Flame Angels
Page 17
Overruling this criminal’s spurious concession to anything, Ravid replied, “No. I made that up. That was a tough situation, with you about to kill me for fucking Minna. We fucked about — what — about fourteen days, say once an hour, hour and a half. But then when you wake up and want to fuck again, it takes so long to blow your chum, and then once you fucked, you know, six, eight times in a day, then you got to fuck and fuck and fuck to get the hot sauce out. But anyway, where was I? Fourteen days, say six or eight fucks in a day is — what — a hundred twenty fucks or so before I ever knew you existed. She didn’t tell me. You did, when you drove up in that circus wagon. She was sucking me off when you pulled up. Well, she’d just finished sucking me off. She was wiping her chin when you got there. I guess she couldn’t swallow the whole load. You know.”
The cousins looked very worried. But not Darryl. Old Darryl, seasoned veteran of the pissing contest to the death, only smiled the old smile. Ravid smiled back and in further concession to something or other said, “Hey. This is good, eh? We’re talking softly. And listening.”
Darryl nodded, as if agreeing to agree at last. “Let me tell you what she is capable of swallowing.” And softly he spoke with Ravid listening, as the grimace moved awkwardly to the face of paler complexion.
So the remaining distance was slowly covered, though not so slowly as by a man adrift. Darryl could twist the dagger deftly on sordid details. Squeamish reaction could not be contained, so bold and voracious was Minna’s appetite for the big banana. “I knew you was lying when you say about my name. She no care who, when she get the Portagee sausage go fump, fump, fump. Up here. Down deah. She no care.” So compelling was Darryl’s narrative in delivery and detail that a few eyebrows rose among the cousins, pondering personal prospects for the Portagee sausage go fump, fump, fump. Speculation ended when Darryl saw those wheels turning and asked, “Ey. You like die?” The cousins looked down, because no, they no like die.
They looked up to see Darryl’s skill in the shore break, keeping the tin boat’s stern to the breakers till the bow thudded sand and surged another eight feet up on the next wave to high and dry. All the cousins got out and slouched for the road. Ravid oozed over the side and crawled up, not like the first creature in the evolution of land-based animal life but like a waterman surviving attempted murder. To the tourists passing on their fabulous sunrise strolls, he looked like an early swimmer in a wetsuit. Rising on the third attempt to stand upright, he realized that the inky darkness turned gray had cleared to blue, the day’s radiance oblivious as the sun coming over the horizon. The early beach crowd stared at the temerity of such a long swim at sunrise. Nobody had seen him enter the water, but they assumed the swim was long, another wondrous event of life in Paradise. A few observers who’d actually bought real estate in recent months muttered, “Lucky we live Maui.”
Wobbling his head like a plastic pooch in a rear window, Ravid looked amiable and half drunk. Then he completed the task begun fifteen hours before, of walking home, this time on a heavier shuffle with a few rusty hinges in his gait.
He drank a quart of water from the hose at the side of the shack but had no strength to pull off his wetsuit. So he cut it off, nearly cutting himself in the process but cutting nonetheless this object of his servitude, though it saved his life. Well, he might have made it without the wetsuit. The net bag with his shorts and cat food sat on the steps. Wasn’t it great to have friends?
Walking inside to the little red beacon flashing on his answering machine he pressed play in passing, on his way to the drawer for the can opener as little voices told of tomorrow’s charter, of low pressure with a system moving in and high pressure from a tourist woman who wanted to get a drink or something to eat or something. Then came: “Hi. Dis Steve Shirokiya wit da Immigration Natchazation Service. You don’t need one lawyer. Okay? You call me back. Okay? Plan to come right down. Okay? Oh! Bring your green card. Okay? We get one problem.”
So the hammers fell in sequence, giving the chaos a rhythm and banging numbness to oblivion.
Never mind. He opened the cat food to quell the incessant demand, as if she didn’t know where he’d been or how his rigors could possibly compare to missing a glob of cat food. In the hot shower, he shuddered uncontrollably. He cried again suddenly, and as suddenly stopped. He dried, rubbed oil on his body, brushed his hair and lay his beaten self down. He got up, made coffee, had a can of sardines with crackers and gave one to the cat, who chewed half of it halfway and walked away from it, underscoring the terrible indifference of love and nature.
He lay himself back down and dozed for what felt like three minutes, then woke to a knock at the door, which he opened on two people apparently arriving at the same time, staring at each other as if to ask, What are you doing here? Each held a fold of papers.
The first was a court-authorized server with a subpoena from Hundred-Grand Kreeger. Joseph Kreeger, attorney, was the skinhead ambulance chaser from hell, famous across Hawaii for suing the state over every accident at every beach or on any charter boat, citing negligence and claiming damages between 1.5 and 5.1 million, but most often willing to settle out for a hundred grand. The insurance companies invariably settled, since a hundred grand was the cost of defense. On this subpoena the plaintiff’s name appeared just below HG Kreeger’s: Darryl Omadang, seeking damages including, but not limited to, one million dollars, along with a demand for proof of legal entry and green card in order to answer charges of violation of civil rights. And so on and so forth to attempted murder by stealing a drain plug on the high seas, with a deadline date for discovery and deposition and on and on.
