Here Today, Gone to Maui Page 4

  “It’s early here,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right! So, you and Jimmy should be getting all hot and sweaty right about now.”

  “We’ve got to come up for air sometime.” I forced a laugh. “Did anyone buy muffins?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Oh, no—ya know what we did? Manny—he’s in production? He lives in LaHabra, and he stopped off at Boston Donuts on his way to work. That’s down on Imperial. I had a jelly-filled one. You ever try one of those?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Manny got all kinds—jelly-filled, cream-filled, chocolate, glazed. Everybody was like, ‘Oh, cool—donuts!’ So, no offense, everyone really likes your muffins and all, but people are really liking the donuts, and Manny said he can pick them up every Friday, as long as he can get money from petty cash to pay for them.”

  “So, you don’t . . . people don’t want my muffins?”

  “It’s not that! People love your muffins, your muffins are awesome. It’s just that people are really liking the donuts. But you can still bring in muffins, if you want. Maybe we could have both. I just thought it might be nice for you to have a break, is all. I know you’re, like, really busy with Jimmy, and all.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I looked around the empty room. “Jimmy keeps me busy, all right. Speaking of which, I’d better go soon. Can you put me through to Mr. Wills?”

  “Morning, Jane,” he said. “We sure missed your muffins today.” Since Mr. Wills suffered from high cholesterol, I always offered low-fat alternatives. He was especially fond of my apple-oatmeal scones. “Are you having a nice vacation?” he asked.

  “Oh, it’s great,” I said. “Just thought I should check in.”

  He made his little humming noise. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt your vacation,” he said finally. “But I just put together some target numbers for the sales force, and I’d love to get your input. Does your hotel have a business center? I could e-mail you . . .”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll get it back to you by tomorrow.” Maui Hi didn’t have hair dryers, much less a business center, but there had to be an Internet café around here someplace.

  Jimmy came in just as I finished making the bed (which meant straightening the blankets and sheets; the beige coverlet looked and smelled so suspicious, I’d folded it up and shoved it in the closet).

  “Hi,” I said, stopping myself before I could ask, Where were you?

  “Hey, baby—you miss me?” he asked, dropping his key and a white plastic bag on the table.

  “Of course,” I said, with just enough of a smirk to make him wonder.

  He was wearing faded yellow board shorts, a sleeveless white T-shirt, and a shark-tooth necklace. His hair, which was slightly shaggier than usual and a little damp, was pushed behind his ears. He looked really, really cute.

  “I had to make some business calls, and I didn’t want to wake you. So I drove out to a beach and called from there. When I was done, I jumped in the water—felt great.”

  I was a little hurt that he’d gone swimming without me, but I was happy about the business calls. Every step toward a more solid business meant a step toward a more solid relationship. Right?

  “I’ve been on the phone to my office, too,” I said. (Translation: I have not just been sitting around waiting for you to return.) “I figured I’d catch people before they went to lunch. Who were you talking to?”

  “People around here, mostly,” he said. “Trying to set up some meetings.”

  I glanced at the clock. “You left pretty early. Did you wake anyone up?”

  “Nah—divers get up with the sun.”

  “I called my mom, too,” I said. “She wasn’t home, but I left a message. Did you tell your parents we were coming here?”

  He shrugged. “They don’t care what I do. I travel so much, it would be hard to keep up with my schedule.” Jimmy had grown up in Lancaster, a desert town about a hundred miles inland from Los Angeles, but his parents had moved to Arizona shortly after he graduated from high school. He’d said, “We’re just not very close—nobody’s fault really, we’re just totally different people,” but I always got the sense that he was hurt by their semi-abandonment.

  “I’d like to meet them sometime,” I said casually (and not for the first time).

  “Sure,” he said (as he always did). “Next time they’re in town.” He fingered his shark-tooth necklace.

  “New jewelry?”

  He glaced down at the neckace. “I thought a shark tooth was more manly than a lei. I bought you something.” He reached inside the white plastic bag that said ABC STORES in blue lettering.

  “This is for you.” He handed me a string of white shells on a cardboard backing.

