by Carter Blake
“No, the trip is fucking paid for. But still...”
“Still what?” Andrew is getting annoyed, which I appreciate right now. We’re on the same fucking wavelength, that much is certain. “It’s still Hawaii, is what it is. Why wouldn’t you go?”
I can’t argue with that.
Ethan
There’s a small wooden sign hanging on a post leading to the fenced-off area. The white hand-painted letters read Sunset Beach Spot.
Holy shit, I couldn’t think of a lamer fucking name if I tried. This is supposed to be part of a luxury resort.
There’s a small bar on the sand with tiki décor, a couple uncomfortable-looking, retro space-age stools.
The only person here right now is the bartender, wearing a suit vest and pants on the beach, checking his inventory of plastic cups.
I walk to the bar, looking to see if there are any out-of-focus figures in the distance making their way towards this part of the beach.
Closer to the bar I see there’s a hot buffet set up under a canopy. It looks like expensive catering, like at a wedding or something. It looks awful.
“What can I do you for?” the bartender offers as soon as I’m close enough.
“What’s with that buffet?”
“It’s twenty-five dollars a plate.”
This place isn’t exactly all-inclusive. I tell the barkeep to charge it to my room number, and I pack a full plate from the fancy buffet. The china, the silverware, the food is all top notch. I’m pigging out on my plate at the bar when I see a figure approaching Sunset Beach.
A really fucking alluring figure.
I make out more details as she gets nearer: a toned physique with extra oomph distributed in all the right places, a wonderfully exotic look all-around, and a cerise-colored bikini leaving just enough to the imagination.
I feel a twinge of excitement when I notice she’s walking directly to the bar. Fortunately, I don’t give a shit about the half-eaten plate of ahi poke and chicken long rice in front of me.
The woman looks at me and my plate with cool, passing interest when she gets close enough. Her face is youthful, but she exudes confidence beyond her years.
I think about the perfect interplay between her skin tone and her slightly darker freckles as I finally put down my fork.
The woman sits at the other end of the bar, which means there’s one empty stool between us.
“Captain’s Demise,” she demands to the bartender. Probably a drink, but I’m not going to fucking open by asking her about that.
“You try the buffet?”
I point to the table with my fork, owning my gluttony.
“Many times,” she softly fires back, barely looking in my direction. But there’s still a friendly smile in her voice.
“What accent is that, may I ask?”
“I’m from Barbados, originally.” The smile in her voice is slowly making its way to her lips.
“You’ve come a long way.”
“Not really. I live in Portland. Pretty much everyone I know comes here for vacation.”
“You mean Portland, Oregon, I hope?”
She laughs. I think she’s getting me, whatever I am right now.
“Yes, of course. It’s a short flight, which is good since I have a five-year-old.”
I nod simply. “So, it’s just you and your kid?”
The bartender sets down a hurricane glass, filled with a crimson cocktail, garnished with lemon zest.
“Yeah, she’s with a resort babysitter. Just for an hour. That’s all I need.”
“I’m Ethan, by the way. Mind if I join you for one of those drinks?”
The woman in the cerise bikini shrugs while sipping through her straw.
“Dominique. Take a seat.”
I have a cocktail with Dominique, then let her get back to her kid.
I was supposed to come here to make sweet love in a hot tub, on the beach, in a luxury resort suite, and anywhere else I could find with Audra.
I walk back to my room, shower, make a couple vodka tonics from the minibar. Might as well max out at least one credit card while I’m here.
I change from my bathing suit to a casual tweed blazer and a light blue oxford shirt with formal chinos and brown derby shoes. It’s not the best-constructed outfit, and after another drink, I’m getting too sozzled for solid fashion choices, but I still look overdressed for the bizarre little resort nightclub where I’m headed so I lose the blazer and roll my sleeves up.
The club is spacious, but there’s little going on there from what I’ve seen.
It’s still damn early in the evening when I walk through the club’s double steel door entrance.
The place is deserted at this hour, as I expected. This is what I do now, I guess, haunting random spots at weird hours. Just a sad fucking ghost in Hawaii.
While checking out the haphazard collection of vending machines and arcade games along the wall, I spot one person climbing the concrete stairs to the second story at the edge of my vision. Probably someone who works here.
Bored out of my fucking mind, I follow whoever it is, although they’re long gone from the stairs by now. I power up to the well-lit second story, sort of a chill-out area, with massage chairs, a snack bar and fucking pool tables for some fucking reason.
The last few hours of booze are catching up, but I feel loose enough to shoot a pretty good game of eight-ball if I wanted. And hey, it looks like somebody’s playing already.
She’s standing by one of the tables. She’s blonde, wearing her hair up, a retro style that suits her features...holy shit, I’ve seen this woman. Wearing a tiger-print suit on the beach yesterday.
Why didn’t I try to talk to her then?
She looks fucking amazing, wearing a low-cut black top with a tiger-print trim. I’m suddenly really into this motif.
She watches me walk towards her. Her expression looks honest and open with a dose of sassiness. Her face is stunning, and it’s even clearer now than it was at the beach that her body is out of this fucking world.
