by Kirsten Koza
Adam shouts, “Oh my god! Kyle!”
The man continues to stare blankly into the window. His face, on stark display under the high beam of a parking lot light, has deep lines, yet the skin around his eyes is taught. Is this guy real? No, he’s a wax figurine, someone rolled into place. He kind of looks like he belongs in a museum. That’s when I recognize him.
“Oh my god,” I say, trying to place his name. “That’s…that’s…” And it comes to me: Steven Tyler, of Aerosmith. Wait. Yes. Oh my god. It’s Steven Tyler.
Suddenly I’m starstruck and all I can do is return the stare. Who would have thought? Steven Tyler! What the hell is he doing here? Does he live in Maui? Is he on vacation? Is he on tour? What are the odds of this? I mean, really…Steven Tyler. He’s like a hundred years old and has so many famous songs. He’s a legend! A true legend!
A weighty feeling tugs at my right hand, and I realize I’m still holding my pants.
Oh my god, that’s really Steven Tyler! Staring at my penis!
Unfazed, I lay my pants over my lap and automatically reach out to roll down the window. I have to say something, anything. This moment is too good.
“Kyle, what are you doing?” shrieks Adam. I turn toward him, smelling sunblock and sweat, and see panic crawling down his neck, red as sunburn. It’s no match for the frozen grip he has on the passenger side seat.
I attempt a limp save, “It’s Steven Tyler. Of Aerosmith. We should say hello.”
“Kyle do not open that window! You’re embarrassing me!” Adam’s declaration echoes in the sudden stillness. His tone carries an alarm that, in our five years together, I’ve never heard before. It’s an alarm that sounds a wave, a tsunami straight from the Pacific Ocean, that fills the cracks of our history together and crashes against the sides of our Jeep. I’m on a new island now, just the size of us, and he is the only one I see here.
Perhaps I pushed too far. Or I was too careless with my attention. Whatever it was, something unlocked in his history that’s bigger than me. I don’t understand it and maybe I’m never meant to. But like the experience of negotiating a foreign land, so is my relationship with this person. It’s the smile that crosses your face when a local welcomes you to dance with her in an unfamiliar custom. Or the song you sing with gusto, even though the words are Chinese.
Adam is a foreign country, with all the riddle and mystery that it entails. And I am the dutiful, deferential traveler who, in this particular instance, finds himself just slightly off the map and needing to get back home.
I reach up and cover the dome light so he can finish dressing.
After taking a few minutes to get situated, I pull onto the highway and head north. Adam is calm, fumbling with his phone in his lap and obviously thinking about something.
“Honey,” I say, contrite. “I have a confession.” Adam looks at me, curious. “I don’t think Steven Tyler saw us naked. In fact, I don’t think he saw us at all.”
“What do you mean?”
I explain. As Steven Tyler stood there, under the bright lights of the parking lot, he turned without reaction and entered the car next to ours. Instantly, he pulled down the sun visor, poofed his hair, and scrunched his lips into a mirror. He’d been admiring his own reflection in my driver’s side window, not us. “So basically,” I continue, “we were watching Steven Tyler watching us while really he was only watching himself.”
Adam pauses to consider it.
“And if I can be frank, Adam…dude kinda looked like a lady.”
Adam breaks into a laugh. “Kyle, you did not just say that.” He smiles, shakes his head in mock disapproval, and resettles into his seat. “Well,” he says after a minute or two, “you could have opened the window if you wanted. I mean, it was Steven Tyler.” He throws me a guilty smile and a proverbial hand, one accepting a little more help onto the edge.
Ahead, I see a sign for Haleakala National Park. At the next intersection, the volcano’s summit will be 50 miles to the right. The Ka’anapali beaches will be 32 miles to the left.
Adam looks down at his phone. “I need to play a song to mark this occasion.”
As the first few uh-mm-mm-mm-mm-mmmms of Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” ring out, I slow to approach the coming intersection. Adam is focused on his lap, consumed with Aerosmith’s discography. He scrolls with one hand and finds mine with the other, grabbing it firmly as I, we, hold the main gearshift. He caresses the top of my hand with his thumb.
