Here Today, Gone to Maui

by Carol Snow

  “He was beautiful, like . . . like an angel,” she said. “Or a surfer. Except I don’t even know if he surfs. God, I can’t believe I don’t even know that!” Her crying resumed full force.

  “How about his height?” the officer asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Tall.”

  “Tall as in six feet? Six foot three? Six foot six?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  The officer blinked twice, the slightest flicker of irritation showing through. “Miss Shea gave us a description of her boyfriend yesterday. Let me read it to you.” He pulled a sheet of paper off his desk. “Thirty-four years old. Five eleven and one-half inch. One hundred seventy pounds. Dark blond hair. Blue eyes. Athletic build. Scar on chin.” Here he paused and frowned at the paper. “Detached earlobes.” (They’d asked for distinguishing features; I was just being thorough.)

  “I don’t understand what all of this has to do with Jimmy!” Tiara blurted.

  “Jimmy?” I said.

  “Having two men go missing in twenty-four hours—that’s pretty unusual,” the detective said, crossing his arms. “Even more unusual is when both missing men are named Jimmy James.”

  “Jimmy’s real name is Michael,” I said, as if that cleared things up. “My Jimmy, I mean.”

  Tiara stared at me. “Same thing with my Jimmy.”

  I grabbed the side of my chair. The room spun. There must be some misunderstanding. Some terrible mistake. “Do you live here?” I asked when I could speak. “Does your—your Jimmy live here?”

  She shook her head. “California. I live in Irvine. Jimmy lives in Laguna Beach.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, covering my mouth with my left hand.

  She yelped. “You have a ring!”

  I held out my hand and blinked at the diamond as if I’d never seen it before.

  “You and Jimmy were engaged?” she wailed.

  “He wanted to marry me,” I whispered, hiding the ring with my right hand.

  She stuck a knuckle in her full mouth and made sounds like a wounded animal.

  “Miss Cardenas arrived in Maui three days ago,” the officer told me. “Same day as you. Her boyfriend flew in separately, said he was on business and staying in a client’s condo but he’d visit her at the hotel.”

  Jimmy’s disappearances returned in a flash: the early morning meetings, the sales calls. And then it hit me. It couldn’t be. Oh, no.

  “Where are you staying?” I asked slowly.

  “Huh?” She fluttered her damp eyelashes, too dazed for a moment to speak. And finally, the answer: “On Kaanapali Beach. At the Hyatt.”

  That did it: total emotional overload. My head buzzed. My breathing came in gasps and spurts. Everything grew fuzzy and pale.

  “Can we get some water over here?” the detective called out. Someone brought it and made me drink. I gagged but got it down. The detective asked us more questions, and I’m sure I answered them, but I’m not sure what was said. Mostly I remember waves of nausea, catapults of emotion: pain, anger, confusion, more pain.

  “This doesn’t really change anything,” the officer said in closing. Doesn’t change anything? That may have been the stupidest thing anyone had ever said. “We still have a man missing. And probably—” He looked from me to Tiara and back to me. “Probably dead.”

  I tightened my mouth and nodded shakily as Tiara burst into a fresh round of sobs.

  The officer stood up. “The search crews are out today—we’ll send them out again tomorrow if necessary. You’re free to go. We’ll be in touch.” In touch. As if we were completing a job interview. I stood up. Tiara remained hunched in her chair, her wails growing louder and, quite frankly, annoying.

  “Oh, Miss Shea,” the detective said. “Did you get any more contact numbers for his friends and family? Maybe someone can send me a recent picture.”

  “I talked to his mother already,” I said. “And his office manager. I told them what was going on.”

  “You know his mother?” Tiara asked weakly.

  “We’ve spoken,” I answered after a pause. “I charged his cell phone on the way over,” I told the detective, wanting to change the subject. “I’ve got it right here.” I dug the phone out of my purse and hit the power button. Somehow, I didn’t expect it to work, as if it needed Jimmy’s life force to function.

  But the screen came to life with its made-for-teenagers greeting, WHERE YOU AT? I’m in the innermost circle of hell, I thought miserably.