“Hey, where’s your cue?”
I point to a spot between her right side and the table. I look up and see her emerald eyes, and I feel a familiar stir that suggests the type of intense horniness that I thought might have died with my marriage. Thank fucking god. All is well.
“You think I’m actually playing?”
Her voice is strident, high-pitched, with a subtle smokiness. Hearing it for the first time is turning that initial twitch into something more. Something bigger. Way bigger.
“You’re not?”
She giggles with derisiveness, but it sounds like divine fucking music to my ears.
“I thought you were serious!”
“I am. Why aren’t you playing?”
She shakes her head, rolls her eyes slightly.
“Nobody uses these tables. I don’t even think you can. I’m just checking out the dance floor, trying to see what’s going on there now.”
I know there’s a glass wall twenty feet behind me, and that the section of the nightclub which actually fucking resembles a nightclub is beyond that.
There’s a dance floor, and there’s already a DJ spinning for what’s probably an empty room.
“What’s going on there?”
“Nothing yet.”
I don’t know what she’s looking for, or what would interest her, but right now I’d fucking love to know how to be part of it.
“If you want, we could get a drink while we’re waiting for something to happen. On me, of course.”
“No,” she counters while staring past me, “that’s okay. I’m good.”
I’ll give her this: I’m suddenly not thinking about Audra or any of the other bullshit that’s been permeating my brain day and night.
Without a word, without even learning her name, I leave her by the pool table and go to check out the empty dance floor.
There’s no one dancing yet, but there are two women in what look like unco
mfortably tight dresses sitting at the bar with fluorescent-colored drinks. The have matching hairstyles, sort of chin-length bobs. They’re definitely regulars.
I walk over to the woman closest to me and take the empty seat next to her.
She’s grinning before she looks at me. She knew I was coming. Her hair is bright red. She’s what most men would think of as scorching hot.
“Haven’t seen you around here,” she chirps.
“It happens.”
“Not to me, not until now.”
“It’s your lucky day, I guess.”
The red-head throws her head back in a cheesy laugh.
“Is it? I’d like to know now if it is.”
Her friend, raven-haired with chestnut streaks, turns to me abruptly.
“Hi! I’m Collette, and this is Lita, who you decided to talk to instead of me for some reason.”
Lita keeps grinning. A few minutes ago, I would have been happy to meet either one of these ladies and start my ritual of forgetting about why I’m supposed to be here.
And that’s a fucking weird thought: it’s like I can forget about Audra, but not some stranger whose name I don’t even know.
No, it’s still Audra. Has to be. I’m just processing everything in some fucked up way, most likely.
Lita and Collette order me a drink with taurine and milk thistle extract or whatever the fuck. I don’t fucking care as long as it still has plenty of alcohol.
As the dance floor populates, I have a couple more drinks with my new friends.
They are friends. We’re laughing, talking nonsense while getting drunk, and I’m totally not thinking about dating—or hot, crazy sex.
Some strange woman by a defunct pool table hasn’t just changed my life.
Nope, it’s still just Audra making me crazy. It must be.
But fuck, there she is! Not Audra, but the pool table girl, getting a drink at the other end of the bar.
“Hope to see you around.”
I leave my new friends with that as I launch myself towards the mystery woman. I have a new goal to learn her name as I try to keep my walk over to her from becoming a run.
I’m still out of breath when I reach her.
“I can still pay for that. I want to. I told you I would.”
The mystery girl sighs.
“Fine. Fuckin’…whatever. Just put it on his tab.”
She makes the demand to no one in particular.
“You’re used to people doing what you say. Am I correct?” I ask with a smirk.
“Yeah, I guess. What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.” I just think you’re fucking amazing, and I know it sounds insane coming from a guy like me—or anyone—but you’re the sexiest damn woman I’ve ever seen. “I just like it.”
The mystery woman nods slightly. “You like it, huh?”
“I think it’s neat.”
“Neat. Okay.” The mystery woman grins with a little more enthusiasm.
“How about swell?”
“A little better.”
She’s actually looking at me, listening.
Do I ask her to get a drink with me again? Usually this shit comes naturally. I mean really. Pre-Audra I was the quintessential ladies man. Yeah, I know how that sounds. I don’t give a fuck. What I’m more concerned with is what the fuck is wrong with me today?
Do I start by asking her name?
“Do you want to go out on a date with me?”
Holy fucking shit, did I really just say that? Real smooth, Ethan.
“Yeah, sure.”
Huh. Maybe this shit does still come naturally.
“Right now, I mean?”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“What’s your name?”
The mystery woman sits down on her stool at last, and the sassiness in her eyes deflates just a tiny bit.
“You’re paying, right?”
We end up getting bottle service. I’m happy to shell out hundreds for a bottle of mediocre vodka so we can sit at a secluded table, laugh hysterically and devolve into conversational nonsense.
We reach a kind of drunken telepathy as we both know it’s time to hit the dance floor and move in some weird, hilarious new ways.
“This one is called the Lava Lamp,” she screams at the ceiling as her limbs flow wildly.
