by Frankie Bow
“My initiative?” I didn’t remember introducing any initiatives. Why would I do that? “Student-directed curriculum? It’s not ringing a bell, sorry.”
“The idea you brought up at the retreat.”
“You don’t mean when I said, why not just let the students give themselves whatever grades they want? Are you talking about that?”
“Dan wasn’t receptive at this point in time,” Linda said. “Unfortunately, we’ve found that some faculty are skeptical about anything that de-centers the traditional power dynamic of the professor as the person who knows things.”
“Could be.” De-centers the traditional power dynamic? I didn’t believe for a second that Linda knew what those words meant. She’d probably memorized the phrase at one of her professional development boondoggles.
“We believe your idea was a little outside-the-box for him.”
Now that was the Linda I knew. I can’t stand that expression, by the way. Every time I hear outside-the-box I want to brain someone with an MLA style manual. The hardcover edition. It makes sense as a metaphor, I’ll give it that, but it’s monstrously overused, and always by people who are themselves so inside-the-box they have visible corners.
“It is very outside-the-box,” I agreed. “The College of Commerce might not be ready for something so advanced. But I will talk to Dan, I promise.” To thank him for fending off yet another insane Student Retention Office initiative.
“Good,” Linda gave off some unseen signal, which caused her two flunkies to get into formation and follow her out the door. “Make sure to keep us in the loop.”
“Keep you in the loop. Of course.”
At least I was done for the day. I cheered up a little at the thought of heading home, pulling a lightweight murder mystery off my bookshelf, pouring myself a big glass of wine, curling up on my couch—
My phone buzzed in my hand, reminding me I had an appointment in ten minutes. One I’d nearly managed to forget.
I trudged down to the parking lot, found my car, slid into the driver’s seat, pulled the heavy door shut, and started the engine. With my enthusiasm level now well below the detectable threshold, I headed out toward Hotel Drive for my first Business Boosters meeting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Small talk comes easily to some people. I am not one of those people. So great is my horror of unstructured socializing that I routinely arrive fifteen minutes late to Mass on purpose, just to avoid the Passing of the Peace. So when I arrived at the Lehua Inn, found the upstairs dining room, signed into my first Business Boosters meeting, and was told to take a seat “anywhere,” my heart sank.
Mercedes Yamashiro waved, smiled, and then went back to conversing with the people at her fully-occupied table. Darn. It would have been nice to sit next to the voluble and perpetually cheerful Mercedes. She owned the Cloudforest Bed and Breakfast, where I stayed during my job interview. Mercedes was my first acquaintance in Mahina, one of those people who could make anyone feel at ease. Or so I assume, because I consider myself the boundary case.
My innards launched into spin cycle when I spied Marshall Dixon sitting near the front. She was next to one of the few empty seats in the room, but there was no way I was going to sit there. It was bad enough to feel judged by a room full of strangers. At least strangers might grow to like you at some point.
Fortunately I spotted Tatsuya Masumoto and his wife Trudy at a small table against the paneled wall. I hurried over and wedged myself into the vacant seat between them. We had about half a second to exchange a brief greeting before the program started. Perfect timing.
Trudy, my hairdresser’s sweet and sparrow-like wife, hugged me so closely her blonde hair tickled my nose. Then she pulled back and beamed at me
“Rumor has it you look fabulous in a beehive.”
“Speaking of disasters,” Tatsuya added mischievously, earning a glare from Trudy.
“Oh. I guess everyone knows what happened on my birthday?”
“Don’t you worry about him.” Trudy straightened my collar, which had managed to get inverted on one side. “There are plenty of other fish in the sea. And some of them don’t even smoke.”
“We’re starting.” Tatsuya stood for the Business Boosters anthem. Trudy and I were already standing, so we turned toward the front of the room. I relaxed and inhaled the reassuring diner smell: old cigarette smoke mingled with decades of pancakes and burned coffee.