  I smiled. “A bracelet?” Jimmy had never given me something “just because.”

  “An anklet,” he said.

  “Really?” The happy feeling spread through my chest. “I’ve never owned an anklet before.”

  “I kind of figured.” He dug into the bag again and pulled out a plastic-wrapped muffin. “I thought you’d be hungry.”

  “I am.”

  “I had one, too,” he said. “It’s not very good. I think your muffins have ruined me for anyone else’s.”

  “I think you’ve ruined me for anyone else,” I purred, slinking toward him. He circled me and held me tight.

  “I have to leave you,” he muttered.

  “What?” I said, too sharply, stepping back and looking him in the face.

  “I have a meeting today. Well, two meetings, actually. One in”—he checked the digital clock by the bed—“forty-five minutes. And the other one for lunch.” He bit his lip. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  “Oh,” I said, stepping back. “It’s no big deal. I’ll just—swim. And explore. And read. I brought a whole stack of books.”

  “You’re the best,” he said, kissing my forehead before heading to the shower.

  As disappointed as I was, there was no point letting the morning go to waste. I could settle in and do some necessary errands.

  A quick check of the brown plastic cabinets revealed salt, pepper, rice-wine vinegar, soy sauce (“please refrigerate after opening”), and curry powder. Far in the back was a tin of baking powder, probably left over from the last millennium and presumably inactive. An exploration of the lower cabinets turned up a rusted cake tin and two warped cookie sheets that just might fit in the toaster oven. And, oh—two fondue pots. Because no Hawaiian vacation would be complete without fondue.

  The condo office was three doors down from our studio. Jimmy had left me in the car when he’d checked in the night before, so I hadn’t seen it yet. I expected something dark and shabby, and I wasn’t disappointed. The room was deep and narrow, with only one parking-lot-view window to let in light. Hula music gurgled from two wall-mounted speakers, only partially masking the buzzing from the fluorescent lights overhead. Bamboo-print wallpaper covered the walls, while framed posters advertised catamaran rides, snorkel trips, and luaus. In the middle of the room, a bunch of rattan chairs circled a glass coffee table. A long counter overlooked it all from the back wall.

  The woman behind the counter had a wide, calm face with perfectly square teeth. Her skin was mocha-colored, her shiny black hair pulled back into a braid. She could have been twenty-five or forty-five. Her blue polyester muumuu was at least two sizes too big. Her name tag said MARY.

  “Aloha,” she said when I walked in the door.

  Lacking the Hawaiian words for “this place sucks,” I said “aloha” back and wandered to the counter. There was a rack filled with brochures advertising everything from skyline tours to sunset cruises to bike rides down the volcano.

  The grocery store was a bit far, Mary told me, but there was a convenience store just down the street. As for an Internet café, I’d have to go into Lahaina, which meant waiting until Jimmy returned.

  The road to the convenience store was leafy, narrow, and overrun by rental cars. I jumped into the bushes
twice to avoid getting run down. By the time I arrived, I was breathing heavily and sweating profusely. Also, I was starving. It was still morning in Maui, but my stomach hadn’t gotten the memo. Praying I wouldn’t get food poisoning, I bought a chicken teriyaki bowl from a roadside vendor and wolfed it down on the spot.

  This was not the kind of morning I had envisioned when I’d drawn up my itinerary.

  Fortunately, the convenience store had everything I needed, at only two or three times the price I would have paid on the mainland. I bought cereal, milk, orange juice, yogurt, minibananas, a bunch of tropical flowers, a bottle of sunscreen, and a cheap snorkeling set with flippers ( just so we’re clear, by “cheap” I am referring to quality, not price). Packages of homemade baked goods sat on the counter. I chose pineapple-mango scones.

  I barely noticed the condo’s ugliness as I unpacked my groceries and arranged the flowers in a chunky glass vase. Nesting always makes me feel better.

  When I was done, I balanced a scone on a square of paper towel and headed to the office. Mary laughed in delight and said “mahalo,” which means “thank you” in Hawaiian (eighteen hours here, and I was practically fluent). She took a bite and nodded. “Mm—’s good.”

