Hotel Honolulu

29 The Widow Mrs. Bunny Arkle

On one of the last mornings the hooker Jasmine ate breakfast in the hotel's coffee shop — soon after that, I never saw her again — Buddy Hamstra said to me, "Look at that woman. She's outrageous." I glanced at Jasmine in her white slinky dress, and Buddy said, "No, her," and nodded at a slim, delicate-featured woman, about sixty or so, moving toward a table, looking graceful and patient. The new flower man, Palama, Amo Ferretti's replacement, was doing the lobby arrangement, sorting stalks of heliconia and bird of paradise.

"Mrs. Bunny Arkle." It sounded like one word to me, Bunnyarkle, and from then on I never thought of her without imagining both names. But this woman could have had many more names. She had been married four times.

She was not local. She was from California, no one knew where. She had come to Hawaii with her first husband, a stockbroker, and decided the place was for her. They bought a house on Black Point, even then an expensive address.

"She's having her place repainted, so she's going to be with us for a few weeks," Buddy said.

"Where's the stockbroker?"

"She ditched him years ago, pretty soon after she first got here."

What I had taken to be the whole story was merely the opening detail, of hardly any consequence, except that Mrs. Bunny Arkle, the woman from nowhere, was now resident in a big house on Black Point. When I pressed him, Buddy muttered that he had heard that Mrs. Bunny Arkle had been raised somewhere in the South by her ambitious but hard- up mother, who had introduced her to the stockbroker and told her how to please a man.

"She had a pretty torrid affair with one of the Coulter heirs — lots of land on the Big Island. Divorced the stockbroker. Huge settlement. Kept the house. She sort of worked out of there, you might say. Coulter's wife got wind of the business. Killed herself and cursed them in her suicide note."

"That sounds like the end of the affair."

"In a funny kind of way it was the beginning, and it made the whole affair serious. Coulter married her after that. When they divorced — the dead wife's curse had worked — Mrs. Bunny Arkie got a chunk of property. Later on, it was rezoned for mixed use, commercial and residential. A hotel developer bought it and built a resort. Part of Mrs. Bunny Arkle's payment was in shares. Beachfront. The woman was instantly wealthy."

Not needing a husband, and possessing the Coulter name, she was secure. Two husbands, especially wealthy ones, made her more than

respectable, gave her a kind of invincibility — even she thought so. A famous photograph showed her playing poio at Mokuleia.

Boyfriends, "takers," came after the second divorce. But at the time she had not known they were parasites. One, an Australian, Keith, had seemed almost genteel. His Australian accent sounded British, he drank tea all the time, he said "grawss," "poss the catsup," "cawnt," and even when he swore he sounded delicate, words like "bawstid" and "betch." He also said "figgers," and "I reckon," and "strait" for street, as though he saw a world better than the one she knew. He moved in with her and one day was gone with most of her jewelry.

Another opportunist — how could she have been such a fool? — was ten years younger than she, had nice clothes and a sports car. He didn't move in but he begged to, and she almost allowed it. She was lonely. He said he loved her. He borrowed money — not much. And one day she went to see where he lived and found it to be a Samoan apartment block in Kalihi. Barefoot children surrounded her car. He was a fireman! Never again, she said, and hated the memory of pleasing him in bed, his howls.

The gossip gave her a reputation. She was lonely again. She was introduced to a widower, an old enemy of Coulter's, and smiling at him she thought, I am going to marry this man.

He called her a few days later, as if the same thought had occurred to him, too. They went to the opera. It was La Boheme at the Blaisdell Concert Hall. Mrs. Bunny Arkie wore her loveliest gown. He wore a tuxedo. That night, when he drove her home, she invited him in for a drink. She

seemed prim, but her attention to him was full of oblique suggestions: the champagne, the cigar, the way she folded his dinner jacket, and the man was encouraged to be bold. They slept in the same bed that night, though he could hardly recall the steps to the bedroom. They were married within six months, their two fortunes combined. His name was George Gideon Wright, a descendant of the man who gave his name to Wright's Point.

"She had a knack," Buddy said. "The successful ones all do, forget what people say about brains. Wallis Simpson became Duchess of Windsor. Reason being, she could tighten her vaginal muscles. It gave her a grip on the Prince of Wales."

After seventeen years in England, I had to come to a small hotel in the Sandwich Islands to discover this secret that had profoundly affected the future of the British monarchy.

"Pamela Harriman had three rich husbands and lots of upscale lovers. Sure, she was glamorous, but hey, was the key to her success her savoir- faire? Try this. She was a demon in bed. She did 'tea bags' — the old testicle trick, make like they're marshmallows. Drove them wild. She checked out as U.S. ambassador in Paris." Buddy swigged his drink and added, "Jackie Kennedy looked like she had class, but she was a real negotiator. Her marriage contract with Onassis was all worked out. They would stay married for seven years, she wouldn't have to sleep with him, and when it was over she would get twenty-seven million bucks."

"And Mrs. Bunny Arkle?"

"Look at her." The woman, solitary, dignified, was sipping tea, her head upright. "Looks like a precious little bird lady with breakable bones." Buddy wheezed for emphasis and said, "But her secret is she's a slut."

I frowned at the insulting word, but Buddy just laughed.

"Men talk," he said, before I could ask. "Women do too. She was expert at rimming — that's what it was called in the cathouses of Nevada. Nowadays it's 'tossing his salad.' A tongue job. It's probably illegal in most states, but then all the fun things are. George Wright was a very happy man."

The teacup was back on the saucer, and Mrs. Bunny Arkle was unfolding the napkin in the muffin basket.

"When George Wright died there was a free-for-all over his fortune — his kids objected to this woman getting so much. Mrs. Bunny Arkle made a deal, settled out of court and ended up with assets of fifteen million. A mac nut farm. A horse ranch. Still had shares in the resort on the Big Island."

In her late fifties, she had become one of the wealthiest women in Hawaii. Men pursued her as she had once pursued them. One of Buddy's friends caught her in a weak moment and they had an affair. It lasted a month; she sent him away.

Arkie was the last. He owned a chain of movie theaters. He was Jewish, he had changed his name, he too was a widower. She converted. She wanted him because he was somehow real. Now she found it hard to be alone, and she was uncomfortable going out. She who was

contemptuous of most men saw Arkle as practical, strong, and the easiest of friends. She wanted his protection.

This man in his seventies was sexually active, but you did not want to think of the details or even imagine him naked. Buddy made a face and said, "Can you imagine what it's like to be a proctologist?"

Arkle was delighted with her, but he also said, "Lose fifteen pounds and I'll marry you."

It took months, much longer than she had expected, and they were married in his mansion in Nuuanu, near the synagogue. When he died, half his art collection went to the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Arkle Bequest, and she sold the other half, keeping only a Bonnard for its peculiar shade of blue.

Buddy said, "She probably slept with no more than ten men in her

life."

"Some hookers do that in one night."

"But Mrs. Bunny Arkle put her heart into it. She gave better head than any hooker. Reason being, she was patient."

Still, the little old woman sat in the hotel coffee shop now buttering a muffin, her fingers extended, her rings catching the sunlight. Perhaps she was thinking, I wanted to leave those men I married, but they paid me to stay.