TroubleinParadise

by Cindy Jacks

  One mug of coffee and one toaster waffle later, Clarissa climbed into the Vanagon and headed to the Art Building. As she approached her studio through the courtyard, she noticed an envelope taped to the door. The note read—

  Clarissa, come see me when you get in. I’ve got some exciting news for you.

  —H.

  Her adviser, Hector Ross, didn’t often request to see her, but for him to consider the news exciting, it had to be something big. She dropped her backpack and headed down the corridor that led to the glass and ceramics courtyard. The door to Hector’s workspace hid in this darkened hallway. Easy to miss if you didn’t already know it was there. She knocked on the open door.

  “Clarissa, come on in. I see you got my note.” The older man looked at her over a pair of drugstore reading glasses perched atop a beaklike nose.

  “Yep. So, what’s up?”

  He set aside the figurine he was fiddling with and took off his glasses. Turning his swivel chair toward her, he crossed his spindly legs, making himself comfortable for what Clarissa hoped would be a brief conversation. In truth, the old man creeped her out a little. Balding, too thin, with the faint scent of whiskey on his breath, Hector seemed to cultivate others’ dislike of his company, and she tried to spend as little time with him as possible.

  Fingers steepled, he said, “I assume you’ve heard about the sculpture garden that’s to be installed in the new Honolulu Performing Arts Center.”

  “I have.”

  “I assume you’ve also heard that slots are invitation only, voted upon by the Center’s board of directors.”

  “Yep.” Sigh. Would he cut to the chase already?

  Instead of going on with his mysterious question-and-answer session, he handed her an envelope. “Open it.”

  She did as she was told and skimmed the contents of the letter within. Though eleven of the twelve slots had been awarded to local artists and UH faculty, the board had decided to open up the last slot for competition among a select few grad students. Her name was on the list—along with Sione’s and a ceramicist named Kim Nakamura.

  “Holy crap!”

  “Indeed,” Hector replied. “Congratulations. Your work, should you choose to submit one, must center around the theme of music. Preferably an interactive exhibit that makes some sort of sound.”

  God only knew what she’d come up with to fulfill those requirements, but she’d give it her best shot.

  He went on, “Should your piece be selected, you’ll be paid for materials—with a cap of a few thousand dollars—plus receive a fee of twenty grand for the work.”

  “Holy crap!”

  “Yes, dear, you keep saying that.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know what else to say.”

  “I take it you’re interested, then?”

  “Hell yeah I’m interested.”

  “Good. I thought you would be. Tanya and I will help you three come up with the best possible pieces. I’d like to see your first design by Friday and a scale model by the end of the month.”

  “No problem.”

  “Make us proud, eh?”

  She assured her adviser she would and scampered back to her studio to begin the design process. Musically themed, interactive, makes sound and aesthetically pleasing. Her instincts also told her it should reflect the unique flavor of Hawaii itself. How to say all that with one sculpture? Well, she had some time before Hector’s first deadline. Something would come to her. It always did.

  * * * * *

  Thursday night found Clarissa in a foul mood. She’d come up with nothing of any merit for the contest. Everything that came to mind seemed too pedestrian, too static, too uninspired. But the harder she pushed herself to be brilliant, the further her creative impulses receded.

  Screw it. She’d worried enough about the submission. If inspiration struck between now and tomorrow evening, great. If it didn’t, it just wasn’t meant to be. But how could she let an amazing opportunity like this just slip through her fingers? Shoulders tense and nerves frazzled, she decided to join Michelle and Sione at the Gardens for a drink.

  She found her friends at the usual table, a pitcher of beer half gone.

  “Get yourself a glass, girly. You’ve got some catching up to do,” Michelle told her.

  But instead of a mug of beer, Clarissa ordered a double bourbon. Making her way back to the patio table, she took down half the glass in one gulp.

  “Whoa,” Sione said. “You mean business tonight, sistah.”

  “Damn skippy.”

  “What’s wrong?” Michelle asked.

