by Piper Lennox
“This is pretty cool, I’ve got to admit.” She practices shifting to one foot and moving the Segway in a circle. “Why don’t these have the Paradise Port logo on them, though? Like the shuttles?”
“They belong to Kona Seg. Different company altogether. Like I said, this is a trial run—so if the company likes partnering with us, it’ll become a permanent affiliate.”
“Didn’t the shuttles used to belong to an affiliate?” She pauses until I’ve caught up to her. We start on a loop around the cabana-style house at the back of the property. It’s the only piece of our old hotel that still exists.
“Yeah. Kona Tours.”
Her eyes stay on me, even when she almost plows into the hut’s window. “What happened to them?”
“Merger.”
Tanya catches up to me and stops. I do, too.
“So you guys bought them out.”
I run my tongue along my molars and debate if the look on her face is really as dubious as it seems, or if I’m just imagining things. “In layman’s terms, sure. Why?”
“No reason.” She leans forward, once again overdoing it, and falls off the back when she overcorrects. This time, neither of us laugh.
“If you have something to say, just say it.” I take off my helmet and lean the Segway against the hut. “Don’t do this sly, circuitous shit. You know I hate it.”
“I was just asking a question, damn.” She follows suit and sets to work smoothing out her helmet hair. “Why do you do that, always picking fights?”
In actuality, we pick fights with one another about fifty percent each. All the same, I hold up my palms.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. Work’s just been getting to me.” I push back my hair and let my hand fall on my Segway handle. “This was not an easy deal to land, I’ll tell you that much.”
“That’s what I don’t understand—why did you guys have to land the affiliate at all? I remember you talking about Kona Seg when I was here in December.”
We walk to the ditch that will eventually become the lazy river and sit, swinging our legs over the edge. “We wanted to add Segway tours to the guest packages. Didn’t I show you the pitch?”
“Yes, many times.” She rolls her eyes. “What I mean is, why didn’t Paradise Port just buy Segways and set up their own in-house version? It seems so much easier.”
I run my hand over my jaw, scratching my beard before I answer. “Paradise Port isn’t exactly welcome, when they come into places like Kona. Anywhere with a high percentage of local businesses, actually. So instead of competing, we’ve been running this affiliate program to boost the local businesses and...integrate Port with the rest of Kona, so to speak.”
“Ah. Showing the locals you’re one of them.”
“I am a local.”
“This isn’t,” she counters, nodding behind us to the resort.
Once again, her tone makes me guarded. “Why are you ragging on it? You love Paradise Port.”
Tanya looks down into the ditch, tapping her heels against the side. Everything’s been untouched for months, so grass is starting to regrow down the dirt’s slashed edge. Her sandals kick a spot of new blades free; they flutter down like confetti into the hole.
“There’s a rumor,” she says finally, “that the affiliate program is just a front. That you guys are actually forcing all those companies out of business.”
I stare at her feet, still swinging too casually for the spear that’s just left her mouth. “What? Where did you hear that?”
“Elevator.”
“Well, it’s not true.”
She reels back a little when I snap. “You are touchy today.”
“Don’t do that thing where you turn it around.” I stand and brush the grass off my pants. “That’s such a huge accusation to throw on me.”
“I didn’t accuse. I asked.” She follows me to the Segways. “If it’s not true, why are you getting so angry?”
“Even just asking is inappropriate. You’re questioning my integrity.” I get back on, leaving my helmet on the bars this time, and start up the hill to the road. It takes her a minute, but she catches up. “I’m local, this business started local, and most of our affiliates are people I’ve known since I was born.” I make it a point to look her in the eye, so she knows I’m not even close to kidding. “I would never muscle someone out of their business.”
She’s quiet, so it seems like the discussion is over.
But I know Tanya. This is definitely not over.
“So, Kona Tours…what happened there?”
I stop when we’re at the road and bob back and forth for balance. She still doesn’t have the hang of hers, so she braces one foot behind her. Waits.
