Hard Rock Improv

by Ava Lore

I stared at him. He grinned back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You bought it last night?”

  “Yup. Dropped you off, went home, bought it. Told ‘em to have it at the airport when our flight came in, done deal.”

  Only one question now burned in my head. “Why?” I said.

  He pointed to the front of the car. “Well, look at it! It’s smiling! It’s a happy car.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessarily a good reason to buy a car.”

  His only response was a shrug.

  I continued, my brain leaping ahead of me, making plans, looking for unforeseen consequences: “Especially a car sight unseen. Like, what happens if it’s a lemon and breaks down?”

  He shrugged again. “I got feet. You got feet?”

  “Last I checked.”

  “Then get in.”

  Carefully I pulled on the handle and let myself into the car. It was like getting into a hamster ball, but less safe. Setting my backpack and purse down on the floor at my feet, I buckled my seatbelt and clasped my hands for want of an oh-shit handle.

  Ahead of us the driver of the gray van was still piling luggage into the back, and next to me Manny made an impatient sound. “Ugh, let’s go. I want to get to our home away from home before the icebergs melt and flood it.” Then he gunned the engine and the car leapt away from the curb.

  I must have squealed, but Manny just laughed as the sweet tropical breeze picked up into a wind, blowing my hair back and lifting it away from my face. The scent of flowers filled my head, and the sun beat down on my face and arms, warming me up from the outside in, and slowly, slowly, I felt the icy dread of the past six months begin to thaw.

  Manny zipped us out onto the road, and the wind whipping past us made conversation impossible, for which I was grateful. Without the pressure of talking—although, if I had to be honest, Manny was one of the easiest people in the world to talk to, so I shouldn’t have been so anxious—I could look around.

  Kauai was beautiful. Mountains rose up off in the distance I stared out at the trees and the grass, the flowers and ferns speeding past us. Manny laughed into the wind whenever he took sharp corners, and, after I realized the car wasn’t going to roll at the slightest provocation, I began to relax and thrill at each tight turn.

  We left the city—such as it was—behind. There had only been a few buildings clustered in the opposite direction we had turned, and now we were driving along a long four-lane road, the ocean obscured by trees and land. I didn’t care. I stared at the mountains slipping by, then looked down at the can of guava nectar I still held in my hand. I took a long pull and put my head back, reveling in the sunlight and the roar of the car. The warmth and the purr of the engine filled my world, and I drifted.

  Then Manny was nudging me in the ribs. “You’ll want to see this,” he said when I opened my eyes.

  Frowning I looked ahead of us. We were about to take a turn, and then I glimpsed the sliver of blue.

  I held my breath as we drew closer, and then there it was: the Pacific ocean. Vast and blue, diamonds of sunlight dancing on the waves.

  Mountains to the left of us. Infinite blue to the right.

  A lump rose in my throat, and for a second the beauty blurred together, became one, and I began to cry.

  Manny’s warm hand settled on my own, and to my shock, he laced his fingers with mine as he guided the car along the road.

  “Sorry,” I said, sniffling and watching the waves dash and dance against the island. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  He squeezed my hand, and it was strong, and sure, and good.

  “You can cry as much as you like, Rosalita,” he said, and so I did, the sun and perfumed wind carrying the salt of my tears out to sea, until at last my eyes were dry.

  * * *

  As is often the case, home-away-from-home was about a thousand times nicer than home-at-home. We’d curved around to the north side of the island and pulled along the beach, where the ocean met the shore, and I’d stared and stared at that blue horizon.

  Now we were on the north shore in a very snobby private community. The shore wasn’t far away, but the house was somewhat inland away from the beach, and entirely in a new world. Lush greenery surrounded us, tropical palms and ferns fluttering in the warm breeze. There was a pool and a porch—a lanai, Manny said—with a spa perched on it and huge hammocks slowly swaying as though rocked by unseen hands.

  The house itself was two stories of lovely orange wood and its many open windows winked at us. The wind caught the curtains inside and drew them out into the sunshine, the hems of ghostly robes. But nice ghosts, the kind that serve you mai tais with little green umbrellas in them instead of sucking your daughter into the television set and making you puke pea soup.

