Riptide

CHAPTER 13

At seven-thirty, Jake Lassiter pulled under the canopy of the Sonesta Beach Hotel and gave his yellow Olds convertible to a goofy teenage valet — “Rad, man, that a GTO?” — who promptly ground the gears. Lassiter gritted his teeth and walked to the veranda overlooking the ocean. In five minutes they appeared, freshly scrubbed and wholesome as a Pepsi ad.

Keaka’s short black hair was still wet from the shower. He wore baggy cotton pants and a polo shirt, his arms strung with steel-cable veins. Lila had changed into a simple pink cotton dress, the sleeveless tank top clinging to her breasts and a full skirt falling away from a dropped waist. The long skirt flung easily with each athletic stride. When they walked outside and Lila felt the breeze from the Atlantic, she locked both hands behind her head, cradled her neck, and tossed her hair downwind. The ocean was streaked with creamy light as the moon rose in the east and smoothed a warm glow over her face. The wind was gusty and scented with salt, and as it blew, Lila’s skirt gathered between her long, strong legs. She stood there with eyes closed, back arched, and breasts thrust forward, listening to a silent song, laughing into the wind.

Jake Lassiter stood transfixed. Her physical beauty was intoxicating, as natural as a windswept beach. Never had he seen a woman so exquisite, so removed from his world of the mundane and mendacious… and never one so beyond his reach. His mind recorded the sight, savored it, and burned it into place.

“God I love the wind,” Lila said finally, her hair flying.

“Easterly,” Lassiter said. “About eighteen knots, but there’s a venturi effect here from the buildings. Feels more like twenty-five.”

Idiot! He cursed himself. The occasion called for savoir faire, for poetry, anything but a weather report. Then the moment was gone.

With the top down, they headed across the Rickenbacker Causeway to the mainland, through downtown and across the MacArthur Causeway, the lights from the moored cruise ships twinkling in Government Cut. On South Beach, Keaka Kealia paused before entering Joe’s, the famous stone crab restaurant, and said, “Surf here.” His head was cocked toward the ocean half a mile away. Lassiter listened and couldn’t hear a thing.

“The ocean’s just at the end of the street,” Lassiter said, “but not much surf, at least not by Hawaiian standards.”

“Three feet, maybe a little less,” Keaka announced judiciously.

They entered the restaurant, the Hawaiian still listening for the distant shore break, Lassiter wondering if he was being put on. A throng of tourists huddled in the foyer and the adjacent bar, and Lassiter had to elbow his way toward the maitre d’.

In Miami, there are three enduring personalities who, like Franklin Roosevelt, have defined an era. There is Shula the coach, Fidel the dictator, and Roy the maitre d’. Without access to Roy, the highlight of your trip to Joe’s was standing in line with fifty John Deere tractor salesmen from the Midwest.

Bespectacled and sleek in a black dinner jacket, Roy saw Jake towering over the crowd and waved him to the front. “How do you like the Fins against the Bills Sunday?” he asked.

“Give the points and put your money on Marino.” It was the same advice he always gave — give the points, or take the points — but bet on the Dolphins. He was right about half the time.

The captain took them to a corner table under a black-and-white photo of Miami Beach in the 1930s. When they were seated, Lassiter turned to his guests. “Keaka, did you really know there was surf here?”

Lila said, “Keaka has a sixth sense for water. His ancestors paddled canoes from Tonga to Hawaii, and Keaka believes in reincarnation, so he thinks he was a great sailor or King Kalaniopuu from an earlier life.”

Lassiter nodded nonchalantly, as if he often dined with reincarnated royalty. “King Kalan…”

Keaka smiled for the first time. “He killed Captain Cook.”

“And ate him,” Lila laughed.

“A lie!” Keaka barked at both of them. “A lie invented by the British. Cook was a fool. He did not know the people or the land but thought he was invincible because he had guns and the natives had only stones and slings.”

The outburst silenced the table. Lassiter shifted uneasily in his chair, wanting to change the subject. Anything but cannibalism or the weather. But Keaka wasn’t ready to let it go. “Do you know anything of Hawaiian history?”

“Not much,” Lassiter answered. “There was one king who united the islands, wasn’t there?”

