Hotel Honolulu

40 Hearts of Palm

The Christmas carols in Waikiki were being sung in Japanese. On the second-floor lanai, which contained the overspill from Paradise Lost, Buddy was comparing our Christmas decorations with those of the other hotels. I knew what was coming: the reminiscence of Santa Claus nailed to a cross, Mickey in a manger (a plastic saucer) surrounded by the Seven Dwarfs, Jesus wearing a Santa hood. "And last year — great!" The Japanese man next door in the Kodama had signed all the company Christmas cards and then jumped out the window, landing messily at the edge of the swimming pool.

"He thought he was being a good owner. Funny thing is, they had to send new cards."

"Holiday depression — I get it sometimes," Peewee said.

"Yeah, Christmas is always a ratfuck," Buddy said. "God, I hate those carols."

"I don't mind that one." Even sung in Japanese, it was clearly "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." I said, "Something like 'In the Bleak Mid-Winter' never fails to undo me."

We could see the tops of the palm trees that fringed the beach, two streets and a row of hotels away. No Old Masters existed in our museums,

but we had Turner sunsets and Titian heavens, and I remarked that at least the world's clouds have not changed in the planet's history — sometimes I imagined our skies as Renaissance ceilings.

When I pointed to the sky, Buddy muttered something about a new Ramada hotel going up near Fort DeRussy. He was a big bulky man who whenever he was idle was always leaning on something. His elbows rested on the railing and his hands cradled his cheeks.

"I love looking at the sultry fulguration of these skies," I said, just to try out the sound. But it didn't register with him. Just a noise I was making.

Keola said, "You so hybolic."

"Oh, yeah," Buddy said. "Hey, look at them palms."

I often stared at them too, thinking: South Seas dream, where the golden apples grow, balmy Paradiso, under the hula moon.

"Some good eating there."

I thought Buddy meant the tall sign on Kalakaua Avenue advertising the sushi bar, but no, he was still talking about the palm trees. Having seen them yanked down and their feathery fronds battered by hurricane winds — never uprooted but set gracefully upright again as soon as the wind eased — I came to regard palm trees as indestructible.

"You basically lop off the trunk and tear open the core. Chop it up. Pickle it in brine. It's awesome in salad. I had palms in my yard in

Waimanalo. It looked clear-cut when I moved. I basically ate the whole yard."

To this fat man with lovely teeth, the memory of feasting on these tasty trees made his mouth juicy with saliva.

"Any palms in England?"

"No palms. Just qualms."

He queried me by squinting and opening his mouth. "What's the book?"

"This is Celine. Journey to the End of the Night."

I read: The human race is never free from worry, and since the last judgment will take place in the street, it's obvious that in a hotel you won't have so far to go. Let the trumpeting angels come, we hotel dwellers will be the first to get there.

"That babe knows what she's talking about. I love to read," Buddy said. "Maybe I should read one of your books one of these days."

"Not necessary."

I was a little sensitive on this point. The week before, Sweetie had told one of the hotel guests I was a writer. I had specifically warned her about this. "Say 'hotel manager." It had the virtue of being true and was less of a mine field.

"Your wife tells me you're a writer," the guest said.

I smiled, dreading what was to come.

"Do you write under your own name?"

"Yes."

My name rang no bells, and yet, keen to demonstrate his love of reading, he recommended several books I saw in the hands of sunbathers whenever I strolled along the beach. My anonymity made me happy here, and I reflected on how in a touristy place, as one of the herd, no one ever gets to know your name, no one ever questions why you're there.

Some guests, seeing posters for the Nutcracker, said to me, "There's ballet here?"

"Indeed there is. Also opera and the Honolulu Symphony."

"We love shit like that," one guest declared.

I said, "Just because you see palm trees and barefoot residents tossing beer cans out of their car windows doesn't mean there's no cultural life."

But going to the ballet in Hawaii seemed to me ostentatious and vulgar, the height of philistinism, the very opposite of refinement. Give me barefoot beer drinkers and brainless surf bunnies any day. I hated talk of books. It embarrassed me when Buddy, who boasted of his barbarism, mentioned books in his unconvincing voice. I needed to talk to Peewee about his bread recipes. I liked hearing Buddy tell me something I didn't know about hearts of palm and how he ate his way through a half acre of them.

Sweetie considered herself an intellectual because she listened to the audio book of Cujo while she Rollerbladed.

Peewee said, "You must miss the big city."