  The phone’s battery was low—the drive to the station had been short—but there was enough of a charge to check the contact list. I zipped right down the list to the Ts. And there she was: TIARA. Home number, cell number. No photos, thank God. Then I backed up to the Js, just to make sure I was there, that Jimmy hadn’t erased me from his phone in preparation for erasing me from his life. But there I was: JANE SHEA. My name is short: easy to enter in its entirety. And yet, it bothered me. Tiara was just Tiara. I was “Jane Shea.” I could be anyone—business acquaintance, hairdresser, one-night stand.

  The detective crossed the room; I handed over the phone.

  “You know a Scott?” he asked, flicking through the numbers.

  “Work.”

  “Bryan?”

  “Roommate.”

  He ran down the list (omitting my name and Tiara’s). I knew some names, coworkers from the restaurant, mostly (Bunny, Chaz, Luis). There were girls’ names (Holly, Simone, Tammi). What was their story? I wondered. Were they one-night stands from Laguna Beach? Or were they holed up at yet another hotel? (And if so, was it nicer than the Maui Hi?)

  “Nothing for his parents,” the officer said finally, shutting the phone and handing it back to me. “They’d probably be the best bet. Can you get me that number?”

  I nodded. “I’ve got it back at my room.”

  Tiara staggered across the floor, dabbing her eyes with a wad of toilet paper (the station had run out of tissues). “So you never met his parents?” she asked in a little voice.

  I shook my head. “Did you?” It was ridiculous how badly I wanted her to say no. And she did. But it didn’t make me feel much better.

  The detective put his hands in his pockets. “That will be all for now. Thanks for coming down.”

  We both looked at him, bewildered.

  “If I hear anything else, I’ll call of course. And, Miss Shea, I’d appreciate you calling me with that phone number.”

  I nodded. Tiara and I continued to look at him. How could he just send us off like this? What were we supposed to do?

  “You two might want to sit down together,” the detective suggested. “Someplace else, someplace neutral. And compare notes.” He saw my expression. “Or—not.”

  Not, I thought.

  But Tiara said, “That would help me. Really. I’m staying at the Hyatt.” (As if I’d forgotten.) “Maybe you can come over, and we can talk. I have so many questions.”

  I did, too, of course, though I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear answers.

  Tiara blew her nose into the wad of toilet paper. “Please come with me. I don’t want to be alone.”

  Chapter 13

  So I finally got to see the Hyatt, though the experience wasn’t quite what I had envisioned.

  “It never even occurred to me to rent a car,” Tiara sniffled from the little red car’s passenger seat as we glided up a long, palm-lined driveway to the hotel. It was the first thing she had said since leaving the police station.

  “I mean, why would I need a car?” she continued. “All’s I was gonna do was lounge by the pool and make love to Jimmy. Maybe stroll down to some restaurants if we got hungry. But mostly, I figured, we’d just get room service.”

  “Welcome to the Hyatt,” the valet said, opening my car door. “Will you be staying with us?”

  “She is,” I said, nodding toward Tiara.

  After one look at Tiara, the valet practically yanked me out of my seat, leaving me stranded in the driveway as h
e raced around to assist her. He opened her door and leaned forward eagerly. She held out her limp, manicured hand. “Let me help you,” the valet murmured.

  Standing in the lobby was a major déjà vu moment—not because I’d been there in this (or any) life, but because in the past month I’d spent so many hours poring over photos in guidebooks and on the Web.

  Alo-fucking-ha.

  The photos hadn’t done the Hyatt justice: pictures couldn’t capture the soaring open-air atrium, the ocean breezes, the smell of hothouse flowers, the chirping and cawing of brightly colored birds. Reddish flagstones lay underfoot, interrupted here and there by towering palm trees and antique canoes.

  “You wanna see the penguins?” Tiara asked. “Because I think that’s just really cool. You know—penguins in Hawaii.”

  What was she—my tour guide? My enthusiasm for penguins had diminished over the last couple of days, but I followed Tiara, her heels clicking on the stones, until we reached a gold railing surrounding a leafy enclosure.

