by C. McGee
When I finally arrived at my vehicle, I found a cop waiting for me.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, and started to laugh, amazed by my misfortune.
The policeman didn’t see the humor in the situation.
“I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you,” he asserted. “I’m here to search your car.”
“The hell you are,” I retorted, too tired to filter myself.
“What was that?’
“I said you’re not searching my car. Not unless you have a warrant.”
I wanted to go home, that’s all, and the quickest way for me to get there would have been to let the policeman search my vehicle. He would have found nothing, and I would have been on my way. No harm done. But that also would have meant that he would have won and I was in no mood to let anyone else win. So, I demanded the proper paperwork. As expected, he didn’t have it.
“Ma’am,” he said to me, like I was some middle-aged hockey mom, “I can get a warrant, but things will go a lot better for you if you just let me search the vehicle.”
“No.” I retorted snidely. “I want to do it the hard way where things go worse for me.”
“Fine, then you’re going to have to sit here while I get a warrant.”
“Fine. I will. It’s a beautiful day. I would love to spend it outside.”
“Very well,” the policeman replied. He shook his head, turned around, and headed back toward his car.
I watched the cop walk away, my face etched with indignation. It must have been a rather odd sight, me acting all haughty while looking like a hot mess. At the time, however, it didn’t strike me as such. My anger was too righteous to look bizarre. The cop was a shit-cherry on top of a shit-sundae, and I had done nothing to deserve his presence. The world seemed to be conspiring against me, and I’d had enough.
Two hours passed in hostile silence before the warrant finally arrived. As soon as it did, I grabbed my key out of its hiding place in the wheel well and unlocked all the doors. The cop gave my car a thorough search and found nothing. He looked legitimately surprised. I looked smug. I got in my car, drove home, showered, dowsed my arm in antibiotic ointment, and went to bed.
When I woke up the next day I thought, Why the fuck was that cop there? And why was he so determined to search my car? And why did he show no concern for my mutilated arm? What a dick. Then I looked at my arm and thought, Damn that looks bad. Fucking mongoose. Then I looked out my window at the empty kayak rack and thought, I suppose scratches are better than shark bites.
Chapter 25
Recovering from Fights with Animals
Having barely survived my first attempt at smuggling, I decided to take it easy for the next few days. I tried to forget about the chickens and focus on myself. It worked for a little while.
The first day back I barely got out of bed. I nursed my wounds, binge watched guilty-pleasure television, and ate a shit ton of crap food. The second day back I did the same but switched over to a show with some artistic merit (fewer vampire-werewolf-fairy love triangles, more advertising executives behaving in a morally dubious fashion). The third day back I got a bit more ambitious. I went over to Ethan’s place and hung out by the pool with him and Charlie. The whole kayak-mongoose-shark story came out within the first five minutes of my being there. I suppose it was bound to. My arm looked like a used cutting board, randomly sliced in all directions, so inquiries were inevitable. Both Ethan and Charlie responded as expected. The former showed mild anger mixed with concern while the latter deemed my actions slipshod and foolish. After fifteen minutes they both let it go. Those guys are good that way. What’s passed is past; they pause long enough to note the mistake, learn from it, and then move on. I appreciate such pragmatism.
On my fourth day back I returned to the realm of the productive, landing a job at Garden Isle River Guides. The proprietor, Paul, a lean, upper-middle-age, half-Hawaiian-half-white-guy, with graying hair, hired me on the spot. I was a little nervous at the prospect of getting back into a kayak, but I knew it had to be done. Sure, the last time I was in one I nearly died, but fuck it, I hadn’t actually died and that meant I needed to keep living.
On my way back from the job interview I kept my eyes peeled for chickens. It had been a while since I added to my tally, but it felt like a good time to start up again. I needed more fuel for my flame, a reminder of why I went on that kayak trip in the first place. Unable to recall the exact number at which I stopped, I decided to start up again at one thousand nine hundred. It sounded right, significant in some way.
