Ori stared at her, trying helplessly to follow whatever crazy rabbit trail her potsteeped brain was trying to lead him down.
She scrubbed at her eyes with both fists like a sleepy child. “Wait, no that’s the wrong story, sorry. That doesn’t help at all, does it?” He wasn’t sure how any story was going to help. His hope that Yvelise would cheer him up at least for a little while was rapidly fading.
“The worst was Kahala—I mean Kahalaopuna. Her husband beat her to death because he thought she was cheating on him. So an owl‘aumakua, you know, the guardian—”
“I know what they are.” Get to the point.
“The owl comes along and brings her soul. So she comes back to life, and she goes right back to her fucking husband. Horrible, you know, but so true, right? I mean, so many of these abused women— And he just beats her to death all over again.”
“Damn.”
“It gets worse. This other guy who isn’t an abusive asshole teams up with another ‘aumakua and brings her back to life again, and they put her husband on trial and he gets executed. So far so good, Kahalaopuna and the decent dude have two good years together, but then she makes a mistake and goes out surfing, and her dead ex-husband in the form of a shark who was waiting all the time swims over and bites her in half and eats her so she’ll never get resurrected, the end.”
Maybe he should have taken a few tokes after all. Maybe she was trying to warn him off with a be-careful-what-you-wish-for tale, a Bottle Imp or a Monkey’s Paw except with coconut shells and people who turned into sharks, but all he could think about was finding his own guardian spirit or spell and somehow bringing Kalani home again.
A daydream cut from the same cloth as the fantasies where he never left Hawai’i and was Kalani’s knight in shining armor that night on the side of the highway; a cold, desperate comfort that only lasted only until he remembered such things were impossible. And one day, he realized, he’d learn to give up his dreams of deep-brain stimulation too.
He thought of something bitter to say to Yvelise but at the last moment pulled back, seeing the same longing in her eyes. “But yeah, that class sounds like it must have been tough on you…considering.”
She puffed her bangs out of her eyes. “You know what you’re doing’s just trying to catch wind in your hands, right?” He did. That was all it had ever been with Kalani, even before the coma. He put out a hand, feeling the warm twilight breeze trickle between his fingers. “It’s good to see you. I’m going back to Honolulu tonight. Maybe we can meet there tomorrow. I’ll take you out for coffee, make sure you’re studying hard enough.” He stood and bent to help her up after him.
“Ori, are you listening to me? Don’t change the subject.” She stretched and grabbed him by both shoulders. She was barely five feet, and her red-rimmed eyes made her hard to take seriously, even though he knew he should. “This is only going to break your heart. Please, Ori. Make peace like the rest of us.”
Except none of the rest of you get it.
“I love you. I need to go now.”
Chapter Four
2008 “I’m from Miami. Overtown,” said PFC Hall. His accent was the diametric opposite of Hawaiian: words sliding into one another instead of clipped and singsong. They’d been guarding the Humvee for half the night, and it looked like this dusty moonlit street on the edge of Sadr City would stay quiet for the rest of it.
“Oahu, Hawai’i, USA,” said Ori. A depressingly large number of fellow soldiers hadn’t gotten the message that Hawai’i wasn’t a foreign country, so he liked to be specific.
“Figured you was from the islands. Man, if I was born there, I’d never leave.” “I heard Miami’s nice.” He ran his gaze over the crumbling concrete rooftops of the squat buildings that lined the street. Snipers flitted like ghosts over this terrain. Looking out for them had become second nature, a survival reflex.
“Ain’t shit to do there but work in tourism. Overtown’s real ghetto. Got some fam there, but I wanna move them out.” Hall was talkative, but his eyes were working methodically, just like Ori’s.
“You can’t do that on an E-3 pay grade, but if you line up a contractor job…”
“Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. So what about you? You trying to get away from anything? Anyone?” “No,” said Ori, lying automatically. “My dad’s in the army. My brother’s a marine. My grandfather…well, you get the idea.” He’d thought long and hard about breaking the tradition, but in the end, it was for the best. Kalani would settle down with one of his girlfriends, and Ori could stop by Nanakuli between deployments, say hello, have a few beers. Anything beyond that would be too much torture. He decided it was time to change the subject. “Are you gonna vote for Obama?”
