Island Cultural Center

by Marilyn Foxworthy

  She said, “I went to the front desk and asked who to talk to about a job. Hey sent me to an office and they told me that they can’t hire non-residents right now. That I’d have to live here and have a permanent address. Then I walked over to the few restaurants and gift shops that I could get to and they told me that they didn’t have any openings. I slept in the massage cabana on the beach over there,” and she pointed at a green covered cabana on the beach.

  She went on, saying, “That was five days ago. Since then, I’ve been hanging out at the pool, eating sandwiches from the little grocery store across the way, hiding my bag in a locker in the women’s changing room by the pool, sleeping on the beach, and thinking about killing myself.”

  I said, “I’m glad that’s over.”

  She said, “Is it?”

  I said, “Of course it is. There’s a plan here. We just have to wait and see what it is. So what do you think? Can we do it?”

  She said, “Do what?”

  I said, “Try being honest with each other. My experiment. I want to try it and I think that you are the one to try it with. What do you say? We just tell each other the truth all the time. Not that we have to say things that we don’t want to, but that what we do say is truthful. That’s what my friend, oh, your nephew, has been talking to me about. His life is working out in new ways and I want to see what it’s like.”

  She said, “OK. You know, that sounds good. OK. I’ll try.”

  I said, “And we call each other on it when we aren’t telling the truth, agreed?”

  She stuck out her hand and we smiled and shook on it.

  I said, “So, first, your name. What should I call you? It doesn’t have to be your name, just something that you want me to call you.”

  She said, “Diane, I guess.”

  I said, “Nope. Be honest. What do you want me to call you?”

  She looked surprised but finally said, “Brenda. I want you to call me Brenda.”

  I exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! That’s beautiful. And it suits you so well. That’s perfect for you!”

  She said, “It is? It’s my middle name. I guess when you asked me, I thought, yeah, I’m not who I was. I want to be Brenda. Brenda Jackson. I like it, but I don’t know why. Why do you say it’s perfect for me?”

  I said slyly, “I’ll tell you later. I just think it is. For several reasons.”

  She grinned and said, “Was it the name of your first love, or your mother, or something?”

  I laughed and said, “No, nothing like that. It suits you, not me.”

  She said, “You are a funny man, Roland Jackson.”

  I said, “So, are you going to change your last name, too? Go back to your maiden name or something?”

  She smiled somewhat wickedly and said, “Well, to tell you the truth, the absolute honest embarrassing truth, what I think I want to do is change my last name to Jackson.”

  I smiled and said, “You want to change it from Jackson to Jackson?”

  She said, “If we’re just talking about feelings right now, yes. But I’ll need to figure out who I am first, as you say.”

  I said, “You have already told me. You are Brenda Jackson.”

  She exclaimed, “Oh wow! I see what you mean! That is convenient.”

  I grinned and said, “How?”

  She said, “Having the same name already might lead to some convenient misunderstandings.”

  I said, “It might. We’ll see. But you came up here to take a shower.”

  She said, “No, according to you I was compelled to come here by cosmic forces beyond my control.”

  I said, “No. You could have resisted and stayed in control. But they wanted you to come here to take a shower and you jumped in the stream and floated along where they were going.”

  She said, “I suppose so. The cosmic forces sent me to Kauai to take a shower in your hotel room. It’s kind of backward.”

  I said, “How?”

  She said, “Well, normally you buy a girl breakfast after she comes to your room and ends up taking a shower in the morning.”

  I laughed and said, “Truthfully, I wouldn’t know about that. But let’s go in and you can do what you want.”

  I led us into the bathroom. It wasn’t anything special. Tropical venues don’t spend a lot of effort making bathrooms elegant. Mountain venues where it’s cold outside are places that expect you to want to spend time in a shower or tub. The tropics view it as a place to wash the chlorine off.

  I said, “Here, if you need anything, use my stuff. My razor or shampoo or whatever.”

  She said, “I have a few things.”