Chapter 26
Cookies and Umbrella Trees
“Mom, I promise you don’t need to send those cookies.”
“But, honey, you have to have them. I mean, they’re famous. And ya know you can only get them at the Minnesota State Fair and that only comes around once a year.”
“I know the fair only comes around once a year but—”
“And,” my mom continued, talking over me, “we brought them back all the way from The Cities just so we could mail them to you, so—”
“Mom,” I interjected, more firmly this time, forcing her to listen. “Believe it or not, cookies do exist in Hawaii, same as back home, so there is no reason for you to spend a fortune sending a bucket of them across the Pacific Ocean.”
“But these cookies are different.”
“They’re different, huh?”
“Yes, they’re different.”
“Do they have flour?”
“Well, yes.”
“And sugar?”
“Yes.”
“And shortening, and chocolate chips?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Then they’re cookies, mom! They’re chocolate chip cookies. They make them out of the same stuff down here.”
“You’re right, honey, of course you’re right,” my mom replied, swiftly transitioning into the role of the martyr. “No need for me to send them. I’ll just walk down the street to your sister’s. The grandkids will eat ‘em right up, no problem.”
“Good, do that,” I said with a touch of venom in my voice. After a hurried goodbye I hung up.
I couldn’t tell if my mother intended to be passive-aggressive with the whole, your-sister-has-already-given-me-grandkids-and-lives-a-block-away bit, but I certainly felt like she was which means I acted like she was. Perhaps that was unfair. Perhaps my mother was not implying that she preferred my sister’s life choices. Perhaps she was just letting me know that the bucket of cookies would not go to waste. Who knows? I certainly don’t, and I suspect that my mother doesn’t either. The habitual nature of her passive-aggression has degenerated her ability to identify the very behavior to which she is addicted. She can no longer tell when she is being passive-aggressive or when someone else is. It’s frustrating.
Annoyed by the conversation with my mom, I threw a jacket on and headed to the bar for a drink. On my way I spotted a couple of chickens merrily pecking away at a bag of old cookies. It was an uncanny coincidence, but I didn’t give it much thought. Instead, I threw a rock at them. It missed, flying a foot or two over their heads, but it succeeded in scaring them off. As I watched the rat-birds recede into the thick green brush, my mind returned to thoughts of mongoose smuggling. Nothing had changed. The chickens still needed to go and mongooses still seemed like the best way to make that happen. By the time I got to the bar no new ideas had struck me; however, the gears in my head had re-commenced turning and that was something.
Koa was at the bar, sitting on a stool by himself, head hanging over the top of a nearly empty glass. It was a rather mournful sight, like something Bruce Springsteen would write a song about—just a blue-collar American down on his luck.
Looking to turn Koa’s spirits, I put my hand on his shoulder and offered him an upbeat greeting. “Hey, friend, long time no see!”
He looked up at me with a smile. It was a tired smile but a smile nonetheless. “There’s my haole girl. Haven’t seen you in ages.”
&
nbsp; It took Koa a few seconds to get going but soon he was talking to me in his characteristically jocular fashion. His cheer, however, seemed hollow or forced or both, so I asked him if anything was wrong. He offered a reply that seemed honest yet deliberately vague, something about not seeing eye to eye with a particular friend. A mental image of the huge Hawaiian with the ridiculously long name popped into my head, but I didn’t inquire as to whether or not that was the friend in question. Instead, I let Koa move the conversation in a more affable direction.
We ended up talking for hours about an array of subjects. It was nice. At one point, he told me that as a kid he loved to play his ukulele underneath the umbrella tree in his backyard. It was such an idyllic image—little Koa strumming away in the shade of his favorite childhood tree—I couldn’t get it out of my head. I thought about it on the walk home from the bar and dreamt about it that night in bed. It was a delightful and quixotic dream that my unconscious mind was enjoying a great deal until suddenly it was cut short. Chickens were the culprit, a whole torture of them, eight maybe nine, all raucously celebrating the first morning light, dragging me unceremoniously into the world of the conscious with their grating crows and caws. It had been weeks since they had woken me at my own house, not since the mass beheading, but now they were back and so was my anger.