  “See?” Tiara put her hands on the rail and leaned forward. “Penguins.” She sounded proud, as if she owned them. As if we had nothing more important to think about than exotic birds.

  The penguins were smaller than the usual tuxedo kind, their markings more muted. Plus, they didn’t stink the way penguins usually do.

  “Nice,” I said.

  “There’s flamingos, too,” she said. “And swans. You want to see them?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh.” She looked stumped, confused—like she couldn’t remember why we were here.

  “When did you meet Jimmy?” I asked. Wasn’t that what we were supposed to discuss?

  “Not that long ago. Sometime after Christmas,” she said, still gazing at the penguins. “I can’t remember, exactly.”

  “Was it still December?” I asked. “Or January?” For some reason, the timing felt important, something I had to know. Did Jimmy pull away from me because he’d met someone else? Or did he look elsewhere because I’d begun to bore him? Maybe he just got lonely when I left him to go to New Jersey for Christmas.

  She looked at me, baffled. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe what?”

  “I’m not sure. January?”

  I remembered Jimmy once saying that I was smarter than the girls he usually dated. No shit.

  “Was it before or after New Year’s?” I said, speaking slowly.

  “Oh! It was after.” (Comprehension: yay!) “Because for New Year’s? I was dating this other guy.”

  “Mm.” I nodded. “And how long before you and Jimmy . . . were intimate?” I couldn’t bring myself to say made love.

  “Oh, we fucked the first night,” Tiara said. “Four times.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. No wonder Jimmy had lost sexual interest in me. He’d been exhausted. In the penguin enclosure, one of the birds waddled into his plastic igloo. I longed to follow him.

  The questions continued to jump around in my brain. Did Jimmy take me to Maui because he felt guilty about Tiara? Or had he met her after booking the tickets?

  “It would help me,” I said, “if you could tell me the exact day you met Jimmy. I could—better understand things, maybe.”

  She shook her head, confused. “I really haven’t a clue. I mean—do you know when you met him?”

  “September eighteenth,” I said. “Seven P.M.”

  She squinted. “Huh.”

  “Don’t you have a planner?” I asked. “A calendar? Something?”

  Her eyes widened. “Kind of. It’s in my room.”

  Tiara’s room (my room) was in the main tower, high above the atrium. Once off the elevator, I peered down to the stone floors far below. A person could fall from here, but what a way to go. Besides, if a person splattered in the Hyatt lobby, at least there would be no missing-body issues.

  The room had a kick-ass water view, a lanai, and pretty, Asian-inspired furniture that didn’t smell. There was a comfy-looking sofa covered with soft green velour and a dark wood coffee table that, I was pleased to see, was a bit worn around the edges. The walls were covered in a paper that looked like ivory linen. A Hawaiian quilt decorated the wall behind the bed, which had a white coverlet and enough pillows for three people.

  Ew.

  I don’t know what pissed me off more: Jimmy’s infidelity or this room. In a flash of self-protective and entirely deluded thinking, I considered for a moment that he’d put me in the condo because it had a kitchenette and he really liked my cooking.

  And then Tiara peeled off her top and every device of psychological self-defense failed. “I’m going to change into something more comfortable,” she said, like a coy character from an old sitcom. “This shirt is so tight it’s, like, cutting off my circulation.”

  Tiara got the nicer hotel because Tiara had bigger boobs than I did. Actually, Tiara had bigger boobs than pretty much anyone I’d ever seen—and I belong to an Orange County health club. It was unclear whether she was just uninhibited or whether she was showing off.

  I could see her full tattoo now, a five-point star on her left breast that said TIARA. Was that to make sure that no man, on the morning after, ever asked, “What was your name, again?” She could have been more straightforward and tattooed “Hello, my name is:” above it.

  Tiara kicked off her white heels. One of them almost hit me in the shin. When she started unbuttoning her shorts, I headed for the lanai, but she stopped me. “So you and Jimmy had been going out for a while?” she asked, sounding like a sad little girl.

  “Yes.” I looked at her out of reflexive politeness and then looked away because—you know. When she didn’t react, I peeked over again.

