Hotel Honolulu

54 Triple Word Score

His head lowered in reverence, the dark islander put out a set of fetish objects, like a shaman engrossed in a ritual for telling the future or interpreting the past. He crouched beneath the ragged wind-shredded fronds of the leaning palms, in the mossy corner of the shadiest part of the property, an islander at a jungle pool, the water's reflection spangling his belly and making it gleam. His face was close to a painted square that was blocked with the sort of mystical patterns you find in the boldest mandalas of Oceania.

I went nearer, feeling intrusive and awkward, until I saw it was Keola with his shirt off, bent over a board game. Peewee hurried behind me and said, "You want to play?"

It was Scrabble. They had started playing it between shifts at the far corner of the hotel swimming pool, after it closed for the evening. Everywhere I had lived, Scrabble was played differently, the game adapted to the culture and the lingo, certain words allowed and not others, challenges restricted, one society making a noisy free-for-all of it, another an intellectual exercise. The game of Scrabble reflected the people who played it, as when Trobriand Islanders made the game of cricket into something riotous, a reconciling adaptation known to anthropologists as syncretism, as valid with Scrabble as with cricket or Christianity.

"Only problem — Peewee take hours to choose a word," Keola said, which alarmed me, because Keola was the slowest worker in the hotel.

While he was talking, Marlene joined us, shaking her head. She had heard Keola and obviously agreed with him.

"Let's do rapid transit," I said. I explained how each player would have just two minutes to choose a word; if time ran out, the player's turn was forfeited. This way the game would be shorter and more exciting.

They liked this idea. They passed me the sock that served as a bag for the letters and told me to choose one, to determine who would start. I got an "M," which I was sure was no good, and handed the sock to Peewee, and smiled at the thought they were letting me join them. They knew that in a former life I had been a writer, Buddy Hamstra still introduced me by saying, "He wrote a book!" but they were not in the least put off by the prospect of my playing.

"Maybe I should have a handicap."

"You got a handicap," Keola said. "You one malihini."

It meant newcomer, but was I that new? More than seven years had passed since I had come to Hawaii and taken over as hotel manager. But the longer I stayed, the deeper my understanding of the paradox that the people with the lowest status had the greatest seniority. Like Mohawks in Manhattan, Hawaiians in Hawaii had no wealth and were almost placeless, yet they could pull rank even on the missionary families. Hawaiians were like impoverished aristocrats who had sold the castle, the land, and the

family silver, and yet, battered and threadbare, they still kept the family name. This also meant that every human encounter involved a tricky negotiation, because pride was involved.

"I'll do my best."

Marlene went first and put down "ped" at the center of the board.

"You allow abbreviations?" I asked.

"The sign say 'Ped Crossing.' Is a howlie sign," Marlene said, and chose three more letters from the sock to indicate that the discussion was over.

Peewee used the "p" to make "zap." Keola made "moped," which I put into the plural with the vertical word "same." Telling me I was wasting vowels, Marlene used my "a" to make "ama," and before I could question the word, she said, "Means outrigger in Whyan."

"Hawaiian words okay?"

"Dis Whyee."

"But they aren't in the dictionary."

"Try look in one Whyan dictionary," Keola said, and used his full two minutes to make "lua," which he declared meant toilet in Hawaiian, as well as the number two. One entire side of the Scrabble board began to bulk with Hawaiian words: "lolo," "manao," "puna," and "kumu." And then, after Marlene made the word "hi," Keola added two more letters and created "shim."

"Dis a word, brah," he said before I could question it.

"Pidgin," Marlene said, and defied me to challenge her. "Dis a language. If you know it, maybe you make more better words."

"Shim,' it English," Keola said. "Use in construction."

Something in the way he pronounced it, conshruction, made me doubtful, so I challenged the word. Because it wasn't Pidgin, neither Peewee nor Marlene backed him. "Too bad we don't have a dictionary," I said. Keola lost a turn.

Peewee put down "less," and for his turn Keola put "fut" in front of it. Futless?

"It mean confused," Marlene said, speaking for Keola. "In Whyee."

