03 - Three Odd Balls

by Cindy Blackburn

  I told myself that a crowded corner, at a crowded gate, at a crowded airport during the holiday travel rush probably isn’t the best place to meet anyone, stepped over my carry-on, and introduced him to my mother. At least we had found Tessie a seat, and at least Chris seemed genuinely pleased to meet her.

  Indeed, there was that Wilsonesque grin. Chris pumped Mother’s hand with far more enthusiasm than he had mine. “Dad’s told me all about you, Miss Tessie. Are we gonna have fun or what?”

  “Or what!” she squealed in reply, and Chris asked if she had ever surfed.

  Of course the answer was no, but ever-ready to give me heart palpitations, she professed a burning desire to learn.

  “I’ll teach you!” he said, and with that he kicked over his carry-on and hopped on.

  While Chris pretended to ride imaginary waves, and while my mother and Wilson asked far too many questions as to how one keeps one’s balance and so forth, I called Candy. Chris had launched into a detailed explanation of things called point breaks versus beach breaks when she answered.

  “Have they killed each other yet,” I asked.

  “Umm, not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They could be so cute together if they tried,” Candy said, not exactly clarifying things. “You know, Jessie? With Snowflake all white, and Wally all black, and Bernice all mottled-like.”

  I interpreted the report. “So they’re not playing together, but they aren’t fighting either. Is that it?

  “They’re doing both, actually.”

  “Candy!” I said, and a few people around me jumped. “Please tell me everyone’s getting along.”

  “Okay, okay.” She tried to calm me down. “Puddles and Wally really like each other, okay? They’re chasing each other all over the place.”

  Puddles, still in the throes of puppyhood, is Candy’s Poppe’s poodle. If Adelé Nightingale possessed half of that dog’s energy, she could write a book a day.

  “Your condo is great for chasing games,” Candy was saying. “Lots of open space, no extra walls. It’s almost as good as Round Robin Park.”

  As if verifying Candy’s assessment, I heard Puddles bark in the background. “What about Snowflake and Bernice?” I asked.

  “They’re the ones kind of fighting.”

  “You mean, they’re actually swatting at each other?” I looked to Wilson for support, but he was still paying rapt attention to his son’s surfing advice. “Has anyone drawn blood?” I asked Candy.

  “No, nothing like that. They’re just staring at each other and hissing. And their tails are, like, really bushy. Is that normal?”

  I groaned. “Cats do that when they’re mad.”

  “I figured. But don’t worry. If worse comes to worse, I’ll bring Bernice and Wally downstairs to stay with Puddles and me. No one will get hurt, okay?”

  I groaned again and thanked my valiant friend for her efforts. “I hope all this cat sitting won’t ruin your holiday, Sweetie.”

  “Gosh, no. Puddles likes the company, and I bet the cats will be best friends by the time y’all get back.”

  “I’ll be happy if they’d just tolerate each other for a few days.”

  “No, Jessie. You and Wilson are destined to be together forever. So your cats have got to be best friends.”

  “Forever?” I glanced skeptically at Wilson. My mother had stood up, and he was holding one of her hands aloft as she suitcase-surfed on Chris’s carry-on. I tried not to notice how the crowd was encouraging her.

  “Like, duh!” Candy sounded exasperated. “I’m sick of reminding you how much you love the guy, Jessie. Which reminds me—what’s his son like?”

  As if he had heard the question, Chris took a hiatus from smiling at my mother in order to frown at me. I held his gaze.

  “He and Mother seem to have hit it off,” I said and hung up as Tessie toppled off the suitcase into Wilson’s arms.

  “Now then, Chris,” she said as she sat back down. “Explain to me what hanging ten is?”

  Chris glanced at his father. “I took them off for TSA, so why not again?” He tore off his sneakers, and much to my mother’s delight, demonstrated hanging ten over the edge of that poor suitcase.

  Mother clapped in glee. “Do you think I’ll be able to hang ten?” she asked.

  Lord help me, Chris was actually giving her eighty-two-year-old, one-hundred-pound frame an appraisal and considering the possibility. He must have seen me flapping my arms and shaking my head from the sidelines, but he ignored me. “We’ll get you out on the waves,” he told her. “I promise.”

  Mother giggled and twisted around to face me. “Me, hanging ten, Jessie. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  Unfortunately, yes. I turned to the complete stranger next to me and asked if he happened to have an Advil in his carry-on.

  ***

  No, but the flight attendant took pity on me. And with my headache averted we soon—or rather, eventually—found ourselves in a taxi and at the gates of The Wakilulani Garden Resort. Can you say “Ahhh?”

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome!” Louise shouted and waved an enormous sunhat from across the sun-drenched patio.

  “No!” She ran to meet us as we climbed out of the cab. “A-lo-ha, a-lo-ha, a-lo-ha!”

  “A-lo-ha, a-lo-ha, a-lo-ha!” we all shouted back, and a few of us did a little dance of joy.

  As Wilson, Chris, and the cab driver unloaded the luggage from the back of the van, Mother and I hugged Louise and looked around, astounded and amazed.

  Beautiful? Oh, my Lord.

  “Even the parking lot is beautiful,” my mother concluded in wide-eyed wonder.

  “It’s why I picked the Wakilulani,” I said. “Not the parking lot, necessarily, but the gardens. The pictures on Google were remarkable, but this—” I waved a hand, trying to think of an adjective to do it justice.

  “Fantastical!” Louise helped me out. But Louise wasn’t interested in the garden—she was staring at Wilson with unabashed curiosity. “And here he is!” she exclaimed. “The mystery man! Jessica Hewitt’s paramour!”

  “Paramour?” Chris glanced up from pulling his surfboard out of the van.

  Wilson put down the suitcase he was holding. “Wilson Rye,” he said and held out his hand to Louise. But Geez Louise had other ideas. She handed me her hat and opted for a bear hug instead.

  Wilson flapped his arms and appealed to me for help. I shrugged and introduced him to my agent. “Isn’t she everything I said she would be?” I asked him.

  “And more.” He gave up and hugged her back, and Geez Louise emitted another fantastical.

  Eventually she freed the poor guy from her firm embrace and held him at arm’s length for another assessment. Wilson mumbled something about how nice it was to meet her.

  “Nice!?” she shouted for the whole island to hear. “I cannot believe it! Wilson Rye! In the flesh! Oh, and Jessica, what fine flesh it is!”

  She let go of Wilson and set her sights on Chris. But the younger Rye was faster than his father. He held up his surfboard for self-protection.

  Never one for a lengthy attention span, my agent dismissed the possibility of any further groping and spun around to take my mother by the hand. “Wait until you ladies see the beach!” She reclaimed her hat, and with a fantastical here and a fantastical there, led us ladies down the garden path.

  Mother and I were content to take in the exotic scenery while Louise talked nonstop. “I do not understand why the place is so deserted,” she said as we passed by several bungalows that did indeed look unoccupied. “Other than the guy on staff, I’ve been the only one here all afternoon. It’s been so lonely!”

  She put an arm around my mother. “I’m so happy to see you! How have you been, Tessie? It’s been, like, forever since we last saw each other. I think we should meet in Hawaii every year, don’t you?”

  Mother giggled but had no time to respond before we reached the beach. We stopped short and beheld the Pacific
Ocean looming only a few yards away. To Louise’s credit, she actually shut up for a full ten seconds to let us soak it in.

  But Geez Louise was soon interrupting the soothing sounds of the waves crashing onto Halo Beach. “Wilson Rye.” She sounded almost forlorn. “Isn’t he the absolute, most perfect man for Jessica?”

  “He is darling,” Tessie agreed.

  “They make a fantastical couple!” Louise continued. “Romantic, majestic, statuesque—”

  “Statuesque?” Mother was studying me as if she had never seen me before.

  “Okay, so I’m tall,” I told her and turned to Louise. “But if you call Wilson Rye statuesque to his face, he’s apt to arrest you.”

  “He’s off duty,” she reminded me. “And about four thousand miles out of his jurisdiction. Therefore, he cannot arrest me. Isn’t that right, Tessie?”

  “Wilson almost arrested Jessie once,” Mother mused.

  I rolled my eyes and tuned out any further discussion of the darling and majestic Wilson Rye. I breathed deep of the sea air. “Aloha,” I whispered.

  “Aloha,” Wilson whispered back.

  I jumped and turned, and noticed Mother and Louise had conveniently disappeared.

  “Aloha,” I repeated. I was giving my beau a kiss worthy of Adelé Nightingale when Chris ran by, surfboard in hand.

  “Didn’t you guys get a bungalow for that?” he called over his shoulder.

  ***

  If only it were that easy. But checking into our rooms at the Wakilulani Gardens proved far more challenging than booking all our last-minute reservations. The person in charge of this seemingly impossible mission, a big thirty-something Hawaiian guy, tapped at his keyboard, clicked his mouse, and furrowed his brow, while Wilson and I watched and waited. And waited.

  “Where’d you get your shirt?” Wilson asked him eventually.

  The clerk stopped clicking and tapping to glance down. But his Hawaiian shirt, in a brilliant and downright blinding pattern of yellow and orange Hibiscus flowers, must have startled him. He dropped his mouse, and it dangled forlornly off the edge of the desk while the men discussed the shopping options along Halo Beach.

  Wilson Rye discussing clothing stores? I chalked it up to jetlag and leaned on the counter for a short snooze.

  “Shynomore Shirt Shop has the best selection,” the clerk was saying as I opened my eyes.

  Wilson, apparently in all seriousness, asked if the Shynomore Shirt Shop was close by.

  “Yes, sir! It’s just down the beach. You can even walk there if you want. I’ll point you in the right direction. Most anyone can point you in the right direc—”

  “Our reservations?” I said loudly and directed everyone’s attention back to the computer screen, which of course, had gone completely blank.

  That spurred the clerk back to action. He picked up the mouse and began clicking at a furious and alarming pace.

  I swallowed a groan. “Is there a problem, Mr.—” I squinted at his name tag. “Palakapola? Did I say that right?”

  “Almost. But I’m Mr. Okolo. Palakapola is my first name.”

  He must have seen my alarm. “Everyone just calls me Buster,” he said. “Me and my brother are the new owners here.” He offered a big happy smile, which soon disappeared as he returned to the problem at hand. He banged at the keys and slapped the side of the monitor with the palm of his hand. “Three bungalows?” he asked for the tenth time.

  “Is that a problem?” Wilson asked.

  “Oh no, no, no.” Buster continued abusing the keyboard. “No problem. No problem whatsoever.”

  Reminding myself that patience is a virtue, I stepped away from the counter while Buster Okolo attempted to solve the no problem whatsoever. We were in “The Big House” as the sign out front had informed us. More specifically, we were standing in the expansive lobby with whitewashed, rustic wood walls and a high, bare-beamed ceiling. The restaurant and bar to our right boasted huge windows overlooking the ocean. And to the left, with views of the gardens, were the library and game room.

  Wilson must have seen me staring at the pool table. “Shoot me a game?” he asked.

  “Maybe later,” I answered. “After we’ve settled in.” I emphasized the after for Buster’s benefit, but he didn’t take the hint.

  “I don’t play very well, myself,” he said. “But the pool table was my idea. It’s brand new. What do you think?”

  Wilson said he thought Buster should concentrate on checking us in. Buster cleared his throat and returned to his arduous task.

  I continued nosing around the lobby. The upstairs, a loft with a wrap-around balcony, seemed interesting. The empty bird cage up there in the corner was especially intriguing, but a chain across the narrow stairway informed me that the upstairs was “Private.”

  “Where’s the bird?” I asked and raised my eyes to the rafters overhead. Sure enough, a big green bird was perched up there. Some sort of parrot. I whistled, and to my delight, the bird responded in kind and swooped in for a landing on the counter.

  “Darn it, Ki!” Buster exclaimed.

  “Darn it, Ki!” the bird repeated.

  “Is this Ki?” I smiled and reached out to touch him, but thought better of it when I saw the size of his beak. I pulled back my hand.

  “That’s Bee Bee,” Buster said.

  “Bee Bee,” Bee Bee repeated and waddled over to me. He seemed to expect a pat on the head.

  I again reached out a tentative hand. “Does he bite?”

  “No way. He loves attention.”

  Thus I patted Bee Bee’s head and told him what a beautiful boy he was.

