Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (18 page)

“I’ll walk you home,” he said.

“I’m okay.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “What are your plans while you’re here?”

“Read, sleep, float. I’m resting between projects. I’m headed to India.”

“Sounds interesting.”

The moon was losing its grip on the night, but I had left a light on at my place to guide me home. Mike said good night at the porch and headed off through the jungle toward what I assumed was Jon’s house.

I got in the hot tub. I had a flash of pith-helmeted white men boiling in a black pot surrounded by natives with bleached bones in their hair. A vivid imagination never goes on vacation. The walls of the hot tub were slick. I could smell the spongy wood melting cell-by-cellulose-cell into the hot water. Smoke from the bonfire drifted in slim threads through the grove. Jon’s voice rumbled low through the undergrowth followed by Candace’s laugh. Candace knew what she was doing. Jon did too apparently. I soaked for half an hour; it grew quiet across the way.

I got up early and headed out. It was warm and cloudless. The water was a sheet of glass between gurgling lines of baby bubbles. I went slowly, I hated to disturb the surface. I began my float. I tried it all different ways, arms and legs spread, just legs, just arms, then just like I was lying on a therapist’s couch with my hands crossed on my belly. For some reason it’s totally effortless. Half my body is usually out of the water. I don’t know if it’s body make-up, why some people float and some sink. I suspect the sinkers are fighting giving up control to Mother Nature. A shadow cast across my face. I looked up to the sight of a man standing on the water next to me. It took me a second to realize that it was Jon standing on a paddleboard.

“That’s a weird visual,” I said.

“You want to try it?”

“No thanks.”

He sat down on his board and floated next to me. I floated on, breasts, belly, hipbones, kneecaps and toes out of the water. I asked him about the restaurant. He said it was right on the beach so caught a lot of bar hopping, which they liked. He’d grown up in Santa Barbara but had gone to UCSD; we knew the same beaches. He’d majored in math and had done an internship at Scripps Oceanography before moving to Hawaii to work at one of the marine labs. He asked if I knew anyone on the island.

“Not a soul. Why?”

“Women come here, get lonely and end up hooking up with one of the bar rats. You seem too nice for that.”

“Good to know my disguise still works. I doubt I’m too nice for anything. But thanks for the heads up. My hooking up days are over.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“What was so funny about the zip line last night?” he asked.

“The zip line?”

“Yeah. You looked like you were going to burst out laughing.”

“Oh. It was Grandma. I had an image of her zip lining.”

“You don’t think Candace can zip line?”

I turned my head as far as I could to look at him.

“Candace? Not Candace. I’m sure she can do it all.”

I turned my head back and looked at the sky.

“I meant my own grandmother. I had a vision of her zip lining in her white leather shoes and clacking dentures,” I said. “She died a few weeks ago.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. She was ninety-eight. She had a long wonderful life. My grandfather was fun; he loved the expression
close, but no cigar
. I can see her trying it at ninety.”

He invited me to the restaurant for Christmas Eve. They had a tradition of family style eating with a group of people who came every year. He said it was a friendly bunch. I thanked him, but said I doubted I’d be there. We floated for a few minutes without talking and then he hopped up on his board and landed in perfect balance.

“Let me know if you want to try this,” he said. He took a few strokes and glided away.

“I don’t think I have the abs for it,” I called.

“I think you do. Won’t hurt to try.”

I could see it hurting. Sore muscles and banged up legs to start. I’d entered a kayak from the water once. I had a pretty good idea of how a person looks when they try to hoist their ass onto a moving object that doesn’t want company. He slid off down the coastline and I swam in and got dressed. I was starved so drove to town for a batch of poke.

I spent days like that, floating, reading, sleeping. The boys and I fell into a regular bodysurfing routine. Jon wandered over once a day to see if I’d changed my mind about paddling; I hadn’t. He spent some time in the water with us. But he seemed to spend more time over at Candace’s; I suspected I was babysitting when I was bodysurfing. I doubted she was lonely, at least not this week.

