by Carol Snow
But Regina was right, of course. Joey was dating me and he was dating Katie.
“I’m so confused,” he moaned when I confronted him after school that day, his big brown eyes looking genuinely pained. “I didn’t plan it this way, you know? It just, like, happened. I like both of you. I mean, you’re cuter and sweeter, but Katie is exciting because she’s different.”
I held back a mouthful of biting comments because I was supposed to be the sweet one. If I called him a cocksucker, I’d be left with nothing but my cuteness to recommend me. And I wasn’t even all that cute.
The next day, Katie smiled when I passed her in the hall. She had a wide mouth and funky-crooked teeth. I thought, What does she have to be happy about?
A couple of days later, while I was still (stupidly) waiting for Joey to make his choice, I ran into Katie in the lunch line (it was pizza day) and she said, “I guess we’ve got something in common.” She laughed sweetly. (And I was supposed to be the sweet one.)
I said, “Yeah, I guess,” and grabbed a salad because it got me out of line faster. If she was happy, it could only mean one thing: Joey had chosen her.
But he hadn’t. In the end, he drifted away from both of us. For the rest of high school, Katie continued to smile at me, while I did my best to avoid her.
The summer after my freshman year of college, I took a job at a local clothing store only to discover that Katie worked there, too. She had just finished her first year of art school; her short hair was now streaked with pink, and she had three holes in each ear.
“I hated you in high school,” I confessed one day while we were dressing a mannequin. (Katie wanted to glue a metallic stud to the mannequin’s nose, but I talked her out of it.)
“Why?” She looked genuinely confused.
“Because of Joey,” I said. “Because he liked you.”
“But that wasn’t my fault,” she said. “I didn’t even know about you till after he asked me out. Besides, he was a jerk to both of uth.” (Her lisp only came out now and then.)
“I know,” I said. “But it just bugged me. He was the first guy—well, the first cute guy—who saw something in me, but I wasn’t enough for him.”
“Or maybe he was just an ath-hole,” Katie said, her piercings glinting under the fluorescent lights.
She was right, of course, but I was left with the nagging feeling that I was not special enough to be loved—that I, alone, would never be enough for anyone.
Through college, Katie and I kept in touch—writing letters and getting together on Christmas and summer vacations. She’d call me when she needed advice; I’d call her when I needed to laugh. Regina’s parents had moved away the summer after graduation, so I didn’t really see her anymore. By the time I finished college, Katie was my closest friend from high school. She urged me to move to New York with her after graduation, but she was already involved with Ron, the man she would eventually marry (an investment banker, of all the unlikely choices) and I didn’t want to get in the way.
A year after moving to California, I flew back to be a brides-maid in Katie’s wedding. It was the first time I’d met Ron, who sported a goatee and a gold hoop earring.
I didn’t know many people at the rehearsal dinner, so Katie was pleased to see Ron and me laughing together. He either found my stories about high school in New Jersey extremely funny or he was just really drunk.
When it was time to leave, he said, “I’ll help you get your coat.” I thought he was just being nice. Katie was across the room, laughing with her sisters. I waved to her and went down the hall with Ron. Once I’d retrieved my coat, he followed me around the corner, grabbed my shoulders, and laid his mouth on mine.
I pushed my hands against his chest and pulled my head away.
“Where are you staying?” he asked urgently.
“You’re getting married!” I said, suddenly sober.
“Yeah,” he said. “So we’d better hurry. Tomorrow it’s all over.”
I didn’t sleep with him, of course. I gave him a brief, inarticulate speech about how lucky he was to be marrying someone as wonderful as Katie and how stupid he’d be to throw everything away. The next day, I took my place in the bridal lineup, taking care to avoid Ron’s eyes (not hard, since he was avoiding mine as well). It was a modern ceremony: no “do you have any objections” moment. But I wouldn’t have said anything even if I’d been asked.
The truth was, I had never hated Katie for dating Joey; I had hated her for telling people about it. I wanted to believe Joey was all mine. Whether it was true or not didn’t really matter.
After the wedding, I let my friendship with Katie lapse, afraid that my memory could somehow poison her happiness. Ron was not the man she thought he was, but she’d be okay as long as she never discovered the truth about him.
And now, in Maui, that’s how I felt about Jimmy—and Tiara. For all my insistence on research, on clarity, on lists, there were times when I craved complete ignorance.
Chapter 15
I awoke early, Joey Ardolino’s long lashes still fresh in my mind. After a couple of hours spent trying to get comfortable in the hard bed with its rough, overbleached sheets, I finally got up and turned on the lights. It was too early to call the police station, not that there was much left to ask or say.
I took a long hot shower, and then swore when I remembered there was no hair dryer. But then, did it really matter what I looked like?
Once dressed, I brewed a pot of coffee and called the airline. If the police needed someone to identify a body, they could call on Tiara, who was obviously content to remain in Maui for the rest of the week, getting volcanic mud treatments at the spa and buying expensive shoes. As for me, I had a good job to go back to, a nice condo, and a pleasant set of work friends.