My turn signals remain a blank slate in the night sky, and it’s not until I’m upon the intersection that I decide to turn left, toward the beach. There will be plenty of stars there, I imagine. The air fills with a sweetness, of pineapples, and long strings of streetlights lead the way to the shore.
Kyle Keyser is a recovering filmmaker, former mayoral candidate, and future something-or-other. To be continued. www.kyle.tv
JILL PARIS
Africa à la Carte
Saved by a frickin’ saint!
“LAMU’S NOT THAT FAR—IT’S JUST A BIT NORTH OF HERE,” I EXPLAINED to Lori as if I knew what the hell I was talking about. Up until a month before, I’d never even heard of the secluded island once referred to as “the black hole of laidbackness,” thanks to the hippies and artists who’d infiltrated the African hideaway back in the ’60s.
“You can’t fly off on your own!” she yelled. “It’s too dangerous!!”
“Sure I can,” I assured her. “Trust me. No one’ll even miss me.”
At the beginning of our three-week safari throughout Kenya and Tanzania, Lori and I were assigned together as roommates by the travel company on account of our being the youngest out of 30 travelers, not because we were BFFs. I hardly knew her. Jeez, by her reaction you’d have thought I’d renounced my citizenship to stay and live naked amongst baboons or something.
The year was 1987—the decade of big hair and decadence. We’d been schlepping around en masse for weeks and, on that day, our group’s activity was to visit an open market then return to Mombasa for yet another buffet feast. Fruit-gazing just doesn’t do it for me, in Kenya or anywhere else, so I had decided to break free and see what revelatory powers Lamu had to satisfy my 20-something curiosity. And besides, our strict itinerary reminded me of a prix fixe menu’s limitations—for one set price you’ll eat what we’re serving, when we say, or go hungry. I wanted to order something “off the menu” for a change.
“What should I tell Hans?” Lori whispered as if saying his name too loudly might conjure up bad spirits. “He’ll forbid you to go.”
Hans happened to be our stern Danish tour guide, who I’m pretty sure hoped I’d catch Dengue fever and die. Everyone on the tour couldn’t have been nicer, and I certainly meant no disrespect by my need to exclude myself at any opportunity, but I think Hans kind of hated me for being the “antijoiner.” I sensed his loathing after I’d snuck off during a bathroom break at Chania Falls when the game drives first began. He’d glanced down at his watch, then back at me with real condemnation (probably because I’d smoked a cigarette and downed a Tusker beer before breakfast). After that incident, he’d “accidentally” omit me from the day’s rotating seat assignment. I’d often end up bouncing around in the back of the bus, where the seat’s worn-out springs had sprung to epic recoil. It was nauseating. Lori nicknamed it “the trampoline.”
“Just tell him…whatever! Who knows? Maybe I’ll disappear,” I joked. “He’ll probably be thrilled.”
Lori shook her head, seemingly displeased by my decision to a) ditch the group without clearing it with our leader, and b) jet off unaccompanied to a teeny, smidge of an island without cars. But, most baffling of all to her was probably why in the hell I was outfitted as a cast member from the award-winning film Out of Africa? I’ll admit the captivating flick not only inspired me to visit Isak Dinesen’s real home outside of Nairobi and dream of becoming a writer, but the movie’s period costumes must have prompted some sort of bullshit p
retense in me to try and look the part of the author as well. So, yes, if you squinted hard enough, I might have passed as Baroness Blixen’s shoddy relation in a white muslin maxi dress I’d mail-ordered through Banana Republic back when the store’s garments were designed for off-the-beaten-path adventurers with its cool catalogue filled with treasure maps, steamer trunks, and an abundance of khaki and canvas. Upon my head sat a straw boater hat I’d recently purchased in London to complete the impersonation. My answer to the unflattering pith helmet, I guess.
The hotel concierge in Mombasa arranged for my flight and a private tour guide to escort me around Lamu on foot (as the only method of transportation there was either bicycle or beast). Also included in the day trip was “a leisurely lunch at a seaside restaurant and an afternoon cruise on an authentic dhow.” I wasn’t sure what that meant but didn’t really care, as the low-key, do-as-I-damn-well-please excursion sounded like bliss on a stick.