“We made them an offer after they mentioned wanting to sell.”
“Just the one offer?”
“Well, and the counter-offer in negotiation, but yeah—just one.”
“So Paradise Port,” she drawls, sliding her hands to that dip in her waist where my hands were just braced, “never, say, made phone calls to them, sent floods of emails, removed the affiliate logo from their signage so Tours would have no choice but to sell—”
“I would never,” I say again, a bomb resounding inside my chest, “muscle someone out of their business.” On cue, there’s the pain in my stomach, ricocheting from my navel into my ribcage, joining the anger for one hell of a burn. I don’t want to hold my stomach—to show even one ounce of weakness in front of her, after she’s tossed down that kind of glove—but the pain gets the better of me.
Her hands skim down to her sides. “You okay?”
“No, I’m not fucking okay.” I take the Segway from her and coast both to the docking station, just off the front entrance at the corner of the building. I can hear her shoes on the asphalt behind me, but I’m still surprised when I turn and find her there.
Normally, this would be the exact moment I’d kiss her.
Every trip, it happens just like this: we argue and storm around, until she gets right in my path and I, without fail, close the distance. Like two fires, finally merging into one giant blaze. I’ve heard couples with passion have great sex and even better fights.
Too bad we’re not a couple.
We never were. But for a few days a year, we pretended. That’s why she allowed the cute gestures, the dates; why I allowed the cuddling after sex and the little notes she’d leave in my car or office, pieces to find long after she was gone.
Now? We can’t even pretend.
“You’re giving me that look like you want to kiss me.” She almost smiles, but her eyes shift between mine with such slowness, so much sadness, she can’t.
“What I want,” I tell her, putting a wide gap between us, “is some antacids. I’ve got an ulcer. Thanks for making it worse.”
She doesn’t buy it. I should have known she wouldn’t. Tanya sees through me like cellophane.
When she pivots, chips of asphalt from the road grinding under her heel, I close my eyes. God help me, I almost tell her to wait.
Screw it—let her go.
“Okay,” I call after her, my laugh blackened with sarcasm, “walk away, that’s it. You want to accuse me of being some heartless, unethical asshole who steps on people to get my way, when you’re obviously just marrying that guy for money? Fine. Not like I’ll miss my invitation to that wedding.”
Tanya freezes, her hand on the beach bag she hid near a shrub. Even the back of her head tells me I just said exactly the wrong thing.
She turns. In her free hand is a roll of antacids.
“Oh.” I scratch my head. “Tan, I’m—”
“Here. Dick.” Her throw goes wide. Halfheartedly, I try to catch them, but they hit the payment and scatter like pennies.
Guess we’re even.
Tanya
I should have known he’d follow me. He always does.
“Wait.” He’s panting when he catches me in the lobby, holding his stomach again. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m a li
ttle worried about him.
“Have you been to a doctor for that?”
“I’ll be fine.” Here comes that sideways smile, the one thing in this world that can undo the lock I’ve set around myself. “I may or may not have picked up some of those antacids off the ground before coming after you. Five-second rule.”
It’s almost shameful, how little it takes for him to win me over again.
“In all seriousness,” he adds, “I do need your help with this test run. We’re opening the trial station for Platinum Package guests tomorrow, and I need a tourist’s perspective on the tour route.” He takes my hand. We’re all the way back at the Segways when it registers with him. He drops my hand like a dead rat.
“Sorry.” The redness of his ears almost matches my bathing suit, the same one I wore the day we met. His favorite.
“It’s okay.” I move a piece of hair from my mouth when the wind billows past, a warm but strong breeze that rattles our helmets, still hanging on the station. “Force of habit.”
“Exactly.” He bows from the waist, sweeping his arms to the Segways. “After you.”
When you get right down to it, I am marrying Oscar for money.