On the agenda for today’s meeting was a discussion of the New Hanohano Hotel, a universally reviled rebuild of a formerly beloved landmark. The assembled Business Boosters stared resentfully out the window at the mold-streaked monstrosity currently under construction. The Business Boosters chapter president, a stern-faced blonde wearing a pastel suit, enumerated the various offenses of the developer, Jimmy Tanaka.
First, the bulldozing of the original Hanohano Hotel had taken place mere days before the quaint plantation house was due to be added to the Register of Historic Places. And that was just the beginning. As soon as construction was underway, the New Hanohano gained a reputation as an aesthetic and environmental catastrophe. Careless grading combined with Mahina’s heavy rainfall washed tons of precious topsoil into the bay. Construction waste was discovered dumped in the forest in unincorporated Kuewa, an apparent attempt to avoid landfill fees. Most tragically, a worker had perished in a construction mishap.
The hotel had reopened before the top floor was finished, and the result had been roundly panned on the travel websites. None of the local business organizations, all of whom were generally in favor of expansion and development, had anything good to say about the New Hanohano Hotel. Or Jimmy Tanaka.
Trudy nudged me.
“You know who’s single?” she whispered.
“Jimmy Tanaka?”
“No, Silly, see the man over there, dark hair, blue aloha shirt?”
She pointed in the general direction of Mercedes Yamashiro’s table.
“I guess.” In fact there were three or four men at the table who fit Trudy’s description.
“His name is Donnie Gonsalves. I’ll introduce you after the meeting. He owns Donnie’s Drive-Inn. Plate lunches, loco mocos, local favorites.”
“He sounds interesting.” I looked in the direction of their table again.
“He’s been on his own since his wife left, and I hear the son is a handful. Anyway, I think you two would get along.”
“I’m not ready to meet anyone new yet.” I wondered what on earth Trudy imagined I’d have in common with some divorced small-town businessman and his delinquent son. “Thank you so much for looking out for me, though. I appreciate it.”
“Well, I never wanted to say anything when you were dating him, but I always felt you were stifling your creativity to spare Stephen’s ego. He’s the kind of person who always has to take center stage, and I think he’s been holding you back.”
“Probably,” I agreed.
“What have you been doing to nourish your soul?”
“I haven’t had time for soul-nourishing. Summer’s been awfully busy.”
“I thought professors didn’t work during the summer.”
“We don’t get paid during the summer,” I corrected her. “There’s still a surprising amount of work to get done. And I’m teaching a summer class. You know, I noticed the shop seemed pretty quiet too, speaking of summer.”
“It has been. But it’s not because of the time of year. Someone’s been leaving negative reviews online for Tatsuya’s Moderne Beauty.”
“Really? That’s terrible.”
“We think we know who it is.”
“I left a positive review for you,” I said. “But I’ll go leave another one. You should put in some good reviews for yourselves too, to counteract the bad ones.”
“Oh, we couldn’t do that. It would be dishonest. You know, it was bad enough before the internet, when you’d get an unhappy customer complaining to all their friends. Especially after they insist on an unsuitable cut
or color, and then they’re dissatisfied afterward.”
“Did you ever see Kent Lovely’s unsuitable color?”
“Oh, that poor, deluded man. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I think he thought he was Elvis or something.”
“At least that wasn’t Tatsuya’s fault,” I said. “He told me he refused to do that color for Kent.”
“What do you mean?” Trudy looked surprised. “Tatsuya did do Kent’s color.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Tatsuya did Kent Lovely’s hair color?” Tatsuya didn’t seem to hear me. He was paying attention to the presentation. “Trudy, are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. I remember when it happened, because Tatsuya was so upset.”
“Upset at Kent?”
