The Green Room

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  Marty Barstow took a step back, out of the picture, while Gabe Watson appeared to stand next to Ben. Both of the young men wore red singlets emblazoned with the emblems of sponsors. WhiteOut Watercraft went up one arm, and the logo of a sports car manufacturer covered their chests.

  More interesting to Storm was the fact that Ben would meet the reporter’s gaze for brief moments, but he hadn’t looked at Gabe during any part of the interview. Instead, he either squinted out to the bay or looked down at the sand. When the reporter addressed Ben directly, he looked up and answered the question, but if the reporter asked a general question, Gabe usually jumped in. While Ben looked away.

  Uncharacteristically, Storm was more interested in watching the dynamics of the interview than she was the surfers. So when the crowd cheered a successful ride, she swung her attention back to what was happening in the water.

  “That’s the first guy, right?” she asked Dede.

  “Yup, and that was an absolutely beautiful top to bottom drop. If his partner does as well, they’ll definitely move up.” She pointed over her shoulder at a big scoreboard propped in the sand not far behind them.

  Storm had her eyes to the Nikons when a woman’s shrill voice distracted her from the next surfer’s takeoff. Sunny and Dede stood like statues, their binoculars trained on the tiny figure in the water, but Storm lowered hers. Though the wind and crowd noise distorted her voice, the woman seemed familiar to Storm, and she recognized the man the woman had confronted as the fellow she’d seen with Marty Barstow the week before.

  He was tall, with the look of an athlete going to seed, and he held a hand up, as if to quiet the woman. She wore a pareu tied low around her narrow hips and a tiny bikini top. Long, dark hair whipped around her face, and people were beginning to notice her, partly because of their spat, but mostly because she was gorgeous.

  Though the man continued to make pacifying motions, the woman leaned into him, her slender arms rigid with fury. The sound of her slap carried on the wind. Sunny and Dede lowered their binocs and glanced over, as did many of the people around them.

  The man grabbed her wrist and began to lead her out of the crowd. He didn’t appear to be as threatening as he was embarrassed, so most of the audience turned its attention back to the contest in the water.

  Storm was fairly sure the man was one of the contest promoters, and was intrigued by the familiarity of the woman. She allowed herself one more peek at the apparent lovers’ tiff when the woman wheeled and twisted out of the man’s grasp, only to catch Storm’s eye and come to a dead halt.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Despite the changes eighteen years had brought, Storm recognized Pua Pi'ilani. Thinner and more graceful, her face shared the same high cheekbones and fine planes of her brother’s. She’d also grown at least a foot, had her teeth fixed, let her jet black hair grow in gentle waves past her shoulders, and lost all her baby fat, which had been considerable.

  Storm closed her open mouth and raised a hand in greeting. Pua, without glancing back at the man, squared her shoulders and walked toward her. With outstretched arms, she threaded her way through observers toward her old friend. Her eyes were wide, and a drying trail of tears streaked her cheeks.

  Storm enfolded Pua in a hug, which the woman returned. She felt as frail as a bird in Storm’s embrace.

  “Storm, I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “It’s been so long. I tried to call you back.”

  “I know. And no one could ever hear a phone ring out here.”

  “Who’s that guy you were talking to?”

  “Steve O’Reilly. He’s the organizer-producer of the Intrepid and a complete asshole.” Her words held more misery than fight.

  “What happened?”

  The two women had the attention of Dede, Sunny, and everyone within ten feet. Pua was hard to miss, and her low voice, almost a whisper, attracted attention even over the noise around them.

  “That’s what I need to talk to you about. Partly, anyway. Storm, I’m sorry I—”

  Suddenly, three men loomed behind Pua. One was a local policeman, and one was dressed in a sweatshirt emblazoned with the Intrepid logo and the blue shorts of local lifeguards. The third was Marty Barstow. Barstow stood back while the two security men each took one of Pua’s arms.

