door.
Olivia rolled over in her bed, but Charlotte wasn’t going away. She poked her head in the open window beside the door.
“Livy!” she said. “It’s our last full day in Hawaii, and I don’t care if a nuclear bomb blows up the moon. We’re going to enjoy it.”
Olivia started to smile, but even that made her head hurt. She must have drunk a lot more wine than she realized last night.
“What are we going to do?” she croaked out from the bed.
“Meet us at the car in half an hour, and you’ll find out,” Charlotte said. “It’s a secret.”
Thirty minutes later, Olivia climbed into the convertible. The Advil was starting to work. Kenneth sat in the back, puffing on a cigar, acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world, which he probably didn’t.
“Where are we going?” Olivia asked.
“You’ll see,” Charlotte said. “It’s something I never thought I’d do.”
They drove the first 15 minutes in silence. Olivia tried to memorize the skyline, the soaring cliffs, the blue of the water and the plants — everywhere the plants. Life exploded out of the tiniest mounds of dirt in Hawaii.
“So, how would you like to go apartment hunting when I get back?” Olivia asked.
“You’re already planning your escape?” Charlotte said.
“I have to,” Olivia said. “Mike moved my things into a Stor-n-Lock. His attorney says he’ll give me the key when I get back.”
“Jesus,” Charlotte said. “Somehow I just thought this was a fight gone bad. I didn’t realize my best friend is really going to be a divorcee.”
“Yeah,” Kenneth called out from the backseat. “I guess this is going to put a damper on my friendship with Mike.”
“Ummm, probably so,” Charlotte said over her shoulder.
Olivia was silent in the front seat. The word divorcee resonated. Charlotte reached her hand across the console and laid it on top of Olivia’s.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through. … And I would love to help you go apartment hunting. You know you’re going to be staying at our house until you find a place, right?”
Olivia tried to say yeah, but there was a knot in her throat.
The voice-guided GPS interrupted her thoughts.
“Your destination is 200 yards ahead on the right,” it said.
Olivia looked up and saw a sign for the Koko Shooting Complex.
“Welcome to gun-owners heaven!” Kenneth yelled out from the backseat. He laid a hand on Olivia’s shoulder and shook her vigorously. “We’re going to blow some things up! It’s the perfect cure for the blues.”
∞
Their instructor was an enormous Hawaiian named Nohea. “It means handsome in Hawaiian,” he said, grinning. “You’ve got to admit my makuahine knew what she was doing when she named me.”
Despite herself, Olivia smiled. Handsome wasn’t the word she thought of when she looked at Nohea. She couldn’t keep her eyes off his gelatinous stomach. It stuck out so far his shirt didn’t cover all of it, and Olivia could see his belly had its own tan line. He must not own a single shirt that covers that thing, she thought.
Nohea’s shotgun looked like a stick in his giant hands. When he passed it to Olivia, she was shocked by its weight. She felt awkward with a gun, not knowing where to hold it. It seemed like there was too much to think about: steering clear of the trigger and concentrating on keeping the barrel pointed away from herself and her friends.
Nohea urged them on, though. He let each of them take five shots one-by-one. Olivia was up first, and Nohea led her to the shooting box. A small microphone was mounted near her waist.
“When you’re ready,” Nohea said, “you’re going to aim just above the traphouse.”
He pointed a massive finger at a green bunker 16 yards in front of where she stood. “Real loud-like, you’re going to call out the word ‘pull.’ The mic will pick up the sound and launch a pigeon, and you’re going to point at it and blast that bugger out of the air, okay?”
Olivia nodded. This was the first time she’d ever fired a gun, and she had no idea what to expect.
“It’s not going to be a real pigeon, is it?” Olivia asked.
Nohea broke out in great rumbling laughter.
“No, no,” he said. “Clay pigeon. Looks like a Frisbee. Put your weight on your front foot, okay?” he said. “That’s good. You look like a pro, like you do this every day.”
Olivia was so nervous her breath came quickly. It sounded unnaturally loud with earplugs in her ears.
“Pull,” she called out.
An orange disc shot out of the traphouse. Olivia swung the gun toward it, closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.
“All right!” Nohea yelled. “That’s the ticket. You got it first time. Your makuahine would be proud.”
