THE HOTEL
After a quick shower, Lu stepped into a sleeveless dress and went down to meet Mr. Rockefeller. He’d written the note himself. Please meet me on the promenade fronting the Dining Pavilion at five p.m. sharp. LSR. From everything she’d read, Rockefeller was a hands-on kind of guy in the best sense of the word.
Lu took the side stairs, and worked up her first story in her mind, recalling the opening of Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands: “On a certain bright morning the islands hove in sight, lying low on the lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper dock to look.” To be sure, she would not be able to write like Samuel Clemens, but she could insert her own voice and give it a go. Put a new spin on correspondence coming out of Hawai‘i. More real, less offensive.
A low bank of clouds had set up shop along the horizon, toning down the summer heat, but with every step, she felt her hair expanding. Growing up in Kona, she always knew where the wind was coming from. North meant flat and well-behaved hair. South or west meant wild and frizzy. Just a byproduct of island life.
On the way down, she passed a giant Buddha—one of the many priceless art pieces reported to be here—at the top of a grand staircase leading to the lower deck. Lu admired the modern, clean lines of the substantial sand-colored pillars. An “invisible building” had been the goal, and Rockefeller had succeeded in grand fashion.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw him right away. Them, actually. Laurance Rockefeller was standing with Matteo Russi, pointing out something in the water. Lu took a deep breath. You can do this. She pulled her shoulders back and stood as tall as she could, thanks to her wooden platform sandals. Promenade, it turned out, was just a fancy word for a stone-paved walkway that fronts a hotel. Some of these new words she’d had to look up in her dictionary. Mrs. Hoapili, her neighbor and hānai aunt—Lu called her Auntie H—had given her the dictionary when she was thirteen and going into the ninth grade at Konawaena. It was coffee-stained and missing a few pages, but it was her most trusted ally.
Mr. Rockefeller was dapper in a light blue suit and white shoes. As soon as he saw her, he held out a hand and gave her a smile that immediately put her at ease. “Welcome to the Mauna Kea, Miss Freitas. I understand you know these parts well.”
“Thank you, sir. I feel extremely fortunate to be here. What you’ve done is perfect,” she answered in her most polite and practiced voice.
He winked. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Have you met Mr. Russi? I thought it would be good to have press from both coasts. Keep each other honest.”
“We haven’t met. I’m Lu Freitas, a big admirer of your work,” she said.
Russi, who appeared older in real life than in photos, laughed. “Coulda fooled me. But thanks, kid.”
Rockefeller went on. “I think it’s brilliant, too, to have both a man and a woman and I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it first. We have a host of top-notch women on staff, everything from director of personnel to reservations to waitstaff.”
“I’m happy to hear it,” Lu said.
Russi was staring out to sea, looking lost in thought. A long pale scar ran down the side of his face, and crow’s-feet framed his eyes. But together with his thick head of hair and good bone structure, Lu could see why older women might find him appealing.
“While you’re here, I want you to both behave as my guests. The place is yours. You’re here to do your job, but also to experience the Mauna Kea and all she has to offer,” Mr. Rockefeller said with a sweep of his arm. “But please remember that the other VIPs are here at my invitation and are looking forward to a Hawaiian getaway far from the pressures of the mainland. Write about the hotel, not them. Now, I’d love to show you a few things.”
Mr. Rockefeller led them down a stone path, around a swimming pool surrounded with coconut trees and down to sea level. A patio with tables merged with lawn and naupaka bushes crawling onto the beach. Most of the other beaches on the island were black with tiny green olivine sparkles. Not here. This sand was white as sugar.
“I’m betting you like to swim, Miss Freitas. How about you, Mr. Russi?”
Russi’s jaw tightened. “Not a big fan.”
“A shame, but you may change your tune. The water here has a way of working its magic on even the most ardent nonbelievers,” Rockefeller said.
“I’ll stick to the land, but thank you.”
Out on the water, the sun slipped beneath the clouds, a red orb of light on the water.
“When I first came here, one of the locals that was showing me around told me that he had never, not once in his life, missed a sunset. And this was not a young man, either. His words struck a chord in me. I want this to be a place where the only thing people have to worry about is missing the sunset. For that reason, we have no televisions and other distractions of civilization.”
They stood and watched it slowly disappear.
“How does it feel to be home?” Mr. Rockefeller asked Lu.
