“You’re letting me stay here, and you bought my airplane ticket. Yesterday was the least I can do.”
“Take it. We each cleared over five hundred dollars last night. Use it to book a massage or something.”
“I can’t accept…” I’m not sure I meant to snap back the envelope so quickly as I ask, “Wait—five hundred dollars for one night?! Is that normal?”
Jeff’s face lights up. “Seeeee … Now you’re thinking about it. Is it normal? Hmm. For a Saturday night, yes. But I assure you, we don’t do that well on Tuesdays, and it’s why I don’t even bother being open on Sundays or Mondays.”
“Can I go back on Tuesday?” I ask, still staring at my wad of cash.
“You won’t make that kind of money. Saturdays are our big night.”
“That’s okay. I had fun. I want to do it again.”
He shrugs. “Okay, that’ll give me more time to find someone permanent.” He takes a bite of bacon. “In the meantime, since the bar is closed today, I figure we’d go snorkeling and have a picnic lunch at Kapalua Bay, followed by cocktails and a tiki-torch ceremony at the Westin in Ka’anapali, and then on to dinner somewhere fun.”
My eyes light up. “A tiki-torch ceremony? Like a real one?”
“No, like a fake hotel one. But it’s like a luau: if you’re in Hawaii, you gotta go at least once. Come on. Chop, chop.”
Within ten minutes, I have wolfed down my breakfast, taken a shower, thrown on a swimsuit, and packed clothes for later in the evening.
We then head up the coast.
FORTY-TWO
After a lovely forty-minute drive up the Honoapiilani Highway (pronounced Hah-noe-ah-pee-ee-lah-nee. Doesn’t that sound much more exotic and fun than the San Diego Freeway or the Union Turnpike?), we get to the town of Lahaina, and Jeff pulls his car into the Foodland parking lot. “This, my dear, is Foodland—the island’s neighborhood grocery store. There’s also one in Kihei that’s open twenty-four hours a day, so if you need dental floss at three A.M., you’re set.”
We walk through the parking lot in what in any other part of the country I would consider hot and muggy weather and into the delight of crisp, cool air-conditioning.
Jeff grabs a plastic, green basket, and we could be walking through any supermarket chain on the mainland—save for all of the sunscreen, masks, and snorkel gear on display near aisle three. We make our way to the seafood section, where I see a large sign on the wall behind the counter that says HAWAII’S HOME FOR POKE.
I turn to Jeff. “What’s poke?” I ask, making the e silent.
Jeff grins at me. “Actually, it’s pronounced poh-kee, and it is one of the Hawaiian delicacies you must eat while you’re in Maui.”
I check out all of the varieties of poke through the deli’s glass. There are bright red chunks of fish that don’t seem to have sauce, brownish-pink chunks with a light brown coating and herbs, white chunks swimming in some sort of marinade, and about a million others, all displayed in sparkling stainless-steel trays. “Looks like raw fish.”
“There’s some cooked stuff. But mostly it’s raw fish marinated in soy sauce and anything from wasabi to seaweed to tomatoes. Poke is a Hawaiian staple. There are a million kinds, and it’s all fresh. And poke doesn’t just refer to raw fish. Poke is a Hawaiian verb that means ‘to section, slice, or cut.’ So it can refer to anything that is sliced or cut, including edamame.”
A middle-aged gentleman sporting the name tag JOE walks up to us and cheerfully says, “Hi, folks. What can I get for you today?”
“We’d like half a pound of your ahi, a half pound of the salmon, plus let me get half a pound of the garlic soybean poke and…” Jeff turns to me. “Do you like fermented black beans?”
I involuntarily make a face. Jeff laughs. “Okay, I’ll take that as a no.” He turns back to Joe. “Let’s just do half a pound of shrimp ceviche.” Then he turns back to me. “Plus, I have a sauvignon blanc to go with all this that’s going to make you so happy, you might buy a silver wine charm for your bracelet.”
Moments later, we have plastic containers of various types of fish and are heading toward the produce section. “I know it’s a cliché, but we’re getting a pineapple. Oh, and I forgot…” He takes my hand and walks me over to aisle four, the canned section. “Check this out.”
In front of me is a wall of Spam. All kinds of Spam: classic Spam, lite Spam, Spam with less sodium, something called Spam spread. “Ew…”
“Don’t say that. The stuff is pretty popular on the island.”
“Not enough sauvignon blanc in the world…,” I insist, shaking my head.
A few minutes later, we are back in Jeff’s car and heading to Kapalua Bay, which is a sheltered white-sand beach near the Ritz-Carlton hotel. We have to wait a few minutes for a space in the small parking lot off to the side.
Once parked, we pull out beach bags filled with various snorkeling gear Jeff has acquired over the years (masks, flippers, and snorkel tubes) and one large picnic basket.
I cannot yet see the beach as we get out of our car, walk past some public restrooms and through a rocky tunnel, but then the path opens up to palm trees and gloriously sparkling water.
As we walk along the light sand beach, Jeff asks, “Have you ever snorkeled before?”
“Other than in a pool when I was ten, I have not.”
“This is the perfect place to do it because the water is so calm. See how there’s a reef on each side?” Jeff points to a reef to our left, and I can see it begins a C-shaped cove with a reef on either side of the bay to keep the waves from coming in, ensuring that the water stays calm and clear.
I inhale a deep, cleansing breath, and revel in the salt smell. “Very peaceful.”
“Yes. The fish think so too. The other benefit of this place is you can just walk out into the water. Some places, like Molokini Crater, you have to take a boat to get to. Here, you can grab your mask and snorkel tube, walk out into the water, swim past the breakers, and, boom, fish everywhere.”
We pick a spot in the middle of soft sand and put our stuff down. Jeff pulls a pair of blue flippers out of the bag and throws them to me. “If you want to go even further out, you can use these.”
“Flippers!” I say, my face lighting up. I carefully put them on my feet, then walk around to test them out as Jeff lays out large beach towels for us to sit on.
“How do I know if they are the right size?” I ask as I carefully lift my knees up and down, admiring my new shoes.
“What is it about women that they always want to walk around in their flippers? It’s not a strappy high heel. It’s a flipper—one size fits all.”
He has a point. I do look kind of silly walking in my flippers. It’s like walking to the ice-skating rink in your skates—you can’t look graceful. “Do these flippers make my butt look big?” I joke.
To my surprise, the beach is not very crowded, and it’s also very quiet.
I pull a mask from the bag, along with a snorkel tube. “So what do I do now?”
“Defog your mask, and go to town.” Jeff pulls a small bottle of “defogger” out of a bag and tosses it to me. “Only use a drop or two.”
“Right,” I say confidently. I open up the bottle …
Then stare at it.
Jeff is pulling various gear and sunscreen out around us and hasn’t noticed me yet.
Finally I look at him. “Let’s play a game where we pretend I’m the stupid tourist.”
He smiles. “You don’t know how to defog a mask?”
“I didn’t even know defog was a word.”
He laughs, takes my mask, puts a drop of goop from the bottle on the inside of the mask, and rubs it in. Then he does the same with the other side, then hands me the mask. “Go to town.”
As Jeff prepares the picnic (including pouring himself a glass of wine from a plastic decanter), I stand there, confused as to what to do next. “So I’m just going to walk out there,” I say, pointing to the water in front of us, not
five feet away, “and there will be fish?”
“No. You want to walk over to the north end of the beach and snorkel around the rocks. There’s more fish at the reef. The water’s calmer, so it’s clearer, plus sometimes there are turtles.”
“Me? Aren’t you coming?”
“With my fear of sharks? God no.”
“You have a fear of sharks?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you moved to Hawaii?”
“Don’t sound so Jaws IV about it. We have land in Hawaii.” He pulls out a colorful hardback book entitled Fish of Hawaii. “You want to take a look at this before you start? It shows you what a humuhumunukunukuapua’a looks like. Did you know that that used to be Hawaii’s state fish?”
I look back at the water, confused. “Are there a lot of sharks out there?”
“You mean ones that eat snorkelers? No.” He opens the book. “Oh, parrot fish! Those are good too.”
“You’re actually going to read a book about fish rather than see them for yourself?” I ask incredulously.
“What can I say? It is the delightful quirkiness that is me,” he says, returning to his large book and leafing through the pages.
I cross my arms and lean on one hip, trying to give him my best look of pity.
Jeff takes a sip of wine from his pool-safe wineglass, unfazed. He knows I’m trying to make a point, but refuses to look up from his book.
“Oh, come on!” I plead. “If there is one thing I have learned in the past few weeks, it’s to stop reading about life and get off your ass and start experiencing it! You have an entire other world less than ten feet away, and you’re just going to let it slip away from you because of fear.”
Jeff looks up. “That was the plan, yes.”
“You can’t make life decisions based on fear,” I say firmly.
Jeff sighs. “Fine.” He puts down the book and pulls a mask and tube from his bag. “But if you see a shark near me, punch it in the nose.”
I look at him blankly. “Wait, is that a thing?”
“Actually, it is. It disconcerts the shark.”
“Well, it would certainly disconcert me.”
Jeff defogs his mask, and the two of us walk to the north end of the beach to snorkel along the rocky reef. I carry my flippers and put them on just before we wade our way in. Once we are waist-deep in the water, Jeff tells me to put on my mask, put the tube in my mouth, and lean into the water.
Immediately after sticking my head in, I see some bright yellow fish with stripes flit past. These I would find out later are called butterfly fish. A bright blue fish then swims right past me. I wade farther into the water to see a school of silvery fish with large yellow and white stripes going across their sides. I fall into a floating position at the surface of the water and use my flippers to propel myself into deeper water, hoping to see a Nemo fish (called a clown fish—they’re orange), some blue parrot fishes, or maybe a humuhumunukunukuapua’a, which are multicolored, and I think look as if they’re wearing yellow lipstick.
Just as I start watching a superthin silver fish race through the water, I hear a horrific scream.
I throw down my legs on the sand and turn around toward the sound. Jeff is wading back onto shore quickly, his tube out of his mouth, his mask up.
“What happened?” I yell to him as I race back to land.
“Don’t know! I hurt my foot!’ Jeff yells.
By the time I get back to shore, Jeff is sitting at the water’s edge, holding on to his foot, which is covered in blood.
My eyes go wide. “Jesus.”
The top of Jeff’s foot is split open, and blood pours out everywhere.
“It’s fine,” Jeff insists tensely. “Just hurts like a son of a bitch. But I’m fine.”
“That looks like you’re going to need stitches.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding a lot.”
“I’m not going to ruin a perfectly good day cooped up in an emergency room,” Jeff snaps.
A very handsome dark-haired man in swim trunks rushes up to us. “I’m a paramedic. Can I help?”
“No,” Jeff begins angrily, turning to him. “Everything’s…” Jeff’s gaydar goes off at the sight of this gorgeous guy, and his voice immediately softens. “Fine. Absolutely fine.”
The paramedic looks worried. “You seem to be bleeding rather profusely. Mind if I take a look at it?”
Jeff waves him off. “It’s nothing. Throw a little salt in it, I’ll be good to go.”
The man visibly winces at Jeff’s suggestion. “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he says, kneeling on the sand to get a better look at Jeff’s bloody stump. “It looks like the top of your foot scraped against some coral. I can see there’s still a piece lodged in there.”
“Really? Oh. I was looking out over the water and thought I saw a fin. I panicked and tripped over a rock at the reef. Maybe I hit the coral then.”
“That’s probably what happened. I’m going to try and pull the coral out and see if we can’t get you cleaned up.”
“Pull away … um…”
“Brian.”
“Pull away, Brian.”
Brian points to a towel and a beach bag a few feet from us. “I have a clean towel in my bag. Let me go grab it.”
“Okay, Brian,” Jeff says, pleasantly smiling at his new love.
The second Brian is out of hearing range, Jeff’s smile disappears. He takes my hand, looks at me with all kinds of seriousness and urgency, and whispers to me, “Invite him with us to the torch-lighting ceremony.”
“How can you even think about sex at a time like this?” I whisper back.
Jeff shakes his head. “It’s like we’ve never met.”