  Come in, come in, they seemed to beckon. I wanted nothing more than to stumble up those steps, fall into that house, find the nearest bed and bury myself in the covers for days and days. I would leave the windows open. I would read books. I would watch TV. I would do nothing at all but stare at the ceiling, letting my thoughts percolate. No fear, no worry, no work. Nothing.

  I stood outside the car and nearly wept with relief.

  “You okay?”

  Manny’s voice brought me back from my lavish imaginings. The rest of the band was unloading the van, dragging suitcases up the rocky cobbled walkway, black with volcanic stones. Their tight LA clothes seemed out of place here. They should all be naked, or nearly so, I thought to myself.

  Manny was watching me, his golden eyes shadowed to a thick amber in the brightness of the day. It was nearing four o’clock, nearly seven back at home, and I was ready for something to eat.

  “I’m...I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little hungry.”

  Manny grinned at me. “Good, good,” he said. “That’s great.”

  I was feeling a little slow on the uptake. “It is?”

  “I have a wonderful dinner planned for us. You’ll love it.”

  I smiled. “What is it?”

  “It’s a surprise.” He winked at me and held his finger over his full lips as he smirked.

  I couldn’t help but smile back. Some kind of exotic Hawaiian fare? I wondered. Would he cook it for us, or did he know the local restaurants, the little holes in the wall that would make a dish fit for a king out of the squeezings of a handful of sandy seawater?

  My hands on the strap of my purse tightened and a renewed energy surged through me, seeming to come from the bottom of my soles.

  Then Manny leaned over and took his shoes off. I blinked.

  He grinned at me. “Island style,” he said. “Shoes are not required. Neither are shirts, really.”

  Wow. I’d been right—people should be naked!

  I looked down at my feet, which were in sandals, and pursed my lips.

  “Better not just yet,” Manny said. “We have some walking to do.”

  I blinked. “We do?”

  “Of course. We have to pick up ingredients for dinner.”

  “Who’s cooking?”

  “Me, of course.” He grinned at me. “You gotta have some traditional Hawaiian fare on your first night in Hawaii.”

  Visions of fish freshly caught and exotic fruits danced through my head. “But we’re not driving?”

  “Nah,” he said. “We can get everything we need at the corner store.”

  That...did not sound as exotic as I’d thought it would be, but what the hell. Maybe by ‘corner store’ he meant a corner market where local fishermen hocked their wares and children sold rare foraged fruits to the highest bidder.

  “Come on,” he said, taking my hand. I jumped and warmed at the contact. Manny flashed me a secret little smile that thrilled me to my toes, then waved up the drive to Sonya, who was unloading her copious luggage. “Hey!” he said. “We’re going to go pick up some food for dinner!”

  Sonya looked down at us, and I swear the look she gave our linked hands was full of poison. But she nodded and turned back to
her work, and Manny led me away to the store.

  It was not, as I had imagined, a lush open air market. It was a place called the Save-O-Mart, and it was a mile up the road. By the time we reached it my feet were aching.

  “This will be fun,” Manny promised as we entered.

  I had to admit that it did sound sort of fun, if only because my grocery shopping for the last year had been so horribly curtailed. My stomach, until now so quiet, began to rumble and I prayed Manny couldn’t hear it.

  “I hope you like Spam,” was all he would reply, his grin enigmatic.

  The innards of the grocery store were much like every other supermarket ever, except that it was Casual Friday in the State of Hawaii. But it was a Monday. Extremely casual Monday. I followed Manny through the aisles as he carried a little caddy. He loaded it with a bag of rice, a carton of eggs, and three cans of Spam.

  Yeah. Spam.

  I started to worry if Manny knew what he was doing, but then he moved to the produce and began picking out fresh fruit, and I relaxed enough to take in the people around me.