Unfortunately, they’d have to wait. The flights between now and my scheduled departure on Thursday were booked solid. I was stuck in Maui.
Shortly after I got off the phone, there was a soft knock on my door. Mary stood there, holding a small loaf of bread.
“I saw your lights on,” she said. “Figured you were up.” She held out the loaf. “Banana bread. Thought you could use some homemade comfort food.”
“You made this?”
She smiled, her square teeth very white. “Well, not me personally.”
I took the loaf. “Would you like some coffee?”
“I should get back to the office, but, well . . . a few minutes wouldn’t hurt.” She followed me over to the kitchenette. “Any news about Mr. James?”
I shook my head. “Still missing.”
There was some news, of course, and I might as well get used to saying it. Keeping my eyes on the fake-wood-grain cabinet, I said, “Though I did find something out. He was seeing another woman. And she’s here on Maui.”
A lump clogged my throat. I pulled a couple of mugs out of the cabinet and poured the coffee, trying hard to steady my hands.
“I know,” Mary said quietly.
“You know?”
Eyes on the ground, she nodded. “It was in the paper this morning.”
“Oh God.” I took a deep breath. “Can you show it to me?”
MISSING MAN AT CENTER OF LOVE TRIANGLE
LAHAINA—The case of Michael “Jimmy” James, the Laguna Beach, CA, man who allegedly disappeared while scuba diving on Saturday, took a bizarre twist yesterday. Initial police reports indicated that Mr. James had been traveling with “a friend.” New information reveals that Mr. James was splitting his vacation time between two women, Jane Shea, 32, of Brea, California, and Tiara Cardenas, 24, of Irvine, CA. Both Ms. Shea and Ms. Cardenas maintain that they knew nothing about each other before yesterday (story continued on page 6).
I looked up at Mary. “Allegedly?”
“Huh?” She was getting a carton of milk out of the refrigerator.
“It says Jimmy ‘allegedly’ disappeared while scuba diving. Are they saying that he may not have disappeared? Or that he maybe wasn’t scuba divi
ng?”
“I think you should read the whole thing,” she murmured.
I turned the pages. “Oh my God!” There were separate photos of Tiara and me outside the police station. She looked ready to go clubbing. I looked like I lived in a house without a mirror. “Who took these? Was there someone waiting outside the police station?”
Mary shrugged helplessly.
“I look like shit,” I said.
“It’s not a good angle,” Mary conceded.
LOVE TRIANGLE (continued from p. 1)
According to Lahaina Detective Fernando McGuinn, “We are surprised that the body has not turned up yet. We are asking all Maui residents to alert us immediately if they have any information.”
Police surmise that Mr. James met both women in California, where he owns and runs Jimmies, Incorporated, a wetsuit design company.
Ms. Shea is a registered guest at the Maui Hi condominiums on Lower Honoapilliani Road. Ms. Cardenas is staying at the Hyatt Regency on Kaanapali Beach. Neither woman was available for comment.
Hands shaking, I gave the paper back to Mary. “Now everyone knows where to find me.”
“You’re not exactly Britney Spears, honey. I think you’ll be fine.”
“You’re right,” I said, trying to smile.
“Let’s get you out of here,” she said. “It’s nice outside. And Martin should start playing right around now. How ’bout we take our coffee out back and look at the water?”
Martin, it turned out, played the guitar music I’d heard drifting out of a ground floor unit.
“He came here on vacation,” Mary explained, putting her coffee and the banana bread on a plastic side table. “It was 1995, 1996—something like that. And he just never left.” She settled herself on a slightly damp lounge chair, tucking her oversize polyester muumuu around her legs.
“Wow,” I said, settling onto the lounge next to her. “People always talk about doing something like that—getting out of the rat race and moving to the tropics, embracing the simple life. But I didn’t think anyone actually did it.”
My coffee was warm and sweet. Mary had added sugar without asking me. It tasted surprisingly good.
“Ha!” She laughed. “You hang around Maui for any length of time, you find lots of people did just that very thing. Works for some of them.”
“And the others?”
She shrugged. “They go home. When they find they can’t make a living here, when they get sick of the sunshine. Some people think they can run away from themselves—that if they come here, they’re going to be a whole new person.”
“Wherever you go, there—you are,” I said, thinking of my cross-country move. I’d never really felt at home in California until I moved into my pristine little condo, the exact replica of which I probably could have bought in New Jersey or Boston.
I’d gone to Jimmy’s house only once. We’d just finished an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Laguna, and he wanted to pick up a change of clothes before heading up to Brea. I was excited about seeing the house, having wondered why we didn’t spend any time there. It was within walking distance of the beach, after all. He’d told me it was a fixer-upper, but how bad could it be?
Pretty bad, as it turned out. While the house must have cost a lot of money—he never told me what he’d paid, but everything in Laguna was expensive—it looked like a shack. Several blocks up from the Pacific Coast Highway, it was a sad, squatty bungalow crammed between two renovated beauties. The paint was a dingy yellow, the walkway cracked concrete.
“Bryan’s home,” he muttered as we walked hand in hand to the front door. Jimmy had a roommate to help with the mortgage.
