by Paloma Meir
“Hawaii...” I panted, “My old friend... have to help him out... be back in a few days... Nicki... You’re a champ...” I came with a force that I feared would drown her.
We went downstairs, and I said good-bye to my parents, who looked surprised but did not ask for further details. My family liked Nicki and insisted she stay for dinner. I went outside to Danny, a calm man.
In my relaxed state, thank you Nicki, I joked lightly on the drive to the airport, feigning surprise at our destination. Danny bought us two first class tickets at the counter. He paid for them and in his roundabout way apologized again for losing his mind. I made a mental note to send him a check when I made it back home.
I opened up my computer on the plane because I did not have the days off as he thought. I was a rookie in the office, a well respected one who showed great promise, and sucked the clients dry with my high billing rates but still new. He wore me down mid-flight with his blathering on about his plans and quick corrections clarifying that of course this was about Louisa, who even with his stilted bro-vocabulary, I could tell he already loved perhaps as much as his fairytale girl. I wanted to tell him that Zelda was not a girl, but I didn’t have much hope for him ever seeing her any other way. Maybe that was okay within the parameters of their unorthodox relationship.
“Danny,” I interrupted his endless nervous talk of being a good father to Louisa. It seemed to me a pointless worry, and one I couldn’t help him with anyway. “Do you know what you’re getting into...”
“Dude, I get it, like I said finish what you started, your game dude. All games come to an end, right? Dude...” He signaled the flight attendant with his blinding smile and a flick of a raised finger, “I can’t change what happened... but you know... It’s different now. You’re my buddy, Serge.” He raised his arm to pat my head. I playfully deflected.
“Like I said in the car... I’ll give you a chance...” I had also said in the car that I had found him borderline evil, but he didn’t need to be reminded of that.
I smiled, though I didn’t want to at all, “Let me finish my work, dude.” I opened my computer back up and stared at my documents. The text was a blur of shapes instead of meanings.
We stretched our tight backs as we stood in front of the airport in Oahu. The humid floral scent of the island filled us, so different than Malibu. Breathing in deep while rolling our necks our eyes met and a feeling of solidarity fell over me and probably him.
Feeling a peaceful buzz, we shambled over to the car rental kiosk not far from the terminal, very different than the sprawling layout of LAX. If the airport represented the island in any way, then I would say we were in for a more human experience. We climbed into the doorless bright blue Jeep that had brought us down to the point of tears with laughter as it pulled up in front of the kiosk.
Zelda’s part of the island was the North Shore, about an hour drive according to a helpful older woman at the car rental. She had given us a map, again causing laughter. We could have just as easily pulled it up on the powerful phones that we carried in our pockets.
Going with the spirit of the Island that was powerful with the light wind shaking the tall trees, releasing the sweet scent of plumeria, I had an urge to throw my phone across the freeway we sped across on the dark night illuminated by the bright and shining moon. The question of how he found Zelda, a question almost anyone would have asked hours before, I finally asked.
“Danny, I already knew she was here,” I yelled out over the wind. He was singing a song only he heard. I had forgotten what a car rapper he was, “But how did you find her?”
“Huh?” He turned my way, “Duuude, I didn’t look for her... I told you I wouldn’t, and I didn’t... I wouldn’t do that to either one of you...’ He paused and looked back along the highway that was pure blackness.
“I ran into her mom at the liquor store down the road from our canyon... It’s not our road anymore...” He hands gripped the faded leather steering wheel.
“You going deep on me bro? It’s not our road anymore,” I mocked back in the dreamy tone he had used.
“Well yeah," he laughed hard back, “Dude… needed to happen... Nine months alone with my thoughts, talked to Sarah a couple of times, visited my family, didn’t even talk to Brendan. I needed it... because the road was a dead end.”
I patted him on his shoulder that was damp from the humidity of the island because there wasn’t anything to say.
“Her mom, okay,” He nodded his head in the way he always did, some things never change, “You know her mom and me. I never really closed that one up, ever. It wasn’t easy either being around her... I did it for Zelda... Fuck... You know her mom... She would never get it.”
I wanted to defend Mrs. Moreau, but I didn’t, no point. Everything that was done was done. She made her choices, taking the blame for Zelda’s downfall without explanation.
“I hadn’t seen her in years. I knew she didn’t know. I know Zelda dude. I knew she wouldn’t tell her family the truth.” He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly in the wind.
“Zelda’s probably convinced herself that Paolo is Louisa’s father by now. You know how she is when she gets an idea in her head...” He turned to me and laughed. I did not return his laughter. I was a little perplexed.
“I was talking to her, wanting to get away from her, polite though, you know? She pulled out her phone, showed me pictures of Louisa. Dude, I had never seen her before. It was like looking in the mirror. How blind is her family? I was standing right in front of her, and still she didn’t see it. Zelda worked that angle hard, you know?”
I didn’t recognize the Zelda he was referring to, so many sides to a human. I laughed off my thoughts not wanting to get too deep because my road was fine. Wrong.
“She had her dad wrapped around her finger her whole life. So good, but at her heart... you know... she could be devious. I loved that about her. She couldn’t even see it because in her mind the motives were pure, like her... I’m not making sense.”
I was taken aback by his idea of her, how he saw Zelda as human with her own agency. I had never heard him consider it before. I kept quiet.
“Back to the store... Serge... Dude, I wasn’t going to ask her where Zelda was... I wasn’t...” He shook his head vigorously, “But the picture, the little blond girl that was mine... Dude...” He laughed again, like a maniac. I wondered for moment if I should take over the driving, “I couldn’t ask her straight out, you know? That batty woman, her thoughts wander...”
“You want to pull over? I’ll drive.” I asked because his body was jerking around in the seat with the convulsions of a very girlish giggle fit. I worried the seatbelt would come loose, and he would fall out of the Jeep.
“I’m fine... We’re almost there...” He righted his position in the stiff backed car seat but giggles continued to erupt like hiccups. I smiled because the island was mellow. I wondered how anyone got anything done here. “Finally, she told me... I think I forgive her.” The laughter stopped and so did our conversation as we drove through Zelda’s little town that looked like something out of the Old West with the wooden storefronts.
We pulled into the brightly lit Hotel, checked in and went straight to our room that we shared, no more excess for the two of us, roommates once again.
…
I jumped out of bed and pulled back the curtains to illuminate the dark room with the morning sunshine of this tropical island. The time change did not work in my favor. I could see the light wanting to peek through the night sky, but it wasn’t there yet.
I opened the sliding glass doors as Danny slept to view the island. The ocean below roared peacefully against the black turtle covered rocks below. I had never seen such large ones before. They seemed as sleepy as Danny with the earliness of the day.
I imagined staying, throwing away the lawyer life I lived in Los Angeles and working in the low level observatory on the island that was not up to the standards of what I had studied at MIT all those years
ago. Surfing every morning, going home to sweet Zelda. A hand on my shoulder pried me away from a world that was never going to be.
“Dude... morning,” Danny’s voice was groggy, “We didn’t pack... it was a powerful statement... but we don’t have any clothes.”
“Boxers... they’re like shorts. Let’s go for a swim while we wait for the shops to open.”
“Mahalo,” he mumbled. If I knew how often he would mutter the island greeting over the next five days, I would have put a stop to it right then.
We floated on our backs past the line of waves and fell into what felt like a meditative state. I stopped trying to analyze what elements of the island were the causes of tranquility. The scents of sweetness? The rich humid air? The nature around us? The answer didn’t matter as we drifted on the buoyant waves.
“If you knew she was here,” Danny’s dreamy voice slipped through my reverie, “Why didn’t you go to her... talk to her... doesn’t seem like you... or maybe it does.”
“Huh,” I answered back. His question made me uncomfortable, “She didn’t email me. I told you that already.” The answer felt false.
“Women for you... Mahalo dude.”
I sensed he knew the answer in a way I never could, but I didn’t ask him to clarify. “Getting a chill out here, lets head in to the Jacuzzi.” We raced to the shore. He won.
We almost fell asleep in the bubbling hot Jacuzzi that had been built more for lovers than bros after a swim. All warmed up from the ocean chill, we climbed out and ran through the hotel complex, past the golf course, which wasn’t our sport. We stopped at the tennis courts and contemplated picking up the rackets that were left in the corner and play a quick game.
We decided to go to the gym instead. We tore into the machines that were more of a joke to us. Outdoor sports were our thing. We were swiftly kicked out with a very mellow “Mahalo” for not wearing shoes. The damp boxers that clung perhaps a little too suggestively to our thighs were not a concern.
“You think Zelda waits around in her underwear for the shops to open when she travels?” He asked as we sat down in the lobby with our coffee and muffins in hand, eyeing the clothing shop and waiting for it to open.
“That’s the way I like to imagine it,” I spoke with an inappropriate candor, jarring me to the reality of his plan. This was a man who tried to break her in the darkest way. He seemed to be back to himself, a better version, and I would give him credit for that, but the depravity was still inside of him. “Are you sure you’re good with this? You can’t have a breakdown in front of Louisa.”
“I’m good and if I’m not, I can keep it together. I’m manly that way. Don’t worry, Serge.” I don’t know if it was him or the oppressive mellowness of the island, but I believed him.
“What’s the course of action this morning? Notice how I didn’t say plan? I memorized the Thesaurus entry on that word so that I would never have to use that word again. It’s the lawyer in me.” I flicked the remains of my blueberry muffin at him.
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought it through. Mahalo.”
“Mahalo Dude. The shops open, let’s go buy matching outfits.” And we did, and they couldn’t have been a more boyish choice with the bright green of the t-shirt with the hotel turtle logo emblazoned largely across the front, and our black lightening bolt board shorts. We felt pretty good about our sartorial choices as we headed through the lobby outside to the valet stand.
