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...

Jack couldn't help it; her ass was just too fine. He kept his eyes glued to the sweet round chunk of booty as the flight attendant bent over, handing some guy a couple rows up a drink with a paper umbrella and a piece of pineapple dangling off the edge. Jack traced the outline of her panties against
the blue sweep of her skirt with his eyes. It's not like it made him hard. That was a given.

Jack's eyes followed her as she worked her way through the cabin. Stanley sat in the next seat, complaining about flying first class.

“Slippers? What are they for?”

“Comfort, you nimrod.”

“It's such a waste. We paid triple coach for slippers?”

Jack wondered about his son. Who complains about flying first class? It wasn't just the slippers that made it better. Check out the flight attendants in the front of the plane: young, blond, and looking like they were poured into their uniforms. You want to fly with frightening-looking biddies with hairy moles sprouting out of their chins? Take a seat in economy.

The flight attendant came up to Jack and looked down at him. “Would you like a cocktail? Mai tai or piña colada?”

Jack smiled up at her. “Fruity drinks are for fruity fellas. Gimme a beer.”

As he said that he adjusted himself on the seat so a blind person would've noticed his enlarged and turgid cock straining against the fabric of his pants. The flight attendant noticed.

“Are you having trouble with your tray table?”

Jack grinned at her. “It won't go down.”

She smiled at him, a detached, slightly condescending smile that indicated she'd had about enough of assholes like him and would quit tomorrow if only her husband hadn't lost all their money in the stock market.

“Let me.”

The tray table banged down, the drink and tiny bowl of mixed nuts soon after, and then she was gone.

Stanley looked at his dad. “Why'd you do that?”

“What?”

“Flirt with her.”

“I had a stroke, Stanley. I'm not dead.”

“You offended her.”

“That's what you think.”

“She forgot about me because you bugged her.”

“He who hesitates becomes lunch.”

Stanley hated when his dad said that. A pout spread across his face. “I'm thirsty.”

Jack turned away; he couldn't stand the whining. Stanley was never a good traveler. Even in first fucking class he was whining about not getting a drink when all he had to do was push the little button on the armrest and the chick with the sweet ass would be hustling down the aisle to attend to his every whim. Why couldn't Stanley figure that out? A monkey could do it.

Jack sipped his beer. It was cold and slid gently down his throat, cleaning the airplane air out of his mouth, leaving a sweet and sour aftertaste on his tongue. He was happy. This move was genius. Sure, it'd been a big investment, almost a million bucks. But he'd done it before and—except for the disappointment of Seattle—it'd worked out well. You had to take a risk if you wanted to grow. What was the cliché, break eggs to make an omelet? Jack didn't like omelets—steak and eggs was more his kind of breakfast—but he knew that pussies stood pat while the gambler hit—except on seventeen. It was the only way to beat the house. Sometimes you just gotta lay your ass on the line. That's how he took his father's lunch truck business in Detroit and made it the success it was. He spent years feeding Teamsters on construction sites until he discovered the big money in feeding Teamsters on a movie set.

Jack's dad's relationships with the AFL-CIO paid off when Jack moved the company to Las Vegas. He muscled out a little guy—not without a fight, of course. The little guy turned out to be resourceful and have some connections himself. They were mostly Hollywood connections—something Jack hadn't developed at the time—and for a while there Jack was worried. But then he hired a fixer, who took care of things the old-fashioned way. The scrappy little guy died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his catering truck, and that, as they say, was that.

After Las Vegas, Seattle and Portland had been a cinch. Moving into Honolulu was just the next logical step in Jack's long-term business plan.

Jack had had to take out a loan for most of it, using his house as collateral. But it was worth it. The trucks and gear had landed two weeks ago and been stashed in a warehouse. No one knew what was in them; no one knew what they were for. He had put Lucey Truck Sales on the manifest. Any longshoreman or AFL-CIO member taking a casual interest would think Jack was opening a truck dealership on the island. That was how he liked to do it. Stealthily. In the dead of night. Don't let the competition know you're there until it's too late. Before they knew what hit them, Jack and Company would be out of the gate: locking up jobs, hiring the best drivers, and basically showing the locals how the big boys did things.