Olivia beamed. She had no idea how she’d hit the pigeon, but she had opened her eyes in time to see it disappear in a poof of dust. She had expected the gun to launch her backwards, but instead she’d stood her ground and hardly noticed the recoil.
“Now, we just need to work on keeping those eyes of yours open, okay?” Nohea said.
An hour later, the three of them had gone through 50 shots each, and Olivia’s arm felt as gelatinous as Nohea’s belly. It was a good pain, though, like Olivia had battled a terrible beast and won.
“How do you feel?” Nohea asked. “Like a million bucks, right?”
Olivia smiled.
“I feel like I can take on anything life throws at me,” she said.
Nohea tossed his large head back and laughed. Again, the valley filled with his deep, rumbling sounds. The laugh shook every ounce of fat on his body, even his long black hair seemed to move.
“That’s good, young lady,” he said. “Now, you know how Nohea feels every day.”
∞
Guns are insidious. You don’t feel any pain when you shoot them, but later you find bruises in strange places. Olivia stood shirtless in front of the mirror in her cabana. Two deep purple bruises had formed: one on her shoulder and the other on her right cheek where she’d been pressing her face to the wood to sight the gun. They were like visual indications of how she felt inside: beat-up and used.
She walked to her bed and propped herself up on her pillow, laptop in her lap.
Dear Thomas,
I’m sorry I haven’t written lately, but life has thrown me a few curveballs. My friends did, however, take me trapshooting today, and I hit quite a few of the targets! Who knew I’d be good with a gun?
I loved your latest whisper. Part of me wished you actually would have shown up! I should be back in Dayton with your package soon. I hope there’s a new whisper waiting for me when I get home. Something tells me I’m going to need it.
xoxo,
Hawaii Girl
∞
Dear Hawaii Girl,
Thanks for taking the time to write and for the kind words. You can rest assured that if I had the money, I would have flown out there and made a complete fool of myself — whether you wanted me to or not! Trapshooting sounds incredible, too. I have to admit, you’re braver than me. I’ve never shot a gun in my life, and I’m not sure it’s something I want to do! Regarding those curveballs life’s throwing at you, I hope it’s nothing serious. If anyone can handle them, though, it’s you. Safe travels, beautiful girl.
Your Faithful Servant,
Thomas
∞
They spent their last night in Hawaii at the Paniolo. The name meant Hawaiian Cowboy, whatever that was, and it was the sort of place only locals visit. Nohea had told them about it, and he made them promise they
’d visit it before they left.
“You’re cowboys now,” he’d said. “You shoot guns in Hawaii, you go to the Paniolo, too. That’s the way it is. You promise, okay?”
The bar itself wasn’t much more than a wooden platform with a thatched roof and strings of light bulbs glowing brilliantly against the star-filled sky. There were no tourists here. Just clusters of Hawaiian families. There weren’t any age limits either, and it looked like each family had brought a representative from every generation. There were infants, teenagers with thick, oily hair and grandparents with deep, joy-filled smiles.
Here, they served a drink they called ‘awa. Olivia would only learn later that it was a sedative the locals drank to relax. It came in a halved coconut and tasted pungent, like someone had put lawn clippings in a blender and turned it into a drink.
Shortly after they arrived, Kenneth slipped away and started up a conversation with one of the elders. They shared a long wooden pipe.
“That man has a gift for meeting strangers,” Olivia said.
“Indeed,” Charlotte said. “I have to keep him from using it with other women.”
Olivia nodded toward the beach, and the two women walked a few feet away from the bar and sat on the sand facing the sea.
“I wish we didn’t have to go back,” Olivia said.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Charlotte said. “You could just stay here — get a job at the gun club or at the Hawaiian Cowboy or something. You could become one with the sea.”
“That doesn’t sound bad,” Olivia said. “Things are simpler here.”
“That’s because Mike’s not here,” Charlotte said. “Things are always simpler when he’s not around.”
Olivia didn’t want to say that she agreed. Instead, she forced down a giant gulp of ‘awa. Before long, they’d both had three mugs of ‘awa each, and the sedative was in full effect. They lay flat on their backs staring up at the stars, nothing but the sound of the sea filling their ears.