I stared at the non-English-speaking pilot, who motioned for me to sit beside him in a plane so tiny the instrument panel compared to that of a midsize automobile’s interior. Seriously, it was like a Toyota with wings. Then, three male French backpackers arrived and tucked themselves in like folding chaises. The grungy trio did not take their seats (because there weren’t any) and instead crouched down on the cabin floor exposing their tanned legs for my viewing pleasure, plus the bonus lack of boxers or briefs under their shorts. Bonjour, Messieurs.
In no time, the plane touched down on the isle of Manda, and soon we were directed onto a small boat made out of kindling. The lithe skipper huffed and puffed while steering his oars through jerky waters to the brink of an asthmatic attack. I’m not sure which was worse, the sight of the cutest dude’s failure to conceal his seasickness, or the amount of ass-splinters I accrued from the vessel’s fine attempt to capsize. In this case, it was a toss up.
Once we finally reached Lamu, a bastardly breeze snatched that bonnet right off my head, and I watched part of my new persona haul ass down a dirt road, as if being chased by wild dogs. Deeply saddened over the loss (and now sporting major hat hair), I followed about 50 yards behind the others, when, out of the wistful air, an unusual voice called out.
“You must be my client because…I found your hat,” said a podgy man in baggy, black trousers that were about six inches too long for him. He clutched the brim with childlike pride, shifting his weight from side to side, then sort of bowed before me with his arms extended.
“Oh, thank you!” I shouted. “Thank you so much.”
“I am Mohammed,” he said with a thin smile. “Come. Please.”
I learned quickly that he was born “somewhere in the middle of nine children.” His eyes were as dark as espresso with weathered skin to match. What a pair we must have been, lily-white me towering at least a foot over him, shrouded in the hopeful disguise to be somebody else, and he in what very well may have been another man’s clothes as well.
Mohammed led me to a majestic structure where scads of chanting men, each one kneeling and bowing like mad, crooned verses in a strange language. I’d never seen a mosque in person before or ever visited a place where kicking one’s shoes off and pressing one’s forehead to the ground was the official way to pray. It felt wrong to be penetrating their sacred space—forbidden. Kind of like the time in high school when all the cheerleaders inadvertently broke into the wrong house while we were “kidnapping” one of the football players who, unbeknownst to us, lived on the next street. It’s a wonder we weren’t jailed for breaking and entering, but it’s kind of nice to know if I ever need to jimmy a lock somewhere I totally have a knack for that shit.
Mohammed tapped me on the shoulder and shifted his eyes sideways as a signal to leave. We ducked out quietly with the hum of gratefulness lingering long after we’d gone.
Some chickens pecking at the same stupid pebbles blocked our path to a narrow alley surrounded by high stony walls, but luckily a man leading a donkey with fruit piled at an insane tilt angered the birds into a scatter.
“Would you like to buy a khanga?” Mohammed inquired.
“Sure,” I replied, thinking it might be some kind of illegal pet worth smuggling home.
“This way,” he said, guiding me down a slanted passageway so slim, I could practically hold my arms out and touch both sides.
The stones’ hue shone like pink tourmaline even in the shade. There weren’t any written signs above, below, or in between the surrounding rock. I didn’t notice any numbered markings or addresses either. I thought maybe he had to tally his paces to find his way around, like a blind person does. Just in case, I remained super quiet so he wouldn’t lose count.
Just inside an open doorway, long tables housing stacks of fabrics in every color combination soon clarified that a “khanga” was in no way against the law but was actually a sarong garment made of cotton, worn mostly by ladies and even some men.
“They’re all so beautiful. Which one do you like?” I asked my trusty guide, but before he could answer, an ear-piercing “OH, MY GAWD!” startled us both. There she stood, the loud, bushy-haired woman who one month ago had complimented the Irish linen dress I was wearing as we strolled through Heathrow Airport to catch our respective flights. She had five or six pieces of cloth draped over each arm. Her frizzy ’do had been swept up with frayed raffia, but it totally worked on her. She reminded me of a rich, New York fashion designer who only parties on yachts and collects vintage sunglasses just for the hell of it.