Hall smiled as he nodded vigorously. “You too, huh?”
“He’s from Oahu.”
They broke their brief eye contact to scan the rooftops, squinting at shifting
shadows, waiting for something to materialize and break up the monotony. Dreading it? Welcoming it? Ori wasn’t sure. “You know five soldiers died on this street three years ago? And a whole apartment building full of them Iraqis got blown up.” Hall pointed to the street corner occupied by a low-slung warehouse with fresh white walls. “That’s new. They shutting this war down. Moving on to Afghanistan.”
“I got next year off, but I guess I’ll be there soon.” The last thing Ori wanted was another deployment, but he didn’t know how to handle base life either. He should be working on making combat instructor, maybe doing some conditioning to get ready for Ranger School. Every goal he had was physical or economic, though, and it just wasn’t enough.
“Yeah. See you there soon.” Hall sighed.
The sniper ghosts failed to take flesh that night, and arcs of tracer fire never crossed the face of the full moon over Baghdad.
* * * *
2011 By the time the bus reached Honolulu, Ori was fading in and out, struck down by jet lag. It was a weird kind of exhaustion, and he told himself to stay up and fight it.
Instead of walking to his hotel, he headed for Lojax on Seaside, a hybrid gay/sports bar. He’d never been there before—always too risky—but lately he’d been realizing he was tired of playing safe. He’d played safe all his life, and what had it gotten him? And it wasn’t like he had anything left to lose.
He kept his head down when he walked in, but consciously stiffened his spine and walked right up to the bar. A basketball game, a surfing competition rerun, and a boxing match were competing for earspace; the noisy chaos was just enough to keep him awake without giving him a headache.
“Aloha, what’s it gonna be?” asked the bartender, a chubby East Asian guy with a shaved head. Ori ordered a light beer and settled in to watch the surfing competition, keeping the other men around the bar in his peripheral vision.
This was…nice. Relaxing. Not nearly as bad as some of the glittery disco caves he’d endured on the mainland for the sake of a quick hook-up.
He even managed to summon up a smile for a guy down the bar. A genuine one, at that.
“Hey, are you an MMA fighter? I think I’ve seen your picture up in my old gym.” Ori turned to face the questioner at his back: a bronzed young guy with peroxidestreaked hair.
“Yeah,” he said. “I haven’t been fighting for a while, though. My name’s Ori Reyes.” I told him my family name—fuck!
“Jimmy Okole. Nice to meet you, brah. Hey, uh, I’m here with my boyfriend”—he waved toward a booth—“but I got a friend who thinks you’re cute. You should buy him a drink.”
“Maybe I will,” said Ori.
* * * *
It wasn’t long before he and George Chan hit it off and were stumbling arm over shoulder through the door to Ori’s motel room. The jet lag had made three beers feel like eight, and when George pushed him back halfway onto the bed, Ori didn’t have the sense of propriety to fight him off.
“You are so fuckin’ hot,” George growled into Ori’s neck, thrusting downward w
ith his hips. He was a sloppy kisser, his big lazy tongue filling Ori’s mouth and lashing wet stripes across his lower lip and chin. Ori wasn’t in the mood for kissing tonight, though, so he tried scraping his fingernails hard down George’s chest to rough things up a bit. “Ow! Mm, you gonna show me some of those wrestling moves?”
“That what you want?” Ori asked, arching his back to test George’s weight. George may have been on top, but he was built small and Ori could throw him easily. The idea had legs, getting George down on elbows and knees on the floor, one arm twisted behind his back and his boxers around his thighs. Ori began to push harder. Not hard enough to shift their positions, but enough to suggest that when he was ready he could. “There’s the guillotine. The can opener. Or how about the rear naked choke?”
“That last one—damn, you’re just making that up, aren’t you?” “Am I?” Ori jackknifed his body, twisting as he bent, and took George down to the floor, calculating every ounce of force to keep from hurting him. Ori never had to worry about losing control in the ring or in bed. He trusted himself, trusted his own body.
