“I know,” he said, taking such a large gulp of coffee that I winced, imagining it must have burned going down. “You don’t have to explain why. I told you why. I’m just glad you called.” He gestured to the yard with his free hand. “This is a beautiful spot.”
I nodded. “It is.”
“You’re a painter.”
I gave him a sharp look, feeling intruded.
He tilted his head. “I saw your easels. I saw no art, though, so I could only assume. You have the hands of a painter.”
I sipped my drink, gathering my thoughts before I said anything. “I do paint. I came here to . . . but . . . I just haven’t.”
“You haven’t been inspired.”
I snorted and shot him a sideways glance. “If you can’t be inspired on the most beautiful island on the planet, there’s something wrong with you.” My smile quickly faded at my last words. There was something wrong with me. Fatally.
“Maybe you’re not looking in the right place. Inspiration isn’t in your backyard or at the bottom of the ocean. It’s somewhere else.”
I glanced at him curiously. His face was grave but his eyes bright, shining like the sun.
“Come on,” he said, tugging lightly at my arm. “I’ll show you.”
Minutes later I had finished my coffee and was climbing on the back of his bike. Legally you didn’t have to wear helmets here, but he still gave me his to wear. Truth be told, I hated motorcycles—I hated the speed and uncertainty, finding them to be more constrictive than freeing. They also forced intimacy with the person you were riding with. Not only did I have Esteban’s helmet on my head, which was damp from sweat, though it was a musky, pleasant smell, but I had to put my arms around his waist. This Harley was definitely not a cushy cruiser.
“Where are we going?” I shouted into his ear as he revved the engine.
“Around,” he shouted back at me.
“That’s not very helpful!”
“Don’t worry, it will help you in the end!”
“How do I know that you’re not taking me somewhere to kill me?”
He shot me a lopsided smile. “Because you’d already be dead. Besides . . . they call me the nice one.”
“Who are they?”
He didn’t answer. He accelerated and we were flying down the road toward the highway. Esteban was a safe driver, though, and didn’t go much faster than the speed limit, which on Kauai was stupidly low, yet I still found myself holding on to him for dear life. My God, he had fucking abs of steel, and somehow I felt guilty just touching them.
It took about ten minutes of us heading south before I began to loosen up a bit and reduced my Kung-Fu grip on his T-shirt. I began to appreciate the speed as we picked it up and the road rushed past us. The scenery was breathtaking; to our right were deep-cut green mountains, straight from the scenes of Jurassic Park. To the left were the fields of tall grass and small farm stands, red dirt coating the signs while the Pacific sparkled in the distance.
But despite how much I relaxed, the ride—everything—felt dangerous. It wasn’t the same type of danger that I’d been courting, though. This danger was more subtle, more menacing. This danger spelled trouble for the life I’d have to go on living.
Eventually we passed through the towns of Kapa’a, Lihue, and Poipu before I realized we were going quite far off the beaten track.
“Where are we going?” I yelled at him.
“You’ll see,” he said. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
I wasn’t. But being afraid of a stranger pushing you off from a great height was a different story.
Soon we passed the ramshackle town of Hanapepe and started zooming up toward the mountains, heading inland. There was only one place for us to go, and I knew where we were going: Waimea Canyon.
It was one of the places I hadn’t been before, thanks to its location at the south end of the island. Also, when you’re traveling alone, you don’t really feel like being a sightseeing tourist.
Eucalyptus trees flew past us as we ascended the mountain road, the foliage becoming greener, the earth redder, the air filling with ethereal mist.
When we zoomed past the most popular lookout over the canyon, I started to get a little nervous.
“Where are we going?” I asked again.
“That view is, how you say, overrated.”
We accelerated as we rounded a corner, the colder air snapping against me. I went back to holding on to him for dear life as we passed more and more viewpoints filled with tourists. I started to wonder if this was such a good idea after all. It seemed he was taking me to the end of the road, the end of the line.
That idea hadn’t scared me before; it was curious that it was scaring me now.
But eventually when the road did end, it did so at a parking lot with a couple of cars parked and some sightseers milling about. I breathed out a sigh of relief as the bike came to a stop and I was able to get off.
I slipped off the helmet, knowing my hair was probably sticking flat to my head, and Esteban stared at me curiously.
“You seemed a bit scared at the end,” he noted.
I swallowed hard and looked away. “Well, I’ve never been good on bikes.”
“It’s a good sign to be scared, hey,” he said. “When you stop feeling fear, that’s when it becomes dangerous. That’s when you die.”
I resisted the urge to say something, to tell him he didn’t know shit. He acted like he knew all this stuff about me, just because he rescued me and saw my “shadows,” something we hadn’t even touched on yet.
“This is the Puu o Kila Lookout,” he said as he lightly touched my elbow and guided me toward an unpaved trail that sloped away from the parking lot. “Not many people know about it. They stop at the one before and never venture on. But this is better.”
“And how do you know so much about this island?” I asked him.
“I like to do my research,” he said in a low voice, and I followed him as we went down the smooth red banks until suddenly . . . I was breathless.