I wasn’t lonely either. Mike came by every day and joined in the bodysurfing. He was a widower and easy company. We went to town for lunch a few times. He had rented a condo in one of the big resorts out the road so we hung out by the pool with monogrammed towels, personal cabanas, and iced tea with flower petals. He wasn’t Steve; he didn’t like the fancy place. He said he was going to grab my place next year. I told him he’d have to wrestle me for it.

I wondered how Steve was getting on in Mexico; his mother must be happy. I didn’t know if he’d ever even mentioned me to his family. I called Eric and Anna to break the news that Steve was gone. They were disappointed, as in heavy sigh, when will it all end, disappointed. And they’re my biggest boosters. I called my mother and told her too.

“I’m sorry, Hannie. We really liked him, we thought he would work out.”

“I did too. But he couldn’t get past Stroud.”

“Are you talking about Alan?”

“Yes. We might have survived it if he’d been a doctor, lawyer or Indian chief. Steve really hated the whole truck driver thing.”

“I can see that.”

“You can? What if Daddy had been a truck driver?”

“I wouldn’t have married him.”

“I’m not talking about marriage, Mom.”

“I don’t know. Aren’t you lonely there all by yourself?”

“Not yet,” I lied.

I woke up on Christmas Eve and decided to go to Jon’s place for dinner. Mike had been encouraging me to go. He said I’d know at least two people. The only thing I had to wear was a crazy black sarong dress with big red flowers and hair sticking out all over the place. I had to pull it together. I opted for hyper-crazy hair like I meant it, and then threw on my pearls to confuse the message.

It was an interesting mix of people from the all over the country, ex-pats from city living, a few locals. There was a couple from Seattle with an asset eating coffee plantation, and two women physicists from Cal-Tech. One wore a baseball cap that said, “Blah Blah Blah.” Jon hosted in a wildly colorful shirt. He was with a beautiful young woman who turned out to be his daughter Chana. She was completely at ease in the group. She’d obviously known most of the people for years.

Live slack key music came from the corner. Everyone talked and laughed and swapped chairs through a dinner of platter after platter of Hawaiian morsels. Mike introduced me to everyone. It was a fun and lively group. He mentioned to one of the physicists that I was going to India. She said they’d been, that it’s a wild place for a Western mind. He kept introducing me as someone who worked in the movie business. He was twinkling. He knew I thought it was silly. But people who didn’t know better were enthralled with the business, even some in the business.

Everyone was sent home with a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts painted with red flowers. It was a tradition, and a great touch. I tore open the box of candy as soon as my car headed back to the cottage.

I got home and sat on the deck with my feet on the railing and watched the moon on the waves at the end of my tunnel. The view was blocked by a figure walking my way. A tingle of L.A. fear ran through me, but it was just Jon.

“You want to share?” he held up a champagne bottle. “We didn’t get a chance to talk.”

“Is this because Grandma’s gone?”

“No, it’s because I was busy and we didn’t get a chance to talk.”

“Sorry. Bad joke. Let me get some glasses.”

We sat with our feet up on the railing and toasted the Christmas that had just spun through the cosmos to us.

“That was a lovely party. Thank you for including me. I’ve never been alone on a holiday like this.”

“Mike took care of you. I thought he might be here.”

“No, sorry. He gets a kick out of saying I’m in the movie business. He knows the effect it has on people.”

Jon said his daughter was graduating from high school and considering colleges; UCLA was at the top of her list. The physicists were pushing for Cal Tech.

“UCLA is my alma mater,” I said.

“I’m not sure she’s ready for L.A.”

“In my business, L.A. is like the center of the universe. Unless you’re from New York.”

“Then maybe I’m not ready for her to be ready for L.A.”

“That sounds like algebra. But I don’t blame you, I’m an old cat in L.A. who’s running out of lives.”

“Do you know algebra?”

“Not since high school. I majored in anthropology. As my last director said, and I quote, ‘I will not be held captive by the laws of mathematics’.”

He wanted to know if I was more Margaret Mead or mummies. I told him I hadn’t been able to decide, so went into production design instead where I gathered intense knowledge about slices of life for brief periods of time.

