Hotel Honolulu

3 Birdsong

Not long after I nailed the janitor, Keola, as incurious, I saw him emptying trash barrels into a dumpster in the alley beside the hotel. Some papers flew out. He stooped and snatched at them with big blunt fingers, but instead of throwing them away, he looked at them. He began to read them, holding the flapping sheets to his face and smiling. That shocked me. He glanced back at me and gave me what the locals called stink-eye.

Later, when I summoned the courage to ask him why he had read the discarded papers, he denied it. If he sometimes seemed to be doing something crazy like reading, he said, it was because he suffered from "nonselective blackouts." He said he didn't even know what I was talking about.

"My short-term memory more worse, boss. Get real common in the islands. Real falustrating."

A week or so later I was in my office and heard, coming from outside the window, the voices of Keola and Kawika, who were weeding the flower bed by the swimming pool.

"Eh, where you was yesterday?"

"Eh, was working."

"I call you up talfone."

"I never hear."

"Eh, you never dere already."

"Assa madda you, brah?"

Fascinated, I cocked my head to listen. It was like hearing birds squawking.

"Figure us go Makaha. Catch some wave."

"I was lawnmowa da frikken grass. Weed Eater was buss."

"How was buss?"

"Da shaff."

"Eh, I get no more nothing to do."

"Was frikken choke grass. I just stay sweating. My pants all broke. Later I wen cuttin da tchrees."

Two birds on a branch, squawking together, squawks I was trying to remember and understand. A few days later, they were squawking again.

"Was one udda bugga. Was rob."

"Who da bugga?"

"One howlie guy."

"Who da steala-rubba?"

"Udda howlie guy."

"Frikken howlies."

"It da djrugs."

"Yah."

"They in depf."

"Yah. Hey, how he go do it?"

"Hide in one tchree."

"Up the tchree?"

"Back fo the tchree. See a waheeny with one bag. He say, 'That mines!' He cuckaroach the bag, and the waheeny she ampin like hell."

"They all on djrugs."

"Take da cash. Buy batu."

"Batu. Ice. Pakalolo."

"Pakalolo one soff djrug. Batu is more worse."

Squawk, squawk. I sat at the window, pretending to work.

And another day:

"Eh, but da bugga."

"What bugga?"

"Da one new bugga."

"Da howlie, yah. He more betta."

"Eh, he look akamai."

"But talk hybolic."

"Yah. But everybody speak him too good."

"The waheeny she frecklish."

"She Housekeeping."

"She not Housekeeping. She Guess Services."

"But Tuna, he too much rascal."

"Man, numba-one pilau luna."

"And how come all da time he look us and then he laughing?" "Bull liar. He job easy."

"Yah."

"Yah."

"Too much hard though my job."

"Stay sucking up beer. Talk story."

"And us stay sweating."

"Yah."

"Yah."

"Man, he got one big book, howlie bugga."

"I never wen see no book."

"In he office."

"Bugga office?"

"Yah. Howlie bugga office. Big book. Hybolical book."

"Eh, no easy fo read, yah."

"Too much easy for howlie."

"Yah."

"Yah. Bymbye, da howlie bugga be rascal."

"Frikken big rascal."

Squawk, squawk. There was more, and all in the dopiest apocopes, but by then I had realized they were talking about me, and my Tolstoy.