Last Light (Novella) (2 page)

Makani could have driven to the restaurant in three minutes, but she took ten, winding through the residential streets of the peninsula point, doubling back on herself, the windshield dappled with continuously changing laceworks of sunlight and leaf shadows, while she recalled her life in Hawaii.

After only six years, those days and places seemed like threads and figurations in a tapestry of dreams: the tropical forests and the pineapple fields and the dormant volcanoes that were ancient gods sleeping but aware, the sudden rains and the many waterfalls of the Ko'olau mountains, the refreshing trade winds….

She missed all of it. Now and then she suffered a long day of sadness when she realized too poignantly how the paradise of her childhood and adolescence was slowly fading from the fabric of her soul.

Most of all, she missed her mother and father. Great-Aunt Lokemele. Grandmother Kolokea. Uncle Pilipo, who preferred to be called by the English equivalent—Philip. Her sister, Janice. Her brother, Robert, who answered only to his Hawaiian name—Lopaka.

She longed for all the others as well, both blood kin and friends, whom she had left behind.

Since she had been sixteen, however, life had grown steadily more difficult when lived among so many people whom she loved. At that age, her gift came upon her suddenly and without explanation. The gift—or perhaps curse—was to discover, by the merest touch, other people's darkest secrets.

Her family and friends were good people, struggling to live with grace and with consideration for others. They were not angels, however, not a one of them, but human beings with weaknesses and faults. Just like Makani herself. Compared to outrages that were committed by others in this fallen world, the desires of her loved ones, their moments of envy, and their less-than-noble urges were almost innocent. Yet that unwanted knowledge changed how Makani regarded each person; to preserve the image of them that she had harbored before the power came upon her, she found herself taking their hands less often, kissing them hardly at all, and even shrinking from their touch.

Her plight grew worse year by year, because in time she became even more sensitive to the current darkest secret of anyone she knew too well. With friends and family, the touch no longer needed to be skin to skin. A hand placed affectionately upon her shoulder would transmit through her clothing the smoldering resentment or ignoble desire preoccupying the person at that moment.

One day, having lost a boy whose love she'd sought, Janice envied Makani the blue eyes inherited from their Irish father, and petulantly wished on her younger sister some misfortune that would rob her of her good looks.

Robert, who insisted on being Lopaka, had once been angered that a coworker had received an unearned promotion. He wished ardently that he could think of a way to frame the man for some transgression that would get him fired.

Janice's envy would pass. She loved Makani no less than Makani loved her. Neither of them would hurt the other or rejoice in the other's misery. Likewise, Robert was too morally centered to act upon his unworthy desire.

If Makani had been able to read entire minds or at least to see a wider spectrum of a person's thoughts, her strange talent might have been more tolerable. When the touch occurred, if the person was not in the grip of a bitter resentment or a hateful coveting, or a most violent urge, Makani received no psychic input. She was attuned solely to vile and intensely felt emotions and desires that people would never willingly reveal. She was made aware of only the most low-minded, most mean-spirited, wickedest secret or unexpressed craving. As a consequence, she found it increasingly difficult to remain always aware that the glimpse she was given into the other's heart was not the sum of the person, not even indicative of the true self, but only a minuscule fraction of his or her real nature.

To spare herself the repeated traumas that might eventually have made her cynical, that might have led to a distrust of those she loved the most, she had self-exiled from glorious Oahu just after her twentieth birthday.

She had made friends here on the mainland; but she wasn't as close to them as she might have been. She engineered relationships that were more formal than usual in casual Southern California, less touchy-feely. Inevitably, she spent more time alone than she would have liked to.

Taking a lover involved more emotional risk, a greater chance of heartbreak, for her than for people who were not burdened with her paranormal talent. In moments of the greatest intimacy, when she succumbed to passion, she seemed more psychically receptive than usual, and if her partner harbored excessive animosity toward anyone or hid from the world a repugnant desire, he might disclose it in his rapture.

She had no intention of taking Rainer Sparks into her bed this day. Perhaps never. But so far she liked him. The mere possibility of shared intimacy, of affection and friendship that might grow into love, had lifted her spirits as much as had the hours riding waves. So she dawdled now, winding through the streets of the peninsula point, afraid that the prospect of a normal relationship would be snatched from her if she dared to reach for it.