  Pua looked resigned, and shook her arms free of them. They let go, but stood right by her. “You need to leave, lady. Or we’ll take you in,” the Intrepid guy growled.

  “Complaints have been filed,” the cop said. Storm thought he sounded a bit sheepish. He should be. O’Reilly was probably six-two, two-fifty. Storm bet Pua didn’t weigh half that.

  Pua didn’t seem to want to make more of a scene, though. “Later,” she mouthed to Storm, and walked away, chin high, ahead of the cop and lifeguard.

  Barstow hung around. “I asked you to call me,” he said to Storm.

  Storm felt her face flush with anger. “Most people call me at the office.”

  His voice remained reasonable and confident. “I may need your help.”

  “Against hundred-pound brunettes?” Storm snapped.

  Barstow shrugged. “She’s my partner’s problem. He had to get a restraining order.”

  “Call me sometime this evening,” she snapped. “I’m tied up until then.” By that time, she would have tracked Stephanie down.

  Sunny and Dede had stood by her during this exchange, and when Barstow strolled away, they looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  “Are you representing both of them?”

  “No way. I don’t know what he wants.” She frowned. “But I should find out. You heard anything from the surf community about him and his partner?”

  Dede shrugged. “I heard the partner’s been trolling.”

  “Anyone you know hooked up with him?”

  “He made a pass at me,” Sunny said.

  “No shit.” Dede grinned at her. “I feel left out.”

  “He just hasn’t seen you yet.”

  “How long has he been in the islands?” Storm asked.

  Both women shrugged. “A month or two, and he gets around.”

  “The next surfers are going out,” Sunny said. She and Dede raised their glasses to view the next pair buzz out into the bay on the back of a jet ski. One of them was Goober, whose bleached dreadlocks were unmistakable.

  “He got in the lineup,” Dede said with some wonder in her voice.

  “Yeah.” Sunny’s forehead was creased with a deep frown. “He’s paired with Kimo Hitashi.”

  “He hasn’t even won a major tournament,” a nearby surfer complained.

  The tiny figures were visible in the rise and fall of the water by their bright yellow singlets. Storm observed Goober slip from the back of the PWC and paddle into a rising swell, while Kimo zipped well away from the break zone.

  Binoculars were critical to watching the surfers’ moves, but they also made it difficult to judge incoming swells because of their tendency to make the waves appear closer together than they were. She could tell by Goober’s reaction, though, that he felt the rising water promised a good ride.

  Sure enough, with the audience’s collective gasp, Goober rose to his feet. To Storm, his takeoff looked solid and aggressive, but she heard Sunny utter a small groan.

  “What?” she asked.

  “He’s late,” she muttered without lowering the glasses.

  Now Storm could see it. Goober seemed to be trying to compensate, but the wave was ahead of him and started to curl. It had to be an awfully scary feeling, Storm thought, and watched him crouch into a drop, his only hope to get far enough ahead of the lip.

  She could feel Sunny, whose shoulder touched her own, relax a bit, but Dede turned to Sunny with a question.

  “How are they judging this? The waves aren’t big enough to give the biggest ride the most points.”

  “In surf like this, they give points for a combination of things. Nahoa told me
they’d look at everything from aerials to classic tube riding. They’re looking for the best snaps and cutbacks, too.”

  The wave, a mere twelve- or fifteen-footer, still showed what was probably more than a twenty foot face. Storm’s method for judging literal wave height was to try to figure out how far above a man the wall of water towered. This wave was three or four times Goober’s height. To Storm, that was a big honking wave.

  Goober was in what appeared to be a safer zone, and he got enough speed for a nice cutback, which encouraged applause from the fans. Storm knew there was no way he could hear the crowd’s approval, but he must have been stoked by his move, because he next tried to fade up the wave, and lost some of his momentum in the process.

  Part of the challenge of surfing is that every wave is different. Like snowflakes wrought by Mother Nature’s ingenuity, each has its own personality in thickness, curl, speed, and direction. A surfer needs to continuously evaluate these factors and adjust to them. Storm suddenly saw that with his last move, Goober had miscalculated where the wave would break first, and consequently, the angle of his ride.

  Dede’s yelp confirmed her fears. The wave’s leading edge was directly over Goober, and he was about a foot too low on its face. There was no way, even if he rocketed into a drop, that he could beat the speed of the wave, and he knew it. So did the crowd, which let out a collective gasp.

  The viewers moaned as tons of water folded on top of him, turned to one another in dismay, then craned to see when and where his head would appear in the rolling lather of the broken wave.

  Everyone watched Goober’s board tombstone in the frothy whitewash. Kimo Hitashi zoomed in on the duo’s big jet ski, warily keeping an eye on the next incoming set, but the crowd could tell by the frantic whine of the engine and Kimo’s overlapping circles that he hadn’t found his partner.

  Long minutes elapsed before a yellow blur, the color of the vest Goober wore, appeared like a speck on acres of foam. When Kimo got to him, the spectators exhaled their pent-up breath in relief. But people tittered with anxiety, because they could see Kimo lean over and struggle to haul Goober onto the watercraft.

  When Goober was finally visible behind his colleague, a cheer went up from the beach. In the interest of time, the next set of surfers was hustled into the water, but all eyes were on Goober and Kimo as they wobbled to the medical tent. It didn’t take long for word to spread through the crowd that Goober had suffered a blown eardrum and would require further medical examination. Kimo would get a chance to finish his part of the competition the next day.

  “Poor Goober,” Dede said. “He’s out. No way he’ll be allowed in the water for a few days.”

  “Lono’s revenge,” Sunny said in a voice only Dede and Storm could hear.

  Dede nodded soberly. “Maybe.”

  Storm started. “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Dede said, looking around.

  The three of them walked to the car, and Sunny talked. “Lono punishes those who break certain kapu. Spiritually, Hawaiians believe that humans need to coexist with nature, to be part of the 'aina.”

  “Goober grew up in foster homes. He’s sacrificed some of his hanohano the last couple of years.” Dede winced as she said this. “He became a bit desperate.”

  Storm nodded. The fact fit with what she’d observed in him. “So he entered the surf contest for the prize money. Is that what brought on Lono’s revenge?”

  Sunny shrugged. “More like he did a complete reversal of the philosophy he had when he came here. He used to surf for the athletic challenge and for a kind of purity, a oneness with nature.” Sunny pulled onto the highway. “Then he got desperate to compete. And yes, his motive was mostly the money.”

  “You know the feeling,” Dede said, “that there’s a much greater power than yourself, and for a few brief moments, you’re part of it?”

  Storm nodded. She knew, and the wisdom of these two young women impressed her, not for the first time. “Has Goober finished high school?”

  “Not yet,” Dede said. “He’s on and off with it. Since he moved here from California a couple years ago, he hasn’t had a permanent place to stay or a steady job. He’s almost twenty, and though there are probably a couple other juniors and seniors at Waialua High School his age, he’s touchy about it.”

  “Like a lot of us, he grew up surfing,” Sunny continued, “though some of us are lucky, and have an education.” She looked over at Dede, who rolled her eyes.

  “Sunny’s more forgiving than I am,” Dede said. “I think he should make a job and school his top priorities.”

  Sunny continued, undaunted by Dede’s comment. “He moved to Haleiwa thinking that he could get a job either teaching surfing or as a lifeguard.”

  “And the local boys shut him out,” Storm muttered, almost to herself.

  “You’ve got the picture,” Sunny said.

  Storm winced. “It’s hard to get a job as a lifeguard even if you’re born and raised here.” She didn’t need to mention if you were a blond Californian, it was even harder. As much as Hawai'i people wanted to deny it, some racism still existed, often against newcomers from the Mainland—and particularly if they sought prestigious, high-profile City and County jobs that didn’t require advanced degrees.

  “But he’s teaching surfing,” Storm said.

