O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) (5 page)

“Wait ‘til you
see the view,” said Jeff.

We got out at a
small vestibule with a large carved mahogany door on the opposite side from the
elevator. There was a small brass plaque with ‘Penthouse’ engraved in script to
the left of the door. Jeff took a key card from the folder and slipped it into
the lock. A light flashed green and then the lock beeped.

“Moment of
truth,” Jeff said as he pushed the door open.

The penthouse
opened before us like a cave of buried treasure. The first thing my eyes landed
on was the view.
A sweeping horizon of sapphire blue ocean
lay dead ahead.
We were up so high it seemed we were seeing it from the
vantage point of a bird in flight.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow,”
Jeff said. “I knew Tom had hit it big with that app he created, but I had no
idea how big.”

“Well, I’d say
a full-on ocean view Waikiki penthouse means it was big with a capital “B”
big.”

We looked
around the spacious penthouse. The floors were some kind of ebony-colored
hardwood and every flat surface was either granite or marble. The bathrooms had
those sinks that look like big glass bowls sitting on the counter. The kitchen
was stainless steel everything with an enormous Sub-Zero refrigerator that was
paneled in the same expensive-looking wood as the cabinets. There were two
bedrooms. One looked down on the ocean and the other looked over the rooftops
of the city.

“I’ll flip you
for the water view,” Jeff said.

“No, you take
it. I’ve got vertigo enough just being up this high. I’ll feel a little more
grounded seeing other buildings around.” It wasn’t true, but I wanted Jeff to
get to see the ocean as much as possible while he was here. After all, I can go
to the beach any day of the week.

The lanai off
my bedroom looked out across the entire skyline of Waikiki and ended with the
green folds of the
the
Ko
Olau
Range mountains beyond
Manoa
.
I was glad I’d offered Jeff the other bedroom. I’d spent four years at UH and
Manoa
would always have a special place in my heart.

That night we
went out to find a restaurant we could both agree on. It turned out to be
sushi. Actually, I’m not a big fan of sushi.  It seems to come out of the
kitchen missing a key ingredient—cooking. But Jeff said he rarely has time at
home to savor a true sushi bar experience so I conceded. Even though I’d
probably just stick to ‘training wheels’ sushi like California roll, the sushi
bar vibe is usually a lot of fun. 

The restaurant
was on the second floor of an open-air shopping area a few blocks
mauka
,
or inland, from the beach. The
entrance was window-less, with only a simple sign displaying the name, ‘Miyake
Sushi’ in both Japanese and English. When we got inside, it was quickly
apparent it was an authentic Japanese place, not
a
wanna
-be place catering to American tourists. The
front entrance was
feng
shui’d
to the max—very dimly lit, with a small koi pool, bamboo plants, and pale
yellow walls. Farrah would’ve loved the décor, but she probably wouldn’t have
appreciated seeing the fish swimming in the huge aquarium. No doubt those very
fish were the ones referred to in the menu as ‘freshest fish in town’ and those
guys blithely doing their last laps were only an order away from being cleaved
into tiny morsels.   

The hostess
wore an authentic Japanese kimono. It was an exquisite silk wrapping of coral
pink, white and pale blue. Her hair was done up in a heavily-lacquered bun. She
took a look at us and her face displayed the tiniest flash of concern. She
bowed her head slightly. In a small voice she greeted us in Japanese and
gestured for us to follow her.

“I think this
is a Japanese restaurant,” I whispered to Jeff.

“Of course it’s
Japanese,” he said. “It’s sushi.”

“No, I mean I
think this is a restaurant for Japanese people. Not for us.”

“I don’t see a
sign saying we can’t eat here,” he said. By now four or five diners positioned
at the sushi counter along the back wall were staring at us, chopsticks poised
in mid-air.

“They probably
don’t speak English,” I said. I gripped Jeff’s elbow in an attempt to steer him
back outside.

“Well, I didn’t
come here for conversation,” he said. “I came for sushi. Don’t you think they
save the best stuff for the people who know what it’s supposed to taste like?”