  She dropped her shorts on the floor. I looked away, but only after I’d seen that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  “I haven’t known him long,” she said. “But right away I was certain—I just knew he was the one. He was my Prince Charming, the man I’ve been dreaming about since I was a little girl.”

  “But your prince already had a queen,” I said, feeling like the witch who gave Snow White the poisoned apple.

  “I didn’t know about you, I swear,” she whimpered. After a pause, she said, in a tiny voice, “When did he ask you to marry him?”

  I looked at her in surprise, training my eyes on her face—though some dark recess of my brain registered Brazilian bikini wax, to which another, more primitive, recess responded, Ouch!

  “It was . . . a while ago.” As I said it, the realization hit me—rather late, I’ll admit, but remember, I’d been under a lot of stress: Jimmy might have bought the ring for Tiara. In fact, Jimmy probably bought the ring for Tiara. Then again, if Tiara got a room at the Hyatt, it only seemed fair that I got a diamond.

  I scurried toward the sliding-glass door, suddenly desperate for fresh air. There was a big mirror over the dresser; passing it, I shuddered. My hair looked even flatter and greasier than it had this morning, and dark circles had formed under my eyes. I looked like I had been through hell. But then, I had.

  Beyond the sliding door, the lanai had a triangular glass table and two chairs. The view was spectacular, of course. The resort had winding stone paths, a rope bridge, and a humongous pool—a Flintstones-meets-Fantasy Island creation of caves and boulders surrounded by lounge chairs and lush landscaping: bougainvillea, magnolia trees, palm trees, all kinds of pink and purple flowers. It was like a rain forest, only without the poisonous snakes and exotic parasites. Hammocks and cabanas overlooked the beach, which wasn’t nearly as wide as I expected but that, all things considered, didn’t suck.

  Beyond the beach lay the Pacific, the island of Lanai rising in the distance. The blue water was gentle today, the waves not crashing so much as stroking the shore, as if they were too polite to make a lot of noise. A powerboat buzzed by pulling a parasailer, the giant parachute a lemon-yellow decorated with two eyes and a smile. Have a nice day, my ass.

  “Which do you think?” Tiara asked from
behind me. I turned. She stood in the doorway to the lanai, stark naked, holding a teeny bikini top, one white, one pink, in each hand.

  “Ahh!” I yelped.

  “What?” She looked genuinely hurt.

  “People can see you.”

  She shrugged. Perhaps that was the point. She turned and strolled back into the bedroom. Her ass, I noticed uncharitably, was puckered with cellulite.

  “I think I’ll wear the white one,” she said, slipping it on. I didn’t bother to tell her that her nipples were slightly visible behind the light fabric. That would make her happy. I didn’t tell her that her butt looked cottage cheesy in the back. That made me happy—and happiness was in short supply right now.

  “You’re going swimming?” I asked. “I thought we came up here so you could check your calendar.”

  “Oh—that. It’s not a calendar, exactly.” She shrugged. “I’ll get it in a minute. But anyway, I’m not going in the water. I’m not in the mood with all that’s happened, plus it took me like an hour to do my hair this morning. I’m just really hot, and I can’t bear to wear clothes right now. You want to borrow a suit?”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think your bathing suits would fit me.” I crossed my arms over my A-cup breasts.

  “Oh, no—here’s the thing.” She crossed to the dresser, yanked open a drawer, and rummaged around until she pulled out another white bikini, identical to the one she was wearing. She brought it out to the lanai. “When I buy bikinis? I have to buy two sets because my top and bottom are such totally different sizes. What I’m wearing is a sixteen on top and a six on the bottom. So—you could just wear the pieces that I’m not using.”

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

  She bit her cushiony lip. “Was that rude? I didn’t mean to say—what I mean is, there’s nothing wrong with being more, um, natural.” She made fluttering gestures around her chest. “Actually, you’re lucky—I mean, you’re starting from scratch, so if you ever do decide to get some enhancements, you can get some that are more proportionate. Makes it easier to buy dresses. Anyway, I bet this would fit you.”