Sunset Sanctuary

by R J Castiglione

  "Yes? Can I help you?" I asked the woman. Tad walked in from the kitchen carrying a tray stacked with food. Too much food for two people to possibly consume in one sitting. Auntie stumbled in behind him with a carafe half-full of coffee shaking in her old, tired hands.

  "My husband and I wanted to take a helicopter tour of the islands today. We were hoping you could arrange it and charge it to our room."

  I looked at Tad and Auntie, not sure how to respond. I was no concierge, and our little operation was too small to cater to our guests’ every whim.

  Tad, more accustomed to these types of requests, responded. "I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. It's tough to get same-day helicopter tours. I can give you the number for a company, though. You can call to schedule later in the week." I was taken aback by Tad’s “customer service” voice. It seemed, when he spoke to clients, he put on his best show.

  Mrs. Jones pursed her lips, displeased by the answer. She glared at her husband, who looked up at her with fear in his eyes as he bit into a thick Portuguese sausage. He tensed up and swallowed his breakfast.

  "What would you recommend instead?" Mr. Jones asked.

  "Well, if you're interested in adventure, I got some spots open on my afternoon zipline tour. The cost is $110 each."

  Mr. Jones coughed when Tad said the price, shocked at the amount. "Is there a discount since we're your guests?"

  "Unfortunately not," Tad said. "The zipline company doesn't offer discounts to hotels."

  "So you work at this inn and for a zipline company? Interesting," Mrs. Jones said.

  The woman sounded snooty, as though Tad having two jobs made him suddenly worthless to her.

  Auntie strained as she sat down at the table, sighing as she took weight off her bad hip. I chuckled under my breath after spotting some curlers still locked in her fuzzy, graying hair. She poured herself a cup of coffee from one of the spare place settings. "My nephew doesn't work here," she said. "He's just here for the food."

  Mr. Jones laughed. "Our children are the same. They only show up when they want to empty our fridge."

  His wife cleared her throat. The room became tense and quiet. Even the trade winds blowing through the house seemed to cease, making the dining room feel stifling.

  "I'm sorry, young man. We're going to have to pass on ziplining. I just had my knee replaced,” Mr. Jones said. “I think I'll just take my wife to the Whaler's village I read about. We'll do some shopping."

  Tad, disappointed they didn't want to go ziplining, walked back into the kitchen. Mrs. Jones perked up. Now that I sat next to Auntie to start on my breakfast, I could see both of them at the same time. The wife’s eyes darted about, obviously thinking about all the trinkets or clothing she could buy later in the day. Her husband fumed over his plate, possibly afraid of forking over hundreds of dollars for his wife’s shopping dreams.

  Tad came back out carrying even more food — a tray of malasadas, and a pitcher of POG juice. Mr. Jones' eyes lit up when he saw the pastry tray. He plucked a malasada off and started downing it even before Tad set the tray down.

  Auntie started laughing, pleased he seemed to enjoy his breakfast so much. While she clutched her warm cup of coffee in both hands and blew on it to cool it down, she winked at me. She always seemed to come to life when entertaining and feeding others. Being a proper host was her reason for living. It was the primary motivation behind our fight to keep her little inn alive and operational.

  After breakfast, our guests fussed around the inn for a while before they left. Mrs. Jones stumbled in the parking lot as her heels got caught in the broken pavement, and Mr. Jones sauntered behind her, wearing a tacky Hawaiian shirt that contrasted with his sunblock saturated skin.

  Tad and I cleared the table while Auntie rested in her favorite chair in the dining room, a perfect place for her since it offered a view of both the beach and the parking lot. There, she could nap or read or talk on the phone while she enjoyed the ocean and kept an eye out for arriving guests. I sat in a chair opposite her with the ocean view to my back. All I could see through the large windows was the decrepit parking lot.

  "Sorry, Auntie," Tad said as he packed lunch in his bag. "I can't stay. I got a tour in thirty minutes." He didn't wait for her to respond, but left the inn and jogged out to his truck. As he tore open the gate on the picket fence, a hinge broke. The gate hung half crooked, about ready to fall off. I watched through the window a frustrated Tad rip the gate off and toss it aside. The rest of the sad fence shifted as he pulled the gate off and now leaned to one side, ready to collapse at any moment.