By now we’d
arrived at the sushi counter. The hostess indicated two chairs at the end of
the bar and we sat down.

“I don’t know
if this is such a good idea,” I said. “We won’t know how to order.”

“Look
Pali
, back home I eat sushi whenever I can. I know the
words. And besides, look at the menu. It has pictures.”

I glanced at
the glossy menu and indeed there were rows of pictures of pink, white, red, and
gray seafood. Most things were shown wrapped in either green or black seaweed.
To me it looked more like a bait shop list than a menu.

“Do you think
they have California roll?” I said to Jeff.
“Or maybe something
with cooked shrimp?”

Jeff snorted.
“Let me order for you. I know the good stuff.”

“Can we get
some hot
saké
?” I said. I knew whatever fish
concoction he was going to foist on me would go down a lot easier after a few
gulps of piping hot rice wine. Besides, maybe the
saké
would ‘cook’ the fish when it hit my stomach.

“Sure. Good
idea.” Jeff expertly ordered a large
ginjo
saké
—in Japanese.

“Do you speak
Japanese?” I said.

“A little.
I worked on a project with a team from Tokyo
University in
Shinjuko
. Their way of getting the job
done was to work for ten to twelve hours straight and then go to a
kyabakura
, or hostess bar, and get
falling-down drunk. You get up the next day and do it all over again. Those
dudes were relentless.”

The
saké
came in a thin white vase about ten-inches tall. The
hostess placed two tiny porcelain cups in front of us and poured the first
round. The warm
saké
went down like a cool flame—hot
yet numbing. After the first cup I was enjoying myself a lot more. By the
second cup I was up for taking a stab at things like raw eel and urchin.

Everything
tasted like rubbery sea-water to me, but I didn’t care. We had a great time,
and the other diners seemed to get a kick out of Jeff’s tortured Japanese. They
must’ve figured me for his well-trained wife since I didn’t utter a word. Even
if everyone had been speaking English I still probably wouldn’t have said much.
The
saké
had seen to that.

We walked back
to our high-rise—Jeff expertly steering me up over curbs and away from light
poles.

“You’re a cheap
drunk,” he said when we finally got into the elevator.

“
Arigato
,”
I said, saying ‘thank you,’ in Japanese. It was the only word that had stuck
with me.

He laughed.
“The good thing is we don’t have to get up tomorrow morning and design a propulsion
algorithm.”

“I can’t even
spell
algorithm, let alone design one,” I said.

He draped an
arm around my shoulder as we walked the ten steps from the elevator to the
penthouse door. “I’ve missed you, sis.”

“I’ve missed
you, too,
bruddah
.”

“Let’s tear up
O’ahu
,” he said. “Let’s see it all, eat it all, and act
like a couple of obnoxious tourists for the whole week. I want to go home tired
and guilty.”

“Sounds good.
Goal for the week: little sleep and lots of
remorse.”

CHAPTER 7

Since Farrah
had left for Honolulu on Friday, I was a little concerned when I hadn’t heard
from her by Sunday morning. Ono was scheduled to take
Tomika’s
guests out that day, so I figured it’d be a good time to call.

“
Aloha
,”
she trilled as she took my call.

“
Aloha
, yourself.
How was the trip over?”

“Groovy beyond words.”

“Really?”

“Really.
It was bumpy, like you said, but fun bumpy. It
wasn’t ‘we’re all
gonna
die’ bumpy like on an
airplane.”

“I’m really
happy to hear that. So, what are you doing today? Do you want to hang out with
me and Jeff?”

“Sorry, but Ono
says we won’t be back until after dark,” she said.

“Oh. So are you
going with him to
Ko
Olina
?”

“Yeah, Ono
calls me his ‘cabin girl.’ Isn’t that cute—cabin girl? I’m
gonna
help him with the drinks and stuff.”

“You know Ono
doesn’t drink, right.”

“I know. He
told me. We pretty much haven’t stopped talking since we left Maui.”