  “It’s that fucking Performing Arts Center contest. I got squat. Nada. Can’t come up with shit.” That her vocabulary had degraded told her the whiskey had already gone to work. She’d had little to eat so the liquor went straight to her head.

  “Oh boo hoo hoo. Cry me a river.” Michelle rolled her eyes. “At least you got an invitation.”

  “True dat,” Sione piped up.

  Clarissa leveled her gaze at him. “I bet you’ve got your idea all mapped out, don’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  She threw back the rest of the bourbon and waggled the glass at Sione. “Another please. Mahalo plenty.”

  “Okay, but only because you’re depressed. You want something else, Mich?”

  Michelle declined anything stronger than beer. When Sione returned, he brought not only Clarissa’s shot but also a double of tequila for himself. Burning through the forty bucks they had on them, the two proceeded to get, for lack of a better term, shitfaced.

  “You know when I said you had some catching up to do,” Mich said, “I was only kidding.”

  Clarissa giggled. “Now you’re the one who needs to catch up.”

  “Afraid not. I gotta get going. You two okay to leave here alone?”

  “We’re doing jus’ fine,” Sione slurred.

  “Very reassuring. Call me when you get home, girl.”

  Clarissa waved goodbye to her friend.

  “Ready for another?” Sione asked.

  Not foolish enough to try to keep up with the man, she shook her head. A dizzy spell clouded her vision. “Woo. I think I’ve had more than enough.”

  “You gonna blow chunks?”

  “Nope. But I need some fresh air.”

  He laughed. “We’re already outdoors.”

  “Shut up. I wanna go for a walk.”

  “You’re da boss.” Sione took her hand and helped her to her unsteady feet.

  Walking through the campus at night could be downright eerie. Tall trees lined the sidewalk, their giant roots buckling the pathway in some areas. Spooky or not, Clarissa’s favorite tree on the university grounds was a huge banyan that gradually expanded its empire with each passing year. Left untended, the imports from India could choke out all surrounding vegetation.

  She fell to her knees at the foot of the giant tree and spoke to it, “Are you going to eat the planet like in The Little Prince?”

  “Sistah, you lolo? Talkin’ to a tree? Besides that was a baobab tree in The Little Prince.”

  Flopping onto her back, she looked up to the foliage far overhead and the great tangled mass of aerial roots that dropped down from the branches. “That’s right. Oh my God. I love that you know that.”

  “Come on. Time to get you home before Mika kills both of us.” He extended a hand, but instead of helping her up, she pulled him off balance. Sione tumbled to the ground in a gale of laughter.

  “Isn’t it beautiful under here?” she asked.

  He scooted next to her. His exhalations grazed her cheek as he turned his face toward hers. “Yeah, it is.”

  Her good sense drowned in a sea of bourbon, she turned her head to face him and found they were almost nose to nose. Studying his angular bone structure, she noted what a gorgeous man he was. She could smell the musky liquor on his breath and clean scent of his aftershave. A dull ache formed between her thighs and tension twisted in the pit of her stomach. She
wanted him, God help her, she did. It was wrong in every way imaginable, but she did.

  Her heartbeat sped up, the same hammering rhythm echoed by her pussy. It clenched tight, sending a burst of pleasure through her.

  A chorus of “this is wrong” ricocheted around her brain, but she was unable to break the thrall. Fortunately, Sione turned away first, clearing his throat.

  Apropos of nothing, he said, “My mother died when I was eight years old.”

  The comment threw a wet blanket on the fire between her legs. She nodded. “I know. It broke my heart when Mika told me that.”

  “Yeah. He felt the loss too. My mom was close with his mom. Auntie Na’ilah had me over for dinner every night when Mom was sick and after she passed. Mika would help me with my homework. Mika’s always been smarter than me, even in third grade—”

  “That’s not true. You two are smart in different ways.”