Stanley waved to the flight attendant. Jack watched her breasts heave as she walked toward them.

Stanley ordered a glass of skim milk.

...

Wilson drove his father down the road toward Honolulu. Verdant hills, deep green and jungled up, rolled along, spilling down from the Kolekole Pass heading for Pearl Harbor and the ocean. Sid Tanumafili, a man with a body built like two linebackers gone to seed, adjusted his bulk in the seat of the Ford Explorer, brushed some donut crumbs off his XXL University of Hawaii sweatshirt, and turned to his son.

“What you know den?”

“No one can get in.”

“We bust in.”

“Alarms.”

“Since when did dat stop anyone?”

“And dey got dogs.”

“Give 'em some Spam an' Seconal.”

“It's just some fuckin' trucks, Dad.”

Sid Tanumafili knew it wasn't just some fucking trucks. He wasn't born yesterday. He didn't maintain his grip on the business through blind luck. He knew who Jack Lucey was, and he had a pretty good idea what he was up to.

“You talk to Joseph?”

“He went out fo' a run.”

“What he say den?”

“Nobody gonna drive fo' dem, man. Nobody gonna cook fo' dem. Dey're fucked.”

“He say dat?”

Wilson shifted in his seat. “Not exact like, no.”

“What he say den?”

Wilson's face flushed. “How come you only care wot fo' Joseph say? Don' I count?”

Sid didn't answer. What was he going to tell him,
No, you're my son but you're an idiot?
Better not to say anything. Sid pulled his cell phone out of his sweatpants and speed-dialed his nephew.

...

Francis could smell her from down the hall. What was she wearing, burnt patchouli? It made him want to light a clove cigarette just to counter the stench. He watched as Yuki came bounding down the corridor, a bright smile on her face and some kind of grotesque chunk of rock dangling from her neck, banging into her flat chest. Francis checked to see if she was wearing Birkenstocks. She was.

“Good morning!”

Francis grimaced. Only a retard is this cheerful. “Let's go.”

“Sleep well?”

Francis didn't respond.

“Is your room comfortable?”

“It's fine.”

“I slept great. Must be the fresh air, all those ions from the ocean. Did you see the ocean? Can you believe the view? Isn't it fantastic?”

It was going to be a long morning.

They entered the hotel restaurant, with its sweeping view of the ocean and landscaped lawn, and sat down in a blindingly sunny booth. Francis couldn't take the brilliance while his brain was still struggling to escape the full nelson of a World Wrestling Federation–sized hangover, so he popped his sunglasses on. That was better. He toyed with the idea of ordering a Bloody Mary for breakfast, hair of the dog, but
thought better of it. That would be like admitting he had a problem.

The smelly girl pushed her menu away and looked at him. “I already ate. I had some fruit in my room.”

Francis looked at the menu.

“After I do my meditation, I like to eat fresh fruit.”

“That's nice.”

“It's good for your body, you know? Gives you a fresh feeling.”

Francis wondered if he could fire her. Send her home with a severance package and a couple of pineapples. Take her high-fiber, low-fun, sunshine-fresh feeling and send it packing.

“Don't you just love it here?”

He looked over at her and forced the sides of his mouth to rise up in a creaky, painful imitation of a smile.

“It's great.”

Although it was an almost superhuman effort, Francis was glad he'd done it. It made her day. She positively twinkled, like a disco ball.

“The papayas are superdelish. Try one.”

“Okay. I will.”

...

Hannah pulled her long black hair back into a ponytail and wrapped a rubber band around it to keep it that way. She turned, revealing the golden-brown nape of her neck, faced the blackboard, and wrote the word
KAMAPUA‘A
on the board. She immediately heard titters from her class of ninth-graders. It was like that every year she taught this section of the
Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation myth. Certain stories in Hawaiian mythology were funny, but the myth of Kamapua‘a, the Hog God, was the one that got the kids going. Hannah knew why. The Hog God had been a playboy. Naughty and hedonistic, licentious and lustful, allegedly endowed with a “snout of great size,” he was the one—along with Kanaloa, the evil-smelling Octopus God—that captured their imagination.