George struggled underneath him now, panting and groaning, his slim wrists twisting in Ori’s grip. He tapped out, laughing. “Does that mean I have to blow you first?”
“That’s right,” said Ori, releasing his grip. He brushed his fingers across George’s mouth. George had a sweet, pouty lower lip.
The light flickered and buzzed just then, a harsh sawing sound.
“This is some shitty hotel,” George murmured, opening his mouth to try and catch the tips of Ori’s fingers. Ori snatched his fingers away at the last second, making George whine. “Didn’t hear you offering to take me back to yours.” His happy, drunken mood of earlier was rapidly fading.
At which point the shitty horizontal blinds hanging in the shitty motel’s lone shitty window came crashing down. The metallic rattle and clatter had his hands itching for the weight of his rifle. He leaped to a crouch, ready to spring on his invisible enemy.
Maybe to sane people like George it was just a stripped screw finally coming loose—ordinary, if a little startling—but Ori hadn’t been sane since two tours ago.
There was nothing. No one.
“What the fuck?” George sat straight up, brow furrowed. “What’s gotten into you? You look like a pueo.” Which he did, of course, perched as he was on the balls of his feet. He flushed, ashamed, and stood up straight. Whatever part of his erection the loud noises hadn’t spooked out of him, George’s bug-eyed look finished off.
Ori rubbed down his face with both hands, the motion squashing his brow and cheeks. “You should just go, man. I don’t feel too good.” “Yeah, whatever.” George fumbled at the doorknob and paced out, weaving a little bit in the parking lot but ultimately straightening out. Ori hoped he made it home all right, but didn’t care enough to chase after him and offer to call a cab. Instead he shut the door and went to see if he could fix the blinds. He felt cagey. All that fizzledout arousal, then the adrenaline on top of it, no wonder. He should go for a run.
“I’m sorry.” This time he nearly jumped out of his skin. In fact, he did jump. He jumped about three feet in the air in some kind of sad pirouette and landed arms out and ready to tackle something.
Kalani sat on the end of the bed, fisting the sheets in nervous hands. “Oh God,” Ori groaned. “I’m crazy. I’m actually crazy.” At least the other night he’d been half asleep and waking up from some battle nightmare. This time he had no excuse. He blinked his eyes. Rubbed them. Kalani didn’t disappear.
“You’ve been in Iraq,” Kalani continued, ignoring his outburst, or maybe he hadn’t seen it at all; maybe he was just some image, monologuing. Isn’t that what some people said about ghosts? That they could only walk through walls because they were following old hallways? Doomed to mindlessly retrace past steps?
Except Kalani’s not fucking dead.
“You’ve been in Iraq,” Kalani said. “I should have known loud noises were a nogo. I’m an asshole. I’m sorry. I guess I’m sorry for cock blocking you too. I’m trying to let you move on, I really am.”
Now that spoke of at least a little bit of awareness of present events. Ori was having a hard time standing all of a sudden, so he dropped to the floor cross-legged and put his head in his hands.
“I guess I just couldn’t stand you wrestle-flirting with anybody but me.” Ori felt hands cupping his shoulders and looked up again. Kalani knelt in front of him now, close enough that their foreheads nearly touched. He smiled, and Ori knew.
“You…you’re real. How are you even here?” Ori let his hands fall away and looked up into Kalani’s eyes, knowing full well he’d be lost in the madness at first sight. And he was. This was Kalani. Warm, breathing, mind alive. He accepted it.
“And you came back,” Kalani said, almost at a whisper. He leaned forward until their noses touched. “You came back for me. Even after I sent you away.” Ori reached out. He had to touch him. His hand landed on Kalani’s cheek, cupping it gently in a way he’d never been brave enough to before. The square shape of his jaw felt perfect and strong and, most importantly, solid. This was a new smile, one Ori had never seen before. More subtle, a little bit shy.
“Do you know?” Ori asked softly. “Do you know how I felt about you?” Oh God, he’d used the past tense. “How I still feel?” The love he felt for Kalani—alive, dead, or anywhere in between—strained his heart to the limit. It always had.
