Sunset Sanctuary

by R J Castiglione

  Tad seemed more frustrated than the last time we spoke. “Lua,” he said as he hauled himself out of the truck and walked up the trail to relieve himself.

  I knew things were rough, but I couldn’t imagine they were terrible enough to get Tad so worked up. I thought I would be here to do some painting and changing out some furniture. It sounded so much worse. I needed to talk to him now before getting to Lahaina. I turned off the car and pocketed the keys, stepped outside, and leaned against the grill. It was time for some answers.

  “Tad, you need to tell me what’s going on!” I yelled up the trail. I paused briefly as my ribcage jerked against the force of my yelling. “With Auntie!” I continued with a slight cough.

  Tad sauntered back down the trail with a big grin on his face and a freshly fallen coconut in his hands.

  “No, Tad. No distractions. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  As he leaned next to me, the car sunk against his weight. “It’s not good, brah. You not gonna like it.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck, kneading out some of the built-up tension I carried from Atlanta. “I’m going to find out anyhow.”

  “If you really want to know, it started ten years ago. Remember? When she fell. Your mom doesn’t know, but she broke her hip. Since then, she hasn’t been doing too good. She couldn’t afford therapy, so walks kind of stiff-like. She’s stuck on the first floor, and that doesn’t hold so well for managing the business.”

  Tad fidgeted with the coconut in his hands, apparently wanting to get back into the car. I gave him the keys, and we climbed back in and took off.

  “About five years ago, folks came in and reappraised the property. They hiked up her taxes. She thought about getting an exemption, but word is some mainland firm is eyeing her lot and wants her out. Even though we’re doing all we can to make sure she has what she needs, she’s barely making ends meet. The more she pays in taxes, the less she has for the property. The less she has for the property, the worse business gets.”

  I thought about this for a little as traffic in front of us sped up.

  “How much does she owe?” I asked.

  “Thirty-thousand.”

  My stomach dropped after hearing the amount. Now almost there, I was glad that I knew what was going on.

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “Yeah, brah. She still got a bottomless jug of POG in the fridge.”

  2

  Evening 1

  The drive through Lahaina in the early evening triggered waves of euphoria. The sights, the smells, and the sunburned tourists all remained unchanged, save a drastic improvement in their fashion sense since the early ’90s. There was a lot less neon and armbands. Looking to the east, I saw the dry mountains leading up to Puu Kukui, the lesser of Maui’s two long-dormant volcanoes.

  One thing had changed, though. I grinned at the sight of two gay men walking hand-in-hand down the sidewalk, dressed in tight swim trunks and muscle shirts. They left little to the imagination.

  “See something you like?” Tad joked as he gently punched my arm. I turned away from him to hide my blushing cheeks.

  “Just glad to see some of my people here,” I said.

  “You mean islanders? Or friends of Dorothy?” Tad let out a deep belly laugh. He was as insatiable as I remembered but not unrelenting. And how the hell did he know the term “friends of Dorothy?” He calmed down and turned left onto a small side street only a block from Auntie’s house.

  My all-too-brief good mood faded when I spotted the house. As we pulled into the parking lot, I saw signs of disrepair everywhere. Tad shifted the truck into park, and we climbed out.

  Weeds sprouted out of cracked pavement. The once smooth lot where Tad and I played frisbee and soccer as kids was nothing more than a gravel patch, some areas highlighted in jagged white lines where parking spaces used to be. The white fence surrounding the estate was now a dark gray, faded and cracked from decades of sunlight and salt air.

  Slinging my pack over my shoulder, I pressed on until I reached the old picket fence. As I pushed the gate open, some of the wood broke off in my hand, leaving a white powder on my skin that I brushed off on my pants. The house did not fare much better. The front porch’s floor creaked under my weight, and the far left side had missing boards that split and fell to the ground below.