I said no, truthfully. That I hated the foul air. That I was just one of the big mob, in my little slot, feeling tiny and hemmed in by huge buildings. That in big cities it was never dark and never silent.

"But the culture," he said. "Shows and concerts, like we only have at Christmas, and not even the real thing."

"You can carry it with you. Your recipes are culture, Peewee," I said. "And you know language is culture."

Peewee's girlfriend, Nani, said, "I got my own language. Pidgin."

Nani said, "More betta. . talfone. . bumbye. . I never wen learn English." Keola, washing windows, smiled in comprehension, as heartily as if he were hearing music. But it was a sort of fractured birdsong, a debased and highly colloquial form of English composed of moody- sounding grunts and utterances and willful approximations. Everyone called it "Pidgin," and they said it was a separate language, like Portuguese or Greek — it wasn't English, they said. But it was, just a slovenly and ungrammatical version, never written down, without the verb "to be," and mostly used in the present tense. This helped, though, for they spoke nothing else but listened all the time, and in their squinting attention were used to translating what someone said on the basis of sound alone.

Nani said, "Why howlie heah. He huhu? Assa madda you — pickin' pines. No more nuttin' fo' do. Or udda ting. Dis howlie lolo he stay kolohe. But he keiki more bettah." She gasped. "Like dat."

I said, "Would you say there are any verbs in this language?"

She looked insulted. "You fucking with me?"

"In that sentence, 'fucking' is a verb. In this one, 'is' is a verb."

"Peewee, man, this howlie fucking with me," she said. "So you pretty hybolical."

Peewee said, "Try wait, Nani."

She said, "Why he went for see you, was."

I said, "A linguist would say there is no overt verb "to be." That's a type of defocused sentence with a postposed 'was.'"

"Hybolical," Nani said again.

Peewee said, "I told some people I knew you. They were like, 'Hey, he's famous.' They want to meet you."

But I declined. So, on Christmas Eve, I was left with Buddy, Peewee, Nani, my pretty wife and daughter, and several guests at our annual party, on the second-floor lanai outside Paradise Lost.

I said, "I'm through with books. Some are just junk and I get sad when I see them."

"Books are good," Peewee said.

"It's Christmas," I said. "I'd rather talk about birds. Or turtles. Or the sea. I saw a whale last year from the roof."

Peewee said, "Nani saw some dolphins yesterday."

Nani heard her name and said, "We got so many frikken birds we no know their name. But like in Whyan a turkey no gobble gobble. He kolo- kolo. And Whyan Santa Claus is Kana Kaloka."

I smiled and told myself that an ignoramus was preferable to a pseudointellectual. Some hotel guests spent hours telling me the plots of books they liked. Others, returning overdressed from a local production of the Nutcracker, lorded it over the tourists gaping at our Happy Hour hula.

"I wanted to call her Taylor, but my husband said no," Sweetie was telling one of the Christmas party guests.

"Taylor means tailor," I said. "It seems inauspicious. Like calling her Cobbler."

"That's a kind of drink," Nani said.

"Logan is a real nice name," Sweetie said. "Or Shannon. Next kid maybe."

"Shannon is Irish," I said.

"I got some Irish in me," Buddy said. He was peeling the foil from a platter of salad. "The crazy side. Also the strong side. Go ahead, have some."

"You know what's really incredulous?" Peewee said, picking up a white disk from the salad and eating it. "The way they treat prisoners. Hey, they should put them destructive guys in mailbags and line them up in Aloha Stadium one morning and get big fat Samoan women to beat the bags with baseball bats. If a guy woulda lost his life, they'd take it more serious."

"Them trees are making him hungry and driving him nuts," Buddy

said.

"Don't laugh, you'll be joining me." Sniffing the pine boughs, Peewee burst into tears. "That's the smell of my childhood," he said. "We were real poor."

No one was listening. I was murmuring, "Shtrong. Morneen. Makeen. Driveen. Joineen. Dee-shtructive. If he woulda lost his life."

Laughing, Sweetie said, "Sometimes I see him writing. I go, 'What you doing?' He goes, 'Nothing."

She had not said this to me before in the almost seven years I had been married to her. She could only say it in front of other people; she felt protected by them. They were witnesses, and her people. Unlike our daughter, Sweetie was afraid of me.

"I never know what's going on in his head. He real high maintenance."

I was looking west, toward the beach. I said, "I bought some Christmas lights for the palm tree out front."

Buddy said, "I put that palm tree in this salad."