There, sprawled out in front of us, was a view like nothing I’d see before. The red dirt sloped off sharply with no guardrail to keep us back, and when the drop ended thousands of yards below, the valley begun. It ran green and wide toward the ocean, the cliffs rising up from it on either side, gouged out by millions of years of rainfall and weather. Though the sun was out, clouds passed through the valley, quickly scooting over our heads, so close at times that I wanted to reach out and touch them.
“Careful.” His voice whispered at my neck as he gently put his hand around my waist and pulled me back a step. I looked down at my feet and recoiled with horror when I realized how close I had gotten to the edge. It was almost like I had really been going for the clouds.
“It’s okay,” he said, leading me away from the edge.
I was shaking; I couldn’t help it. Jesus, I had been so close to going over.
“Come on, we can get the same view from up here.” He took me to where the path sloped up. We were farther back, but the surreal view was the same. Too bad my heart was still beating so fast, my blood pumping loudly in my ears.
Esteban took his hand off me and I felt a strange chill in its absence. “Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.
I nodded. “Yes,” I said, licking my lips that were suddenly dry. “I’m fine.”
“When women say they’re fine, they’re usually seconds from throwing their shoe at you.”
I cracked a smile, my gaze flitting over to him. “Is this from personal experience?”
He shrugged and tucked his wavy hair behind his ear, the highlights catching the gleam of the sun. “I’ve pissed off my fair share of women. But it’s not my fault they all fall so madly in love.”
I laughed. “I think you’re full of shit.”
“Oh, I am,” he said, facing me. “Perhaps that’s why they throw the shoes.”
We lapsed into silence, our attention turned back to the vi
ew. Now that I was calming down and we were farther away from the edge, I was able to take in the view as much as I could. It was like watching a moving painting. There was something so . . . unbelievable, unnatural about finding such beauty in real life. I felt like I had stepped into my own art.
And that was when it hit me like a kick to the shin.
I was inspired.
The feeling, the itch to paint, to capture the crazy, otherworldly beauty of this place, the rich, thriving greens and the opulent blues and the vista that seemed carved out of time.
“I told you so,” Esteban said.
“Told me what?”
“That you were looking in the wrong place.”
Thoughtfully, I rubbed the back of my hand across my lips, not sure what to say to that. But he was right. We stood there for a little while longer, not saying anything, and pretty soon the silence was as comfortable as warm flannel.
I thought about the man standing beside me, the relaxed yet intuitive way about him, the way my feelings about him swung from easygoing to vaguely fearful in the blink of an eye. He was handsome as hell, the scars only adding to his rugged appeal.
I needed to know more.
“So you said they call you the nice one,” I said. “You never said who they were. How do I know I can trust their opinion?”
He scratched at his sideburn and squinted at the sun. “They’re my colleagues. Out of all of them, I am the . . . most civilized. Though I guess that’s not saying much, hey.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his board shorts. “Oh, you know. This and that. I’m usually a tech guy. Sometimes I help out in other areas of the business.”
“What business is it?” I asked, and immediately felt stupid for doing so. From his evasive nature, to the darkness, to his very scars, I knew whatever he did, it wasn’t working at Target.
“I’ll tell you the truth if you tell me the truth,” he said without looking at me.
“Okay . . .” I started, feeling a little bit uneasy. “What do you want to know?”
When he picked up my left hand in his and raised it to eye level, my skin immediately began tingling.
“You’re married. Why aren’t you wearing your wedding ring?”
My chin jerked down. “How do you know I’m married?”
“Tan line,” he said. “You live somewhere where you get a lot of sun, and normally you wear your ring. But here you don’t. Why?”
I looked at my hand, at the sun spots and faint lines and a tiny splice of lightened skin where my ring usually was. “I don’t know. I was in the water so much, I took the ring off. I guess I haven’t put it back on. It’s on my dresser.”
“I see,” he said.
I frowned. “It’s true.”
“I believe you. I was just curious.”
I eyed his bare left hand. “Are you married?”
“Nope,” he said with a smile. “I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”
“I’m glad you know that,” I said solemnly as clouds momentarily blocked the sun. “Men aren’t cut out for it. But so many think they are.”
I knew he could tell I was talking from personal experience, but luckily he let it go. He cleared his throat. “Is that what you wanted to know? If I was available?”
The silky way he said “available” sent a rush of blood through me. “No. What business are you in? I mean, unless you’re a CIA agent and you’d have to kill me first.”
“I’m Mexican,” he said. “The closest thing we have to the CIA is the CIA.”
I stared at him with impatience until he continued.
“I’m in the import and export business.”
I raised a brow. “Of?”
“Drugs.”
I froze. He couldn’t be serious. Of course he wasn’t. If you were involved in importing and exporting drugs, you didn’t just tell a stranger that.
And that was when the hairs at the back of my neck danced. He wasn’t joking, was he? I stared at him, afraid to see the truth in his eyes, but his scars and that glimmer of burning darkness within told me otherwise.
He was a drug dealer. He was part of a cartel. An actual fucking Mexican drug cartel.