“Oh, my Gaaaawd!! What are the chances!?” she kept saying over and over like a mantra. Yeah, what were the odds that I’d bump into someone familiar on a miniscule island off the coast of Kenya in a back room of an unmarked khanga shop that had taken a dinky plane, a rickety boat, and a maze of masonry to reach? About 800 billion to 1? Lamu was kind of freaking me out.
I glanced over at Mohammed to see if he was as stunned as I by the mysterious fluke. Perhaps he didn’t get how molecularly random it was because he didn’t really seem all that surprised.
I sorted through the vibrant materials in an effort to choose the best pattern, but the woman pushed in and said, “You should have this one” and handed me an indigo and sea-green tinted design. “I’ll even get it for you.” And, before I could refuse, she paid the vendor and was out the door in a rush to meet her husband back at the Peponi Hotel, a favorite retreat amongst British celebs, royals, and the like.
Before long, Mohammed and I approached what looked like someone’s humble abode that faced the whitest beach with sand the color of crushed pearls. I thought maybe he’d brought me home to meet his family, and any second his much-taller brother would burst out half-nude and demand Mohammed return his only pair of trousers.
As we drew closer, the smoky scent of grilled cuisine overtook me, and I discovered a kick-ass brawl was probably not going to happen.
“This is where I leave you,” he said. “I will be back in one and half hours.”
I watched him disappear down the lane and missed him as soon as he’d vanished.
I took a seat next to a fortyish woman dining alone (the only other patron), and she introduced herself as “Mmmonika the Mmmissionary” with inflated alliteration the way a schoolteacher does unwittingly. Her German accent was as thick as the thatched roof above the outdoor eating area. I’d never met a working nun before, or even seen one in plain clothes. It made me a little nervous to think how she’d judge me if I confessed to blowing off my tour group without telling the man in charge and had come here to Lamu on a “wild hair” (one of my mother’s sayings when I do stupid things), all because a radio disc jockey named John Logic that I liked back home said I simply had to check out Lamu no matter what. Maybe Monika would phone the authorities and turn me in? Or better yet, have my disobedient ass flogged right over there next to that snoozing fisherman. But I said nothing.
She and I gazed out across Lamu Bay in quiet contemplation like two scholars set to observe a slide show present
ation on “How to Properly Observe the World’s Beauty in Complete and Utter Silence.”
“How would you pronounce that color in English, please?” Monika asked pointing at the horizon.
“I’m not really sure,” I replied. “Cornflower?” But I knew that wasn’t right. It may have been closer to cerulean or somewhere in the dusky-powder family.
“I have never seen a sky so blue,” Monika said in awe.
“Neither have I.”
I swear if there’s an Admirals Lounge in the afterlife for Cosmic Travelers, I’ll bet its walls are painted that celestial shade of Lamu blue. I’ll have to remember to check it out when I get there.
While I pondered which was prettier, the actual sky or its reflection spread over the satiny sea, a giant plate of fresh-caught lobster and drawn butter was placed before me. I cracked open the shell and bit into the steaming white meat, golden liquid oozing down my wrists, as Monika shared the details of her virtuous life working with a foreign aid organization. Together we marveled over a few new shades of rose, violet, and gray we swore had never been glimpsed either by anyone alive or dead.
In time, Mohammed reappeared, so I bid farewell to my pious friend and followed him down a winding trail onto an empty cove, where two African sailors with broad smiles welcomed me aboard their dhow. It looked like something the Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in. Secured to the top of the mast were sprigs of bougainvillea, sort of like the floral cherry atop a slivered sundae.
Once I climbed aboard, the men prepared to push off and, after several minutes of sitting calmly and waiting for enough wind to raise the triangular sail to carry us away, we were moving. Coasting at a dawdling speed, the lovely view of Lamu from that distance reminded me of a scene inside a snow globe. Its beauty protected beneath an invisible dome, peaceful and untouched, until something comes along, breaks it wide-open, and all of its contents spill out.