“You’re not as good of an actor as you think,” Kalani said, “But I wanted to believe the act. I did. It made it so much easier to push you away if I could just tell myself…”
“So you knew but you never…” Ori drew his hand back and shrugged Kalani’s grip from his shoulders. He wrapped his arms around himself, feeling suddenly small and angry and sixteen again.
“I’ve got more perspective now. I was stupid, Ori.” Kalani sighed and let himself be pushed away, big shoulders slumping. “And I was scared.” “Scared of what?” Ori’s knuckles pounded the carpet, and Kalani recoiled, just a little. In hindsight, it seemed stupid to even ask. Oh, I dunno, maybe getting beaten half to death on the side of some dark highway?
“I just didn’t think it could ever work out. Two men, together. Me, being…like that. You’ve got this mom and dad who love you no matter what, and I—” He twisted his mouth. “I told myself I didn’t want to mess up your life.”
“What life? My shining military career?” Ori laughed bitterly. “Well, you picked the right time to show up, because there’s no excuse now. Nothing left to mess up, is there?” Of course, after he said it, he realized Kalani had no way of knowing.
Kalani solemnly ignored Ori’s embarrassing outburst. “But I want you to know, toward the end? I started facing the facts. I stopped seeing girls and started getting ready to come out. I didn’t think you’d ever want me, but I thought maybe if you did… maybe if you came back…I should be ready for you.”
“So this is my fault,” said Ori. “I should have—” He couldn’t finish. His throat was swallowing the words as fast as his heart was spitting them up. “Of course it’s not—”
“Do you even remember what they did to you?” The images took over all of his senses: not just the photo he’d seen in the paper of Kalani in his hospital bed—mouth wedged around a breathing tube, big black stitches across the swollen red shape of one eye—but his nightmares too, his sick fantasies of Kalani walking along the Nanakuli beachfront highway, hands in his pockets and looking at the moon on the ocean, not even noticing the SUV that had been following him for a mile now. Or maybe Kalani did know about the SUV, could see it out of his peripheral vision, and he kept walking, kept his head held high, kept telling himself it was nothing and stop being so stupid and paranoid, it’ll pass any second, just wait, it’ll turn at the next intersection.
A wave of nausea hit him hard.
“Hey,” Kalani said. “Hey, it’s okay.” He gathered Ori into his arms, against his chest, and hugged
him tightly. He should have said I’m safe now, but he didn’t.
Because he can’t. Ori couldn’t cry, so he smothered his mouth against Kalani’s Tshirt and just moaned, low and mournful as a ghost. Kalani’s hands soothed down his back. “You need some sleep. Come to bed.” “Are you going to stay?” Ori asked as Kalani helped him up. The beer had suddenly hit him, making his body floppy and unpredictable. Kalani guided him to the bed and didn’t comment on the childish insecurity in his voice.
“Yeah,” Kalani said, holding him steady as he undressed without shame. “I won’t disappear on you. I promise.”
Chapter Five
2007 Any guy past the age of ten would know that sound anywhere. Ori stared up at the shadowy frame of the metal bunk above him and sighed. He’d had a good day today—passed his final test, a nonassisted parachute jump, with perfect marks—and this was not how he wanted to celebrate: trapped underneath a Texas good ole boy with a masturbation technique as noisy as a rusty oil-well pumpjack.
Slap-slap-wheeze-flop-slap-slap. Ori felt like offering to help…not out of any sexual attraction, just to shut the guy up.
Someone two or three bunks down sang out in a falsetto, “Just beat it, beeeaaaat it, no one wants to be defeated!” The guy above Ori groaned as other voices picked up the chorus.
God. Army life. They might as well all be fifteen.
Either the guy came silently or did get defeated, because the barracks eventually quieted down. Ori still couldn’t sleep; he kept staring upward, wondering if he’d made the biggest mistake of his life when he signed up six months ago. He wasn’t miserable. Boot camp hadn’t fazed him. Airborne School had its exhilarating moments. He was lined up for some MMA matches next month. He didn’t like the sticky inland heat and relentless ugliness of Fort Benning. Then again, who did?
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