Hannah wasn't that much older than her students, and she remembered her own grueling hours spent attempting to memorize the lineage of the Hawaiian gods. Who gave birth to whom and when and what form of animal, vegetable, or mineral they became. It was complicated, difficult. She was glad they could laugh and enjoy it.

Hannah had studied Hawaiian history and language in college; it had made her feel special, proud to be Hawaiian. She decided to make it her personal mission to keep the culture alive and that's what she was doing; she was teaching Hawaiian. Her father, a former navy pilot who had gone on to fly commercial jets for Aloha Airlines, was always offering to put in a good word for her, and frankly she could've earned twice the money working as a flight attendant. But she believed her work was important, which gave her a feeling of satisfaction a big paycheck couldn't match. All the classes at Ke Kula Kaiapuni‘o Anuenue were taught in Hawaiian. It was a pilot language-immersion program, one of only a handful in the state, and she was one of the dedicated teachers working to make the experiment a success.

Hannah turned just in time to see Lisa Nakashima, the troublemaker, trying to pass a note to Liliana Morrison, her accomplice in class disruption. Hannah intercepted the note
and unfolded the paper to reveal a crude drawing of Kamapua‘a, the Hog God, looking a lot like Porky Pig with a gigantic erection. Hannah couldn't help herself; she smiled.

...

The union reps arrived, one of them looking like that guy in
Goldfinger
who throws the hat—oh, yeah, Oddjob—the other some weasely Caucasian dude in a shirt that looked like it was made out of irradiated hibiscus blossoms. Francis was glad he'd kept his sunglasses on.

“You Frank?”

“Francis.”

“People call you Frank?”

“Not really.”

The two men stood there, Teamster tough, glaring at the faggot from Hollywood and his smelly assistant.

Francis pointed to Yuki. “This is my assistant.”

He kicked himself for not remembering the smelly girl's name. But she helped him out; she stood up and extended her hand.

“Yuki Sugimoto.”

The Caucasian spoke. “Joe Ward.”

They all shook hands. Then it was Oddjob's turn.

“Ed Huff.”

There was nothing friendly or open in the greetings. It wasn't nice to meet them. It wasn't a pleasure. Joe and Ed came with one mission in mind: to get the full hourly rate for their union members. They were sick and tired of constantly cutting deals and dropping overtime or—worse—eliminating golden time, where the union members made double their
hourly rate. This time they were going to dig in their heels. Pay full freight or film your stupid movie-of-the-week in Thailand.

Francis wasn't intimidated; he had dealt with men like these many times. They represented the grunts, the boots-on-the-ground of movie production. The men who drove the trucks, unloaded the equipment, and then sat around eating and playing cards until it was time to pack everything up and drive off to the next location. They were the first to arrive and the last to leave. You couldn't do a shoot without them, and if you didn't keep them happy they could really fuck you over. They could start running late; there could be a problem with the trucks; they could get lost or, worse, just slow down. These kinds of things could cost a production tens of thousands of dollars in lost days. The last thing a producer like Francis—a line producer whose job was to see that everything is where it should be when it's supposed to be—wanted was to lose a day of shooting because of grumpy grips and pissed-off Teamsters.

“Please, have a seat.”

Yuki got up and moved around to sit next to Francis, the proximity to her fragrance sending a volcanic rush of bile into his throat, almost killing him with aromatherapy, as Joe and Ed squeezed into the booth.

“Hungry? It's on me.”

“Just coffee.”

Joe leaned in. He didn't want to waste time. “What're we lookin' at?”

“Six weeks prep, twenty-eight-day shoot.”

“How many trucks you think you're gonna need?”

The coffee arrived. Francis ordered half a papaya to start and then, figuring he'd need some protein to replace what he lost last night, ordered an omelet and a side of bacon. He sipped his coffee and smiled to himself. The side of bacon had been an afterthought, a little fuck-you to his psychic nutritionist, his personal trainer, his dermatologist, his cardiologist, and best of all to Chad. Chad had a fear of pork. As if a little plaque in the arteries or an extra decimal point of body fat was the worst thing that could ever happen to a person.