“It makes me wonder how I ever left in the first place,” she said in all honesty.
“Sometimes we have to leave a place before we understand how much it means to us. And Hawai‘i gets under your skin. I know that much.”
Russi remained aloof, off in his own world. Maybe he was just jaded to beautiful places, but Lu’s gut told her it was something more. He looked to be struggling through this little tour.
Mr. Rockefeller then took them out toward the point, where they turned around and looked back at the hotel, which sank back into the low hillside.
“We started out with nine designs, and this beauty is the winner. She’s something, isn’t she? We almost went with these small Greek village–style units, but we had one built and then during a tropical storm it was nearly wiped out. I kid you not, it was one thing after another getting to this day. We had a construction collapse, nearly all of our uniforms had to be remade, then half my furniture was stranded on a dock in Hong Kong. I had to charter a plane and send an old Flying Tiger buddy to go rescue it.” He chuckled. “If that wasn’t bad enough, add in an earthquake, a tsunami warning and a bomb threat. And that’s not the half of it.”
“Sounds about right. What can go wrong usually does, and then some,” Russi said.
He seemed so nonchalant.
“You’d never know it now,” Lu added.
“No, you wouldn’t. I have fantastic people and my own doggedness to thank for that.”
A zillion dollars didn’t hurt, either.
When they returned to the lobby, Rockefeller went over to say something to the woman at the front desk. A moment later, the hole over the coconut-tree-filled atrium started sliding closed.
Russi craned his neck. “A hotel with a sunroof. Nice touch,” he said.
Even though he was older, and a bit tired-looking, Russi was undeniably handsome. In a rugged, rough-around-the-edges kind of way. And with his dark hair and olive skin, he blended right in.
Rockefeller came back to them, grinning. “So, you two have the schedules. Until tomorrow, you’re on your own. I expect you’ll want to rest up. It’s going to be one hell of a weekend.”
With that, he left the two of them standing awkwardly together on the sea-blue tile. Russi began fumbling in his pocket for something. She thought he was going to pull out a pack of cigarettes, but instead it was gum. He held it out to her.
“Doublemint?” he asked.
“Yeah, thanks.” Lu felt compelled to speak. “Look, Mr. Russi, I want to apologize for earlier, with Joni Diaz. I had no idea it was you and I kind of just reacted. Long flights, long day.”
“More like overreacted.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re green, I get it. But if you had known it was me, what would you have done?”
“I... Well... I don’t know. Probably not have yelled at you, though.”
“In this business, you’re gonna have to get used to dealing with famous folks, folks in power, folks with money.” He paused. “You want my two cents?”
“Please.”
“Treat them like you would any old person. The bartender and Mr. Rockefeller are no different. The maid and the senator both eat, breathe and fuck. You can’t get googly-eyed over anyone—especially me—or you’re screwed. And get used to pissing people off now and then—it comes with the territory.”
With that, he left her, gum still unwrapped in her hand and a mouthful of questions.
In her room, armed with a Coke and a tin of macadamia nuts, Lu sat down to compose her first story. Her idea was to do a series of vignettes, much like Twain had. The problem was, while ideas came easily and in large numbers, the act of putting them down on paper had always been a struggle. Letters went backward and words seemed to rearrange themselves before her eyes. Was it dad or bad? Dead or bead? The very fact that she was here, on assignment for Sunset, was a miracle in and of itself.
Her father, Buster, had balked at the idea of college. Flat out refused to help her pay. “Our family, we’re not school people. Don’t waste your time.” The undercurrent of the message really being, You’re not smart enough. Lu always wished her mother had been alive to counter that. She’d invent stories of her mother showering her with compliments. My brilliant girl, tell me about the time you grew wings and flew around the moon. Your stories are spun from golden honey. Her mother, Sally, had died of a “popped vein in her head,” when Lu was just three. Later, Lu learned the medical term for it—aneurysm. Lu mostly remembered her long brown hair and earthy scent, and fragments of her smile.
Not long after Lu’s mother died, Donna moved in. Buster and Donna both worked on their small, family macadamia-nut farm. Buster managed and Donna picked and cooked for all the workers. Buster was proud of his farming roots and saw little use for schooling. So it was no wonder they called Donna in one afternoon when Lu was in the second grade, for the teacher to inform her that Lu had mental issues, that her handwriting was illegible and she was obstinate as a mule. But Donna had barely graduated from high school herself, and dealing with a slow child was not in her repertoire. Lu was left to struggle through school on her own, never enjoying it, but compensated by telling stories—mainly to the animals.