“Fuck you, you fucking sores,” I said, awake, enraged, staring at the dawn-lit ceiling. “You assholes are dead. You’re all fucking dead.”
Pissed off, I got out of bed, showered, made coffee, grabbed my .22, and headed to the back porch. Once there I sat down in a lawn chair, drank my French roast, and shot at chickens and things that vaguely resembled chickens. In between shots I considered alternative mongoose smuggling techniques. By midmorning I had succeeded in killing two roosters and a crumpled-up paper bag that looked kind of like a hen, but I had not succeeded in devising a new mongoose smuggling plan. I would have continued until nightfall had Lana not called and told me to come over.
Chapter 27
Short Skirts Solve Problems or Play to Your Strengths
It took me fifteen minutes to get to Lana’s place, five minutes longer than normal. The Hawaiian Liberation Front was responsible for the delay. They were holding another protest, this one by the Princeville grocery store. The protest resulted in people gawking, which resulted in traffic slowing, which resulted in me getting annoyed. I hate traffic, and I really hate unnecessary traffic caused by people’s stupid open-mouthed gaping. That said, when I got to the front of the line I totally slowed down to check out what was going on. I’m only human.
The protest wasn’t huge, but it was energetic. Evidently, the HLF is a pretty passionate group. They were out there lifting signs and chanting like LBJ was still in office. And some of them were pretty fat too. That has to count for something. The morbidly obese don’t exert energy for just any old cause. Koa’s friend Tiny might have been among the ranks of the corpulent protesters but I can’t be certain. I was far away, and I have a difficult time telling the difference between really fat people. All their features just kind of blend together into an amorphous blob.
“Hey, Lana,” I said loudly as I walked into her house. “Did you see that crazy shit down at the Foodland? Those HLF guys are getting seriou—”
I stopped talking the second I realized other people were over. Real people. Not Ethan and Charlie (although they were there as well) but actual adults, people in dress clothes—not super fancy dress clothes, more business casual dress clothes, but still, they certainly weren’t wearing a swimsuit cover-up which is what I was rocking.
“Hello, all,” I said while delivering a winsome smile, an attempt to recover from my inappropriate entrance. “I apologize for interrupting like that. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to run upstairs and change into more suitable attire. Please continue on without me.” I curtseyed and left the room.
“Dear god, Ingrid,” I said to myself as soon as I was out of earshot. “Did you just curtsey? Seriously? A motherfucking curtsey? Get your shit together.”
I then proceeded to do exactly that. Although I was unsure as to what was going on downstairs, I was fairly certain that it would be to my benefit to collect myself, so I did. I have never been the type to freak out in stressful situations. It’s so counterproductive.
Proceeding without pause, I walked straight to Lana’s room and into her closet. Lana is at least a half a foot shorter than I am so I knew most of the clothes wouldn’t work, but I only needed one decently nice ensemble and she has a shit ton of stuff, so based on sheer volume the odds were in my favor. I ended up going with a button-up shirt that fit well and a skirt that fit fairly well. The latter was a little short, but my legs are my second best feature so I went with it anyway (Obviously my mind is my best feature—that and my boobs).
Feeling more confident as a result of the wardrobe upgrade, I re-entered the room, offered another apology, and settled down into the chair next to Ethan. All of the men in the room accepted my apology with a smile, the one woman in the room that was not Lana or myself gave me a reluctant head nod and then disapprovingly glared at my legs.
Bitch, I thought.
“Bitch,” Ethan said quietly in my ear. “She just hate you ‘cause she ain’t you.”
I smiled. I like that Ethan defends me without question and that he randomly employs teenage slang; they’re both endearing traits.