  The door opened, and a couple walked in. They were about my age, maybe a little older, and dressed almost exactly the same, in denim shorts and white logo T-shirts. The woman snagged a whale watch brochure. She had blond hair, stringy at the ends, with about an inch of dark roots.

  Her husband leaned on the counter, his underarm hair tufting out of his sleeveless shirt. He smelled like banana mixed with coconut mixed with car grease. Really, he should have spent the extra two bucks on better suntan lotion. “We got a problem with our air-conditioning,” he said to Mary.

  “What air-conditioning?” she asked.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  She blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

  “The AC,” he said. “Pfft.” He sliced the air with his hand. “Not working.”

  Mary bit her lip. “The units aren’t air-conditioned. Did you try opening the window?”

  He stared at her. “Of course not! I didn’t want to let out the air-conditioning! So you’re telling me—oh, man!” He threw back his head in disgust.

  “I told ya we shoulda stayed at a hotel,” his wife muttered, slipping the whale pamphlet back into the display.

  “We have electric fans,” Mary said. “You want one in your room?”

  “What for?” the guy grumbled. “So we can move the hot air around?”

  Mary kept a pleasant smile on her face.

  “Hair dryer,” the woman prompted under her breath.

  “Oh, yeah,” the guy said. “You got a hair dryer my wife can use? She didn’t pack hers ’cause she figured you’d have them.”

  Mary shook her head. “Sorry.”

  The guy grunted in disgust. “This place blows.”

  “Well, that was rude,” I said once they left (even if I did agree with the assessment).

  Mary waved the air with her hand. “That was nothing. Some guests, they come here expecting room service, a heated pool . . .” She chuckled. “In-room massages.”

  I laughed along with her. (In-room massages? I could totally go for that.)

  She continued, “So I say, sorry, we don’t have that, and they get mad.” She shrugged. “Ah—well. It’s a job.”

  “Could you get another job?”

  “On Maui? Probably not. Nothing better, anyway. I’d have to leave the island. Lot of my family’s moved to Las Vegas.”

  I thought of Vegas: the neon, the cigarette smoke, the sprawl. “Isn’t that a bit like trading heaven for hell?”

  She laughed; a full, hearty sound. “Me, I think there’s things more important than a fancy job and a big house. I don’t mind working here. Most guests are nice.” She picked a crumb off her paper towel. “Some even bring me food.”

  She looked at me, considering. “You still need to use the Internet?” she asked. “ ’Cause you can use my computer. Long as you don’t tell nobody.”

  After I read Bob Wills’s e-mail and sent back my comments, I asked Mary for directions to the nearest beach. She told me that if I walked along the rock wall, I’d eventually reach a small stretch of sand.

  Back at the condo, I stuffed my tote with a rough, white bath towel (Maui Hi did not supply beach towels); my new snorkeling set and flippers; a bottle of No-Ad suntan lotion; and a paperback; some frothy story about a city girl looking for love. My swimming attire—board shorts over a navy-blue racer-back tank—was uninspired. I’d save my other suit—floral print, bikini top, little, flirty skirt—for Jimmy.

  The beach was a bit farther down than Mary had said. It was nothing special, at least by Maui standards, but it was fairly empty, and the sun felt warm on my exposed skin. I sat on the towel and read for a while. When I got hot, I pulled out my snorkeling gear and adjusted the strap on my new mask. I spit on the glass to keep it from fogging up, a tip I’d learned while vacationing in Mexico a few years back.

  The water was colder than I expected, but it didn’t take long to get used to it. I swam over to the darker water, searching for fish. A wave splashed over my head and into my snorkel; I sputtered and blew the water out. A yellow fish darted between the rocks; another chased it. A school of silvery-white fish sped by, looking like swimming coins. Water seeped in along the sides of my mask.

  Back at a sandy spot, I stood up, awkward in my flippers. I pulled off the mask, tightened the strap, and put it back on. I swam back to the rocks, where I saw a black fish with little white dots, a white angelfish, the yellow guys again. My mask fogged.

