Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  The same day they parted company, she had a friend call him from San Francisco, “a mediator, if you will, to see if we might work through this.” She’d left abruptly that morning, leaving him in peaceful repose, hormonally spent and enjoying the solace of she who understood him best: Meow. Ravid told the friend that the work was done. The friend waited for elaboration, so Ravid explained that Marcia was clingy, needy and neurotic, except in brief lapses of reprieve, when she gave praise, camaraderie or orgasm. The friend understood.

  Yet the friend persisted: Marcia needed only that Ravid return her love, and she waited that very minute in her condo close by — hardly a quarter mile from where he sat — waited for him, the love of her life, so he could say that he would.

  “Would what?”

  “You know. Return her love.”

  “Oh. Well, maybe tell her you called me but I wasn’t home.”

  “Oh, God.”

  So Ravid told the friend that he’d felt nothing beyond genital contact, which was good till he got tired of it. When he failed to keep up with her sheer, mad love, she’d called him a failure; she said his life was empty. She’d asked, “How long do you think a grown man can blow bubbles with tourists?” The friend provided the correct answer: that two lives could find success as one life shared. But a correct answer for the goose was not good for the gander. Ravid assured the friend that Marcia was deluded, unhappy, unstable and unacceptable. Surely she needed the help she so often provided. With luck, the friend would help work through these obstacles in obtaining the true love that Marcia so fervently desired.

  The friend asked, “Don’t you see?”

  Ravid felt that the friend saw very little but the limited view from his navel, with his head so far up his ass. But that felt unkind, possibly hostile. On the bright side, Marcia would be an option. He could move to San Francisco and set up shop as a clinical psychologist. Then he could get laid and analyzed at will.

  But beyond glib humor was the lesson in love and its delusive reality: Marcia would have moved in — would have phoned the daughter to pack the essentials and come on over. Don’t worry — the movers can get the rest. Marcia wanted to give this shot at eternal love her very best, wanted to shape him up and snap him out of his ridiculous stupor, wanted to facilitate a total realization of the man and his, well, feelings. Marcia begged the question often asked by the charter crowd itself: Who but a fool would be up at dawn, playing in the ocean, bagging the occasional tourist, smoking dope and enjoying warm days with no view whatsoever to the cruel winter ahead?

  Marcia ended her week in Paradise on data assessment, sorting stats on emotional, mental and spiritual emasculation as a means to rebuild from the rubble, as it were. Alas, Ravid could not provide the missing link in her life, though he gave what he could till the weekend. The beach shack got crowded and insensitive to the needs of others. Then it felt oppressive. By Saturday, he’d wanted distance, which is not a symptom of love.

  Elevation might be nice, with a mountain stream babbling more soothingly than the rapids down in the flats, with their iffy footing, slippery rocks and incessant flow.

  Marcia’s last day began and ended at first light when she twisted her head up to see Skinny sitting beside Ravid’s pillow, purring audibly. Ravid had been stroking her head — the woman’s — with one hand while she ate him. He scratched Skinny’s chin with the other hand, generating intense satisfaction in the cat but a certain conflict in the woman. Ravid had naively assumed success in meeting the needs of all females in close proximity. With all parties purring and moaning, each to her or his own, life seemed good, promising another beautiful day — till the woman stopped and looked troubled. She spoke lowly and accusingly, “You love that cat more than you love me.”

  Well, fuck, duh. What was your first clue? Of course he did.

  What a dumb thing to say.

  But he could say nothing. He couldn’t even shrug for fear of being misconstrued. Not that it mattered; morning service was fading fast no matter what he said, unless he could say something equally foolish, like, Oh, no, I love you much more than Skinny.

  Fat chance.

  So he tried denial and small humor: “No, I don’t; we just know each other better.”

  Which was true and hardly mean-spirited. Marcia’s initial critique of Skinny way back at the beginning of the week was far more challenging, far more difficult — and yes, egregiously insensitive to the feelings of the man and, for all anyone in San Francisco knew, of the cat: “Not much to look at.”

  Au contraire, Skinny loomed large, seven pounds of red-orange fluff with her baby face lit by sunbeams. Ravid had let it go in the spirit of hospitality, deferring to potential sex. But it stung and it stuck all the way through the week to Saturday morning and blowjobus interruptus.

  Marcia had risen, indignant as an urban professional woman forced to rectify what had become untenably inappropriate. Grabbing her things, she’d huffed to the door, where she’d waited. Hearing no plea, no apology, no nothing from the bonehead in the sack, she’d left, her parting counsel, “Let her suck your dick.”

  Ravid called out the door, “You’re crazy. She’s as cute as a button!” Then he asked Skinny, rhetorically to be sure, but still as one man to his closest confidant: “Who needs three blowjobs in a night and a day?” Skinny was also stumped, commiserating in her uniquely soft but effective manner. Not that she, Skinny, would deny him anything by way of affection, but Marcia’s hasty, crude suggestion wouldn’t have worked, and besides, it wasn’t like that between them. She was a cat and more, providing pure love and all heart, and he had the others for the other. The moment at hand seemed perfectly natural and inevitable, including the rude departure, perhaps demonstrating God’s motivation in creating both cats and women. What a relief.

  He hoped he would not hear from Marcia or her surrogates again. Marcia was far from a great love remembered, though her farewell and follow-up seemed indelible. He pictured her waiting by the phone in her expensive condo — the friend had assured Ravid that Marcia had “full confidence in Ravid’s integrity as a man,” meaning he would call her once he realized what she represented, what they had between them and the sheer, raw potential looming just ahead. Except for one little glitch: They had nothing, which he saw clearly, his vision confirmed by her melodramatic exit and pining away, classic symptoms of the most manipulative people. He didn’t call. He wallowed in the warm, fuzzy feeling of not calling, but then he set the wallow aside, too, since it was harsher than any feelings she’d generated in an otherwise happy man.

  She was scheduled to leave the next day, anyway, and could likely use the free time to regroup, reassess, fix her face and then imagine how good it would be to get home. There — there’s a much nicer frame for a difficult picture.

  Ravid took a nap till late in the morning. He rose, stretched his arms and legs to start a glorious day off with nothing to do but savor a few hours to himself with no dive or female company or the endless maintenance chores of either. He couldn’t help but reflect on Marcia’s sad dilemma, and he wondered what was better, a heart-rending loss like Annie or a mental bitch whose departure was a relief. At least Annie left a few happy memories.

  So he strolled outside and decided on a coffee, retail, up the road, maybe a double latte with one of those incredibly satisfying pastries.

  He walked and thought that she really was a nice woman who might one day find her man, and maybe the match would be more tolerable because of her recent experience, where she learned what real men want, which is all they want, and what those men are willing to give in return, which is nothing. Who knew? If she met a guy from San Francisco, and he had a good job in town and wore a suit and made good money and could show his feelings on his sleeve and had no inkling of masculinity or assertiveness, things might work out. That guy might be strolling down Union Avenue right now wondering when Ms. Right would come along — make that when Ms. Right would come into his life.

  Post-Maui Marcia would
at least approach romance more humbly and with tempered expectations, and maybe she wouldn’t browbeat the new guy till the second weekend. So things had a fair chance of working out well for everyone.

  Love her more than Skinny? Shut up!

  Yet he could be a tad more circumspect in showing his love for his cat. More subtle affection for a beast, even a cute fuzzy one, in the presence of women might better prevent the accusation and confusion. When you got down to it, neither he nor Skinny needed to convey their love. They felt the love and happiness in this, their time on earth together. Words gave vibration to love, but a purr is the ultimate vibration. He could purr discreetly, but better yet might be a little rub on her chinny chin chin to affirm his love without spooking the guests at critical junctures.

  It was like Basha Rivka Rockulz assured him time and again on nearly every topic: Tzim lachen. It should be to laugh. He couldn’t very well share this experience with old Mom, with the tourist woman getting jealous of a chin scratch for Skinny the cat right in the middle of a blowjob, though he felt Basha Rivka would laugh, too, since, after all, they both still had their health. Make that all three of them.

  At the main road he walked to the crosswalk and began to cross to the coffee shop when a pickup truck with giant wheels drove slowly in front of him. The driver mumbled, “Fockeen haole suck.” Ravid wanted to assure this driver that this behavior was not amusing, and that the phrase “fucking haole” would adequately convey the hateful sentiment without the “suck.” But he knew the guy had no sense of humor, because you can’t spend forty grand buggering up a used truck and remain light-hearted. So he nodded to the driver and gave the right of way with a flourish. As if on cue, the little guy at the wheel stomped the pedal for a roaring smoke cloud, turning into the parking lot on two wheels but not quite rolling over. What dominance. What a show. What a perfect return on investment.