“So,” Ethan continued on, ignoring the glaring woman. “You must not have checked your voicemail.”
“I haven’t checked my voicemail in three months.”
“No worries. It worked out better this way. Your legs in that skirt make this meeting far more interesting.”
“You bet your ass they do,” I said with a wink. “So what’s this all about?”
“An investor’s meeting.”
Obviously, it was an investor’s meeting, I felt foolish for not realizing it immediately. Sketches of the future resort were displayed on either side of Lana, powerful looking people were half listening half perusing the material they had been given in their folder, and fancy snacks were resting on the table in the corner. The scene might as well have come with a label.
Having settled in and acquired an understanding of what was taking place, I focused my attention appropriately. Ethan tried to continue talking to me, but I gave him my I-know-that-you-don’t-give-a-shit-about-decorum-but-I-give-a-half-a-shit-so-shut-up face, and he responded accordingly.
The presentation turned out to be quite interesting. Of course, my three-quarter of a million dollar stake in the venture probably biased my opinion. The whole thing might have actually been a total snore, who knows? I’d be captivated by the most boring shit in the world so long as I had six figures on the line: an Amish church service, an HR seminar, traffic court, golf on television—anything.
After Lana finished giving a thorough overview of the project a thin Asian man with a round face stood up and started throwing around numbers. Although I had never seen the man before, I was fairly certain that he was Lana’s father. Their features, mannerisms, and speech cadence were all remarkably similar. What was not similar was my gut feeling toward them. Lana has always struck me as an effective, no-nonsense, business-type. Her father, on the other hand, struck me as an effective, no-nonsense, business-type, encased in a layer of sleaze. This gave me pause regarding the investment but only briefly. Having an unscrupulous guy on my side probably increased the project’s odds of success.
Following the conclusion of the presentation, I went around and introduced myself to all of the other investors, even the cunt that stared daggers at me. I was keenly aware of the fact that I had made a less than stellar first impression and was determined to rectify my fuck-up. After a half hour of schmoozing I had done just that. Even the bitch with the judgmental eyes warmed to me.
“So, Freyja wins the most improved trophy,” Lana said, as she closed the door behind the last of the formal guests. The boys and I were the only ones left. “You starte
d off rough with the whole inappropriate clothing debacle, but you had them eating out of your hand by the end.”
“Only because she deployed the giraffe legs,” Ethan interjected. “With those things in that skirt she could sell civil liberties to Kim Jong Un.”
“That’s just playing to your strengths,” I said, with a matter-of-fact grin.
“She’s right,” Lana backed me up. “Ruthless pragmatism, that’s how you get things done. If you’ve got something that works, work it.”
The four of us continued talking as we made our way to the kitchen in pursuit of some wine. When we arrived we found Lana’s dad standing by the center island. I was slightly taken aback, as I thought we were the only ones left in the house. The surprise must have shown on my face
“I apologize,” he said. “My intention was not to startle you. I just thought it would be nice to hang back and meet Lana’s friends.”
“Oh, of course,” I said, recovering my composure. “Hi, I’m Ingrid.”
“Yukio,” Lana’s father replied reaching out a hand; he then proceeded to introduce himself in the same fashion to both Ethan and Charlie. Ethan returned the handshake in a nonchalant fashion. Charlie returned it with a curiously deliberate look on his face. Having introduced himself to all of us, Yukio gave Lana a hug and then headed toward the door. Talking over his shoulder on the way out he added, “Oh, and I fed Icarus while I was waiting so he should be good for the night.”
“Who the fuck is Icar …”
That’s when it occurred to me. I don’t know how I hadn’t thought of it earlier.
Chapter 28
The Viking Princess in the Black Market
It’s startling how many stupid pets there are in the world. I suppose it shouldn’t be considering the overwhelmingly large number of stupid people that exist. One of them is bound to think that a pet armadillo or some other such nonsense is a good idea. Here is a list of the worst pets I have ever heard of: