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Baxter scratched his head. Jack was beginning to think that confiding in a hulking doorman at a skanky strip club was yet another really stupid thing he'd done in what was becoming a parade of stupid things. This, he realized, is how you end up behind bars.

Baxter snapped his fingers. “I got it. What if you get someone to do the hit before the hitman?”

“I don't follow.”

“If another shooter gets the victim before the guy who's been hired, then he can't be mad about not getting paid because he didn't do the job. You see?”

Jack thought about it while Baxter continued to expound on his idea.

“It's better than whackin' the first shooter, 'cause those guys are usually connected. And this is the beauty part—” Baxter was beaming—“it still solves your friend's problem.”

Jack suddenly understood. “You wouldn't know where I could hire a shooter, do you?”

“It's you? You're the friend?”

Jack nodded.

“I'll tell you what, Mr. Lucey. I'll do the job for you.”

“You're a hitman?”

“Not really. But it's, like—it's my dream job. It's something I've always wanted to do but, you know, nobody ever gave me the opportunity.” And then, as an afterthought, “I'll give you a good price.”

Jack played it cool. “Can I count on you?”

“You want me to demonstrate? I could whack somebody as, like, a sample.”

Jack shook his head. “That won't be necessary. Just the one.”

Baxter grabbed Jack's gimpy hand and shook it enthusiastically. “Thank you, Mr. Lucey. Thank you. You won't be sorry.”

...

Joseph opened his closet and stared at his clothes. He had a closet full of colorful clothes, but then Hawaiian shirts are colorful by definition. Hawaii's a colorful place, and Hawaiian shirts are a Hawaiian thing. Of course there were gay Hawaiians who wore them, but that was more about being Hawaiian than being gay. Wasn't it?

He closed his closet door and sat down on his bed. What was he worried about? Just because everybody he knew, including his longtime girlfriend, thought he should have sex with a guy didn't mean they thought he was gay. Right? Not that it would be a bad thing if he was. There's nothing wrong with being gay. But he wasn't. Right?

No one met him at the airport. No one said aloha. No one threw a lei around his neck. No one even noticed him. That was the way he liked it.

He picked up his rental car and followed the Xeroxed map they'd given him at the counter to the Ala Moana Hotel just on the edge of Waikiki. It was a nice hotel, the kind of place a businessman might stay, upscale but not too fancy. The kind of place where an innocuous young man could blend right in, get in, and get out, without arousing any suspicion at all.

After he checked in, Keith went for a walk. He strolled down Kalakaua Avenue, stopping in a menswear store to pick up some khaki-colored shorts and a few Hawaiian shirts with big hibiscus blossoms speckled on them. He wore one of the shirts out of the store and down the street. Although he thought the shirt with its pale orange background and splotchy white floral pattern looked like he'd fallen asleep under a flock of seagulls, Keith knew he needed to wear it; he needed to acclimate. Besides, it was better than sweltering under a bright blue burka in Afghanistan.

Keith walked into the Surfrider hotel, strolled through the beautiful old lobby, and came out to the cocktail bar under
a massive banyan tree. He sat with his back to the hotel, admiring the handsome people on the beach, watching a couple of young men take a surfing lesson, and thought about what he needed to do. He ordered a beer.

What he'd learned in the military—Assassination 101—had been pounded into his head in drill after drill and then tested and reinforced in hostile environments. The operational protocols had become second nature to him: infiltration, execution, extraction. Easy. Effective. Like shampooing your hair: wash, rinse, repeat.

Keith checked his list off in his head. He was here, he'd infiltrated. As far as anyone knew, he was a businessman on vacation. He'd already gone through the phone book and located Sid Tanumafili; that wasn't difficult, that's the easy part. Now he had to plan the execution and extraction. These were linked. The last thing you want to do is take out your target and not have a clue how to get your ass out of the area. That, he realized, was the main problem with being on an island. All they had to do was close the airport and he'd be trapped. It's not like doing a hit in Denver; you can't just get in your car and drive to Phoenix. You can't pop somebody and then stroll down to the corner and catch a bus. Nope. Here the rules were different. The extraction had to be part of the execution. It had to be airtight.