“How do you know he’s here?” I asked.
“His car.” He motioned to a black Mercedes SUV parked across the street. “Trust-fund kid,” he explained.
The smell of marijuana smoke hit me the instant Jimmy unlocked the front door. Bryan sat slumped at the kitchen table, mouth hanging open, glazed eyes glued to a laptop. On top of the marijuana, the room smelled like old pizza, stale beer, and miscellaneous decay. Empty pizza boxes and crumb-covered plates covered the yellow Formica counter.
Bryan glanced up when we walked in the room. “Hey.”
Bryan would have made a great bouncer. He was a big guy, both in height and width. Thick, dark, wiry hair peeked out above his sleeveless T-shirt and below his nylon basketball shorts. He was playing a game on the computer, something involving simulated shots, explosions, and screams.
“This is Jane,” Jimmy said.
Bryan nodded without looking up again. “Hey.”
“You want anything?” Jimmy asked me. “A glass of water or something? I think we’ve got orange juice.”
The tiny sink was crowded with plastic plates and beer mugs. Once white, the refrigerator was a streaky gray. “No, thanks,” I said.
Jimmy’s dark bedroom, awkwardly situated off the kitchen, wasn’t much better. He’d left his double bed unmade. Dirty laundry littered the orange shag carpet. The entire room smelled like socks. I reached out to open the window blinds and then thought better of letting in the early evening light: there are some things you’re better off not seeing.
Jimmy shoved some clothes into a shopping bag and then asked, “You want to hang around here some more or . . .”
“Let’s go to my place,” I said. (Screw the easy beach access.)
“I would have cleaned if I’d known you were going to see it,” he said.
“I’m not sure it would have made much of a difference,” I answered honestly.
“It’s a dump, I know. But you can’t beat the location. And someday, when my business takes off . . .” He gazed around, and we both thought about how the room—and the whole house— would look fixed up. All it would take was time and money. And maybe a woman’s touch.
(But which woman? I wondered now.)
“You could get another roommate,” I suggested later.
“Yeah, I know. But Bryan’s quiet, at least. And to be honest, he’s paying way more rent than he should—it comes close to covering my mortgage. Besides, it’s not forever.” He smiled, and I wondered if the word forever could ever apply to us, never dreaming how little time Jimmy had left.
Mary and I sipped our coffee and looked at the water, which changed colors and textures as the sun rose higher in the sky, the blue broken every now and then by the distant splash of a whale. Martin started playing, finally—a Jack Johnson tune. Mary handed me a slice of banana bread. Within seconds, little chirping birds swarmed around us.
“This is delicious,” I said. The banana bread wasn’t quite as good as mine (just being honest here), but I was touched by the gesture and almost ridiculously grateful to have someone doing something nice for me, for a change.
Martin finished his song and moved on to an old Simon and Garfunkel tune. The tension between my shoulders let up, just a little.
A sturdy Hawaiian man wearing a polyester shirt—the print matched Mary’s muumuu—came around the corner. I recognized him as the kind-faced man I’d seen working around the grounds.
“There you are,” he called to Mary with a smile. “Lying in the sun while I’m working my tail off.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, smiling a little as she sipped her coffee. “Do me a favor, Albert, and go check the front office—make sure no one needs anything from me.” She peered inside her coffee cup. “And if you could make us another pot of coffee, maybe? I’m getting low.”
“How’s the banana bread?” he asked, coming toward us with a big grin.
Mary handed him a piece. “Better with macadamia nuts.”
“We were out.” He took a bite and shrugged. “Tastes good to me. I’ll get that coffee.” He shot Mary a sly look. “Your Highness.”
“He made the banana bread?” I asked when Albert left.
“Mm-hmm.” Mary put the last bite in her mouth and slapped the crumbs off her hands. The little birds went wild.
“Is he your boyfrie
nd?”
She swallowed her banana bread and licked a crumb off her lips. “Husband. Four years in April.”
I snuck a peek at her but still couldn’t guess her age. Her brown skin was smooth, and her black hair showed no signs of gray. Still, she seemed too calm and wise to be really young. “You’re lucky to have someone like Albert.”
“I know,” she said matter-of-factly. “But it works both ways. I treat him good, too.”
It never seemed to work both ways for me.
“Was Albert your first boyfriend?” I asked.
She laughed. “Hardly.”
“Did any of the others ever cheat on you?”
“Nope,” she said confidently.
“How can you be sure?” I could only think of one of my boyfriends—Steve the ophthalmologist—who didn’t fool around, but maybe he did and I just never found out.
“I’ve got a good feeling for people, I guess,” she said. “I can tell the difference between what’s flashy and what’s real. Some guys who asked me out, they were good-looking, nice dressers, they could dance—but I could tell that they’d never like me half as much as they liked themselves. So I just said no.”
“You met Jimmy, right?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “I was here when he checked in. Worked a double shift that day.”
I paused before asking, “What did you think of him?”
Mary frowned in concentration, remembering Jimmy. Were his flaws obvious at first glance? Did she see something I had missed?
“I thought he had a nice ass,” she said finally.