  “Ha. You’re sweet, but it’s okay. I know he’s smarter. I’m cool with it.” He waved a hand as though to dismiss the digression. “So like a week after Mom’s funeral we had a book report due. The class read The Little Prince and we were supposed to write an essay about our favorite part, but I’d missed a lot of school. I missed most of the book. Thinking about it now, I should’ve just talked to the teacher, but you know, stuff like that doesn’t come to you when you’re little. I was seriously stressed about it.

  “I tried to read the book on my own. I tried, but I couldn’t. That night, Mika finds me crying on the lanai, asks me what’s wrong. I tell him and he was cool about it. He said he’d write my report for me since his was finished. But I didn’t want that. I was mad I’d missed reading the story with my friends at school, mad at my mother because her being sick made me miss the story. How fucked-up is that?”

  Clarissa touched his arm and electricity crackled against her fingertips. “You were a child. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “I guess I know that now. At the time it was really confusing, to be mad at Mom like that. So Mika takes the book from me, tells me to sit down and starts to read to me. I don’t mean like skipping through it or leaving out the big words, he read it to me word for word. But for the life of us, we couldn’t figure out what a baobab tree was.”

  Sione’s shoulders shook with silent chuckles. “We thought it was like a name like ‘Bay-o-Bob’. We went out into the backyard and started looking for the biggest tree we could find, which was Uncle Johnny’s prize mango tree. Tree looked huge to us back then. We used our pocketknives and carved ‘Bay-o-Bob’ into it. Auwe, Uncle Johnny beat us the next day, but it was worth it. For my essay, I wrote about the tree named ‘Bay-o-Bob’ as my favorite part. Mrs. Tanaka must’ve took pity on me because she wrote ‘excellent’ on my paper. Only time she ever wrote that on one of my assignments. Anyway, that’s why I know what the tree is in The Little Prince.”

  “What happened to Johnny’s mango tree?”

  “It got a fungus and died. He told us we wen’ kill the tree.”

  “Poor tree.”

  “Yeah,” Sione said, then fell quiet.

  They listened to the wind, letting the silence stretch out. She imagined surging forward, planting her lips to his and climbing on top of him. She could feel his stubble against her cheek, taste his tongue, smell his skin. What was wrong with her that she longed to betray her husband? But there it was—that throbbing, pulsing, tense arousal that claimed her every time she was near Sione.

  An exhaustion almost as profound as the attraction weighed on her too. It was this constant internal struggle—good versus bad, right versus wrong. It shouldn’t be a struggle, should it? Then again, what was the harm in one kiss?

  A jolt of clarity compelled her to sit up. She’d gone too far already. The bourbon had allowed her to take too many liberties. Dangerous thoughts could turn into reckless action faster than she could react to stop it and, worse, she might not want to stop.

  But you have to stop, she reminded herself.

  Unable to bear the tug-of-war any longer, Clarissa made a show of yawning and stretching. “Best get me home. I’m gonna have to take the bus again.”

  He lay still for a moment longer then pulled himself to his feet. “I’ll walk you, make sure you get on the bus all right.”

  “You don’t have to. I’m good. I can make it on my own.”

  To her surprise, Sione shrugged and said, “If you’re sure. I’m beat. I’m going to call it a night myself.”

  Confusion swirled in her head and chest, mixed with relief and disappointment in equal measure. Tired of conflicted feelings, Clarissa trudged to the bus stop. By quarter of eleven she’d made it home safe and sound.

  After a quick call to Michelle, she settled in on the couch to wait for Mika’s return.

  * * * * *

  She must have drifted off, but then the jangle of her husband’s keys at the front door created a spark. When she opened her eyes, she half expected to find herself lying under the banyan tree.

  Banyan trees and house keys.

  Crack!

  The strike of inspiration was palpable. She jumped up from the sofa.

  “You okay, baby?” he asked.

  “I’m better than okay. I got it. I got the idea.”

  Desperate to document the design before she lost it in her drunken haze, she dashed off for her sketchbook.

  * * * * *

  Hector sat back in his chair and studied Clarissa’s design. A rub of his stubbly chin, then a sigh.

  He hates it, Clarissa worried, preparing to be leveled. What did she expect? She’d thrown the project proposal together early this morning while battling a fierce hangover.