  The window glass was spotted. Shutters barely hung on their rusted-beyond-repair hinges. The front door was dreary, and the inn’s signpost faded and sun bleached. I wiped some of the dirt off the sign and could still see the lettering: “The Estate Inn.”

  I wondered for a moment how the property passed health and sanitation codes. Maybe Auntie had a friend in the inspector’s office. My concerns were pushed aside when I swung the door open and sighed in relief. Although the outside made the entire place look haunted, the inside was clean and tidy, although a bit worse for wear.

  I kicked my shoes off and stepped over the worn wooden floors, each step creaking enough to announce my presence to anyone in the house.

  “Adam’s home!” a cheerful voice boomed from the kitchen. I peeked into the dining room just as Auntie hobbled out of the back of the house. She juggled a tray in her hands with a glass of POG and a malasada on it.

  I claimed the tray from her and set it down on the dining table before she pulled me into a firm hug the likes of which I hadn’t felt in so long. I melted a bit. Tears welled in my eyes.

  “It’s so good to see you, Makani!” She kissed my cheek, standing on her toes to reach. My knees buckled a little as relief and emotion washed over me.

  “I missed you so much,” I choked out, sobbing a little into her blouse. The stress of the last day seemed to strike me all at once. My nose sunk into her cinnamon-scented hair. Hearing Tad thudding into the house behind me, I composed myself and let her go, wiping tears from my eyes before they both became concerned.

  “It’s good to be back, Auntie,” I said as I picked up and downed the glass of juice, an almost too-sweet mixture of passionfruit, orange, and guava, POG for short. I claimed the malasada as well and consumed it in three large bites. I didn’t realize how hungry or thirsty I was, having not eaten anything since yesterday.

  Auntie took a step closer and pinched my chin in her hand, turning my head from side to side as she examined my black eye. She looked both worried and angry, and I sensed in her a desire to kill my assaulter. I shot her a look that said “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Good to see some things haven’t changed,” I said.

  “Bah!” she exclaimed as she released my chin without saying anything about my eye. “If you’re referring to my home, you should know as long as there’s juice, malasada, and rum, it’ll always be the same. But I do have some things for you to do while you’re here.” Her face lit up as she picked up the now empty tray.

  With her free hand, she wiped some sugar from my chin. “Now go to your room, clean up, and get some sleep. It’s 1 a.m. to you, and I won’t be having you walk around like some drunken zombie tomorrow.”

  “Zombies don’t drink,” I joked. She huffed at me and waved me away with her cane.

  “You better not disobey your old Auntie Ala,” Tad joked under his breath. “She like Madame Pele. You wouldn’t wake up in the morning.”

  He called her by her nickname, Ala, although most folks said her full name, Alana, or called her Mrs. Manalo. Her family and younger friends called her Auntie out of respect.

  She smacked Tad on the back of his head. “I’m not that old!” she yelled. “And I certainly don’t prey on unsuspecting tourists. Haven’t done that in at least a century.”

  I laughed at the two of them, not only because of their local humor — the idea that Auntie was a vengeful fire goddess — but because they were comfortable in a way only family could be.

  Before she scolded me again, I wished them goodnight and made my way up the stairs to my old room. The floorboards creaked with every step I took. I struggled with the shaky railing.
At the top level, I peeked around the hallway leading to the guest quarters and grimaced at the sight of a thin layer of dust on the floor. No footprints meant no guests. And no guests meant no money to fix the property.

  I scratched the back of my head and twinged when my finger ran across the ashtray-shaped scab hiding under my greasy hair.

  “Everything good, cuz?” Tad asked from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  Tad’s voice faded as he yelled his goodbyes to me and left the house. I felt guilty about not asking more about how he was doing. We hadn’t talked at length about his life in quite some time, at least not after his father, my uncle, died. I didn’t even know what he did for work or where he was staying, although my guess would be the same old shack his dad bought decades ago on the mountain-side of the highway. Most locals couldn’t afford homes near the beach. Most didn’t even aspire to it, preferring the seclusion residential communities offered from the endless wave of tourists seeking respite in the island’s warm waters.