Keaka gave a small smile of approval. “Kamehameha the Great, an invincible warrior. A string of war canoes four miles long. Of course, I am descended from Kamehameha the Great.”

“Of course,” Lassiter said.

Lila laughed and her hair fell across a shoulder. “It’d be hard to prove. Old Kame-ha-ha had about forty wives.”

“Only twenty-one,” Keaka corrected her. “Just enough to serve him.”

“Give me a break,” Lila said, “and pass the pumpernickel while you’re at it, Keaka the Great.”

Lassiter ordered stone crabs for the table. Boiled and served cold with a tangy mustard sauce, the hard colorful claws contain a meat sweeter than lobster. Keaka Kealia devoured his order and asked for a second portion. He ate quickly, going from one side dish to another, creamed spinach and hash browns and fried eggplant. Together, they put away several cold beers and the room became warmer. Around them was the clatter of plates and the cacophony of voices. At the table, everything was in softer focus now, the atmosphere changed. Keaka became more talkative, weaving tales of Hawaiian folklore, warriors from the jungle defeating great forces of invaders. Lila’s face radiated happiness, her eyes sparkling, and Lassiter thoughtfully concluded that the world’s most glorious sight was a dab of mustard sauce clinging impossibly to a cheekbone carved by Michelangelo.

On request, Keaka passed the second portion of stone crabs to Lassiter, but suddenly he winced, and Lassiter caught the platter before it crashed to the table.

“Good reflexes,” Keaka said.

“The pass-tip drill,” Lassiter replied. “You okay?”

Keaka was silent. Lila looked at him and asked, “Did you soak your elbows today?”

The Hawaiian shook his head. “Later, at the hotel. Don’t worry. I don’t bother you about your problems.”

Jake Lassiter waited, the outsider, figuring they would fill him in if they wanted to.

“Torn ligaments in both my ankles,” Lila explained, “from hard landings in wave jumping. But it’s really nothing compared to Keaka’s elbows. Chronic tendonitis from all that pressure on the arms.”

“Can’t it be treated?”

“Sure,” she said. “Anti-inflammatory pills, cortisone, tendon massage. Nothing works. Keaka soaks both elbows in ice after windsurfing every day.”

“Like Sandy Koufax,” Lassiter said.

“Who?” Keaka asked without taking his eyes from the claw he was dissecting.

“Pitcher,” Lassiter said, making a throwing motion with his left arm. “Struck out fifteen Yankees in the first game of the Series in ‘63. Had a bad elbow that cut his career short.”

“Yankees?” Keaka asked, clearly puzzled. “ Haoles?”

Lila erupted in laughter. “It’s a baseball team, Keaka.”

Now Lassiter was puzzled. “What’s a howley?” he asked.

“There’s a culture gap here,” Lila said. “ Haoles are Caucasians, foreigners as far as the native Hawaiians are concerned. So when you said ‘Yankees’…”

“I get it,” Lassiter said.

Keaka silently ate his stone crabs, ignoring the conversation, seeming not to listen until he looked straight at Lassiter and announced, “You haoles are ridiculous. You wear too many clothes, ties that choke the neck and hang down like an old man’s limp ole. Your women starve themselves and end up with chicken necks and hips sharp as bamboo sticks. You work in offices fifty weeks a year, then come to Maui and lie all day on a tiny piece of sand by your Hyatts and Marriotts where all you see are other haoles.”

The attack startled Lassiter. Why this resentment directed at him? Lila waited for Lassiter’s response, enjoying the verbal combat as if staged for her amusement.

Lassiter joined the battle. “Keaka, if you’re saying that modern America has a lot to learn, I agree. But we can’t all spend our days on the beach. Somebody’s got to grow the grain and make the widgets and even try the lawsuits.”

Lila’s full mouth parted into a small, enigmatic smile. “Jake, we all must find ourselves, decide what to do with our lives. I know that I would be out of place in a city. And maybe I have no right to say this, but when I look at you, I don’t see a lawyer in a three-piece suit and a fancy office. I see an outdoorsman, riding horses in the mountains, windsurfing on unspoiled waters.”

Lassiter looked at Keaka. No expression. Back to Lila. Was she teasing him, leading him on?

“I don’t know,” he said, “you might think I was just another haole.”