There’s more to it than that; I know there is. A shrink would have a field day inside my head, if I was brave enough to let one poke around. I’m honestly just afraid of what they’d find—all those compacted darknesses I pack away so tightly, the smallest rattle will set them off. Imagine those spring-loaded snakes in prank cans, and that’s basically the extent of my coping abilities.
I want stability. I’m not naïve—any Psych 101 student could look at my childhood and trace each filament to a scar on my life now. Absent father? Problems trusting men. Mother with undying, blind faith in men who treated her like shit? A fierce determination to turn into literally anyone but her.
When John told me I was fired, I was twelve years old again, standing barefoot in my kitchen while a girl from school I didn’t know yet, but did know was very popular, sneered at me.
“You don’t have anything to drink? No snacks?”
The shame that coursed through me felt like an illness. And the way she was looking around my kitchen at the empty cupboards, wincing into herself like she could catch poorness, didn’t help.
“We have tap water,” I offered lamely. “Or I can make lemonade.”
The girl looked around again, then eyed the time on our oven. Her sister had dropped her off an hour ago; she still had another hour to go. “I guess that’s okay.”
I got the lemon juice from the fridge, taking care not to open the door too widely so she wouldn’t see that the shelves held nothing but moldy deli meat and a single black banana. When I climbed onto the counter for the sugar, she asked where my mom was.
“Work.” It was a new job, cleaning other units in the complex, and wouldn’t last long. I can’t remember anymore why she left it—whether she was fired or quit—but I do remember, with aching vividness, how angry I was when she did.
“My mom works, too.” The girl dug through the dish rack and handed me a spoon, then watched carefully as I scooped sugar into the bottom of each glass. While I poured on the lemon juice, watching it melt the sugar like syrup over snow cones, she added, “My dad got laid off last month. But he got severance pay.”
“What’s that?”
“Money you get when they fire you.” She hoisted herself onto the counter and sat. “What’s your dad do?”
My hands gripped the glasses so hard, I was sure they’d break. “He’s a truck driver.”
I expected her to give me the diseased look again, but she raised her eyebrows, instead. “My uncle’s a truck driver. He makes a lot of money.” She looked around again. “Does your dad?”
“Mm-hmm.” It amazed me, how easily this lie germinated in my throat. “But we don’t spend much. We’re saving to build a really nice house.” This, at least, had an iota of truth to it: my mother often told me that, someday, we’d have a big, brand-new house, built just for us. I was still young enough to believe that her word alone could make anything happen.
The girl seemed impressed—until I turned the faucet knob and the pipes rattled. I was already pulling the glass away, knowing what was coming, before the brown water splattered out and flecked us both.
“Gross!” she shouted, flinging her arms around. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.” I put on my best shocked face, grimace and all, as I shut off the water. “Ew!”
It was rust, which I knew. The air smelled like dried blood as I dumped the ruined sugar dregs down the drain. Once again, I felt shame inserting itself into every cell of my body.
When I got fired, that memory rushed back, with about a million similar instances: each shoe worn through its sole, all the times I flipped light switches that did nothing, every night without dinner when I’d hug my knees to my chest, a collapsing star in the darkness.
And when Oscar proposed, the first thought in my head was, “At least now I’ll never be poor again.” Really, it was that simple of a thought, that transparent: no matter what happened with whatever job I got next, or after that, I wouldn’t fall all the way to the bottom, ever again.
“Well, this is what your mom did. Got with guys she didn’t love, so they’d be her safety net.” I hated admitting to myself that Luka, as he often was, had been right. This wasn’t the way to get stability.
What I needed to do was the one thing my mother never did: get a good job, a career, and keep it. Grow it.
The plan started this morning, a single thread quickly becoming a tapestry, when I heard two guys talking outside the elevator bank. My sunglasses hid my stare as I honed it on them.
“It’s all bullshit.” The guy didn’t look like a guest, or an employee. I noticed a notebook in his hands. “They’re not going to stop until they’ve bullied everyone out of business in a twenty-mile radius.”