  Now awash with exhaustion, I staggered down the opposite hallway to the smaller and more intimate rooms that used to house Auntie and my family. The door to her old apartment was shut and locked, the worn glass doorknob stained from decades of heavy use. I pushed the door a bit, hoping it would spring open and reveal to me memories of Auntie and Uncle from my childhood. I thought about my uncle, her husband, and how I was unable to attend his funeral as a child. My mom couldn’t afford the airfare for even herself at the time, just as she couldn’t come when her brother died.

  I gave up on the door and entered my old room, a tiny corner of the house with two ocean-facing windows, a twin bed, a wardrobe, and a small bathroom.

  Warm, moist air overwhelmed me when I entered. The room remained unchanged from the last time I left it. I even saw some of my toys collecting dust in the corner. I sat on the bed and strained down to pick one up — a white plastic truck with a crack on the hood.

  I imagined my seven-year-old self throwing a temper tantrum when I couldn’t pack it for our flight to the mainland.

  “We’ll buy you a new one when we arrive,” my mother had said, trying to comfort me. That never happened. Even though she forgot, I never did. And when my birthday rolled around that very first year in Atlanta, the only present I got was my father walking out the door. We couldn’t afford many toys after that.

  I bent down again and slid the truck under my bed. My ribs throbbed as my torso compressed, causing me to collapse on my side, gripping my ribcage as I slowly stretched out again.

  It took me a good two minutes of wincing and controlled breathing before the pain subsided. When I opened my eyes, I saw a glass of water on the nightstand with a bottle of ibuprofen next to it. Beads of condensation slid down the glass, forming a ring on the apple-crate table. Tad must have put them there before he came to pick me up. Which meant my mother told Auntie what happened, and Auntie told him.

  It took most of my available energy to sit upright and open the bottle. I popped three of the pills into my mouth and swallowed them with a healthy gulp of water and sat there for a few minutes hoping the pills would chase the pain away. They didn’t.

  I stood up instead and moved to the windows, sliding the painted iron lock on each of them before pulling them open. The rope-glided windows raised with ease. I inspected the cords securing the windows and saw they had been recently replaced, either by Tad or some friend of Auntie’s.

  “When did she have the time to get this done?” I asked myself. I jumped at the sound of the door slamming shut behind me, closed by the draft I created. The cool ocean breeze tickled my skin. The temperature in the room dropped quickly from what felt like a balmy ninety to a more acceptable seventy-five. Who needed air conditioning when you had nature’s equivalent?

  The sun was low on the horizon and cast a golden glow across the sea. A flock of tourists planted themselves on the beach, eager to see their first tropical sunset.

  Under any other circumstances, I would watch it as well. I hadn’t seen an island sunset since I was a child, never finding the time or having the money to return to Maui. I wasn’t in the mood, though, and trudged into the bathroom to prepare for bed.

  I stunned myself after I looked in the mirror. Sunlight reflected off my black eye and made it appear twice as big. I poked the tender skin around my eye. It gave way to a swollen mass of nasty that managed to get worse since I left Atlanta.

  I tried to peel my shirt off, but even raising my hands into the air proved too much for me. I resigned myself to brushing my teeth, relieving myself, and returning to the bedroom to collapse for the evening. As I lay there, the last sliver of the sun sank below the ocean horizon, and the room went dark. The noise of applause from elated tourists echoed in the room. I couldn't blame them for their excitement. Maui was a paradise on earth. At the same time, I wasn’t like them at all. Where they came here for a treat, I came here to escape.

  I flipped my phone open and turned it on for the first time since Atlanta. The tiny device buzzed to life. After inputting my passcode, it continued to vibrate as new messages and missed calls rushed in. Fifty-seven missed calls from Jeff, three-dozen new text messages from him, and a single call from my mother. Jeff's text messages ranged from coherent apologies to drunken nonsense and from sorrow to apathy to anger to rage.

