"You could ask her to model."
"I suppose so, but then . . . You mean in some other setting?"
"Yeah," Joe said, "naked in a waterfall--I'll help."
Mo ignored him. "Part of it is the contrast with the grill. But there's
all this other clutter."
Joe shook his head. "How can she be so busy and so serene at the same
time?"
"I don't think I can catch it," Mo said. "But I'm going to try."
"Jade Willow Lady," Joe said on the way back over the pali. "That's
what I'd call her. I have to admit, Mo, I like looking at things. Why
don't we go over to Kauai some time? Day trip. Catch an early plane,
drive around, look at things, and be back by dinner? Mo pursed her lips
and considered.
" I have a client over there; I could write it off. It would be nice to
see the canyon. I have to go to the mainland next week. How about the
week after, say Friday? That would give me time to get something done
before we went."
"Sounds good. Closest flight to seven o'clock, two weeks from Friday?"
"Which airline?" Mo asked.
"I don't know--Aloha?"
"O.K. It's easier for my books if I get my own ticket," she said.
"Great. If I don't hear from you I'll see you at the terminal. Good
luck with Jade Willow Lady." Mo dropped him off at the shopping center
and drove into traffic without looking back.
He took the escalator to the upper level and walked into Shirokya,
drawn by Japanese muzak and pretty packaging. The Japanese were
incapable of bad design, he thought. It was in their genes or
something. Or maybe it was just that they cared. He almost bought a
porcelain doll to keep Batman company on the lanai, but he decided that
might be pushy. He called Aloha and bought a ticket for the 7:10 flight
to Kauai. He and Mo hadn't agreed on a return time, but the 5:45 seemed
most likely.
It was nearing pupu hour at The Chart House. He walked over in time to
get a table by the open windows, ordered a Glenlivet, and stretched out
to enjoy the view of masts in the marina. The trade wind kept up an
aluminum chatter, not as nice as the spirit of the bamboo grove, but
pleasant in its own way.
At the next table, three boat owners in their thirties were drinking,
talking story, and laughing loudly. As the first group of well dressed
office women came through the door, one of the men leaned back in his
chair. A grin spread his mustache across his red face. "Bogeys, three
o'clock," he announced.
The squadron adjusted for combat. Most would become prisoners of war,
Joe thought. He'd been one himself, not unhappily. Perhaps it was the
habit of being coupled that was pushing him in Mo's direction. She
wasn't as natural as Sally, his first wife, or as cheerful as Ingrid;
she was more independent, focused, more like him in some ways. Too bad
about her child--that explained some of the seriousness in her face.
She wasn't bowled over by the great Joe Burke, but she was interested.
He pulled back on the stick and began to climb.
6
If a globe is turned in just the right way, nothing can be seen but the
Pacific and the far off edges of continents. The Hawaiian Islands are
specks in the middle of this immensity. Kauai is a hundred miles from
Oahu, practically next door. The Aloha Airlines jet climbed and then
descended into Lihue before Joe had time to finish a glass of juice.
Green sugar cane and red earth swept past lowering wings. A bump, a
screech of tires, and they were down, taxiing to the small terminal.
Mo put away a small day planner in which she had been making notes.
"Canyon first?" she asked.
"Banana pancakes? Hard to explore on an empty stomach."
"I brought some fruit," she said. They rented a Toyota sedan, and Joe
drove into Lihue.
"Too early for saimin," he said. "Too bad. There's a great
place--Hamura's--biz people from Honolulu have been known to fly over
for lunch to cure their hangovers." He parked by Kenny's. "O.K., this
won't take long." They ordered breakfast.
"When I lived here," Joe said, "there was only one traffic light on the
island, and it wasn't on a highway; it was in the middle of a cane
field, for the trucks."
"It's changing fast," Mo said. "Too beautiful not to be discovered."
"If they stop the sugar subsidies, it's all over." Joe pushed his empty
plate away. Mo was wearing a black sweatshirt, tan jeans, and running
shoes. He had on his Filson bush jacket, Levis, and his all purpose
Clarks shoes. They looked good together, he thought, Mr. and Ms.
Competent.
"Did you notice the Kentucky Fried Chicken place on the way in to
Lihue?" he asked.
"Yes."
"I helped landscape it. Me and Whistling Ed Swaney. He was a sheriff in
L.A.; he quit after the Watts riots. He had a whistling show on a radio
station over there, fifteen minutes a week."
"Really?"
"Yup. He was a mighty muscle man--thirty years older than I was. I
could barely keep up with him. The good thing about Whistling Ed was
that he didn't talk much."
"Giving you free rein . . . "
"Yok. No. I didn't talk either, so we got along well. Anyway, we went
from one posh house to the next, cutting grass and trimming trees. The
owners treated him with great respect. I finally figured out why--he
was always sweating. I gave it a name: Swaney's Law. If you're
sweating, they can't shit on you."