Not more than a half an hour later, we stood across from her home on Kamehameha Highway. A road if it were at all possible was more reckless than PCH back in Malibu. Danny muttered under his breath that he didn’t like the idea of his daughter, and he said daughter several times in a row, each syllable growing longer with a large smile spreading across his bronzed chiseled face, living on such a dangerous road.
The wall around her home was a glaring white in the morning sun as if it were the first line of defense, blinding those that dared to glance. It stood eight feet tall and with shards of glass embedded over the top, preventing, to the point of bleeding to death any random soul who dared to violate her home.
“Do we knock? What do you want to do?” The idea of Zelda, a few mere steps from us was hard to believe. The thought that she would be less than happy to see him or maybe even me did not occur to either of us. “These clothes don’t seem as funny now that we’re here.” We looked like fools.
“We look pretty bad. Mahalo.” He eyed the gardener carrying in large bags of mulch and took a step towards her house, “Let’s go.”
“You think we should just walk in?” A feeling of being in a dream filled me as I followed behind him.
“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out as we go along.”
“That’s not the way you do things.”
“Things have changed.”
Zelda's compound, which best described it, consisted of a large Victorian house along with two cottages, both larger than the house I shared with Danny back in Malibu, scattered around the property that exceeded two acres on beach adjacent land. I did not take in all the details of the lattice work, balconies, wrap-around porches with potted gardenias all around because of what lay before me.
Zelda was bent over a box that looked to be filled with gardening tools in what would be known as the storage shed. But again this was not a shed, but the only modern structure on the property and had been built to her highly organized specifications. It looked like a concrete silo, but pink.
I stared as her pink bikinied backside shifted, her arms furiously digging through the pile of shovels and trowels. Her pearly white body tanned in a way that defied understanding, darker than Danny and myself at the height of a Malibu summer. Her tiny round bottom flexed as she bent down to pick up a dropped gardening tool.
I could have stood watching until the last star in the sky lost its luminescence but a shifting distracted me. I looked down to and saw Louisa squatted over a patch of plants that based on the pink hand painted sign that read “Louisa’s Magic Garden” would be Louisa’s private garden.
She had grown since I had last seen her. A full toddler she was, slathered in thick sunscreen. Her white hair looked to be growing in darker like her father’s. Her shape was obscured by a pair of large white sequined wings.
I looked to Danny who stood as transfixed by Zelda’s search for the missing tool as I had been and tapped him on the shoulder. I pointed down to his daughter. His eyes followed the direction of my hand, and he fell to his knees his life changed forever. My work done, I resumed taking in the beauty of the one who searched for a spade or perhaps shears that looked as if they would never be found. Fine with me because as far as I could tell my body and vocal chords were paralyzed.
She looked our way to the sounds of Danny and Louisa chatting away, to see me and not them. Her mouth dropped then formed in to the widest smile. She seemed as paralyzed as I was in that moment. The laughter of Danny and Louisa traveled across the yard. Zelda tilted her view to find him sitting with Louisa. Her face contorted, the look of love for me washed away in a wave of anger.
She stomped across the grass screaming and waving her hands. The phrasing did not take hold in my head as she grew closer. Instead I heard a smattering of words… Astrid... Marco… Pack… Leaving.
She reached Danny in record speed and scooped Louisa up in her arms. She held her daughter protectively against her chest and continued screaming for Marco with a lot of talk about leaving. A smile was plastered to my face. I felt as if I was a cartoon character with hearts zooming out of my eyes.
The hearts were not in reality shooting out of my eyes but were in actuality drawn on hers and Louisa’s cheeks, matching heart cheeks paired with their matching pink bikinis. This did not seem odd until Astrid came running out of the house also wearing the same bathing suit with hearts drawn upon her face too.
Astrid’s washed out appearance I had seen in Los Angeles, was greatly improved by the outdoor tropical living. She was not as tan as Zelda but she had a hea
lthy glow. It livened up her mousy features, bringing her muddy grey blue eyes into prominence. Her slouchy short stature, or maybe she was just short in comparison to the Amazon that was Zelda, was straighter.
“No Zelda, no more trains, no more planes,.” the shouting words grew into sentences as Astrid spoke.
“Astrid, we are leaving. It’s not safe here.” It would have been a good time for me to speak up, and assure her I would I keep her safe, but my frozen larynx would not thaw.
Louisa shouted about trains, slapping her mother in the face, squirming almost falling out of Zelda’s tight grip. Danny lunged forward to catch her, but it was not needed as Zelda held tighter trying to calm her daughter with soothing pats to her back.
“Astrid help me. We have to go. We could try the southern hemisphere. We’ve never traveled that direction, New Zealand, Australia...”
The confusion of the moment, the anger of Zelda, and the screaming of Louisa could not pierce the happy bubble I stood being not five feet from her. The way she treated her travels through the world as if countries were sweets on the dessert cart charmed me. More words were exchanged as I held in my laughter at all the talk of everyone other than Zelda never wanting to travel on a train again.