  While Tad peeled out of the parking lot, his truck kicking up dust and rock, Auntie shook her head.

  "That bumbling oaf broke my gate," she said. She pulled a flask out from a hidden pocket on her apron and swigged the liquor within.

  "The fence was already broken, Auntie. It's older than you are."

  "Nonsense," she said, taking another sip. "It's brand new."

  "Are you kidding me? I helped you build that fence when I was a kid." I snickered at her and watched as she nurtured her flask. "Should you be drinking this early? Should you be drinking at all? Aren't you taking some heavy-duty meds?"

  She scoffed at me. "I've been drinking this swill my whole life. It hasn't killed me yet, so why stop now?"

  She chuckled and handed me the flask. Sunlight streamed in from outside and reflected off her already rosy cheeks. I took a sip from the flask. The sweet liquor hit my tongue and filled me with warmth. But when I swallowed, I nearly choked. It felt like my throat was on fire. I coughed into my arm and handed the flask back to her.

  "What is that? It’s harsh!"

  "Maui Rum. A friend buys it for me."

  I coughed more. The burning moved down my esophagus and lingered in the center of my chest. "A friend, huh? Are you sure he's not an enemy? It tastes disgusting!"

  "Then why'd you drink it?"

  "Because you handed it to me!"

  She smiled and took another sip of her flask before tucking it back into her apron.

  "Do me a favor, Makani? Don't tell Tad or your mother about this." She tapped the hidden flask. "It'll be our little secret. I don't want to argue with them."

  It took me a second to remember why she called me Makani. When I was a child, Auntie and Mom told me that it would have been my name if my father didn’t insist on a western one. Despite and to spite my father, Auntie often called me by that name to this day.

  "Your secret's safe with me," I said as I walked across the room and poured a glass of juice to wash down the rum.

  "Good, now be a dear and take that dreadful fence down for me?" She eyed the phone next to her. It seemed she just wanted to get me out of the house so she could have time to herself for her daily ritual of calling all her friends scattered over the island to talk their ears off. I never quite understood how people did this. What could they possibly have to talk about for hours and hours every day? My mother was the same way, always on with one girlfriend or another with her long-corded phone stretched all over the house while she cleaned, cooked, or watched TV.

  I detested the idea of taking down the fence. Manual labor was so not my style. But I was here to help Auntie, and if she wanted me to take down a fence, I was going to take down a damn fence, even if it wrapped around the entire house and would take me hours to finish. I nodded and stood up, holding my stomach still full from a much-too-large breakfast.

  "Great!" Auntie said as she picked up the rotary phone and started dialing numbers. "There are gloves on the porch. Watch out for spiders!"

  I found the gloves like she said, sitting under a hammer, ready for me to get to work.

  She planned this. Even if Tad didn't break the fence, she prepared for me to take it down today. I shook my head and smiled. Auntie had a way with people. She was good at getting folks to do just what she wanted, although that didn't help her pay her property taxes.

  I spent the rest of the morning ripping down the fence. None of th
e planks could be salvaged. What didn't split apart in my hands was dried and cracked. I used the hammer to bend or remove the nails, placing the rusty spikes in a bucket I found on the porch so no one would step on them. Sending a guest to the hospital for stitches and a tetanus shot was the last thing we needed. Even when rusted, the nails would certainly poke through the flimsy slippers most people wore.

  The Jones’ arrived back from their shopping excursion a few hours later when I was about done. I sat on the front steps for a break while I nurtured a glass of iced tea Auntie brought out for me. A heap of broken planks littered the ground to my right, waiting to be hauled away by Tad later in the day.

  Mr. Jones struggled to carry stuffed bags filled with his wife's prizes for the day. I guessed their little shopping adventure cost him nearly a thousand dollars, more money than I had to my name.