I tried to swallow, feeling like there was a lump in my throat. “Oh,” I said stupidly.
“Are you afraid of me now?” he asked with intensity.
I squared my shoulders and looked him in the eye. “No more than I was before.”
“I saved your life, you know,” he said. “You shouldn’t fear someone who won’t let you die.”
“Why not?” I countered. “They might love granting something and then taking it away.”
“Lani,” he said, and my name never sounded so sweet. “You don’t trust me because you don’t trust yourself.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“I know you’re in an unhappy marriage. That you’re struggling to find your art again. That you feel this life holds nothing for you anymore, and you think that you’re doing your husband and the world a favor if you just . . . disappeared.”
I hated the way he—this stranger, this fucking drug dealer—thought he knew me.
“You’re wrong,” I lied.
“Then why are you here, with me, now, looking to find those shadows?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I didn’t even know what to say.
Esteban reached out and touched my arm gently. My skin buzzed under his fingers, feeling alive, as if it had been nothing but dead cells before.
“Some fear will kill you,” he said. “Some fear will open your eyes. I know all about the difference.”
I let out a shaky breath. He was getting under my skin and his occupation didn’t help the situation. Still, I found myself asking, “So, what are you doing on Kauai?”
He smiled and removed his hand. “Ah, the million-dollar question. How about I tell you about it over dinner?”
I smiled warily. “Is that code for ‘dump my body somewhere afterward’?”
“I told you,” he said breezily, clapping his hands together, “that isn’t my intention. You took a chance on coming here today, didn’t you?”
I looked away, letting the scenery fill my sight. “I did.”
“And it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
I nodded, still not used to the competing feelings of fear and exhilaration running through me. “It was.”
“Come on then,” he said, stepping away from me and jerking his head toward the parking lot. The golden strands in his surfer hair caught the sunlight that was piercing through fast-moving clouds. “Let’s get you home, get you rested. Maybe when I pick you up tonight, you’ll be splattered with paint. That would make me very happy.”
That would have made me very happy. I followed him to the bike and shot one last glance at the kaleidoscope of greens that tinted the lush cliffs. I couldn’t imagine recreating such beauty, but I knew in my heart I was about to try.
CHAPTER FOUR
It wasn’t that I didn’t think there was something wrong with the scenario. It was more like what wasn’t wrong with the scenario. Everything that had happened since the day I almost drowned had been nothing but wrong. Never mind my mental state, the thoughts of hopelessness, desperation, and despair. Never mind those shadows that trailed inky fingers over my skin and tried to pull me back under, to let everything go and forget.
There was Esteban, a total stranger, who had admitted to me that he was part of a drug cartel. He had rescued me in ways that were not just lucky but calculated. Nothing was accidental when it came to him. Then there was the fact that I willingly let him whisk me away to a perilous place, all while on the back of a motorcycle. And of course the fact that I had agreed to go to dinner with him.
Perhaps that was the most troubling part of all. I was a married woman—an unhappily married woman, as he so astutely pointed out—but a married one, nonetheless. My marriage vows at this point were no more s
acred than my own life, but they still meant something, which in turn meant there was something so very wrong about agreeing to go to dinner with another man.
And yet, despite all these things, all the things that were red flags waving as obnoxiously as a matador’s cape, I wasn’t worried.
Why?
Because when Esteban came to pick me up later that night, I was in the backyard painting the last rays of the sunset. Streaks of pink, gold, and purple were in the sky and on my canvas and dotted on my white T-shirt. I was touched by color.
“That’s beautiful,” he commented, surprising me with his presence.
I only briefly looked over my shoulder at him, too afraid to take my eyes off the scene. A few doves cooed in the nearby bushes, and I wished I could add audio to my painting.
“I suppose you just waltzed into my house?” I asked mildly.
“Yes, sorry about that. I knocked a few times, but there was no response. I did tell you seven, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I said. I dabbed a bit of ochre on the horizon. “But I lost track of time.”
“And I’m glad to see it.” I heard him walk down the back steps and toward me. The chickens that had been pecking at the ground clucked and ran back through the hole in the fence in a flurry of feathers. I felt him stop right behind my back. “Should I come back later, Lani? Or perhaps, not at all?”
There was an edge, a coldness to his last words, as if he was hurt. It was absurd to think that a member of a drug cartel could feel slighted.
I sighed and carefully rested my paintbrush on the easel’s ledge. Then I turned around and brushed my hair out of my eyes with the back of my hand, careful not to get any paint on my face. “I’m sorry,” I said and offered him a shy smile. “This light is disappearing anyway. I was about to wrap it up. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready to go.”
He smiled in return, his greenish eyes softening. It was only then that I realized he cleaned up really well. Gone were the board shorts; instead he was wearing gray slacks and a short-sleeved white dress shirt with the first two buttons undone, his skin glowing gold. His hair was tamed by what looked like gel, and he’d shaven. His look was elegant and casual all at the same time, and had it not been for the scarring on his face, that constant reminder of his job, I would have thought he was like any well-dressed man out there.
Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction Page 18