Keith ordered a second beer. Everyone else was drinking, and he didn't want to stick out. Besides, he was enjoying himself. He watched as a large catamaran sounded its horn and drifted slowly to shore. Dozens of tourists, burned a crispy pre-melanoma red from being out on the water all day, clambered off the boat and waddled back to their various hotels. A family from Seattle walked by. Where they had once been
as pale as uncooked chicken, they were now scarlet and blistering. The wife was complaining to the husband, bitching and whining, her voice getting higher and higher as she got more and more upset. She was annoyed that the sun was so strong here. Keith had to chuckle. What did she think? That her husband could use the dimmer and take the UV index down a couple of notches? Keith heard the woman start in again. Why did they have to come here, was he trying to give her skin cancer? Why couldn't they go somewhere else? Keith shook his head and laughed.

...

Yuki knew Francis was in the hospital. She knew where he was and how he got there. But that didn't mean she was going to visit or send flowers. As far as she was concerned, he got what was coming to him.

She was at work. Someone had to keep things going. Someone had to push the paperwork through. So that's what she did. Although she had to admit that her heart wasn't in it.

All she could think about was Lono. The image of him on top of her, thrusting his cock into her, kept replaying in her mind. She could recall his taste, the salty raw flavor of his tongue thrusting into her mouth. She remembered how strong and solid his arms felt. She smiled when she thought about the sweet sweaty whacking sound of their bodies colliding.

Even though they'd made plans to get together tonight, Yuki couldn't help herself. She daydreamed. She felt her body getting warm, her pulse racing. She got up, locked herself in the bathroom, and masturbated. She let the phone ring.

...

Sid was mad. He and Wilson stood in front of Joseph; their body language—arms crossed, legs hip distance apart, heads cocked slightly—said it all. They weren't going to take no for an answer.

“After all I done for you?”

Joseph groaned. Nobody likes a guilt trip. “Uncle, I said no.”

“You gonna make my house payment den?”

“I won't do it.”

“Wot you scared of?”

Joseph glared at Sid. “You go fuck him.”

Sid shrugged. “I be happy to. 'Cause it mean I got food fo' my family mouth.”

Wilson chimed in. “We all gotta sacrifice, brah.”

Joseph looked at his cousin. “You wouldn't do it.”

“Sure I would, but he wants you, brah.”

Sid came over and put his arm around Joseph. “People do it fo' all da time. All over da world men are fuckin' each other den. It's no big deal.”

Wilson added his two cents. “It's okay wit' Hannah. She said so.”

All his life Joseph had listened to his uncle, ever since his parents had decided to move to the mainland for the security of steady employment and a more affordable standard of living. Without his mother or father around, Joseph had gone to his uncle for guidance. He'd taken his advice about college, which kind of car to buy and how much to pay for it, how to get a mortgage for his house, and what to do when he grew up. They'd sat together and talked and drank and
turned Sid's small fleet of lunch trucks into one of the best production catering companies in the business. Sid was his father figure, his business partner, and his friend. And now he was asking Joseph to whore for the family.

“Sorry. No can.”

Sid shook his head violently. His face grew flushed and his eyes bugged out.

“Once dat guy move in we never get 'im out. Dey take food from our mouth fo' da rest of our life. You gotta stop 'em before dey get in. Dey just like da vines.”

The vines were a pet peeve of Sid's. Some visionary brings a vine from the mainland over to Oahu to grow in his yard, a plant not native to the islands, and the next thing you know it's gone crazy, growing up telephone poles and down the lines until it finds a tree, then covering the tree and killing it, and on and on. The plants were insidious, unstoppable. They had altered the flora and fauna of the island forever. Another invader from the mainland.

“There's enough work to go around.”

Sid spit on the ground. “Wot we doin' now den? Wot we doin'?”

It was true. There wasn't any work at the moment.

“Something will come up. I was talking to Ed the other day. He was getting all kinds of feelers from L.A.”