Finally she parked in the public lot near the pier. She pulled on a light long-sleeve wrap that matched her boardshorts and stood beside her car for a minute or two, listening to the liquid booming of the breakers pounding the shore, the sound of eternity declaring itself—and therefore the voice of hope.

She walked to Sharkin', the restaurant, where Rainer waited in a booth. How handsome he was. And how he seemed to adore her when he saw her approaching.

Suspended from the ceiling were life-size sharks that were not plastic replicas, but real specimens preserved by a taxidermist, as sinuous as they would have been when swimming, as if searching now for yet another meal. On the walls hung colorful custom surfboards and photographs of local surfing celebrities dating from the 1930s to the present. Slabs of koa for tabletops, red and lustrous and sensuously figured. Dick Dale and the Deltones, the Beach Boys, the Ventures, Santo & Johnny, the Chantays, Jan and Dean for nostalgic background music. Slices of lime garnishing the beer glasses. It might have seemed too theme-restaurant in style if the details hadn't been right and real, and if the owners hadn't been lifelong surfers.

After a long drink of ice-cold beer, while Rainer scanned the familiar menu, Makani said, “What do you do when you're not watching girls on the beach?”

“I've been known to paddle out and take some waves myself.”

“I didn't see you on the ride today.”

“You wouldn't have, not as into it as you were.”

“I was into it,” she admitted.

“I suspect you're always into it. I've never seen such concentration.” He put the menu aside. “So where'd you first learn to surf?”

“Oahu. I was born there.”

“Hamakuapoko
?
” he asked, naming a popular and sometimes difficult surfing location on Oahu.

“I learned some there. Here, there, and everywhere on the island, from when I was seven and only bodyboarding.”

“Nuumehalani
?
” he asked, and then he translated, perhaps to impress her with the fact that he knew more than just the name. “ ‘The heavenly site where you are alone.' It means alone with the gods, no matter how many people might be there.”

“Sure. Went there so often, I maybe could have staked a claim to part of the beach.”

Something like delight enlivened his face. While he tipped his beer to his lips and drank, Makani waited to hear what amused him.

He licked the foam off his lips and put down the glass and said, “I saw you there once.”

“I don't think so. I haven't been in Oahu in more than five years.”

“This was ten years ago. I was a month short of my twenty-first birthday, in the islands on business, wanted to catch some waves. A weekday in October. You were with three girls, a couple of boys. You were wearing a yellow bikini.”

“Must be a million girls with yellow bikinis.”

“You were riding a Mayhem by Lost Boards,” he said.

Surprised, she said, “I loved that board. I broke it two months later when I bailed out on a big set.”

“Couldn't be two girls in the world who looked like you, with those eyes, and riding a Mayhem.”

“You recognized me right away, out there today?”

“At first sight.”

“Get real.”

“It's true.”

She was flattered, but also embarrassed. “I don't remember you.”

“Why would you? You were with your crew, having a great time.”

That October, ten years earlier, the unwanted gift of psychic insight had not yet been given to her. She had been normal. Free.

“I admired you from a distance,” he said. “Almost approached you to say
'sup,
or something just as stupid. Then I realized you must be the same age as the other kids, fifteen or sixteen. And I was almost twenty-one. Wouldn't have been right.”

Makani didn't blush easily, but she blushed now.

“That day,” Rainer said, “you were so radical, so
live,
the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.”

Flattery had always embarrassed her. Virtually from the cradle, her mother had taught her that humility was a virtue as important as honesty, just as
she
had been taught by
her
mother, Grandma Kolokea. Now Makani could respond to Rainer's admiration only with gentle sarcasm: “What—were you blind until that day?”

“Well, I'm not blind now,” he said, compounding the flattery and her embarrassment.

To gain time to catch her breath, she said, “You were in Oahu on business that day? What business are you in?”

“I'm a facilitator,” he said, and sipped his beer, as if that one word should say it all.

“Facilitator? What do you facilitate?”

“Negotiations, transactions, financial arrangements.”

“Sounds important. You were doing all that when you were just twenty?”