  They were shocking to my mainland sensibilities, especially my Midwest sensibilities, the ones that stuck around no matter how hard I tried to Californicate them out of me. In LA everyone was dressed fashionably, or at least in shorts and cute tops. Here, most people were in a state of undress normally only ever seen at private parties, and the lack of self-consciousness astounded me. Flip-flops, bare feet, swim trunks and shirts with the sleeves cut out, flowing dresses, whale tails sticking out of shorts that showed both the top and the bottom of the ass...it was scandalous. But they all looked, I must admit, very comfortable.

  I even had to forcibly tear my eyes away from an older woman with spotted, tanned skin and short, sun-bleached hair, wearing only a strapless bikini top and a pair of running shorts to go with her flip-flops. Her pendulous boobs had migrated down to her navel, but she happily combed through the papayas as though this were nothing to be ashamed of. I could barely show anyone my pear-shaped abomination of a body without feeling like I needed to get myself to the nearest lipo clinic. A side effect, I suppose, of living in LA.

  As we made our way back to the beach house carrying several grocery bags, I worked up the courage to ask, “Is all of Hawaii like that?”

  “Like what?” Manny wanted to know.

  I searched for the diplomatic way to put it. “So...casual?”

  He laughed. “Yes. Yes it is. Except for the Mainlanders. They like to put too many clothes on.”

  “By too many, you mean any?”

  “Ah, Hawaii would be even more overrun by tourists than it is if we all got to go around naked,” he said. “We like the money, but you can keep the company.”

  I nodded. That made sense. I felt out of place here on the island, even though it was so beautiful and had welcomed me—and comforted me—more than LA ever had. On the other hand, Manny’s admission that we could be as dressed-down as we liked was freeing. I didn’t have very many clothes to my name, and even fewer of them had fit into my backpack, and I had to admit that I liked his dressed-down look. He wore a tight-fitting black t-shirt and a pair of long hiking shorts that showed off his rich, dark skin and myriad of tattoos. I watched his muscular calves with admiration as he strolled along the side of the road, plastic grocery bags swinging from his fingers.

  When we got back to the house, it was already in a state of disarray that one usually only associated with frat houses. The living room—open to the bright sun and soft breeze—was strewn with instruments. A keyboard, at least five different kinds of guitars, an enormous drum set, and various vinyl and canvas cases littered the floor and the inviting white couches.

  In the richly detailed kitchen, Aylen was brewing coffee, while Carter had two bottles of wine in his hands and appeared to be weighing one against the other, clearly undecided as to which he should open first. Kent was standing at the window looking out into the perfectly manicured yard and yelling into his cell phone, while Rebecca, with a look of long-suffering, was attempting to tidy the mess. Sonya was nowhere to be seen.

  “Rooms are already claimed,” Rebecca said the moment we walked in the door. “You guys get to sleep on the lanai.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “The porch?” I said. Really? Like a pair of cats, they were just going to put us outside?

  “Not to worry, Rosalita,” Manny said. “What Rebecca has failed to tell you is that the lanai is the best room in the house.”

  I doubted that. I knew that back in the old days people would drag their beds out to the porch on hot summer nights, but the house was big and beautiful—surely there were more than three rooms?

  “Are you sure there’s no more room?” I asked Rebecca.

  “There’s always the couches...” She gestured at one couch, still littered with instruments, and winced. I got the message: given the general level of housekeeping in the band it was probably a good idea not to count on any surface becoming available at any time.

  “Hey!” Sonya’s voice came from above us and I looked up to see her leaning over a balcony that rimmed the upper floor. “What’s the word on food?” she demanded. “I’m starving.”

  Next to me Manny lifted his plastic bags with a grin. “I have everything here needed to make a traditional Hawaiian meal, which I know that you all were looking forward to.”

  “Ooooh!” Aylen said as she poured a cup of coffee. “Is it fish?”

  Manny was grinning like a maniac now. “It is not fish,” he said. “I assure you it is a traditional meal enjoyed by many in the islands, since at least the days of World War II.”

  Aylen’s brow crinkled in confusion. “So...not traditional at all?” she said.