  Local hostility seemed isolated and rare but stung like a centipede when it got you unsuspecting. Ravid didn’t take it personally but as a symptom of nature playing out, a sign of the times, in which he had made a mistake, or mistakes, in a series that put him in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  At least that was the formula he tried to use. But what judgment could make crossing the street a mistake? Well, maybe this was the wrong place in general, and the times had turned all wrong. Who knew? Once a free and wild and exotic destination for the adventurous set, Maui felt pressured, morphing into one more cage with too many rats — or people. Rats go to cannibalism in the third stage of overcrowding, right after murder and butt sex. People would never do that — well, not the cannibalism part anyway, not that often. But in that moment came the difficult truth, that too many humans competing for Paradise shouldn’t be surprised at the old aloha going lukewarm.

  With troubling influences in mind, Ravid crossed and walked up the road and into the parking lot to find the truck with the silly big tires and little bitty bed way off the ground, to see if he and the driver could reach an understanding. Finding the truck but not the driver was perhaps for the best, what with resolution so unlikely. Who had what to give? So Ravid held communion with the truck for a minute or two and then walked back to the coffee shop, disappointed that his shot of sugar and caffeine would be soured by a dose of vinegar. But such was the world devolving, pressing a righteous man to balance what felt hazardous.

  What else could he do? Everybody felt it, being swept along with the debris in a tsunami of development with an undercurrent of more, more, more. Who could be more convenient to blame than each other? The so-called locals claimed dominance and cultural something or other, even though their forebears arrived in freighters and not in outrigger canoes. They didn’t arrive in airplanes either, and that was an assumed source of superiority. They too measured substance in tenure and grew confident as many lighter-skinned people granted their claim. Well, except for a few thinner-skinned people.

  All the guy had to say was, Hey, brother. But no, the taunt and threat were more satisfying. Mixed free enterprise would sort things out. Who got what and how much of it would further inflame things. Multi-colored for centuries and split into haves and have-nots, island society suffered a contentious rift, with so many haves having so much and so many others feeling the squeeze.

  So what? Was that any reason for a guy I don’t even know to call me a haole suck? What I got that he no got? Notting is the big fat answer. So his family started out a hundred years ago, or two hundred, as coolie labor, along with the influx of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and the rest, when the missionary sugar company took everything and gave nothing but a growing debt in the company store. The missionaries took the land from the Hawaiians and the labor from the Asians. The missionaries were white.

  That wasn’t me, but the dirtball in the truck would rather be hateful than right. Let the chips fall, Mr. Asswipe. Is it my fault that they’re all blue chips in your prime beach areas? Couldn’t you have bought that beach scrub when it was pennies on the dollar? Does my place look like Santa Barbara? Do I really care if a piece of the rock was only a million dollars two years ago and now runs 3 million to 5 million, 7.9 million, 13 million, and so on?

  Ah, well — the sun climbed higher on another beautiful day for those who could afford it. Those who couldn’t afford it wondered where to go and what to do. Or maybe they only thought they couldn’t afford it. Ravid Rockulz had everything he needed, including a million-dollar view, a cat to confide in and way more recent blowjobs under his belt than a fellow needs on any given day.

  Too bad the coffee place was crowded out the door with pale tourists and more tourists piling out of matching Hummers, happily exclaiming that next year they would rent the Ferrari too, just to have it for their fabulous few days, which would be way better than the Porsche. They had the Porsche last year, and it was okay, but the Ferrari along with the Hummer would really be the best package.

  Hey, it was no big deal that tourists were jamming the place with flesh and talk. A guy had plenty of coffee at home, along with bread for toast and a smidge of lilikoi jelly left. And what a great day for a walk before breakfast — except for the troubling view of the woodland by the reef down the shoreline that used to be Maluaka and Black Sand, being leveled for new condos in the 12-to-15-million-dollar range.

  Well...

  A Hawaiian man of indeterminate age stood in the road a half-mile above the exposed rubble that last week was the forest home to many critters, now cleared, with many holes for dynamite to blast it away for underground parking for more Hummers and Ferraris. The Hawaiian man wore an orange vest and held a red flag. Ravid wondered how anybody Hawaiian could support the destruction, and he said in passing, “You know, this used to be beautiful.”