The farm was home to cats, dogs, chickens, two cows and a small herd of donkeys, also known as Kona nightingales—for the godawful racket they made if left alone. From a young age, Lu would gather the assortment of cats, a chicken or two and the old donkey, Luna, and tell them elaborate tales. The chickens usually wandered away once the scraps were gone, but the cats stayed and Luna showed her teeth whenever Lu stopped talking. She knew she was onto something.
At school, though, things got worse before they got better. Some teachers were understanding, others oblivious and a few uncool. Her fifth grade teacher was the worst, and repeatedly brought Lu to the chalkboard for grammar practice, as if tormenting her would somehow make her smarter. Jason Hamada, the class nerd, took pity on her and they developed signs and signals that helped some. But she never forgot the burn on her cheeks and the feeling of utter worthlessness as the other kids laughed behind her back.
Everything changed when she met Auntie H, who took Lu under her wing and taught her that smarts came in many flavors. Book smart, people smart, music smart, art smart, plant smart and so on. She insisted that Lu was not dumb, just misunderstood. After all, Lu had a bottomless pit of a memory, was blessed with a vivid imagination and made friends easily—both human and animal. “Kindness and compassion make the world go ’round,” Auntie H loved to say.
Over the years, Auntie H had slowly transformed from neighbor to tutor to dearly loved aunt, friend and mom, all wrapped up in one. She filled the motherless hole in Lu that Donna never would. It was purely because of her that Lu blossomed, graduated high school and went to college. Lu loved her to the sun and beyond.
The yellow legal pad sat empty on the desk now, save for a few scratched-out words. It would be far more interesting to her if she could write about the people here. Yes, the hotel was gorgeous. Yes, the sea-blue tile on the lobby floor made you feel like you were swimming. But so what? In recent months, she’d had this same vague feeling. Writing about places and events and backyard barbecues wasn’t cutting it for her.
On a particularly bright summer day, the hotel appeared out of the lava, a sentinel keeping watch over the lazy blue Pacific. After two thousand miles of air travel, and traversing barren fields of brush, the sight was a most welcome one.
It took her two hours to get those two sentences down, and they were nothing special whatsoever. At some point, she was going to have to go with what she had, so she pulled out her portable typewriter and typed it all up.
The next morning, a tapping woke her from a dead sleep. At first she thought it was a bird and pulled the pillow over her head, but the sound grew louder, and she realized it was coming from the door. The sky had just begun to lighten. Why would someone be knocking at this ungodly hour?
“Luana! It’s me, Joni.”
Lu threw on a robe with an orange flower and went to the door. “What’s going on?”
“This is your wake-up call. I thought it would be nice to be the first ones in the water.”
Lu rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Who cares what time it is. Come on!”
“I need coffee. I don’t function without it.”
“Ah, my friend, the water will wake you right up. You’re the one who said early is best.”
Joni was holding a glass of something bubbly. It looked like champagne, but Lu didn’t want to ask.
“Give me five minutes. I’ll meet you at the bottom of the floating steps.”
A light periwinkle glow spread in from behind the hotel. Joni was right where Lu had told her to be, looking out over the shadowy beach. Her wavy locks were piled messily on her head. Even at this hour, she looked beautiful.
“It feels like our own private estate. Not a soul is up,” she said.
“It used to be so wild, so out of the way.”
“It must be strange for you. To have been here before and now see it transformed.”
“It’s going to take some getting used to.”
“Change happens. Sometimes it’s a bitch and sometimes it makes your life better. All you can do is roll with it.”
“Those sound like song lyrics.”
Joni shrugged. “Anything can be a song lyric if you put it to music. Even your stories. I could show you if you want?”
Lu laughed. “I doubt it, but that would be fun, anyway.”
On the beach, the water lay silent and still, save for the occasional splash up and down the shore. The familiar smell of kiawe trees added a certain sweetness to the air. They walked to the far end, near the old Parker cottage, which Lu had stayed in with her cousins a couple of times. From there, you had a different vantage point of the hotel and the bay and the sky.
Joni turned to her and said, “Tell me, do you have a man back home? You’re so natural and cute and...bronze. You have the most luminous skin.”