  “Gabe gets him a few jobs. It’s not enough to live on,” Dede said.

  “Nahoa believed in the sheer challenge of surfing, too,” Sunny said, almost as if talking to herself.

  “He told me.” Storm had been wondering about this aspect of Nahoa’s surfing, and she was glad the other woman had brought it up. “But he still competed.”

  “He and Buster DeSilva used to argue about that,” Sunny said. “If you listen to Buster, he’ll tell you we need to change the Western values that reinforce the concept of ownership and encourage taming the forces of nature. Nahoa felt it was possible to compete and still be true to the spirit of surfing. After all, Lono started Makahiki, which included surfing contests.”

  “And DeSilva didn’t agree?” Storm asked.

  She watched Sunny’s shoulders rise and fall in an easy shrug. “Buster used to compete in surf contests, too, you know.”

  Storm sat up straighter. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Sure, he was good. Great, even. This was before tow-ins, when guys paddled themselves out in big waves. He used to surf with the Aikau brothers.”

  “That was the sixties and seventies. No one could get out when it got much over twenty feet. What the Civil Service Defense Alert calls Condition Black,” Dede said. “When it gets that big, you need a jet ski or boat, because of the speed of the wave.”

  “Buster thinks using watercraft defies the art and spirit of surfing. The huge waves are sacred to him, an act of nature to be revered, not conquered by noisy machines.”

  “Does DeSilva feel strongly enough to take action against the organizers or participants of the tow-in contests?” Storm asked.

  Sunny watched her from the rearview mirror, and Dede looked over her shoulder. “No, no,” Sunny said quickly. “He’d never do that. He and Nahoa were kindred spirits. If anything, they thought people brought bad luck onto themselves.”

  But there was now a spark of apprehension in both women’s eyes, as if Storm had voiced a concern they hadn’t wanted to consider.

  “What do you think?” Storm asked.

  “About Buster’s beliefs?”

  “Yes, and about what happened to Goober today.”

  “Buster’s got some good points, practical ones. Beaches are supposed to be public property, but you know that isn’t always what you find when you try to get to some beaches on this island.”

  “True.” Storm thought of the retaining walls popular among estate owners in the Diamond Head area. Paradoxically, the walls caused erosion of the sandy beaches the estate owners were trying guard.

  “I don
’t think Goober was a victim of Lono.” Sunny looked at Storm in the rearview mirror. “I think he crumbled under his own self-doubt.” She shrugged. “Although, maybe that’s how Lono’s curse works.”

  Storm didn’t doubt that people could sabotage their own efforts due to guilt or ambivalence. Aunt Maile told her it happened all the time. She even believed some illnesses worked that way.

  But this thought brought another question to Storm’s mind. “Usually the tow-in contestants have a lot of experience in big surf, right?”

  “Good point,” Sunny said. “Goober has less familiarity with tow-ins than some of the guys watching from the beach today.”

  “There’s some talk going around,” Dede added. “There’s a rumor he got into the contest by doing favors for that guy O’Reilly.”

  “But Goober fell on his own,” Sunny stated.

  “Still, how did he get into the contest?” Dede asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sunny said, but she sounded worried.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Just as the women pulled into Sunny’s and Dede’s yard, Storm’s cell phone rang. It took her a few minutes to dig it out of her bag under the seat, and when she got to it, the caller had hung up. Storm looked at her missed calls. She had two, and the most recent was from Stephanie. The other was from Pua. Storm wanted to talk to both women.

  “I’d better go,” she said. “Thanks for a great afternoon. It was just what I needed.”

  “Me, too,” Sunny said, and Dede echoed her. “We’ll see you tomorrow for the second round.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Storm grabbed her packages, tossed them into the passenger seat of the VW, and called Stephanie.

  Stephanie must have been sitting next to her phone. “I need to talk to you,” she said, her voice low and hoarse.

  It was five-thirty, which still gave Storm plenty of time to get ready before Hamlin arrived. “I can be at Starbucks in ten minutes.”