“Oh, yeah? Well this is the Electric Eel!” I’m trying to move like a fucking sea creature, doing my best to keep up with the rhythm, fucking drunk off my ass by now.
We somehow manage to communicate to each other that we need to go out on the beach. And take our clothes off.
And make out on the sand, the white noise of waves crashing behind us.
It seems like a really fucking good idea to me. Nothing bad could possibly come of this, right?
Ethan
About ten years ago, I invested in something called a zen alarm clock. It’s supposed to wake you up gradually over the course of a few minutes with soft light and sound.
It turned out to be a real fucking waste of money. I’d wake up when the clanging bells reached a crescendo after ten minutes of tolling softly. It wasn’t pleasant, and the little light show didn’t do shit, either.
This sound, though, the one I’m slowly waking up to now? This is pleasant. What kind of bird is that? Not a seagull, although I hear rolling ocean waves underneath the melody of a few different birds now.
I start to open my eyes and…fuck, it’s bright in here.
Wait, where am I?
It dawns on me that I’m not just hearing the ocean, I’m also smelling it. When my eyes adjust to the light, I can see I’m outdoors.
Last night, I was either sleepwalking, drunk or—most likely—both. I don’t remember a thing.
That’s sand under me, isn’t it?
I literally slept on fucking sand, and it feels like it got fucking everywhere. What the fuck? Actually, no, I just happen to be naked. Fucking fantastic. This is getting stranger and stranger.
“Madeline.” I utter the word out of nowhere. Why am I saying that name?
That name. Who the fuck is Madeline?
Then it hits me.
That’s her name. She finally told me after things started to get really choppy.
I don’t even know what happened to my fucking clothes.
I sit up and see nothing but a few feet of sand leading into the Pacific. Nope, no clothes.
I try to recall the details of how I got into this current situation.
Okay, yeah, that’s right―I’m in Hawaii, and I was bowled over by someone named Madeline. What does her face look like? I can almost see it in the wispy cirrus clouds above the ocean.
I could sit here all day staring at the horizon, slowly recalling details, but I’m fucking naked, I don’t even have a fucking towel, the sand is burning my ass and I have no idea who’s about to show up…wherever I am, exactly.
As nice as the ocean breezes feels and the sea air smells, I also have a bout of rapidly growing nausea that may become a problem real fucking soon.
I push myself up off the sand. Easy, now.
I’m pretty good adjusting to most situations, but naked on an island beach after an evening stolen by rum-flavored amnesia is a new one.
Fuck, there was a lot of rum. I remember that much. Sugary cocktails, sugary lips meeting mine in hungry, absolutely famished fucking greed.
I turn away from the ocean and see that I’m lucky enough that the beach is abandoned apart from a few aging palm trees. There’s a squat, old-looking wooden building a couple hundred feet away. I don’t have any choice but to go face the music there, even if it means an arrest for indecent exposure.
I spot a few other, larger buildings further in the distance. I’m enjoying walking on the sand, and the feel of the warm breeziness on every inch of my skin.
If I’ve got no choice but to continue in this state, I might as well enjoy it. I’m not looking forward to seeing another person.
Except maybe Madeline.
What was her deal again?
I’m still at the resort. I recognize the main building, where I’m staying, as it draws closer. I pass the little wood structure.
Oh, shit.
There’s that fucking sensation. You know the one. Where you remember all the horrible shit that’s been happening a bit more clearly.
That feeling of remembering something after waking up, something you’d prefer to forget. It could go one of two ways.
The way I prefer is the realization that it was all some fucked-up dream, and you’re free to let it fade into nothingness. I think most people are with me on that preference.
The other way it could go is remembering that, yes, it really did fucking happen, and now that you’re awake, your blissful ignorance is over.
Audra’s impromptu post-wedding transformation is most definitely a nightmare, but of the shitty waking variety.
I don’t think Madeline was a dream, either. It sort of feels like one, though.
But not a nightmare this time. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I think.
Fuck.
After the cocktails, the making out by the ocean with fucking fiery abandon, there was something else.
Not the hot, crazy, making sweet love on the beach kind of something else. Even after a day and night of drinking, I would sure as shit remember that kind of something else.
This was more like the letting-myself-drift-off-in-the-sand-despite-the-certainty-of-hot-crazy-fucking kind of something else.
Fuck.
Madeline must’ve taken my clothing as revenge for…what? Fucking passing out on her? Jesus Christ. But it’s the only fucking explanation.
Missing out on what could have been the best possible experience this pseudo-honeymoon had to offer is bad enough, but losing a half-decent clubbing outfit is making me reconsider this whole dumb trip.
Maybe Madeline is still around. The nausea’s still coming in waves, and I have a headache brewing, but I’m still in good enough condition for making up for lost time with Madeline—if she’s into that idea.
If she’s still around.
If she really fucking exists.
I mean, someone took my fucking clothes last night. I’d rather it be her than anyone else in Hawaii.
I’m getting pretty damn close to the hotel now. I haven’t seen another soul yet, but I know it’s a goddamn fucking inevitability that I will.