“That depends on what you mean by have a man. I don’t have a boyfriend, but I have a good guy friend who I do everything with. His name is Dylan and he’s a photojournalist.”
Joni chuckled. “I hate to break it to you, but men and women are never just friends. Either you love him, he loves you or you both love each other.”
“Dylan is like a brother to me,” Lu protested.
“Is he handsome?”
Very, but she knew Joni wouldn’t understand. “In his own way.”
“A word to the wise,” Joni said, downing her champagne. “Men don’t hang out with girls they don’t like. It’s not how they operate. Which means you’re in denial. Which means you need to pull your head out of your ass, pronto. Did you know your whole body started smiling when his name came up?”
Beneath the rock-star persona, there was something wise about Joni. She was an odd mix in contradictions. Sultry innocence and happy melancholy. Lu couldn’t quite figure her out. And maybe that was her appeal. She felt mysterious, like you could never know her.
“I’ve just never thought of him like that,” Lu said.
Not entirely true.
“Liar.”
She came clean. “Until recently.”
It hadn’t taken long for Dylan to become one of her favorite people. But he’d been fresh out of a breakup, and she, focused on landing the perfect job. Tall and freckly and beachy blond, his eyes were the color of the ocean—deep or shallow depending on his moods. He was a freelancer, and one day early on, he invited her to tag along while he photographed giant sequoias, and after that it became a habit. Dylan captured images of anything from wildfires to wild horses to antigovernment demonstrations, while she fished for stories. He got her out of the city, and for that she was grateful.
For over a year, they lived in the limbo state of slowly getting to know one another, and the unspoken agreement that neither wanted anything from the other. Outings, meetings in obscure coffee shops, late-night phone calls. Lu had been sure—or at least had convinced herself—that she was immune to his earthy charms, until the day he blindsided her with news of his assignment in Vietnam.
He’d shown up at her place unannounced, thrusting sunflowers at her the minute she opened the door. Dylan never gave her flowers.
“Can I come in?” he asked almost shyly.
She moved aside and led him into her tiny kitchen, her heart skipping along at full throttle. Something was surely up.
While she found a milk bottle for the flowers and filled it with water, he sat. After a few moments of awkward silence, he said, “I’ve landed a gig with AP. They’re sending me to ’Nam.”
The words hit her like a blow to the gut, and she fought for composure. She’d known he wanted to go, but hadn’t really believed he’d follow through. It was the strangest thing: she suddenly found that she could not look him in the eye. Instead, she fiddled with the flowers, cutting their stems and arranging them in various positions in the bottle.
“Lu? Say something,” he said.
Get it together.
“This is news.”
“Hey, come over here. Sit.”
It would be impossible to hide the quiver in her lip, the tears welling in her eyes. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”
She ran to the bathroom, splashed water on her face and looked in the mirror. Somewhere, just beneath the surface of her consciousness, was the notion that Dylan meant more to her than just a friend. She’d been stuffing it down for a while now, but feelings had a way of finding their way out, of taking on a life of their own, didn’t they?
She went back into the kitchen, standing tall, and said, “I am so proud of you, Dylan, and I’m happy that you’re happy. You just caught me off guard, is all.”
He smiled, looking much more at ease. “You had me scared for a moment there.”
Scared of what?
“So why the flowers?” she asked.
“I don’t know, to be honest. They were so bright and sunny and made me think of you. Remember my shoot in the sunflower field last summer? I almost lost you there, they were so tall.”
They looked at each other then, and it felt like he knew that she knew and she knew that he knew that maybe what was between them had grown into something deeper. But they carried on as normal, and before she knew it, she was left sitting alone with the sunflowers trying to make sense of it all.
Now, talking about Dylan with Joni felt so natural. As if they were just two girls out for a morning swim, not a superstar and a nobody. Lu wasn’t sure why Joni had latched on to her. Maybe it had something to do with wanting to feel like an ordinary person.
Joni pointed to a splash in the water. “Hey, what was that?”
Out near the point, a fin flapped around, then another popped up close by. Lu watched for a second, and knew right away it was not a shark. “It’s a manta ray.”
“How can you tell?”
“When you see two small fins that flap around like that, it’s a manta ray. They hang out around the point in the mornings here. Sharks are hard to mistake—their fins look exactly like you’d imagine them, slicing through the water.”