“I know a little about a lot of things,” I said. “What the Sufis might describe as digging shallow holes, but it’s never boring. Brushing dirt off shards in a museum basement could get old.”

We poured the last of the bottle and sat in the balmy silence.

“A cat?” he said.

“It looks like you’re having fun.”

“Having fun?” He looked at me, then at my hair. He probably figured they’d stopped the shock treatments a little short of the mark.

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way,” I said. “At least someone is having fun.”

“You’re not?”

“According to my mother, I’m a cat in a world of kittens. My window of opportunity for finding the right man is slamming shut.”

I could swear he was considering my hair again. I doubt it looked like right man hair. “Do you want to find the right man?”

“Of course, I don’t want to spend my life banging bar rats. But apparently I have no idea how it all works.”

He was quiet; I glanced over at him. “Sorry, that was incredibly crude. I didn’t mean to go all L.A. on you; we have a tendency to spew our little stories. And I have a tendency to say stupid shit when I’m drinking champagne. I won’t bang bar rats. I don’t intend to bang anybody.”

Okay, obviously I’d already had too much champagne. I was not only saying stupid shit, but I was saying bang and shit while I was at it. My parents would not approve.

“I should go to bed. Now I’m saying banging shit with my stupid shit. I can hear my parents clucking their tongues. Thanks again for inviting me tonight. I was feeling lonely and it was a perfect Christmas Eve. And thanks for sharing; it was really thoughtful.”

“You’re welcome.”

I could swear his hair was sticking up even more than usual. He headed home. I stripped off my sarong, washed my face, and took note of the fact that my hair looked like I’d pulled the bathroom light chain while standing in water. The grow out was going to be a trial. At least I’d be in India where no one would care how I looked as long as I did my job. Well someone would care. There’s always a man or two on location who thinks he cares, or who has lost his moral bearings in a Bermuda Triangle of strange place, opportunity, and horniness.

I woke up with a massive hangover complicated by eating too much chocolate. I cleared the empty bottle off the porch and washed glasses then dug out the bottle of Gatorade I’d had the foresight to buy. I was hours earlier than the mainland, so I had time to get my act together before the Skype calls started. I dragged out and dove in the water. There is nothing better for a hangover than the ocean. I forced myself to body surf, figuring a little pounding might goose my system to life. Maybe I could restore my internal chemistry through osmosis. It worked, sort of. Argh. I swam out past the breakers and floated to give my stomach a chance to get rearranged. I was beginning to feel cleansed.

“You okay?” Jon was treading water next to me.

“I’ve been worse, though I can’t ever remember being so rude to someone. I’m really sorry about that. How about you?”

“It’s okay, holidays aren’t always happy. I’m fine. I’m a little bigger than you and don’t think I put down quite as much.”

“No, that was stupid. Now I can check ‘drink too much at a party’ off my to-do list.”

“What else is on the list?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Sure I do.”

“Well, chop off my hair, which I didn’t even notice I was doing at the time. Talk endlessly at friends, which I have never had a tendency to do. I do it with complete strangers instead, as you are my witness.”

“That’s it?” he asked. “Sounds doable.”

“Add take up stupid hobbies; I’m thinking wood burning, it runs in the family. The last is no joy sex with random unavailable men, that’s done and done. If I can get extra-curricular credit for that one, I’ll finish early.”

“What about finding the right man?”

“First things first. Gotta work the program.”

“That last part doesn’t sound too bad.”

“No, it sounds like more inappropriate blabber,” I was smiling at the sky. “Your restaurant open today?”

“Yep, people don’t come here to cook a turkey.”

“Good, I need burger and fries therapy.”

“Try the Maui onion rings, they work better than the fries.”

He took off while I continued to float. I had absolutely nowhere to be, and no one to be nowhere with. That’s mathematics, zero sum total. Or is it sum total zero? Total sum zero? I should have worked harder at math. Oh well, at least I could get some fatty food.

I felt much better after the swim. I sacked out on a towel and dozed with a gentle breeze consoling my skin. I slept for hours. When I woke up, someone had put up an umbrella and thrown a white sheet over me, weighted down with driftwood. There was no one around. It was strange to think someone was so busy while I slept.