  "Be a dear and help my husband with our bags, would you?" Mrs. Jones said as she walked by me. She held her nose up when she looked at me. I was a mess, with my knees stained with dirt and my clothes saturated with wood flakes and dust. As I worked that morning, I tore a few holes in my jeans and t-shirt. I needed to buy new clothes. And that meant I needed to find a job.

  It was bound to happen sooner or later. Auntie certainly couldn't afford to pay me, and I didn't flee to Maui to spend all my time being her chore boy. As Mr. Jones unloaded his bags into my arms, I wondered what I could do for work. I resolved to clean up and set out that afternoon to buy new clothes and job hunt.

  I hauled the bags upstairs and followed Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Expecting them to turn left to the guest rooms, I was surprised to find they took Auntie's old apartment next to mine. Then again, it was the only room in the house with a five-piece bathroom and a kitchenette. The other rooms only had a toilet, sink, and a bathtub or standing shower.

  I unloaded the bags in the small hallway leading further into the apartment. "Is there anything else I can get for you?" I asked Mr. Jones.

  He shook his head and escorted me out of the room, slapping a crumpled up ten-dollar bill in my hands before he closed the door.

  "How much did you tip him?" I heard his wife whisper from behind the door.

  "Ten dollars, why?"

  "That's much too much. He just carried our bags up."

  "But look at him? He's poor."

  "Please, he's a low life. Just look at that black eye he has. He must have gotten it in a bar fight or something."

  I clenched the bill in my hands. Every bit of me wanted to burst through the door and tell the woman off. I heard her husband shush her.

  "Be quiet. He could hear us." I heard the two of them rustling through their shopping bags.

  "Don't take any of it out of the bags before we recheck the mattress. This looks like the kind of place that has bedbugs. Honestly, I don't know why you insisted we stay here without checking the other hotels first."

  I didn't linger to listen to the rest of the conversation. I hated that Auntie reduced herself so much to accept these kinds of guests. I wished we could fix the place up enough to compete with the larger hotels so that Auntie could attract the sort of guests who wanted to stay here.

  I walked into my room and closed the door, careful not to slam it. I didn't want the Jones’ to know I heard them talking, although I could still hear their muffled conversation through our adjacent windows.

  Peeling off all my sweaty clothes, I stood in the window and let the refreshing breeze wick the sweat off my skin. I enjoyed the fact that the window sill was at waist height. I could be naked in my room without anyone from the beach knowing it. To them, I might look like another tourist in a bathing suit.

  Immediately below my room, the kitchen exited to a relaxing patio with a few wooden lounge chairs, a table, and a rocking chair I knew Auntie loved to use. Only a few dozen steps away, a rickety wooden walkway extended over an embankment and out to the beach where a family of tourists staked their claim for the day. A man and woman sat on a blanket with a large umbrella shading them from the sun while their child, a little girl, played by the shore. They watched over her dutifully. Her father joined her as she waddled deeper into the water until each wave came up to her waist. The girl looked only four or five. While kids raised on the islands comfortably ventured further into the waves at her age, I guessed she was hardly a strong swimmer. Most tourists weren’t.

  A group of rowdy teenage boys passed by the family. They kicked up sand, play wrestled, and talked too loudly to one another. One of the boys spotted me standing in the window and whispered to his buddies some joke, most likely about my too-scrawny torso or how I must have been "checking them out." I retreated into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The pipes rattled in the walls until the showerhead spat out water that took a minute to reach the right temperature. Twenty minutes later, I was cleaned, dressed in my only other change of clothes, and downstairs searching the reception stand for Auntie's car keys.

  Auntie still sat in her chair in the window reading that day's newspaper, her thin-framed cheaters pinching her nose as she held the flimsy paper a few feet from her face.

  "Are you going into town?" she asked.

  "Yes. Can I take your car?"

  "Only if you fill the tank." She peered up at me from behind the newspaper and raised a dangling set of keys in the air.

  As I went to claim the keys, I spotted a white van in the parking lot. A group of suited men stood outside, holding a set of developer plans out in front of them.