  I quickly silenced the phone when it rang again and moved to toss it on the floor, but saw it was my mother calling again instead of Jeff.

  "Hey, Mom," I said as I put the phone on speaker.

  "Adam, you said you'd call when you landed. That was hours ago."

  She sounded both sad and angry, precisely like I felt.

  "I know, I'm sorry. I'm just really tired right now. I’m already in bed."

  "I know you are, honey, but I just need you to know that we're here for you. You never told me what happened."

  "You know what happened. You read the police report."

  "Did they arrest him?" she asked.

  "I don't know. I left before I could find out," I lied. I didn't want her to know Jeff was definitely not in prison. If he were, he wouldn't be able to call me and text me as often as he had. With my mom on speaker, I opened one of the last text messages he sent me:

  I don't know where you are, but I'll find you. This isn't over.

  My jaw muscles tightened when I read the message. I recalled that night, our argument about forgetting to do his laundry, the ashtray to my head, the punch to my face, the kick to my ribs, and my inevitable blacking out.

  I realized I zoned out on my mom. The phone fell out of my hand and landed on the bed. Muffled sounds of her voice diffused into the soft comforter. I flipped the phone over and interrupted her.

  "Mom, I'm falling asleep. I'll call you later." The line went mostly silent, save the sounds of her sniffling.

  "All right. Give Ala my best. I love you, Adam."

  "I love you too, Mom."

  I flipped my phone shut and set it on the nightstand beside me. I heard shuffling coming from downstairs, from the ohana suite where Auntie lived. She clicked on her radio. The staticky sounds of island music floated into my room from our open windows. The muffled sounds mixed with the crashing ocean waves. A cold breeze soothed my skin, and the scent of the island lulled me to sleep.

  3

  Day 4

  I spent my morning at the front desk while Auntie cooked up a storm in the kitchen for the few guests we did have. Every so often, things went wrong at one of the hotels on Ka'anapali Beach, and locals who worked there directed disgruntled guests to the Estate Inn. Sometimes, the guests turned around after seeing the parking lot. But if they were courageous enough to come inside, Auntie made them feel as if they were home.

  "You won't find a more romantic setting anywhere on the island" and "just wait 'til you take your first bites of our complimentary breakfast. You'll never want to stay anywhere else" met the guests who ventured inside.

  The scent of roasting Por
tuguese sausages, the earthy smell of coffee, and the sweet notes of vanilla Auntie used in her pancake mix kept me alert. Our guests must have smelled breakfast as well. They stumbled downstairs, grins painted on their faces, eager to fill their bellies before a day spent on the beach.

  Their attitude changed when they noticed me, still sporting a minor black eye that reduced only a little over the last four days. At least my scalp no longer hurt. My ribs also felt better. I no longer felt a sharp jolt every time I moved. Now, they were just tender to touch, due to bruising on my entire right side. Over the counter medicine reduced the pain enough for me to function without restriction.

  "Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Jones," I said. "I hope you enjoyed your first night here. If you take a seat in the dining room, we'll be serving breakfast shortly. Do either of you have any dietary restrictions we should know about?"

  Both of them shook their heads. The woman, a stout looking mainlander with bushy, black hair offered me a straight smile, shook her head, and dragged her husband behind her into the dining room.

  I looked at their hotel registration record. They traveled from Oregon to get here. Like most folks who visited Hawaii, they lived on the west coast. I chewed on my lip when I looked at the room rate they paid. Auntie offered them a steep discount, charging them only $75 a night to entice them to stay after one of the resort hotels up the street lost their reservation.

  "Young man?" Mrs. Jones called to me from the next room. I abandoned my station, having no other work to do, and walked into the room, finding her and her husband and their odd seating arrangement, both occupying far ends of the table as though they were king and queen dining in their own little castle.

  Auntie usually sits at the head of the table with her guests, I thought. Yet, who was I to correct them? After costs, their four-day stay with us brought in much-needed revenue.