He shrugged. “I like people. I've always had this ability to, you know, bring them together when all they want is to be arguing with each other. I can't stand people fighting, always looking for a reason to be at each other's throats.” A solemnity overcame him. An underlying pallor seemed to leach some of the glow out of his tan. He looked down at the table. “When I was a little kid, I saw enough of that. My old man, my mom. Too much drinking, so much anger. I couldn't do a thing about…the brutality.” He looked up with repressed tears in his eyes. “We get only one life. We shouldn't waste a day of it in anger.”

Because Makani knew too well the darker corners of the human heart, she sympathized with his childhood trauma and hoped that things might develop between them in such a way that she could be a comfort to him.

“You facilitate between businesses?” she asked. “In the surfing world?”

“Yeah, exactly. I did what every surf mongrel dreams of doing—found a way to make a living out of living the waves.”

She didn't know the rules of poker, didn't know how to read another player's tells, but suddenly something about his smile or maybe a certain glint in his eyes, or the faintest hint of arrogance in the slight lifting of his chin, suggested to her that he might be lying about his work.

She must be wrong. He was such a big strong man, yet he didn't use his size to intimidate. There he sat in his surfing-penguins shirt, like an overgrown boy, as sweet as anything. Her suspicion no doubt resulted from the uncounted times that her paranormal talent had revealed to her someone's well-concealed deceit.

If she allowed unalloyed cynicism to settle in her heart, she would never trust anyone again. She'd have no hope of friendship, and certainly no chance of ever sharing her life with a man. The possibility of a life alone already gave her sleepless nights; the certainty of it would bring a depression that not even the consoling sea, with all its power and beauty, could relieve.

Pushing aside his half-finished beer, folding his hands on the table, leaning forward, Rainer said, “This is all a little awkward for me. I mean, I've thought about you for ten years, and never for a minute imagined I'd ever see you again. But here you are.”

“For real, now—you can't have been thinking of me for ten years,” she said, though she wanted to believe that what he'd said was more true than not.

“Not every minute, 'course not. More often than you'd believe. When the waves were big and glassy and offshore and pumping, when it was a perfect day, then you kind of walked out of the back of my mind, as vivid as when I first saw you, as if you had to be there for it to
really
be a perfect day. Is it too much to believe that a man could see a woman across a crowded room or on the beach and be so drawn to her that he feels everything is about to change? But then, for whatever reason, he never has the chance to meet her, and so he's haunted by that lost opportunity, by
her,
for years after? Do you think that sort of thing only happens in novels?”

Makani smiled knowingly, pushed her beer aside, folded her hands on the table, leaned forward as he had done, and took refuge in defensive sarcasm. “Haunted? Rainer, you seem to be a dear man, you really do. But what will you tell me next—that you've saved yourself for me all these years, that you've been as celibate as a monk? A guy who looks like you, a babe magnet?”

He regarded her with grave seriousness, met her eyes and did not look away. “Not at all. There have been women. I've been fond of all those girls, loved one. But never loved one enough. Never had that…electrifying moment, though I've hoped for it. I'll promise you this—take me seriously, give me a chance, more dates than just this one, and I won't pressure you to be intimate, not once, never. If that happens, it'll be when you want it to. Whether it takes a year, longer, I don't care. Your company, companionship, the sight of you—that'll be enough for me until it's not enough for you.”

He had rendered her speechless. Any guy she'd ever known would have delivered that pitch in such a way that insincerity would have dripped from every word. But from Rainer, it sounded as genuine as an innocent child's pledge of fealty to a friend. When she found her voice, she said, “I'm not used to conversations like this, moving this fast. I'm not sure about the territory.”

“Makani, do you believe in
hopena
?”

“Destiny?” She thought of the unsought and burdensome gift that fate—or something in its guise—had bestowed upon her. “Have to say, I've had reason to wonder about it.”

“Have you?”

“Who hasn't? Sometimes, it seems, things happen for no reason. You know? An effect without a cause. Crazy things.”

His right hand unfolded from his left. He reached across the table to her.

The moment had come. Skin to skin. All the dangers of a touch.

If she didn't take his hand, he'd be stung by her rejection.

The possibility of a relationship was at stake.

Perhaps she had lied to herself. Perhaps she preferred to be alone. Her hesitation suggested as much.

No. She hadn't been conceived in passion—and in the surf—only for a life of loneliness.

He would be either what he appeared to be or in some way a lesser man. She had nothing to lose. Except hope. Again.

She took his hand, and knew him for the monster that he was.