  She went back to the room and unzipped the small travel bag that she had with her and took out a little cosmetics case.

  I said, “Hey, Brenda, I have a bold request. While you are in the shower, can I look through your bag?”

  Brenda looked at me suspiciously but softened quickly and shrugged.

  She said, “It would be incredibly honest, wouldn’t it? And very vulnerable. Yeah, do it. Yeah. Why does that feel so right? You aren’t being weird, are you? I can tell that you aren’t. This is just an honest part of what we are doing, isn’t it? To see if we can figure out how to be honest.”

  I said, “And to see if we can start to figure out who you are. So that we can figure out who you will be from here on out. The bag has your past and your present. Not your future. I don’t know what I’m thinking, exactly, but yeah, it would be really raw and vulnerable and honest, and in a way, like you said, freeing.”

  She said, “Go ahead. I look forward to what you’ll find. Roland Jackson, you are a…um, an uncommon man. Go ahead. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  With that, she went into the bathroom with her cosmetics case and closed the door.

  Chapter 2 - Waking up

  I took her bag from where it lay on the bed and went back outside to the balcony patio. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I felt like it was right. I was on an adventure and exploring what it was about.

  I liked her. This was weird, but so what?

  I smiled and opened her bag. It was mostly a wad of clothing. Not much. And hastily thrown together if my guess was right. Sitting at the small patio table, I pulled out the contents of the bag and piled them in a heap in front of me.

  There was a small purse. Yeah, I was going to look through that in a minute. She’d given me permission to look at anything that I wanted to. That included the contents of her purse. There was a set of keys, a few cards, her driver’s license, about eight dollars, and a phone. OK, what could I see here?

  One of the keys was for a house. One was for a car. A nice, midrange import, probably, based on the logo. I couldn’t tell what model it was, but the make was a good reliable Japanese car. It looked like there was a key to a mailbox. And there was the usual assortment of little key-chain ornaments: a tiny metal squirrel and a foreign coin. Those might be significant, but they might not be. Maybe she liked squirrels.

  Her driver’s license verified that her address was in Nevada. I looked up the town on my phone. It was a small place south of Las Vegas, about 70 miles from where I lived, across the border in California. She was 55 years old. I was 60. I felt younger, and she looked younger. But 55 isn’t as old as it used to be. Her height was listed at 5-foot-4. It gave her weight, but I suspected that she had dropped several pounds since the date that the license was issued. She had a credit card, a debit card, and a checkbook but no check register that recorded the checks that she wrote.

  I was surprised that I was actually doing this, and that she was letting me.

  After that, I took a look at her clothes. There was a pair of casual shoes. Something to walk in. I think that she’d been wearing sandals when I met her, but I could have been wrong about that. I was playing detective now, so I looked at the soles. They were worn, but not badly. They just weren’t new.

  She had a bra and three pair of panties. The tag on the bra gave the size. She was busty. The bra itse
lf was plain. Very plain. White with thick cups and a wire underneath. Brenda was apparently feeling a need for supportive undergarments and probably felt self-conscious about her nipples ever showing. Why else have a bra that was armor-padded? It wasn’t to give her more shape. Unless her breasts were saggy and really needed the support. I hadn’t really looked, but I didn’t think that was the case. The panties were cotton bikinis. Not little string bikinis, but more modest normal bikinis. It gave me the impression that she was feminine but didn’t think of herself as sexual or sensual in an overt way. Her underwear gave the impression that it was mostly functional but pretty, to a point.

  One bra and 3 panties. I’d assume that she was wearing another bra and a pair of panties this morning. What was she wearing this morning? I think it had been a T-Shirt and a pair of loose-fitting shorts. She hadn’t packed for more than four days or so. She was traveling light.

  Her other clothes consisted of another T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a vacation dress. The dress was a floral print like something that would be sold here. She’d never been here before. She had brought clothing with her that would blend in.

  And that was it. Except for 2 pair of socks.

  What was missing? There would be something to learn from what she didn’t bring as well as from what she did. First, a swimsuit. She was in Hawaii without a swimsuit. That could be a couple of things. She could have been planning to buy one here because she didn’t ordinarily swim at home. She lived near the Colorado River though. And a lot of the homes in that part of the country, and certainly all apartment buildings, had pools. Either she wanted a new bathing suit, or she didn’t feel that she needed one. If she didn’t need one, it might be because she wasn’t comfortable in one. We’d have to see how comfortable she was with her body and how self-conscious she was about it. But maybe she just wanted a new one.

  What else? No tampons. She’d probably aged past the need for them. No birth control, possibly for the same reason. No hairdryer. What else? What else was “missing”? There was no nightgown or anything to sleep in and certainly nothing that would be considered lingerie; nothing that would have been chosen for its sexual allure. OK, she hadn’t been planning to “hook up” with someone while she was here. She wasn’t here for a revenge affair. And she hadn’t given enough thought to where she was going to sleep to have even brought a nightshirt of any kind. She’d been sleeping in her clothes.

  She had maybe four days of clothes, tops. She’d been here for maybe five. She was out of clothes. She was out of cash, if she used cash. It sounded like she was out of money. She wasn’t running up her credit cards. Otherwise, she would have a room, not a lounge chair on the beach.

  And that led me to another significant conclusion. Brenda was smart. If she wasn’t, she’d have been thrown off the property already. She admitted that she had fit in so well that no one noticed when she picked up my food order and brought it to me at some time in the past. Yeah, she had come here unprepared, on a whim, but she wasn’t foolish or stupid.

  This was cool. This was an adventure all right. And I’d just looked through a woman’s bags and purse, with her full permission, to see what was there. When does that happen? No woman that I’d ever known would ever let someone do that, especially when they weren’t there to oversee the examination. But we were playing a game of trusting each other more than we might have ever trusted anyone in our entire lives. I liked it so far.

  When I was satisfied that I had the information that I could discover from her possessions, I carried the pile and the bags back into the room and set everything out on the bed in plain view. I arranged it all so that it could be examined again by both of us if we wanted to.

  I could hear that the water was off in the bathroom and that a hairdryer was going. I sat down on the sofa and waited. I had a plan. We’d see if she went along with it. She didn’t have to.

  A few minutes later Brenda opened the bathroom door and walked into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around her body.

  She was carrying her T-Shirt, shorts, bra, and a pair of panties and her sandals. Looking at the contents of her bag arranged neatly on the big bed, she laid the clothes she’d been wearing next to the others.

  I stood up and stood in front of her by the bed.

  I said, “Did you find everything that you needed?”

  She said, “Yes. It was really good to take a shower. Thank you. Um, I had my own razor, but thank you for the offer to let me use yours. So, there’s my stuff, huh?”

  We stood side by side and looked at the things on the bed.

  I said, “Let me use your towel for a second.”

  Without thinking, Brenda pulled off the towel that was her only covering and handed it to me. I pretended to wipe some moisture from my brow and instead of handing it back to her, I set it on the bed with the clothes. She didn’t try to pick it up.

  I said, “Brenda, if you want to be naked, just get naked. You don’t need to pretend anything. If you want to be naked, be honest. Just strip and be what you want.”

  She looked down at herself and gasped slightly. She didn’t try to cover up. She just took a breath and closed her eyes for a second and then opened them again. I waited.

  She said, “Thank you. Roland, what am I doing? I didn’t even know.”

  I said, “You didn’t know what?”

  She said, “That I wanted to be naked. But I did. Oh, that’s why I put on a towel instead of my clothes. Oh no! What am I doing? I put on a towel and wondered if it would slip or fall off. Oh no! I wanted it to. I think that I hoped it would. What am I doing?”

  She still didn’t move to cover up at all as I asked, “What do you want to do?”

  She said, “I…well…I, oh hell, I want to stand here naked and find out what you are going to say about it. I don’t know why. No, I really don’t. Well, I do, but please don’t make me tell you.”