Sid stared at him. “Look me in da eye den.”

Joseph looked Sid in the eye.

“You gonna do it?”

“No.”

“Fo' da family den?”

“The gay thing is
pau.
”

“Even if it mean we hungry?”

“Even if it means we sell everything and open up a little
okazu
in Waialua.”

Sid paused. He didn't say anything for a long time. Wilson stared at Joseph, trying to keep a determined expression on his face. Finally, Sid spoke.

“You not my blood. You not my partner.”

“Uncle, what are you talking about?”

Sid exploded, shouting at Joseph. “You fired! I don' wanna see you no mo'.”

With that he turned and walked out. Wilson followed. Joseph watched them leave. Saw the screen door smack into the wood and watched as their hulking figures slowly disappeared down the walk. He listened as car doors opened and closed, an engine started, and the car drove off, the tires making sticky sounds on the hot pavement.

...

Francis lay in bed in one of those ridiculous hospital gowns. That was humiliating enough. But the day was young, and Francis knew a fresh round of embarrassment and degradation was on the schedule for later. Already he'd had a parade of first-year residents standing around looking at his cock. They all had their chance, poking and prodding, squeezing and palpating. He'd learned to respond to their commands like a dog: Cough. Inhale. Exhale. They made him roll over and took turns snapping on rubber gloves, lubing up, and sticking their fingers up his ass to jab at his prostate. None of it felt particularly erotic. But the head doctor told him this was a valuable learning experience for his students. They didn't get to study examples of priapism that often.

Francis understood why. If he hadn't had the shit kicked out of him on the beach, these pimply med students wouldn't be standing around admiring his woody. No way. He could think of a million other uses for it.

When he wasn't being bombarded with inane questions like
When did you attain your last orgasm?,
Francis was on the phone to the mainland, telling the story of how he survived a brutal attack on the beach. He left out the part about exposing himself to his assistant.

A nurse came in with another bouquet of flowers. These were from the executive producers, and he had her set them right next to the ones from the network execs. Francis was a little disappointed that he hadn't gotten any flowers from Chad. Chad was the first person he'd tried to call when he woke up. But, typically, Chad wasn't home or in the office and, according to his assistant, was “unreachable.” Francis had called Chad's cell phone and left a message informing him that he had been practically beaten to death. He figured he needed to exaggerate to get Chad's attention. But still no phone call, no flowers, no nothing.

It occurred to Francis that the only reason to be involved with someone was so they would come and be by your side when you needed a hand to hold or a shoulder to cry on. Francis remembered how he felt as he watched the attack on the World Trade Center on September eleventh. He worried about the people who had no loved ones to call. What if you were just standing there, knowing the end is near, everyone else is on their cell phone muttering
I love you
and saying good-bye to their families, and you've got no one to call? That would suck. That would be him.

The nurse opened the door and smiled. Francis couldn't tell if her expression was one of pity and empathy or bemusement and sadism. He guessed it was a bit of both as the brain trust trooped into his room and lifted the sheet.

Just when you think they've done the most horrible things they can do, they come up with something new. They came in to take measurements, a whole class of them. Gawking like a busload of tourists, making notes and nodding as the doctor in charge rattled off a string of arcane facts and unintelligible medical gibberish. After his little speech and demonstration, he held an impromptu Q&A session before letting each one take a turn molesting the patient.

The students, some of the women tittering and leering like Girl Scouts at a nudist camp, held fancy-looking calipers and other instruments of torture.

They measured from the tip to the base. They measured the circumference, the diameter, the density, and the weight. They took turns at this: snapping on rubber gloves and grabbing his dick like they actually knew what they were doing. He felt the cold touch of the instruments as they went about measuring and calling out numbers. Francis was relieved that they were all speaking metric. Centimeters and millimeters and grams. They might as well have been speaking Chinese. And then one of the pimply-faced little nerds with his white doctor jacket and his plastic pocket protector and stupid stethoscope dangling from his pencil neck piped up with “That's not even six inches.”