The server left halfway through Ravid’s reading of the first word.
The second person arriving, his once true love, stayed on patiently through paragraphs two through twelve. He finished and drifted back in. She followed, beautiful as a picture, smiling sweetly and promising that a love like theirs didn’t happen so often. “Maybe once or twice every few years is all you get, if you know what I mean, and, maybe, I mean, maybe, if you could give us another chance, I can show you a love like you never imagined.” With a strange movement, she stumbled over salacious potential on her way to innocence.
He laughed short, more of a snort or involuntary grunt than a laugh, more to catch his breath than express mirth or humor.
She slapped his back. He waved her off.
Breathing again, calmly as a man trying to swim under the shark radar, he asked her what she’d brought. “Oh, this.” She unfolded the newspaper in her hand to a story of natural destruction involving plastic garbage smothering a swath of ocean. “It’s nothing, really. I thought you’d like to see it. I mean, you’re such an enviro and whatnot.”
Squinting deeply, he focused on the ghastly obscenity: A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area bigger than the continental United States, scientists have said.
And so on, with a hundred million tons of free-floating plastic adrift between California and Japan, an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on.
A court subpoena on a lawsuit for a million dollars and news of a dying ocean were enough to darken the morning. At least the dazed survivor need not worry over the third installment in the bad news trio. It was there before him: It’s nothing really...you’re such an enviro and whatnot...
He saw what he hadn’t seen before, which wasn’t to say it wasn’t there before, or that she’d changed. External forces had not aligned till this juncture. The series of challenges now revealed their meaning, showing him what was up and the consequence of not paying attention. He’d chosen what any healthy young man would choose: a non-stop romp in the canebrake instead of reconciliation to a world gone awry. The path before him was not so different than what had seemed apparent these last few days and years. He’d recognized the correct path but had declined to take it. Now it opened clearly as a trailhead, onto which the first footfall would be imminent.
She didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t know. He turned the paper over to a listing of diseases on the verge of pandemic, with casualty estimates ranging from fifty million to a billion humans. “What is this, the Bad News Bugle? It’s enough to get a guy going. You never thought about that, did you? About going somewhere else?”
She blushed, as if she had thought of moving, or changing other fundamentals. “It’s so strange. I mean, the way you feel toward people. Toward society. You’re so good at what you do, and I think you like people once you get to know them on an individual basis. But you hate them as a group. They disappoint me, too. And I love you. I haven’t figured that out, but I think I’ll be here forever, probably down at the hospital in the worst of it.”
Beautiful as ever, she waited, inanimate as a fence post — a lovely fence post, giving and generous, holding up the fence and providing a perch where the little birds could sing. But her landscape hardly attracted a waterman who knew the score.
Lest a compassionate man grow cruel, he chose to see her lacking what he needed rather than lacking intelligence. He also lacked this and that. She valued society like a good person, though some she’d valued seemed less than a bargain. Her devaluation would take time to sort out. Maybe the hind side of separation would grant perspective and credit them both with an honest mistake, for which nobody should remain indebted.
After all, he’d devalued too — had died in every cell a million times but not the one time that would have stopped his pulse.
So with the humble practicality of he who was spared and isn’t quite sure why, he looked around her, out the door, to see that she had driven her car. And he asked, “Can you take me to the airport, please?”
Stuck again between bliss and a wince, she said yes, of course she could take him to the airport and would — she’d do anything for him and will understand whatever he chooses to do. She told him that overnight he’d become her hero. Oh, she’d admired him immensely already, and it wasn’t the usual nighttime heroics that stole her heart. It was his great skill with people, especially in the water. She could easily see why so many sought him again, whatever boat he was working, one year to the next, and why the women came to him, even if that job performance made her self-conscious of being, well, up to par with those others. But the big thing was, “You swam in from the aggregation buoy! Fuck, man! Darryl guys are good with their little boats and whatnot. I’ll give them that much, but that’s all I’ll give them. They always showing off, taking stupid chances. They don’t know what they’re doing. They want to take everything so you don’t get any. That’s why.” She meant not any fish or puhehe, not one little speck o’ notting, because it’s theirs, all theirs and only theirs. They’d see it die first, and you along with it.
“But you! You swam in from the aggregation buoy,” she said again. “You do know what you’re doing. You know what it means out there. You know, and ocean spirits recognize you. That’s aloha, man. Da kine. From the ocean. You know that, don’t you? Not too many people have that. But you do. And I can say I know you. I can be proud of you. Maybe I cannot be yours, but I can love you. And I do, just like the ocean loves you, and for the rest too.”
Mildly peeved, he practically wished she’d said for the rest too and whatnot, to underscore his assessment, which had its spot failures, but then a strong, young man must forge ahead on his best shot, mistakes notwithstanding.