  I said, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. All I’m doing is giving you the opportunity. And my consent. Now, let me look at you. Brenda, you are very beautiful. I told you that I would tell you why I thought that Brenda is a perfect name for you. It’s because of this. In my mind, Brenda is the name of a woman. A mature, attractive, soft and luscious, real woman. I am going to tell you the truth, and if you think that there are any hidden meanings or sideways insults or anything but the truth, you are wrong. Brenda is a voluptuous name. Emotionally and physically. Looking at you, I see a woman. And emotionally and physically voluptuous woman. You might think of terms like voluptuous or full-bodied or something like that as meaning fat. I don’t. It means full. Luxurious. Pleasurable. Sensual. Desirable. In my opinion, you are incredibly beautiful. In many ways, you might say that you are the epitome of what I think of as a real woman. Not a girl. An empress. Not a queen. A nurturer.”

  Brenda was stunned. Her mouth hung open and her eyes watered.

  She whispered, “I’ll never wear clothes again.”

  I smiled and said, “Yes you will. Part of the time. But that does bring us to your wardrobe. Brenda, do any of the clothes on his bed delight you? Do any of them thrill you or make you feel pretty or happy or aroused in a good way?”

  She shook her head and said, “Truthfully, no.”

  I said, “Good. Because they don’t make me feel that way either. Maybe these were Diane’s clothes. My um, friend Brenda needs something new.”

  Brenda said, “Tell the truth.”

  I looked at her to find out where she thought that I needed to be more honest and said, “My woman, Brenda, needs different clothes.”

  She said, “Crap! Honesty is hard. You just said that. Wow! Out loud. Hey, I get it. We don’t know what’s happening, but you just said it. And somehow I know what it means. It doesn’t mean that I belong to you, it means that you are taking responsibility for me in a way that a man takes responsibility at times for a woman who is family. That’s it, right? And you just said it. And nowhere could anyone say something like that so purely honestly. T
hat had to be terrifying. Unless you were an ass, and I know that you aren’t. And the honest answer to how I know is that I’ve been watching you. Studying you. Looking for flaws. And I’m standing here naked in front of you, and do you know why? Of course you do. Because I am your woman right now. At this one moment, with no real thought beyond this, for as long as this moment lasts, I am your woman.”

  I said, “Um, I was going to try to make you a deal.”

  She smiled and said, “What kind of deal?”

  I said, “I was going to tell you that I was loaning you a thousand dollars and that you could use it any way that you wanted to and that you could leave at any time and go wherever you wanted to.”

  She said, “And in exchange?”

  I said, “And in exchange, you let me buy you new clothes and get you a place to stay for a while and buy you lunches and dinners as long as I’m here and you want to hang out. I get the impression that you don’t have any money, but I don’t want you to feel obligated to me or trapped or like you have to stay with me or do anything at all.”

  She grinned and said, “And to hell with that. Yeah, I understand what you are saying. But if we’re honest, we don’t need that game, do we? If I want to go home, I’ll tell you and you’ll make it possible somehow. If I want to stay, I will stay by your consent. No games. Roland, I don’t have any money. My credit card isn’t even active. I what, let me see, eight dollars? There’s no checking account still open behind these checks. I left with nothing and no plan except the naive assumption that I’d get a job right away. I’m flat broke.”

  We paused for a few seconds and she said, “But I don’t care. Honesty. Truth. Roland, I hope that you will feed me for a few days. There. Bam! I said it. Yes, for goodness sake, take care of me! Wow. I’d never have imagined saying that ever! And if I don’t like it, I’ll be as honest with myself as I am going to be with you. And if I’m honest with myself, I can leave anytime I want. So yeah, Honey, take care of me. I’m not ready to, oh hell, I can’t even say that. I was about to say that I’m not ready to jump into bed with you, but the truth is, I am! I feel like I shouldn’t be, but my brain is all over the place right now. Oh, and you are an observant man, aren’t you? Yes, you are. Roland, what do you think? Am I attracted to you?”