  Emerging from the water at the shoreline, I shivered. I pulled off my mask and smoothed back my hair. Far out in the water, there was a splash; another whale. My face felt funny: I was smiling. Here I was, alone on a little beach, abandoned by my boyfriend, with nothing but a flimsy towel to dry me. My condo sucked; my mask leaked. I should be cranky, whiny, and disillusioned. But it was impossible—because I was finally here, in Maui.

  Chapter 5

  When Jimmy announced that he was taking me out to dinner, I tried to keep my expectations in check. In our five months together, he’d taken me out only a handful of times, always to places he described as “fun.” He claimed that no restaurant could match my awesome cooking (he was especially fond of my chicken parmigian) and that he liked nothing more than sharing a cozy evening at home with me. Between his business lunches and his side job waiting tables, fancy restaurants had lost their allure.

  “Something nice,” Jimmy said when I asked him what I should wear. He had a fresh sunburn on his nose because his lunch meeting had been by a hotel pool.

  “What does that mean? Nice shorts or a nice dress?” According to my guidebook, there was a restaurant in downtown Lahaina called Hamburger in Paradise. That sounded like Jimmy’s kind of place.

  “Just—nice.” He was wearing white linen shorts and a pale yellow silk shirt. It didn’t look like hamburger attire.

  Philippe’s was a first-date kind of place, in the same league as the oceanfront spot in Laguna Beach where I had met Jimmy. Our table, covered with a white tablecloth and decorated with a candle and an orchid, was on a patio right next to a beach. The golden sun, low on the horizon, made me squint.

  “I should have brought sunglasses,” I said as the maître d’ helped me into my chair.

  “I’ve got mine,” Jimmy said. “Here—sit on this side. It’s not as bright.”

  There were a few groups on the beach, enjoying the end of the day. A tiny girl with flyaway brown hair ran around wearing nothing but a swim diaper, holding an orange sand shovel over her head like a torch. An enormous white cruise ship sat anchored offshore.

  “Nice spot for a cruise,” I said.

  Jimmy stared out at the ocean, his chin resting on his hand. “I don’t know. I’d hate to be cooped up like that.”

  “Yeah, our place is much nicer,” I said.


  Jimmy shot me a sideways glance. We both laughed.

  He reached for my hand. “You’ve been really great about that. I know it’s not what you expected.”

  I smiled. “I don’t need a fancy resort. All that matters is that I’m with you.”

  A waitress came to take our drink orders. She was a pretty girl, with exotic Hawaiian looks: shiny black hair, full lips, almond eyes. Her flowered halter dress showed off a tiny hibiscus tattoo on her shoulder. I checked Jimmy’s face, steeling myself for any expression of lust, but he was merely polite, ordering a bottle of champagne before returning his gaze to me.

  “Champagne,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Any day with you is an occasion.” I beamed at him, forgetting for an instant that our usual occasions involved beer and pasta.

  On the beach, the little girl’s mother rubbed the sand off her back with a frayed towel and pulled a pink T-shirt over her head. The little girl danced in place, the orange shovel still clutched in her hand. It made it harder to get the T-shirt over her arms, but the mother managed, somehow. The mother’s hair was brown and flyaway like her daughter’s. She wore a tank top over her bikini, an intricate tattoo blooming between her shoulder blades. The little girl’s father was there, too, folding up the beach chairs and throwing empty potato-chip bags in the beach tote. He had a tattoo, also. I was starting to feel like the only person in Maui without one.

  “Could you see yourself staying here?” Jimmy asked.

  “At this restaurant?”

  He reached out as if to chuck me under the chin but didn’t actually touch me. “No, I mean here. In Maui.”

  “You mean—to live?” What was he asking me, exactly?

  “Yeah. Could you see that?”

  “Well . . . I have my job.” I considered that for a moment. “Not that it would break my heart to leave it, but I don’t know what kind of work I could find here.” I looked at him and then dropped my gaze flirtatiously. “Plus, I have this boyfriend in California. I wouldn’t want to leave him behind.”