I said, "You're peeing on my leg and telling me it's raining."

Futless was how I felt when the game ended and Marlene sulked as she was declared the winner. I came in last, behind Keola, who had always seemed to me a borderline moron. But I wasn't discouraged, just fascinated, for in my office I looked up the word "shim" and saw that I had been mistaken. It was a tapered piece of wood used as a brace or a filler, as Keola had said, in construction.

The next evening, when the shift changed, I was eager to play again. Trey took Peewee's place. Marlene was still gloomy-looking. They challenged me on "kerb," I challenged them on "laff," and let the other words pass: "owch," "dri," "gaz," "yo," and "dis." Keola was way ahead of everyone. Trey put down "toni" and glared at me.

Instead of challenging "toni," I took my turn and converted this worthless fragment into "ultonian."

Marlene grunted, shaking her head.

"It's an adjective. Relating to Ulster."

Marlene was already flipping through the American Heritage Dictionary — she had brought it in a plastic shopping bag because of my previous day's challenge of "shim" — and she triumphantly told me, holding the fat volume in my face, that no such word was listed in it.

Losing this challenge, I lost my turn. On my next turn I used the word "ergo." "Sound like a funny kind of word," Keola said, and challenged it. I confidently looked it up and showed it. "It's Latin for therefore."

"Latin! That hybolic!" Marlene said, and put down "pau."

"I know it means end in Hawaiian," I said. "But I guarantee you it's not in that dictionary."

"Because of it one frikken racist dictionary," Marlene said. "We used to get licks from the teacher in school for using Whyan words."

"Maybe she wanted you to learn English."

"Maybe she was a stupid howlie like you," Marlene said, her eyes shining in anger.

Trey put down "Dion" and explained, "Celine."

Marlene, still furious, said, "Howlie bitch. Got a face like a horse."

"But da kine horse I would fuck," Keola said.

Trey declared the game over, rubbing it in by saying, "This game is pau." Each player's points were added, and Trey came in first, Marlene second, Keola next. I came in last again.

On the third night, Marlene refused to play, but Sweetie said — it was news to me — that she loved playing Scrabble, and so with Peewee and Keola we resumed, passing the sock, selecting letters, making words that were not words — "jin," "hink," "dred," "carni." I didn't care. I loved witnessing the creation of a whole new lexicon. Peewee challenged me when I put down "quod," and he was annoyed to find it in the dictionary.

In spite of missing a turn, he was still ahead, for he knew (and I did not) that an em was a sea eagle, an ai was a three-toed sloth, and a zho was a sort of yak.

Using the "a" in "ai" to make "figa," Sweetie said, "It's a real word, promise to God," and slipped her thumb between her fingers, thrusting upward with this fist, a gesture I now recognized, but how did she?

"Some surfer dudes do that," Keola said. "The ones from Brazil."

Keola made "roop," Peewee made "fi" ("like 'hi-fi"), and I tried to use my "x." Only after I made "axe" did Keola point out that I could have made "axle" on the other side of the board. Peewee put down "casa." I gave it to him because it was one letter short of the corner, which would have given him a triple word score.

Adding an "1" to the corner square to make "casal," Sweetie collected the triple word score and said, "I'm out. I win."

"Wait a minute," I said.

Sweetie giggled and said, "Casal' means double bed. Like queen size. The big beds."

While I stared at Sweetie, Keola said, "The ones you do boomboom

on."

Sweetie said, "It's Brazilian. Like 'figa."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Just smart, I guess."

The sense of blood rising through my body, heating me, making me short of breath, kept me from asking more questions about the Brazilian surfer who had taught my wife those words. And anyway, much to the delight of the others, Peewee, who had been placidly paging through the dictionary, found my name in it.

"Usage Panel!" he crowed, and pointed at me. He showed the page: there was my name. "He on the dictionary Usage Panel, and the bugga come last!"

I never played again. It was not only that, playing Scrabble, I realized that my workers didn't like me very much, and that my wife had a past; it was perhaps the truth of Keola's saying, when he consoled me, "You know, brah, not all the words you say are in the dictionary."