  He put down the papers and took off his glasses. “I like it. Nice idea.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I love it. The design, the title, the philosophy behind it. I’m impressed, Clarissa.”

  He probably wouldn’t be as impressed if he’d known how she’d come up with the idea, but who cared—a flash of brilliance was a flash of brilliance no matter the origin.

  She’d designed a six-foot banyan tree, the trunks, branches and leaves to be cast from bronze. The long, open-air roots that dropped from the branches would be made of strands of keys linked together by rings. The banyan, not indigenous to Hawaii, symbolized the various cultures that had come to the islands and put down roots. The keys worked in three ways―one, to evoke the idea of opening doors, two, giving the piece the function as a musical instrument since the strands could be strummed to make a sparkling, chime-like sound, and three, as a visual pun for the musical meaning of the word “key”. The title of the piece echoed this double entendre—In Key.

  First obstacle cleared, she faced the task of finding funds to bring her genius idea into reality. One worry at a time. Still, she couldn’t help but think that Mika wouldn’t be happy about such a large withdrawal from their savings. The condo-and-baby fund. The sacred cow. But somehow she’d have to convince him.

  This could be her big break, not unlike when he’d taken a pay cut to migrate from a line chef position at a mid-quality chain restaurant to that of prep cook at the resort. In the long run, the swanky hotel offered him more training and a more aggressive platform on which to make his mark.

  Tough competition marked the battle for culinary supremacy in the islands. His innovations were more likely to be noticed in a gourmet kitchen than a place that defrosted much of its menu. This was her haute cuisine. He’d have to understand.

  Chapter Five

  Mika’s entire clan had descended on Kailua Beach. There were more aunties, uncles, cousins, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents than Clarissa could shake a stick at.

  The picnic tables overflowed with salads, grilled fish, sashimi, sliced fruit and of course the star of the show, the kalua pig. Mika had traded shifts with a coworker to attend the gathering. Clarissa hadn’t yet worked up the courage to broach the topic of her sculpture budget with him, but watching him clown around with his
brothers and sisters, a beer in one hand, barbecue chicken leg in the other, she thought he looked more relaxed than she’d seen him in ages.

  “He one good-looking boy, isn’t he?” Mika’s mother nudged her, handing off a dish of macaroni salad.

  “That he is, Momma Na’ilah. You make beautiful babies.” Clarissa made room for the umpteenth salad.

  “When you two going to make some beautiful babies?” Tutu Lelani, Mika’s grandmother, arched an eyebrow.

  “Soon.”

  “You keep sayin’. You two having trouble…you know?”

  Both women looked at Clarissa expectantly as if ready to dole out sex advice. Her throat constricted to the point of choking her, but Clarissa forced a smile on her face. “No, no trouble with that. Thanks.”

  “’Course not.” Na’ilah went back to arranging the food. “I bet he like his father. Sex, sex, sex all the time. Why you think I have so many kids?”

  The women dissolved into giggles.

  This wasn’t happening. Clarissa was not going to discuss her love life with her in-laws, much less listen to stories about theirs.

  Clearing her throat, she asked, “Where’s Sione?”

  At this Na’ilah’s face pinched into a scowl. “Dat boy. He stood up my hair stylist’s sister’s daughter last night. I worked for weeks to set up that date. I don’t even want to talk about it. He knows better than to show up today.”

  “Oh.” Clarissa nodded, simultaneously relieved and disappointed that Sione would not be making an appearance.

  * * * * *

  The rest of the day passed in a blur of food, music and “talking story”—the tradition of connecting with the family, sharing one’s triumphs and tribulations, listening to tales one had heard a thousand times, but which bore repeating to keep the legends alive. It was one of the many things Clarissa loved about Mika’s family. No one buried their nose in their iPad or smartphone. They all gathered, laughing or even arguing, but they did it as a family. Together.

  Mika and Clarissa stole a moment to themselves, watching the sun move lower in the perfectly blue sky.