“No, Jake, you’d be different, I can tell.”

Keaka laughed without smiling. “Would he know the mountain or the jungle or the sea? There are spirits on Maui that sing, but the haoles are deaf. They, are forever strangers in my land.”

Jake Lassiter cleared his throat and bought some time. Had it been a courtroom, he would have thumbed through some papers, stood up, hitched his thumbs in his belt, and prepared to counterattack. Here he just took a sip of the cold beer and thought it through. First Lila flirts with him, then Keaka insults him. And does it well. I knew the bastard could out-windsurf me, but he’s outdebating me, too, Lassiter thought. A surprise witness catching him off guard. He had imagined they would talk about the latest in camber-induced sails and triple skegs, but Keaka was not just a jock and the sparring seemed to be for Lila’s approval. How to win? To tell them their lives were meaningless, just waiting for the wind, doing stunts in the waves, empty days of barefoot bliss. But was his life any more meaningful, renting himself out by the hour to balloon-heads like Thad Whitney at the bank?

Finally Lassiter said, “Keaka, you speak very eloquently. Your thoughts are profound and you deliver them poetically. But you overgeneralize. Every culture has its philistines, even old Hawaii, I’m sure. We have no monopoly on evil here.”

“It’s not poetry, it’s history,” Keaka shot back. “The English came two hundred years ago to build ports for their ships in the Pacific. Then the American missionaries, who thought nakedness was sinful, so they covered our bodies with heavy clothes and made us stink like them. The haoles stole our land and brought disease and killed the whales and swallowed the fish in huge nets. They planted that damn weed, sugarcane, for what, to make Coca-Cola? Then they burned the cane in the fields and blackened the sky.”

Any rebuttal, Counselor? a faraway judge whispered in Lassiter’s ear. He tried to remember what he knew of Hawaii. The college football team was called the Rainbows, or was it the Pineapples, and a long time ago he had read the Michener book, or did he just see the TV movie and think he read the book?

“Even before the Europeans, weren’t there constant wars on the islands?” Lassiter asked. “It wasn’t exactly Camelot.”

“Right,” Lila said, patting Lassiter’s arm. Her fingers lingered, and Lassiter’s pulse quickened. “Keaka’s ancestors used to get all painted up like Indians in a B Western and ride around in war canoes. The Big Island had five or six chiefs ruling different tribes, and they’d cut each other’s hearts out.”

Keaka narrowed his eyes and gestured toward both of them with a table knife. “It is an honor to be a great warrior, to die a warrior’s death.” Then he silently examined a claw that was not cracked, apparently overlooked by the kitchen crew which used mallets to break the hard shells that give the crabs their name.

Lassiter said, “Don’t worry, we’ll send it back and they’ll give it forty whacks.”

“No need.” Keaka scooped up the claw and it disappeared into a thick brown hand. The fingers closed and Lassiter watched ribbons of muscle pop from Keaka’s forearm.

“That’s not a walnut,” Lassiter warned. “The shell’s too thick…” A sharp crack interrupted him, the shell splitting into pieces. Blood spurted onto the tablecloth, a piece of jagged shell sticking from Keaka’s thumb. Expressionless, he sucked at the wound for a moment, then devoured the meat from the claw.

The show of strength seemed intended for him, Lassiter thought, a primitive warning, a staking out of territory. Had he telegraphed his thoughts about Lila, or did every man?

“I didn’t think that was possible,” Lassiter said.

Keaka grunted. “It’s easy. First you find the weak spot, then you apply pressure.” He jutted out his chin and smiled, the look of a barracuda. Then he rubbed his right elbow with his left hand.

“Keaka here is hard as a rock everywhere,” Lila said, squeezing Keaka’s thigh and simultaneously harpooning Lassiter’s morale. “But his elbow tendons are like spaghetti. He doesn’t complain, too Hawaiian macho for that, but I know how much it hurts. I wonder how much longer he can go on. We’re looking for easier ways to make money.”

Keaka shot her a murderous glance. “Listen, I’ve heard enough about my elbows. It takes more than a sore elbow to stop a Hawaiian. More even than three bullets.”

“Three bullets?” Lassiter asked.

Lila sighed. “A Hawaiian fable.”