Brian the paramedic returns, holding a bright white towel that is about to look like a crime scene and a small spray can of what I assume is Neosporin. “All right. Now what’s going to happen is I’m going to pull out the coral, then immediately put pressure on the wound with this towel. Be prepared for a sting.”
Jeff’s smile returns. “No problem. And, Brian, thank you so much for your help. I’m Jeff. This is my friend Mel. She’s visiting from Los Angeles, and I thought it would be fun to take her snorkeling, then to a torch lighting at the—oh, son of a bitch, damn, fuck, motherfucker!”
“Sorry, sir. It’s out now. Let me get you cleaned up.”
Brian the paramedic sprays some disinfectant onto Jeff’s foot, and I swear Jeff’s going to leap off the sand and stay levitated a good five feet.
“Are you all right?” I ask him.
“I’ve had better moments,” Jeff tells me through gritted teeth. Then he asks Brian, “Do you like sushi, because there’s this wonderful place in Kihei”—Jeff continues in a rapid, pained voice—“ow, that hurts! Ow, ow, fuck! Ow! Brian, are you free for dinner?!”
Even in hideous pain, Jeff can still try to make a love connection. You gotta admire that kind of chutzpah.
“I love sushi,” Brian says to Jeff, smiling, then turns to me. “He’s going to need stitches. There’s an urgent care in Lahaina that’s open, if you can drive him. Otherwise I can call an ambulance and have him sent to the emergency room.”
Jeff waves him off. “Oh, I’ll be fine. So are you seeing anyone, Brian?”
I watch a shy smile creep across Brian’s face, “No, Jeff, I’m not. And you’re not going to be fine until after you get some stitches.”
Brian helps Jeff hobble on one foot to Jeff’s car, while I quickly pack up our stuff on the beach. By the time I get to the car, I can hear them making a date for tomorrow night. I shake my head, in awe at Jeff’s uncanny ability to always make lemonade from lemons (or in this case, Bloody Marys from blood).
Soon I am driving Jeff to the urgent care center in Lahaina, which is a large town on the western side of the island between Kihei and Ka’anapali filled with restaurants, shops, and people whose friends have not caused them to need minor surgery.
I park the car a
nd have Jeff lean against me as we hobble into the clinic. Within ten minutes, we are in Patient Room One, waiting for the doctor on call.
As Jeff texts Brian back and forth from his seat in the middle of the room, I examine his bloody foot. “I should have never made you go into the water with me. I am so, so sorry.”
“No one makes me do anything. And I’m fine.” Jeff continues texting madly on his phone. “Besides, for all you know, my misadventure could lead to a marriage.
I shake my head, guilt ridden. “Your foot’s getting worse, and you have so much adrenaline pumping through you right now, you don’t realize how much pain you’re going to be in tonight.”
“I have a man who looks like Clark Kent without the glasses agreeing to have dinner with me. Life really doesn’t get any better than that.”
I blink a few times, deciphering his description. “You do realize you just described Superman, right?”
“Let’s hope so,” Jeff deadpans as he reads a text from his phone. He looks up at me. “Hey, do you think you could make yourself scarce tomorrow night?”
The doctor walks in, wearing a white lab coat, reading from a clipboard. “Good afternoon, Mr. Greco, I’m Dr. Cameron—”
“Airport guy!” I blurt out.
Suddenly, I feel sick. My gut is starting to clench, the way it did when I was fifteen years old, standing next to my high school crush’s locker so we could accidentally on purpose run into each other.
Airport guy looks up from his clipboard. First, he looks surprised, then his face lights up. “Hey—it’s my buddy from the bar. Mel, right?”
He remembered my name! Charming airport guy remembered my name.
Jeff tosses his phone down, much more interested in this new turn of events. He turns to me. “What kind of buddy?” he asks, his voice dripping with innuendo.
“Stop it,” I say quickly under my breath. “Yes,” I answer in a normal voice to airport guy. I’m struggling to remember his name. Damn it! It’s something French. “Um…”
“Ben.”
“Ben! Yes, of course. Benoit.”
“Benoit,” Jeff repeats seductively, eyeing me mischievously.
I bug out my eyes at him, signaling for him to shut up. Fortunately he takes the hint.
Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink Page 24