  I took the keyring from Auntie and rushed outside. She called out after me, but I ignored her. The men had no right to be here. They were like vultures. The property wasn't even theirs, yet they acted as though they already owned it.

  "You're not welcome here! This is private property!" I yelled at them as I bounded down the front steps. One of the men looked up at me and cracked half a smile. As I approached them, I saw Tad's truck careen into the parking lot.

  "If you don't want us here, call the police. Oh, wait. They won't do anything," the guy joked. He was a little spit of a man, hardly five feet tall, sporting an ugly tie and pants too big to fit his lanky frame. And he had the ugliest comb-over I'd ever seen.

  As I got close, Tad's truck screeched to a stop. He nearly fell out as he struggled with a baseball bat in his hands.

  "What did I tell you?" he yelled at the men and charged at them, threatening them with the baseball bat. Where the men didn't take me seriously, they seemed afraid of Tad. He banged the bat into their van as he approached.

  "Get out of here before I get angry again!"

  The men tried to roll up the plans, but Tad ripped them from their hands and crinkled them up. One of the suits tried to get them back. Tad pushed him away much too hard. He stumbled back and fell into the van's side door.

  "Tad, stop!" I heard Auntie yell from the front porch. She held onto a support pillar in one hand with a cane in the other, trying to get down the stairs. I worried she might fall trying to get down too quickly. Tad seemed to worry also, and backed up from the men, ordering them off the property one more time.

  We jogged back to the house as the van peeled out of the parking lot. Auntie looked pissed. She swung her cane at us as we tried to calm her down.

  "You," she pointed the cane at me, "go away! We'll talk later. And Tad, how many times have I asked you to leave those men alone! Get inside! Now!"

  I tried to speak up, to ask how long these men had been eyeing her property, but she wouldn't have it. So I left her alone and rounded the side of the house to the car, a jalopy if there ever was one. I sat in the car and gripped the steering wheel while I worried Auntie wasn't telling me everything.

  Is it normal for developers to plan a whole project for a property they don't already own?

  As I turned on the car and shifted it into drive, it sputtered and popped. The vehicle smelled old and stunk of burning chemicals as though it might overheat at any minute. Bits of it rattled as I drove it through the bumpy parking lot. It settled down as I pull
ed out onto the road and, with the windows down, the burning smell abated.

  Turning left onto Honoapiilani Highway, I headed north. After a brief stop at a gas station to top up Auntie's tank, it took only ten minutes for me to reach Whalers Village, where I hoped I might look for work. As I walked through the modern shopping complex, I became nervous. I got my last job at the gaming shop only out of luck. My high school buddy was leaving for college and recommended me to replace him.

  I walked to store after store where I was either scoffed at or politely told, "Sorry, we're not hiring now." I regretted not buying new clothes first. Faded jeans, ratty sneakers, and a worn t-shirt didn't offer the best impression. And my never having even interviewed for a job before showed.

  At the very far end of the top-level, I smiled when I found a comic book and gaming store.

  This is something I know I can do.

  But I was wrong. I walked into the much-too-cold store to spot mostly empty shelves and table games so old they hadn't been mainstream in decades. As I made my way to the cashier, I looked through their Dungeons and Dragons section. The man still had version 3.5 stocked with no sign of the updated player's handbook, dungeon master's guide, or monster manual. I wasn't one to play much D&D, but I wondered why he didn't at least stock the 4th or 5th editions.

  Next to it, he had a bunch of starter boxes for Settlers of Catan without any of the expansions or scenario box sets. The owner's card wall only featured Magic: The Gathering. I wondered if he stocked so few products because of an absent community on the island to buy them or if he simply didn't know what to sell.

  I guessed the former since the store only had one other customer, browsing through comics in the back corner. The person I imagined was the owner waited patiently at the register, reading some science fiction book. He was a skinny, middle-aged man with thick-rimmed glasses too large for his face. He reminded me of my old boss back in Atlanta.

  "Excuse me, sir?" I asked. He peeked up at me but didn't take his attention away from his book. In a glass case below him, several collectible comics and figurines were haphazardly arranged with small paper price tags attached to them.