“No. True story,” Keaka corrected her. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Never shoot a Hawaiian three times or you will make him really mad’?”

“No, must have missed that one,” Lassiter conceded.

“Right after Pearl Harbor,” Keaka said, “a Japanese pilot tries to get his plane back to its carrier but has engine trouble, so he puts it down on Niihau, one of the small islands. The local constable is a native Hawaiian, big-boned and a barrel for a stomach. He’s unarmed, but he puts the little Jap pilot under arrest. The pilot takes out a pistol and shoots the Hawaiian in the gut, but it doesn’t stop him. Bang, he shoots him again, but the Hawaiian’s big and strong and just getting madder, then bang again, a third shot in the stomach. Then the Hawaiian picks up the Jap and crushes his skull against the plane.”

Lila wore the look of a wife who has heard her husband tell the same golf yarn a hundred times. “Moral of the story,” she said, “if I ever get mad at Keaka, I won’t shoot him, I’ll chop his big fat head off.”

“You’re the only one who would have a chance at it,” Keaka said somberly. He turned to Lassiter, his black eyes humorless. “Lila is strong, quick, and fearless as a pu’ali, a great warrior.”

“But can she type?” Jake Lassiter asked, and the blond warrior rewarded him with a knee-weakening smile.

A cool ocean breeze whipped across the Rickenbacker Causeway as they drove back to Key Biscayne, the lights of downtown Miami bouncing off the bay, the moon high overhead on a cloudless night. Traffic was light and in twenty minutes they were back at the hotel.

“Li’a, I’m going to make a call,” Keaka said, heading for the front desk and leaving Lassiter and Lila standing together in the lobby.

Lassiter’s look asked the question.

“Li’a was a forest goddess to the native Hawaiians,” Lila said.

“Li’a,” Lassiter repeated, letting the name linger on his tongue.

“In Hawaiian, it means desire or a powerful yearning. That’s why the Hawaiians wrote so many love songs about Li’a.”

“Goddess of Desire,” Jake Lassiter said. “The name fits. The spirits of the forest are still alive in Li’a, beautiful Goddess of Desire.”

“You’re a very sweet man, and a very attractive one,” she said with a provocative smile.

Now what did that mean? A thousand men must have complimented her name, her face and perfect body, but she was Keaka’s alone, Lassiter thought. He looked toward the front desk, where Keaka was using a telephone.

“Probably calling his cousin Mikala on Maui,” Lila said. “They’ve got business deals together. Will you wait with me?”

Only for a million years, he thought, and they sat down in cushioned chairs surrounded by ficus trees in the courtyard.

“Do you really want to get out of windsurfing?” Lassiter asked, his mind spinning.

Lila smiled a soft, wistful smile. “I’m not going to give it up to work in an office somewhere, but I’ve swallowed water from nearly every ocean in the world. I’ve been stung by jellyfish, cut by fins, and been catapulted onto rocks and coral. If that isn’t bad enough, it’s gotten boring. Some days, I just don’t want to load my equipment, pack six different sails, rig and rerig all day long. It’s become routine and dull, sort of…”

“Mundane,” Lassiter suggested.

“Right, mundane. That’s the word.”

“Like going to the office, whether you want to or not,” Lassiter said.

“Right, or making love to someone just because he’s there, whether you want to or not.”

He tried to decipher the message on the parted lips that half smiled and half pouted at him. She looked at him for a response. He thought a thousand things and said none. No follow-through. He let the ball slip through his hands with the clock ticking down. Then it was too late, Keaka heading toward them, smiling his barracuda smile, the call apparently a success.

“Mikala agrees we should take care of our business as soon as possible, tonight even,” Keaka said to Lila, and his look told Jake Lassiter it was time to say good night, which he did.

“So long, Jake,” Lila Summers said. “Thanks for a wonderful evening. When you come to Maui, you’ll become a kamaaina — a native — or almost one. You’ll blend into the surroundings, become part of the mountains and the sea.”

She laughed and her eyes danced and Lassiter wondered again if they held a promise or if he was the foil in a private game between these two strangers. He said good night a second time and walked outside, where a different valet looked at his ancient convertible as if it were a two-ton cockroach. Then the wind from the ocean slapped Lassiter’s face and he told himself not to be such a goddamn fool.