They drove down to Nawiliwili Harbor and along a back road through cane
fields that followed a line of mountains. Narrow green valleys cut into
the mountains, mysteriously shaded. There was a sense of two cultures,
of a border at the edge of the sugar cane that was crossed cautiously,
if at all.
They came to the Poipu resort district and then headed up to the canyon
rim where Joe had picked plums. They stood at the lookout, above a
three thousand foot drop and ten miles of rugged red and gold walls
flecked with green. Mountain goats, bits of white, chased each other up
and down vertical slopes. "Incredible," Mo said, focusing her camera.
"It looks like they're playing tag," Joe said. "So free."
They drove to the end of the road and peered into the mist obscuring
Kalalau valley where Koolau, the leper, remained buried. Clouds swirled
and lifted, revealing glimpses of tree tops, steep ridges, and once, a
small curve of beach far below. "I almost like it better this way," Mo
said, "when you can't see it all at once. Brrrrr!" They piled into the
car and drove back down to the sunny fields on the leeward side. They
passed through road cuts, hundreds of yards of flaming bougainvillea on
both sides, and by small plantation houses painted green, corrugated
roofs rusted to the same red tones as the soil. "Stop!" Mo commanded
from time to time. Joe stretched while she took pictures.
They drove through the built up area between Lihue and Kapaa and parked
outside a medical complex. "Five minutes, ten maybe," Mo said. "The
client," she explained when she returned. "Rob Wilcox. He's a fan, buys
my stuff for his clinic and for his own collection."
"Great," Joe said. "Is there a Mrs. Wilcox?"
"No." She flushed slightly. They parked by the beach in Anahola, ate
bananas and an orange, and decided to stretch their legs. Mo walked
strangely on the sand, holding her shoes in one hand. Her pelvis tipped
back; she shifted her weight stiffly from one leg to the other in an
exaggerated prance that said, "You should be so lucky as to even look
at me." But no one else was on the beach. She didn't seem conscious of
the change. Joe looked away. Three-footers curled peacefully along the
beach as far as he could see.
They sat on the soft sand, and Mo took off her sweatshirt. Joe lay back
with his head on his shoes and admired her breasts, high and shapely
beneath a gray T-shirt. Steady, he said to himself, the woman barely
likes you. Who was she, anyway? She took good pictures; he knew that.
He fell asleep for a moment.
Mo took over the driving. They were well around the island, past
Kilauea, when Joe asked, "The Tahiti Nui, do you know it? In Hanalei?"
"A restaurant, bar?"
"Yup. With a porch. I want to have a beer on the porch." Mo looked at
her watch. "Plenty of time," Joe said. "Which flight are you on?"
"Four-thirty," she said.
"Mine is quarter to six . . . We still have time. Maybe I can get on
the early one." They drove over a stream that curved through sparkling
green rice paddies. Shortly afterwards, they stopped by the Tahiti Nui.
They sat on a wooden porch and looked across the humpy patched blacktop
road to a steep hillside, densely green and silent. "Happiness," Joe
said, touching Mo's glass with his. "By some accounts, Hawaii is the
most isolated land mass in the world. Kauai is the farthest out of the
inhabited islands, and here we are at the end of the road. It stops
right over there, can't make it around the Na Pali coast." He drank his
beer and waved at the view. "Isn't it great, Mo? End of the road. Can't
go any farther. How relaxing can you get? Nowhere to go but back--when
we feel like it."
"At three o'clock," Mo said. She took a picture of the road and one of
an orange cat curled on an old sofa next to the table.
"I had a cat like that once--'Jeremy,'" Joe said.
She turned and took one of him. "Joe Burke, at the end of the road,"
she offered in explanation.
"A long way from where I started."
"You were from Woodstock, right?" Joe nodded. "Were you at the
festival?"
"No. I was running a laundromat that year. I leased it from an old
friend whose wife was sick of cleaning it. I couldn't get away. It was
no big deal. There had been little festivals for years--'Soundouts,' we
called them--music all night, sleep in a field. I had no idea it was
going to be so huge. And anyway, it wasn't actually in Woodstock; it
was about forty miles away. Did you go?"
"I couldn't," Mo said. "I was in Vienna in a convent school. My father
was on sabbatical. It was awful. My sister Beth was already in college.
I wish I could have heard Jimi Hendrix's _Star Spangled Banner_."
"A major moment," Joe said. "When Hendrix died, the hot radio station
in Honolulu scheduled that piece for twelve noon. They asked everyone
to open their windows and crank up the volume. That was when I was
driving a cab; you could hear Hendrix blasting all over the city."