Primitive Secrets

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  “Watch out!” A young man’s voice shouted in her ear. Stumbling to avoid a collision, Storm turned toward her rescuer. White Dress jumped out of Storm’s way and toward the lout who scuffled to escape.

  White Dress’s shapely arm was raised again, the weapon incongruous in the manicured hand. “Scram, you piece o’ shit.” An accent of the Far East broadened White Dress’s vowels. His narrow, expertly made-up eyes glinted with the anticipation of another strike.

  The attacker scuttled into a dark alley. White Dress reluctantly lowered his swinging arm and kept his eyes on the shadows where the man disappeared. “He no come back.”

  “Thank you,” Storm gasped.

  “Welcome. Now go home.” White Dress looked at her forehead instead of her eyes. He was shorter than she’d thought, about the same height as she in her tennis shoes. Without his heels, he would be shorter. And he probably weighed less. Storm swallowed hard. What kind of life had this boy led? How could she thank him?

  “Could I buy you a beer?” she asked.

  He looked at her sharply. Only when the skin around the flat black stones of his eyes softened did Storm realize her words had been those of a prospective john. She grimaced.

  “No, t’ank you. Go home.” His maroon lips twitched in what might have been a smile.

  “Right. You’re right.” Storm picked up the useless tennis racquet with the arm that didn’t throb and started up the street. She stayed close to the curb, in the light, away from the shadows of the buildings and the gaping maws of doors and alleyways. Her legs felt like Jell-O.

  “Storm!”

  Storm jerked around. There was Hamlin, in a black tee-shirt and black jeans. Storm stood agape. His outfit was similar to what Martin had been wearing, though not as elegant. Why in the world was he here? She was besieged with another disappointment, on top of everything else. Those terrific legs…

  “You shouldn’t be down here alone,” Hamlin said.

  “Huh?”

  “Well, it’s not a great neighborhood at night.” Hamlin still looked concerned, but his eyes held many questions.

  Storm sputtered. “Why didn’t you help me a few minutes ago?” Storm’s nerves were stretched to their limits. “I don’t need shitty advice right now, Hamlin.”

  Now Hamlin looked perplexed. “Help you? Storm, why are you here? It’s not safe.”

  “Why am I here?” That was the last straw. “Why are you here? Men! You’re a bunch of opportunistic, manipulative bastards, playing your games at anybody’s expense.” Her voice was thick and hoarse.

  “Hey, Storm.” He reached a hand out and she batted it away.

  “Leave me alone. All of you.” Her adrenaline surge was fading and she felt weak and shaky. “Go back to the Bee’s Knees, where you all belong.” She panted with exertion.

  “The Queen Bee, I think you mean. I wasn’t there, though I think maybe I should have been. I was looking for a client.”

  “Right. That’s what Martin’s gonna tell me, too.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve gotta go. It’s been a busy night.” Storm turned away. “You’ve got friends to meet.”

  “Mind if I see you to your car?”

  Storm squinted at him. She didn’t know how much mileage her quivering legs had left in them. The two dark blocks to the parking lot looked like a mile. Good sense overcame pride. “If you want.”

  She started out stomping up the sidewalk, then slowed and resisted the urge to use her racquet like a cane. She kept her eyes front and center. Hamlin was quiet. After a few minutes, Storm spoke. “So, you didn’t see that guy grab me?”

  “No, but now I know why Jasmine was stalking that dirtbag who ran into the alley.” Hamlin sneaked a peek at her out of the corner of his eyes, his jaw set with concern.

  “Jasmine?” Storm asked.

  “Yeah. Tough kid, that one. Used to be Ming-shan.”

  Storm looked sideways at him. “You know him?”

  “From my days in the prosecutor’s office. We kept trying to rehab him, but he wasn’t having any. Didn’t want to send him back to Cambodia, either.” Hamlin shrugged. “What were you saying about Martin?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Um, Storm, did you by any chance see a good-looking guy, big, with dark hair in a pony-tail?”

  Storm gave him a poisonous look. “I’ve had it with surprises tonight.” She shook her head and felt irrational tears sting her eyes. “Sounds like the guy Martin was with,” she whispered. She fired her next words at him. “Why don’t you go back and join them?”

  “Cause I think you need a drink before I take you home.”

  Chapter 23

  Storm’s knees still quivered and she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours. Hamlin’s suggestion to stop at the Ama struck her just right. A low, weather-beaten hut that squatted between million-dollar condos along Waikiki beach, the Ama was named for the outrigger float on the traditional Polynesian canoes. It was an old favorite of hers. Years ago, back when she had to use a fake ID to get in, she and Martin and a few choice friends used to go to the one-roomed, salt-crusted tavern.

  Not much had changed in the past couple of decades. The place was still decrepit and the Ama’s tables were almost all filled. Two ceiling fans stirred the humid air. The bouncer who hovered inside the front door was a big Hawaiian guy who wore his hair in a long ponytail with a headband of traditional fabric. Hamlin nodded at him when they entered. “Hey, Kimo,” he said in a soft voice.

  Kimo’s teeth shone brilliantly against his dark skin. The smile sent slivers of light flashing from his dark eyes. Then he bent his head down and resumed plucking the slack-key guitar he held on his lap.

  Hamlin led Storm around the island-like bar, still draped with the same musty rope, fishing nets, and glass ball floats Storm remembered from years ago, to a small table at the front window. The window extended the length of the room and opened directly onto the beach. Hurricane shutters were propped up by gray, weathered two-by-twos at regular intervals along the face of the small building. Neither glass nor screens hindered the briny trade winds that whispered through the place.

  The Ama persevered on the “gold coast” of O’ahu, smack-dab in the midst of some of America’s most expensive real estate, because well-connected kama‘aina and long-time residents had pooled their considerable resources and made an offer on the property. They were making a last-ditch attempt to save it from the foreign developers who, with ringing pile drivers and stacks of cash, built twenty-plus story hotels and condos along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

  They’d not been able to out-bid the Japanese national who planned another luxury hotel, but they had had enough money to satisfy the original owner of the place, who grew up in the Waikiki that bordered the pig farms of Kahala. Fortunately, he accepted the lesser millions with glee; he merely wanted to retire with enough to take his wife to Vegas twice a year. He could still take his grandchildren and all their friends, too.

  The Ama endured. The new hai, or partnership of owners, left the place with sand and shells on the floor, apparently replaced only what threatened to collapse, and continued to encourage homegrown musicians to come for impromptu jams.

  Storm felt a surge of nostalgia. She liked the fact that it hadn’t changed and remembered how she and Martin would show up, not knowing if it would be a quiet evening or whether Peter Moon or George Winston would be working out harmonies, their groupies in tow. One time, they’d seen Eric Clapton. Rumor was that the owners made just enough to cover expenses, and no one wanted to look too closely at how they afforded the property taxes on that oceanfront land. It was one time that the widespread nepotism in the islands seemed to actually work for the people at large.

  Storm dropped into a chair that wobbled a bit and turned her face to the incoming breeze. Hamlin did the same. Neither of them spoke for a while. Storm closed her eyes to t
he soothing breeze off the ocean, took a deep breath of the cleansing air, and let it out slowly. She felt like she could sit here all night and watch the gentle surge of the Pacific, let its hidden powers soothe her anguished thoughts. The tension seeped from her shoulders. Just being near the ocean had a purifying effect.

  When the waitress set down their draft beers, Hamlin took a grateful quaff and sat back in his chair. “What were you doing down there, anyway?”

  Storm drew her eyes from the foam that skittered along the hard, fine sand. “Chinatown, you mean?”

  “Sure. You scared me to death,” Hamlin said.

  “I scared you?” Storm snorted. “What were you doing there?”

  Hamlin narrowed his eyes and gave her a half-smile. “Okay.” He took another sip of beer. “I was looking for someone.”

  “You told me that part already.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a client.”

  “Sounds like what I was doing,” Storm said. She looked back out at the ocean and wished that the lights from the Waikiki strip a half-mile down the beach weren’t quite so bright. She could barely see the phosphorescence of the waves.

  “It’s also a friend,” Hamlin said.

  “Same here.”

  Hamlin put his mug down with a crack. “Christ, Storm.” He sighed. “It’s this guy I’ve known for years. He’s gay.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” She tilted her head at him and raised one eyebrow.

  “He was my college roommate. He knew about my…my family and encouraged me to move here after law school.”

  “That’s a long time to be with someone. Kind of like a marriage. How’d you sandwich Meredith into that relationship?” Storm sat back in her chair.

  “Storm, he’s not my lover. Never has been. Whether you can accept it or not, he’s a friend.” Hamlin frowned down at the table. “And he’s got some problems.”

  Storm stiffened. “He has AIDS?”

  “We don’t know, yet. You saw him with Martin, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “I suspected that.”

  Storm bristled. “What do you mean?”

  “I wondered about Martin—” He swirled his beer in the mug. “You didn’t know, I take it?”

  Storm turned her head to the beach, away from Hamlin’s gaze. The city lights looked like stars in the prisms of her tears.

  Hamlin looked away, out at the water. “Want to take a walk?” His voice was soft.

  Storm nodded without taking her eyes from the ocean. Hamlin laid a ten on the table and stood up. She rose, too, and he draped one arm casually across her shoulders. It felt good, supportive and warm.

  On the beach, both of them stopped to take off their shoes and socks. They left them in a little pile by a deserted lifeguard stand and let the cool, damp grains of sand drizzle between their toes. Storm dragged her feet and enjoyed the pull on the muscles that ran down the fronts of her legs.

  Hamlin kept pace while Storm, her arms wrapped around herself, meandered into the gentle waves that licked at her insteps, then her ankles. The water seemed to drain away some of her distress, carry it out to be feasted upon by the night scavengers of the reef.

  Storm looked at the swath of moonlight on the dimpled water. So peaceful, lulling, illusive. Just a foot below the surface, life teemed with a ferocity that could be alarming. As a child, she had thrown pieces of fish and crab shells onto coral at the water’s edge after the sun had set and watched moray eels emerge from where people had swum all day. Three and four feet long, they came with their mouths open and razor teeth glinting, until the sand writhed with them. Sharks fed when the sun’s light faded, too, along with hundreds of species of carnivorous, cannibalistic fish. She understood the rules here better than in nighttime Chinatown.

  “It must be a devastating secret for Martin.” Hamlin’s soft voice broke into her thoughts.

  “What makes you so sure?” Bitterness colored Storm’s voice. “I’m sure his family knew. I’m just now realizing the secrets they all kept.”

  “I know because my friend wouldn’t tell me who he was seeing,” Hamlin said when he caught her sharp glance. He picked up a piece of coral. “You’re right, the Hamasaki family has secrets, but I think Miles Hamasaki might have just discovered this one.”

  “What gives you that idea?”

  “I think Martin would have told you first.” He looked at her. “And the part about Hamasaki finding out is an idea I’ve been pondering the last few days.”

  “Why?” Storm drew deep troughs in the sand with her toes.

  “Look, families keep secrets from each other.” Hamlin kept his eyes on the running lights of a container ship, just visible on the horizon.

  “Not the Hamasakis.”

  Hamlin’s voice was flat and low. “Everyone.” He was quiet for a few minutes while he skipped a few pieces of coral into the water. “Remember how I thought Hamasaki was preoccupied?”

  “Sure, but that was because of Tom Sakai.”

  “I don’t think so. This was personal.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Storm kicked a clump of seaweed, hard.

  “The look on his face in the elevator one night after work.” Hamlin still wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It corresponds with Chris telling me about his new love.”

  “The artist? Is Chris the guy I saw in your office?” Her voice became hard. “Why didn’t you tell me before I saw them in the bar together?”

  “I thought about it. But I figured it was up to Martin.”

  “Okay.” Storm’s voice was gentler. “Chris was your college roommate?”

  Hamlin nodded.

  “How did they get together?” Storm asked. “Martin was in Chicago until we called him about Hamasaki’s death.”

  “So was Chris. He had an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. And he met this guy from Hawai’i. He was very happy because they had so much in common.” Hamlin smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I was glad for him. He’d had so many disappointments.”

  “You were worried about AIDS,” Storm said.

  Hamlin kicked at the sand. “About two months before Chris left for Chicago, he was raped. He’d gone to a bar to meet some friends for a farewell party. According to Chris, one of the guys, somebody’s friend’s friend, no one can really identify him now, made a pass at Chris. Chris gently rebuffed him, he says. Then he woke up in some rat hole on a mattress on the floor, hemorrhaging from rectal tears. Somehow, at four in the morning, he made it back to the bar and called me.”

  Hamlin and Storm had wandered from the end of Waikiki Beach around Diamond Head crater to Diamond Head Beach, where the reef met the sand and peeked from the water at low tide. Here, the beach was wilder, untamed. Storm preferred it to the manicured stretch of Waikiki. Coral-encrusted lava rocks, deposited by bygone storms, littered the coarse sand. Honolulu’s city lights were visible as a far-off blush in the sky. Moonlight and phosphorescence in the water illuminated their footsteps and each other’s faces. Every few seconds, the lighthouse flashed a beam far out to sea, probing the blue velvet of the night. Even the trade winds gusted untamed and buffeted Storm’s hair free of her braid. Hamlin’s shirttail whipped around him.

  Storm sat down and leaned against a boulder in the lee of the wind. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind one ear and rested her chin on her knees. “That’s awful,” she whispered. “Did you take him to the hospital?”

  “Yes. They did a drug screen and found that he’d been given this stuff dubbed the ‘date drug’ by the media a few years ago.” Hamlin sat down next to her.

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “Yeah.” Hamlin didn’t hide the disgust in his voice. “It got some press a few years ago when frat guys were doping their dates in order to take advantage of them. It’s called Rohypnol.”

  “God,” Storm whispered. “Poor Chris. Did he ever figure out who
this person was? Did anyone see him leave with this guy?”

  “No, that’s the really frustrating thing. I guess no one really knew who he was. He’d claimed to know someone who wasn’t actually there that night and everyone believed him. Chris’s friends had had a few drinks themselves and thought Chris was fine.” Hamlin let a handful of sand slip through his fingers. “Apparently, they kind of wandered away with their own romantic prospects and left him there.”

  “I can see how that would happen,” Storm said. “It goes on pretty often with women.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  Storm swallowed hard. “Did he get an AIDS test?”

  “Yeah, I made him get the test, and told him to get tested again, in about six months.”

  Storm watched his eyes follow a ship’s lights on the water. The thought flashed through her mind that not even a week ago, she’d thought of Hamlin as rakish in his expensive suits, tough, climbing the firm’s ladder to a partnership. She’d also decided that anyone who could bed and maintain a relationship with Meredith Wo was off the charts on her own scale of alleged opportunism. She remembered Rick’s betrayal with the owner of the lace g-string panties. And Rick wasn’t as smart. Now she was observing a different side of Hamlin. He showed a sensitive streak and talked of a relationship that was not professionally expedient.

  “You’re worried,” she said. Her eyes dropped to a long thigh whose musculature was delineated by tight black denim. She jerked her eyes higher, to safer territory, only to find his face inches from hers. The warmth of his body surrounded her in the cool night air.

  “Just my nature, I guess,” he whispered. With the crook of one finger, he tilted her chin up, paused for a second while he searched her eyes, and then kissed her. His lips were soft and searching, the mustache tickled her nose, and she responded. Her blood sang through her veins, while somewhere in the back of her mind, a little voice tried to chirp a warning. She ignored it.

  She wound one arm around his shoulder. He smelled of warm skin, the sea, and night air. The second kiss was even sweeter.