He half smiled and said, “Maybe someday I’ll be able to see better what got me back in from way out there. I hope so. I’m afraid for now all I can think about is what got me out there.”
His stern visage softened with truce and the emotional ceasefire required to maintain the truce. He asked if she would come back to pick him up in about three hours. He would call her to confirm, once he got a flight.
She said she would plan to be back in three hours and in the meantime would just be, you know, hanging out, so he could call anytime. She hesitated as if for a look, a nod or a touch.
A kiss?
Then she left.
And so our story begins.
Cut! Cut! Cut!
But not quite yet, because no matter how perverse things might seem, another kink can always take its twist. From time to time, the world spins in bilious disarray, as if centrifugal force is hell-bent on churning order into mush. Life can stay challenging for anyone, till chaos finds a pattern. Soon strange events gain a feeling of timeliness, and perversity is easier to process. If not predictable, these unfortunate events at least unfold with diminishing shock value.
In the worst of it, a man of reason and pride won’t easily surrender his rationale. The rhetorical question, “Are you fucking kidding me?” was neither tactful for an international traveler nor did it show the aplomb and circumspection expected of a tourism professional. But the vulgarity rose naturally, an involuntary disgorgement of obscene reality in calamitous cavalcade; the internationally traveling tourism professional really had no choice but to blurt his sincere response.
The situation was simply, profoundly disappointing: An Israeli passport was not viable for entry to French Polynesia without a special visa — never mind that one’s US visa expired a few, shall we say, years ago.
This was not because the French were opposed to Israel or the Israelis; it was simply because, because that is part of the way it is, because. As the French government’s representative to Hawaii explained on the telephone with the Hawaiian Airlines service representative at the ticket counter of Kahului Airport, with Ravid Rockulz listening on speakerphone, “An Israeli cannot enter French Polynesia without the special visa.”
Why not?
“It is not possible!”
The obvious follow-up on how and where to obtain the special visa, never mind the expired US visa, was answered with equal brevity. “You may obtain this special entry visa to French Polynesia at some Israeli consulates, though you may obtain it most easily in Tel Aviv. If that is not good for you, you may obtain it almost as easily in Los Angeles. Or San Francisco, if you prefer. It won’t take you more than forty-five minutes.”
Not bad, only forty-five minutes in LA or San Francisco — even less in Tel Aviv.
The good news was that the flight to Papeete would not depart until tomorrow night anyway — “It’s the only flight, so you have time to get your visa.” Beyond that, the service representative of Hawaiian Airlines frankly had people waiting in line, people with flights reserved and paid, people more entitled to service than this...this rude...whatevah.
Customers demanding service can irritate a service rep in Paradise, who asked, “Whatchou want? You want LA? You want San Francisco? What?”
“Why did I get a reservation for tonight, if the flight is not till tomorrow night?”
“Show me your reservation.”
“I made it on the phone.”
“Next, please.”
“Wait a minute. How can I fly to San Francisco or LA and make it back in time for tomorrow’s flight?”
“I have no way of knowing that.” But the service rep did know the remaining option and was happy to share it: deportation back to Israel, which would be charged to the passenger in advance. If he didn’t have the fare, no problem, he could go to jail, which is not such a bad place if you’re destitute. Ravid did not respond, hoping to avoid the further development of this dialogue or a referral to an Immigration Naturalization specialist, who could surely expedite the resolution. Avoidance of INS at that point seemed hopeless with an expired US visa. Hopeless, unless the immigration guys knew that times had changed, that Ravid Rockulz was no longer an illegal alien but was in fact landed, a married man entitled to the pursuit of happiness, and all men are created equal and all like that.
The alien in question qualified for immediate removal from US soil despite his deep-grained affinity for Hawaii’s reefs, his service orientation, photographic skills, artistic approach to life and fish and all his lovable traits — which should qualify him for a ration of aloha, if you don’t mind. Ravid wasn’t sure if being married would make a difference on the visa issue, but he had his doubts. Where was the wife, anyway? Or the marriage certificate? And what was the purpose of this trip? And whereas the country of destination usually wants to ascertain that the visitor has a return ticket, in this case the country of departure wanted to ascertain that the ticket was strictly one way. Meanwhile, the INS guys knew full well the mockery made of their standards in recent years, with perfect strangers agreeing to marry illegals for ten grand, or even five, thumbing their noses at a dedicated bureaucracy striving to keep America free.
Besides that, playing the marriage card would likely trigger marital audits on the length and depth of the relationship leading to matrimony. Was this marriage a sleight of hand designed to squeeze an alien through a loophole? Or was this love?
Married in two weeks?
Well, Ravid’s marriage to Minna had been dwarfed by the monumental magnitude of their love. Ravid and Minna gave in to the contrivance that could keep people from feeling nervous about all the kinky sex they were having. But there was no rush to the altar. This marriage had definitely not occurred to make Ravid legal. No way. It was for love. Then things changed.