  Manny walked into the kitchen and dumped the bags on the beautiful granite where they made a loud clunk that made my teeth ache. “It’s authentic Hawaii, I promise. Extremely popular.” Then he poured the Spam out onto the countertop.

  Groans erupted from around the room, and Sonya, who had come down the sweeping staircase and snuck up behind me, said: “Are you serious?”

  Manny held up his hands. “I promise!” he said. “You will love it. This is genuine Hawaiian comfort food. I promise. And if you don’t love it, you are welcome to spit it out.”

  “Is there any other food?” Carter asked. “Or am I going to have to drink wine all week?” Aylen punched him in the arm.

  “There’s fruit and vegetables,” Manny said. “And tomorrow we’re all on set so we get fed there.”

  There was a general grumbling, but in the end Manny won out and many cans of Spam were popped open for the initial slicing.

  “It smells like dog food,” Rebecca said. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  Manny laughed. “That’s why you have to fry it first in some sauce. Come on, you guys, Rose didn’t even bat an eyelash at the Spam while we were in the store, stop being such babies.”

  Rebecca rounded on me. “You!” she said, pointing at me. “You could have stopped this!”

  I held up my hands. “I’m just along for the ride,” I protested. “I have no say in anything. Twelve hours ago I didn’t even know I was going to be here.”

  Rebecca wasn’t listening. “You could have saved us and you didn’t,” she moaned while Manny tipped the cans over and slid perfectly rectangular blocks of mystery meat onto a cutting board where he began to slice them up. “This is the last time I’m letting you do the shopping,” Rebecca told him.

  He shrugged, smiling his enigmatic smile. “This is an adventure. You guys should enjoy it. It’s better than road food, at least.”

  That seemed to shut everyone up as to a one they looked off into the distance and shuddered with remembered culinary horror.

  Manny put us to work after that. I was in charge of scrambling eggs, and Carter was given the minute rice to cook up, which he somehow burned, sending Kent and Rebecca out in the van to collect more from the Save-O-Mart.

  They were there and back in less than
fifteen minutes, and I had to wonder why Manny had made us walk the twenty minutes there and back. Not for the pleasure of my company, haha. Couldn’t be...

  Manny, for his part, fried up slices of Spam in various sauces—hoisin, teriyaki, barbeque—and slipped them onto plates until everyone had at least two well-sauced, well-fried slabs of pork fat. Then he spooned the eggs and rice onto the plates and sprinkled them with some sort of seasoning labeled in Japanese, and then, at last, we were settling down to dinner. At six.

  “I always thought rock stars were supposed to stay up and party all night,” I said as we sat down at the table in the dining room, which was also open air, one whole wall missing to reveal a fountain and a meticulously maintained garden. The label had spared no expense, apparently, in housing their most lucrative act.

  “Not when we all have to be up at five thirty tomorrow, and we were up late the night before,” Kent said, and the tone of his voice was such that I had the distinct impression that he was warning everyone against even thinking about staying up.

  “Besides,” Carter added, poking his Spam, “the jetlag is already killing me. I got, like, four hours of sleep last night?”

  “I expect everyone to be in bed no later than nine,” Kent said. “That’s midnight our time. We need to catch up on those lost hours.”

  No one except Manny seemed to be eating their Spam. Rebecca was picking at her rice, Sonya had already cleared her plate of eggs, and Aylen looked like she didn’t even know where to start on the dish. I risked a glance at him and saw that he was cutting up his meat with little flicks of his fork and then shoveling them into his mouth. To any casual observer he would have seemed perfectly comfortable, not caring whether or not anyone else was enjoying the meal he had made, but as I watched him, I saw his eyes flick this way and that, taking in everyone else’s plate, and for a second his eyebrows drew down in a sad frown.

  I looked down at the Spam sitting on my plate. It looked...not bad, but it certainly wasn’t particularly beautiful. It was like...meatloaf, I supposed. Meatloaf, which looked awful, but if you did it right it was wonderful. I tilted my head and thought to myself, This is Hawaiian meatloaf.