“Probably more than that,” his friend sneered. It was then that I noticed a press pass in his hand, dangling from a beaded lanyard. “And it’s not just here, it’s all the Paradise Ports doing it. They’ve been doing it for years without anyone saying shit, so now they’re not even trying to hide it. It’s pathetic.”
It was just a volley of whispers, but they set into me like a fishhook. I thought of every mention Luka had ever made of Kona Tours and the affiliate program. If there was any truth in this, he had to know something about it. I just had to get him to admit it.
Granted, the rumor wasn’t new. It had been running around in different skins ever since the 1980s, and was now a joke of sorts. I still remember a sitcom I watched after school that parodied the franchise with a thinly veiled mention of “Beachside Bay,” which threatened the main character’s dad’s souvenir stand.
“Kona Tours was just the beginning. Watch.” The elevator opened, and the guys stalked off through the lobby. I could still see that press pass, spinning in the light.
“Yikes.” Oscar watched them with me. “You think it’s true?”
“Huh?” I’d barely been listening. I was already imagining the headline. The look on John’s face when I came back and threw the biggest story our paper had ever seen on his desk.
Actually, fuck our paper. Fuck John. And his mango vape juice.
If I could get this story, I could sell it to any publication I wanted. Leverage my way into a brand-new job, something high-paying and respectable. Then I’d shoot a nice long email to a certain former boss, just to let him know I had far more connections in this game than he did.
When we were on the beach, I checked my fantasy. The story—if there was one here at all—likely wouldn’t set newsstands ablaze. But it could make things a hell of a lot easier for me. I’d still land a good job, with a paycheck to match.
“Can I ask...what was the rumor you heard?” Luka asks now. It takes considerable effort to put my focus on him, but once I do, I catch his arms flexing on the Segway bar and can’t look away.
“Just that P
aradise Port is slowly but surely becoming a monopoly.” I angle my feet and nudge his tires with mine as we wind down the back road towards his parents’ house. “The usual.”
“That’s it? You know that rumor’s been going around forever.”
“Yeah. Just never heard it directly, I guess.”
“It wasn’t directly. That’s the problem with rumors.” He checks the battery percentage on his screen, then mine, before we start up a hill. “I’m the owner. I think I know what’s going on in my own business.”
“You own the one location. What about the franchise?” I take a breath to reset my tone, because I’ve slipped into my interview voice. Specifically, the quasi-bitch one reserved for subjects being insolent. “You can’t possibly know what they’re up to, all the time.”
“I really want to stop talking about this. And no,” he says loudly, sensing my urge to protest, “it’s not because I have anything to hide. Like I said, that’s an old rumor that surfaces every so often.”
Little bubbles of guilt prickle my skin. But what do I have to feel guilty about, here? Is it a crime to want to jumpstart my career, get some true independence? As a journalist—even a brand-new, freshly-fired one—isn’t it my job to try and uncover truths?
“So how far does the Segway tour go?” As carefully as I can without accidentally shifting the machine into hyperdrive or flying down a ditch, I turn my head. The palm trees that line the road jut into the sky and bow towards each other in the soil. I can’t even see the resort anymore.
It occurs to me that we’re almost to his parents’ house. I recognize a moss-caked boulder embedded into the hill beside us from the last time he took me here. The only time, actually. I’ve never seen the inside.
“I don’t know yet. I’m thinking it should stay close, for liability reasons. But I also don’t want it to look like a kiddie ride. I want people to see stuff they can’t see on a normal walk.”
“What about the art district? Or the shops?”
“We’d have to take people on the main road, if we did that. The last thing I need is someone getting hit by a car.”
“Then go off-road, in the other direction.” He glances at me. “I mean, these handled really well on the grass behind the resort. You could make an asphalt path down to that boardwalk thing on the opposite side of the hill, then use that back road to access some of the really good views. Not much traffic, either.”