“Are you guys
like—”

“Oops. Sorry
but I
gotta
go. Ono’s calling me. He wants me to
taste the
mai
tai he made and see if it’s good. He’s
so sweet. Let me call you when we get back, okay?”

I hung up and
felt a tickle in my ear.
Green monkey?
Maybe.
But just a little one.

I made coffee
and Jeff stumbled into the kitchen a half-hour later. “Wow, you’d think with
the time change I’d have been awake at five,” he said. “But I was wiped out.”

“I know. I
think
ginjo
sake
trumps jet lag any
day.”

“Especially
lots
of
ginjo
saké
,”
he said. “Do you remember if I paid the bill?”

I laughed. “Of
course you did. I thought I was the only sloppy drunk last night.”

“Any appearance
of sobriety on my part was purely for show. I didn’t want you to think I
couldn’t hold my liquor. It’s one of a half-dozen prized skills I learned from
my Japanese counterparts. Never let ‘
em
see
you slobber.”

“Well, bravo.
You certainly fooled me. So, what do you want to do today?” I said.

“I’m up for
anything that doesn’t involve damaging my liver.”

“Do you want to
go out to Pearl Harbor? I can order the tickets online.”

“Tickets?
I thought it was a National Monument.”

“It is, but
it’s a very busy monument. If you don’t want to wait in line for hours it’s
best to get a reservation before you go out there.”

“Leave it to a
wedding planner to sweat the details,” he said.

I fired up my
laptop and found that the next available admission time was two o’clock. I
ordered two tickets and wrote down my reservation number.

“It’s going to
be hard to find a parking spot out there,” I said.
“You
willing to take the bus?”

“Sure. I’m up
for anything.”

I looked up the
Honolulu bus schedule and found the Number 42 bus would take us in a pretty
direct route from Waikiki to the Pearl Harbor Memorial site. It would take more
than an hour to get there, but we didn’t have anything else to do anyway.

We caught the
bus on Saratoga Road and found seats near the front. But when we pulled away
from the stop at the
Ala
Moana
Shopping Center the bus had filled up. We gave up our seats to two older
‘aunties’ who were wrestling large shopping bags along with their
suitcase-sized purses.

“I can’t
believe the bus is so crowded on a Sunday,” Jeff said.

“It’s crowded
every day. When I was in school here I used to take the bus down from
Manoa
to the beach. Sometimes the buses were so crowded
going back up I’d get out and walk. And it’s a long, hot climb after lying in
the sun.”

We arrived at
the memorial with less than an hour to go until our tour reservation. Jeff and
I ran through the exhibits showing the events that led to the war. Fifteen
minutes before the time on our tickets we got in line for the boat that takes
visitors to the USS Arizona’s final resting place. Everyone in line was somber.
Even after seventy years, the pain of that horrific day still stung. The park
ranger reminded everyone this was hallowed ground; a cemetery no less than the
Punchbowl Cemetery of the Pacific located inside the
Puowaina
Crater up the hill from Honolulu.

The ride out to
the over-water memorial only took a few minutes but it served to remind us of
how vulnerable the men on the ships that day were. They were not docked at a
pier so there was no way to escape to land, even if they’d had time. But of
course they didn’t have time. Nor would they have tried to flee. That’s why
their memory endures. And that’s why their sacrifice is still honored.

When we got out
to the memorial it was eerie to watch the “Black Tears of the Arizona” emerge
from the sunken wreckage. Drops of thick black oil still escape the ship’s fuel
tanks more than seven decades after she was sunk. The drops form shimmering
rainbow circles on the water’s surface as if to remind us to never forget.

On the ride
back to shore everyone remained quiet. What can you say after seeing the watery
tomb of eleven hundred brave young men trapped for eternity?

We got on the
bus and rode back to Waikiki.

***

When we
returned to the penthouse we were still in a somber mood. After witnessing so
much heroism and sacrifice it was hard not to feel our lives were pretty petty
by comparison.

“How about tonight?”
I said. “Do you want to go out?”