“At himself, mostly. Kent insisted on that black color, entirely wrong for him of course. My poor husband went along with it because Kent had always been such a good customer. Well. Tatsuya regretted it, let me tell you. And when he offered to fix it for free, Kent not only refused, he started dying it himself with—boxed hair dye from the drugstore. Oh, look at us, chatting away.” Trudy fanned herself with her hand as if to dissipate the steam from our sizzling-hot gossip. “We should be listening to the discussion.”
The Business Boosters were still on the topic of developer Jimmy Tanaka’s various crimes against Mahina’s economy. I put on an interested expression, and pointed my face at the speaker, just as my students did in my classes. I barely heard the discussion. I was thinking about Kent Lovely.
The last time I had really spoken to Kent—apart from those few words at Monday’s retreat—was during the incident I had related to Marshall Dixon.
Under the table, I slipped my phone out of my bag, muted the sound, and pulled up the browser, all the while pretending to pay attention to the meeting.
It didn’t take long to find the video online. It was the kata section of last year’s island-wide karate tournament, featuring Kent Lovely. His coal-black hair was flying around in slow motion for all the internet to see. Watching the video again brought that afternoon’s events back vividly.
When I had gone over to Rodge’s office to investigate the wall-shaking music, I’d seen Rodge and Kent sitting side-by-side, staring at a laptop computer. On screen, Kent Lovely, clad in a white gi, executed a slow motion roundhouse kick. Droplets of sweat flew out in a perfect centripetal pattern. I rapped on the door frame, but the music was so loud that they didn’t hear me. I finally just walked into Rodge’s office.
“Ah, la bella professoressa.” Kent wheeled around and grinned.
“Molly-Dolly,” Rodge had added, halfheartedly. As glad as Kent was to see me, Rodge was obviously disappointed that Emma wasn’t there.
“Listen, Rodge, Kent, I don’t want to be a bother, but could you turn down the—”
Kent interrupted me with what sounded like a string of nonsense syllables.
“I’m sorry, Kent, I have no idea what you just said.”
“Oh, signorina Molly, you don’t understand your mother tongue, the language of love? Peccato.”
“Ah. Italian?” I guessed.
“Si, Bellissima.”
“I wish I did speak it. I had to read The Divine Comedy in translation. But no, I’m not Italian. My ancestry is Albanian, actually.”
“Im-po-see-bee-lay!” Kent exclaimed.
“What do you mean, ‘im-po-see-bee-lay?’ Why is it ‘im-po-see-bee-lay’ that I’m Albanian?”
Emma had recently referred to me as an “off-brand European,” and I was feeling a little sensitive about the issue of my ancestry.
Kent moved the computer screen so I had a good view of it. “You need to see this, Molly. This is me, executing a series of katas, or karate figures.”
“Thank you, I know what katas are. I don’t want to take up your time, I just wanted—”
“The music is my original composition,” Kent interrupted. “Come on, have a seat.”
“But there aren’t any chai—” Kent patted his scrawny thigh.
“Okay. I think we’re done here.”
I was so eager to get out of Rodge’s office, I bumped into his curio cabinet, knocking over a few of his little statues and tchotchkes. One of the toppled items was a white plastic bottle with a black label, featuring a smiling dark haired woman wearing a cheongsam.
“One of Rodge’s students asked him if those were fertility pills,” Kent said as I righted the bottle. “Know what Rodge told ’em? I sure hope not.”
As Rodge and Kent high-fived each other, I slipped out of Rodge’s office and back to the quiet safety of my own.
How many people knew Tatsuya had been Kent Lovely’s hairstylist? Silly question. This was Mahina, where everyone knows everything, including your bra size. I glanced over at Tatsuya. He took pride in his work, no question, but I couldn’t imagine him going so far as to deliberately poison an embarrassing customer.
Trudy nudged me. “Think about what I said,” she whispered. “Nourish your soul.”
I nodded and slipped my phone back into my bag. Trudy was right. If the talentless Kent Lovely could express himself creatively, why couldn’t I? Kent’s “original composition” had been awful, with a canned string section and a dissonant bass line that didn’t quite sit in the mix. Why had I let Stephen convince me he was the creative one, while I was just a business-school sellout?