  “You can have him if you want,” Buster said. “Ki hates him.”

  Wilson mumbled something about Snowflake as he stroked one of Bee Bee’s wings with the back of his index finger. “Who’s Ki?” he asked.

  “My brother—the one with all the computer smarts.” Buster took another swat at the computer. Some paperwork on the desk jumped, but the machine in front of him remained unfazed. He whimpered slightly. “I begged him not to, but Ki installed all these updates when we got the place. Update this, update that. It’s impossible!”

  “Impossible!” Bee Bee hopped onto the desk and started shuffling around the disarray of papers. He knocked a whole stack on the floor, but the hapless Buster took no notice.

  I gently suggested that perhaps Ki might check us in and glanced around in search of the computer whiz. “Perhaps he’s upstairs,” I said, eyeing the “Private” sign. “Do you guys live up there?”

  Buster kept his eyes trained on the computer screen. “We have an apartment upstairs. But Ki’s never here, no matter how much I beg him.” He bent down and yanked the computer plug from the outlet. “I give up,” he concluded and folded his arms across the sea of hibiscus flowers.

  “Give up,” Bee Bee agreed. He stuck out a claw and deftly opened the top drawer of the desk. Wilson and I watched in fascination as the bird ducked his head in and came out with a large old-fashioned key ring hanging from its beak.

  Buster took the keys and handed them to Wilson. “Your friend—the lady who got here earlier—took Blue Waters bungalow. Other than that, they’re all free.” He turned to me. “Walk around, take a look, and take whichever ones you want. How’s that?”

  Wilson and I shrugged at each other. Fine with us.

  “Welcome to The Wakilulani Garden Resort!” Buster said, rather belatedly. “I hope you like it here! I’ve been sprucing up the place. New curtains, new linens, new beds, even. I built them myself. The wood’s from koa trees. Hawaiians used to make canoes out of koa trees. You’ll see koas everywhere around here—”

  Wilson interrupted by jiggling the key ring.

  Buster stopped and blinked at the keys. Then he pointed us to the doorway. “Make yourselves at home and enjoy!”

  The parrot looked up from where he was more or less eating some of the papers that had not yet landed on the floor. “Enjoy!” he told us.

  Chapter 3<
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  “So much for security,” my beau the cop mumbled as we walked back outside. My mother and Louise were nowhere in sight, and presumably Chris was hanging ten out in the waves. But the huge pile of luggage awaiting us on the patio was not so easy to avoid.

  “Let’s settle Mother first.” I pointed to the bungalow closest to us. “Right there. She’ll be close to the restaurant, the office, and the parking lot—less walking over all these bumpy footpaths.”

  Wilson grabbed her two larger suitcases, I took her carry-on, and we managed the short walk to Seagull’s Roost bungalow. We climbed the steps to the porch and turned to admire the beach. Chris was still surfing out there. And unlike dry land, the waves seemed populated with human life.

  “What did I tell you?” Wilson said. “Chasing bikinis already.”

  I took a closer look, and sure enough all of the surfers surrounding Chris were female. “Maybe watching your son surf will satisfy my mother,” I suggested. “Maybe she won’t insist on trying it herself.”

  Wilson told me to keep dreaming and unlocked the door. He arranged Tessie’s luggage at the foot of her bed while I surveyed the accommodations. Altogether charming. The bungalow was small, but had the same whitewashed wooden walls, high-beamed ceiling, and white tile floors as The Big House. A Buster-made four-poster bed built from tree trunks took center stage, and the quilt on the bed and the curtains on the windows were indeed a fresh, crisp chintz, just as promised.

  “She’ll love it here,” I concluded and followed Wilson outside to find a room for Chris, who, he was sure, would also want a beachfront bungalow.

  We wandered past the Misty Breezes and Sandy Feet bungalows, and Wilson chose Surf’s Up for his son. “This is good,” he said. “He’s got the ocean, but won’t be too close to Tessie to bother her.”

  “Chris won’t bother my mother. They like each other.” I was going to mention Chris didn’t seem all that crazy about me, but Wilson was already scooting across the patio to collect more luggage.

  He came back with a carry-on and small duffle bag and tossed me the key ring. I opened the door, and he unceremoniously dumped the luggage inside.