  “Used to be,” the man said.

  Yeah, well, the guy in the truck was confused on which whites were which, but this sun-baked Hawaiian guy knew the score; it didn’t even matter, because the place was going down. Everyone felt the pressure of more, more, more going to less and less. What could the old guy do, give up his job? Well, yes, he could. But he wouldn’t.

  Nobody wanted to dwell on the negative, but Ravid stood at the top of his road seeing the end. A man must live till he dies, and he’d be better off any day by not stressing out under blue sky and water, wondering where next he would go. He couldn’t help the regret; oh, man, here we go again. Here again a man of fortitude recognized the moment of change. Well, change is for the better. Change is evidence of life. A common bumper sticker said it best: All who wander are not lost. Unfortunately, most who wandered were lost, or yet to be found, but the road still waited for a man who loved the natural world with a few good years remaining. Besides, an old man ready to hit the trail was a man evolved, a successful Brahmin or Buddhist or waterman setting out with faith in what he loved. Not that Ravid Rockulz was old. Not by a long shot.

  Besides, nineteen years in one place did not make him a rolling stone. He’d stopped pleading his case years ago to Basha Rivka. Her chronic r
esponse, with the tongue clicking, the wince and wrinkled brow nearly visible over the phone, around the earth into the wayward son’s ear was meant to give him pause, to make him see and change. She wanted to know, as if she didn’t, “What is it that you do? What do I say when I’m asked what my son does? He’s what? He’s a...a swimming schlep? What?”

  “If you need to tell anybody anything, you can tell them I’m developing a career in tourism with an emphasis on ocean recreation.”

  “Big shot! Who knew?”

  “How is that thing on your neck?” And so on, the browbeaten flailing against the browbeater till he beat her to the punch and led the fray elsewhere, to where she lived and worried.

  “Hmm. Don’t ask.” But of course he asked in self-defense and because not asking would indict a wayward son who didn’t even ask about his mother’s health or that thing on her neck. Then he listened to what the doctor, a real goniff, had her trying that week, and what the other doctor, so young, so...dumb, but she liked him, had wanted her to try — new drugs known to work miracles, which had a nice ring, though we really don’t believe in that sort of thing. He listened weekly from diagnosis, prognosis, indications, prescriptions, new symptoms, to who was sick or recently dead — like Sadie Kornblatt, who up and quit taking her medications one day because they made her feel so bad. Forty pills, twenty each morning and evening for twenty years, she took. So many pills nobody needs like a hole in the head, so she quit one morning and that afternoon thought she felt better but that night died. “It just goes to show you.”

  Yet echoing across the symptoms, remedies and mortalities was a thumbnail of life waiting to begin, a life stuck on the starting blocks, where so many lives stay. A swimming schlep? Of course it was more than that, much more, considering the training and experience along with the life-and-death responsibility of a dive instructor, who alone judges conditions and makes decisions for a different group of strangers daily, all of whom put their trust in his hands. Yes, you could be cynical in that first hour, beginning in the dark and ending with dawn, in which the boat needs prepping and checking, which is minor to be sure, since the captain handles the mechanical stuff. But then it’s the loading, eighteen scuba tanks, each pumped to three thousand pounds, give or take, never mind, hoisted aboard and set into the racks with no grunts, because grunting indicates weakness. Then they’re hoisted out as each guest signs in and hands his dive bag aboard, from which the regulator, octopus, buoyancy compensator and weights are set in place, with the fins, mask and snorkel draped over the top, so arrival at the dive site is like catered brunch. Then in they go with no worries, because a sharp crew makes no mistakes. Because the tourists might take for granted that all their weights are correctly in place, allowing proper descent and stability at depth; that their air is turned on and their buoyancy compensators slightly inflated, so they don’t find themselves sucking on a dead hose going down; that the tanks themselves are indeed pressured to three thousand pounds and not three hundred — but Ravid Rockulz does not one single detail take for granted. People think he’s playful and energetic, like an otter or mischievous seal, spinning, weaving, arching, turning, but these marine mammals inherited their behaviors from ancestors who survived, who “knew” that the constant lookout for merciless predators requires constant vigilance in movement to avoid the unseen predator. Just so, Ravid looked, checked air pressure, pocket zips, comfort level, ear clearing...