When Business Boosters wrapped up, I hurried out of the dining room, foiling Trudy’s plan to set me up with Mahina’s Plate Lunch King. I drove straight home and got ready for bed. I pulled the comforter up around my shoulders and drifted into delicious slumber.
I forgot to turn off my ringer. The booming chorus of Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” blasted me out of dreamland. I planted my hand in random places on the nightstand until I found the phone.
“Hello,” I gasped. My heart was banging in my chest. Phone calls in the middle of the night are never good news.
Tonight was no exception. It was Stephen Park calling.
I pushed up my sleep mask and squinted at my alarm clock.
“Oh Molly,” Stephen’s tone was as casual as could be. As if everything were fine. “You weren’t asleep, were you?”
“Stephen, it’s four in the morning. What do you think?”
“I saw you and Emma in the theater today.”
“We just wanted somewhere comfortable to eat lunch. The cafeteria was closed. We didn’t mean to bother you. I thought we were being nice and quiet.”
“We—I was testing the lighting. I didn’t have time to talk.”
He wasn’t going to bring it up. I’d have to do it.
“Stephen, what happened? I waited for you, and you never showed up.”
Pause.
“You, know, on my birthday?”
“Things got kind of hectic.”
“It was my birthday, Stephen. You stood me up on my birthday.”
“I texted you, didn’t I?”
“It would have been nice if you’d told me in advance you couldn’t make it. Instead of letting me wait and wonder if you were bleeding to death in an emergency room somewhere.”
“I’ll come over now,” he said, as if he were doing me a huge favor.
“Now? At four in the morning on Wednesday? No, I guess it’s Thursday now. Are you insane?”
And had my birthday only been the night before last? So much had happened in that short time.
“Why not? We’re both awake, and I—”
“Stephen, I’m only awake because you called me on the phone and woke me up. I should be asleep now. You should, too.”
“You know I don’t work that way, Molly. The Muse doesn’t punch a clock.”
“Ah, yes. Art absolves you of everything. Unlike un-creative, clock-punching me. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, that’s not what I—”
“No? Did you not just imply I have nothing more important to do than hang around until you randomly and unpredictably see fit to contact me at you
r convenience?”
“No, I was saying my schedule—”
“Oh, you mean what could I possibly have on my schedule more important than waiting until you have a spare moment?”
“Molly, you know that’s not—”
“Know what? I have a very busy schedule. Me.”
“I’m sure you do. I know you’re teaching a summer class.”
“Not just summer school. I have a big steaming pile of committee work and other uncompensated service. Oh, and you know what else? I’m, I’m, getting serious about my music.”
Silence.
“That’s right. My music. I’m not kidding.”
“You’re getting your little grad school band back together?”
I closed my eyes and massaged my throbbing temple. “My little grad school band. Yes, by all means, be as condescending as possible. That always gets good results. Good bye, Stephen.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I woke up for good three hours later. Despite the early-morning call, I felt so energetic I only needed two cups of coffee instead of my usual four or five.
I made a phone call, showered, dressed, hopped into the Thunderbird, and started up the hill before I had time to lose my nerve.
Emma answered her door wearing snug black shorts and a bright yellow jersey.
“Why are you dressed like that?” I asked.
“I’m going paddling. One of these days we’re gonna get you to come out with us.”
“Sure,” I said, insincerely.
“You’re lucky Jonah could take you on such short notice.”
“Oh, I realize that.” I slipped off my shoes and stepped inside. “I’m glad he could fit me in at the last minute.”
“Sounds like you’re looking forward to your lesson.”
“I really am. It’s been so long since I’ve played, so I’m a little apprehensive, of course. I’m afraid I won’t be able to remember anything.”
“You sure everything’s okay Molly? You seem suspiciously cheerful. You been drinking?”
“Of course not. Just coffee.”