“Do manta rays sting?”
“No, they’re gentle and graceful creatures. You’re thinking of stingrays. Different animal.”
“Can we swim out and see it?”
Before Lu could answer, Joni was beelining for the water. Lu followed and they both dove in at the same time. Clear and salty liquid sunshine, just like she remembered. The sandy shallows extended out a good way, and they bounced along until they could no longer touch. They swam along a ledge, where bright blue and yellow coral heads ran along a wide sand channel.
Halfway out, Joni said, “Are you sure we’re safe out here?”
“No guarantees, but we should be.”
When they reached the point, the manta was nowhere to be seen. Joni was a splashy swimmer, and probably scared it off.
“Let’s float quietly and see if it comes back,” Lu said.
Five minutes later, a giant dark shape passed underneath them, wings lightly waving. The manta was giant, at least ten feet wide.
Joni’s eyes grew big. “That better be a manta ray!”
“It is. We’re fine”
You could see the animal’s white mouth open wide as it collected tiny plankton for breakfast. Neither woman moved, and the manta ray made wide sweeping circles around them, coming within feet. Then more came, at least six.
Pretty soon, Joni teared up. “It’s all just so gorgeous I feel like crying and laughing at the same time,” she said.
Lu had to agree. There was so much beauty contained in this moment.
“If there ever were a tonic for what ails you, this might be it,” Lu said.
“Makes me want to drop everything and move to Hawai‘i.”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Why on earth did you leave?”
“If I’d stayed, I would be working on my family’s farm picking mac nuts and shoveling chicken shit, but that wasn’t my thing. I wanted to tell stories and see the world and make a name for myself.”
“You’ll be back. It’s no accident you came here. Just like me,” Joni said.
Lu had been wondering about that, since Joni did not fit the mold of Rockefeller’s guests. “How did you end up here? Do you know Mr. Rockefeller personally?”
“No.”
Joni didn’t elaborate and Lu didn’t ask. She probably should have, because any journalist in her position would be clamoring to know more. But there was a line that Lu was not willing to cross. On more than one occasion, her favorite professor had told her not to get attached to her subjects. “Especially when writing obits,” he said with a laugh. She knew what he meant. She was a softy.
“Will you be singing?” Lu asked.
“I brought my guitar, should the opportunity arise, but I’m not scheduled to. I’m just here to enjoy the parties and swim in the ocean with you. Promise me we can do this every morning while we’re here.”
“I would love that.”
By the time they reached the shore, the whole place was drenched in sun. Lu had her camera, but decided not to break the spell. They lay in the warm sand and stared up at the sky. If only her father would come up here, to see the hotel, see her. When she’d called to tell him about the assignment, she realized she’d been holding her breath. Waiting to hear him say he was proud, or acknowledging her accomplishment in some way. Or that he would drive up and visit. But he said none of that. His only question was, “Are you going to come down south? See your family?”
It almost seemed like the more she tried to prove her worth, the more he resisted. When she’d been younger and spending more time over at Auntie H’s house, soaking up her knowledge like one of those sea sponges, Buster had gone so far as forbidding Lu to go over there. But by then it was too late. She went anyway. And thank goodness Donna had been at least smart enough to see that Lu’s teachers were no longer bugging her every week. Buster finally relented, though he somehow took her excelling as a sign of his failures—real or imagined.
Joni seemed to read her mind. “Everything okay?”
“Fine.”
“In my experience, when people say fine, it means the opposite.”
“Really, nothing’s wrong. Just wishing my dad would come up to say hi.”
“Why won’t he?”
“He’s too proud, I think.”
“Too proud to see his daughter?”
“Too proud to admit that he was wrong about me going off to the mainland. He didn’t want me to leave, but I left, anyway. I know he thought I wouldn’t be able to cut it, though he never said it outright. He had this thing about me taking over the farm, keeping it in the family.”
Joni groaned. “That’s better than being a physicist, which is what my father wanted for me. I come from a family of science nerds, if you can believe that. Parents think they know what’s best for us. They either want us to become them, or to become a reflection of their broken dreams.”
“In my case, he wanted me to become him, or a female version.”
“Maybe he just wanted to keep you close to home. There are worse things, babe.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
Auntie H had said the same thing. He doesn’t want to lose you, too.
“Life is always complicated. Give him time, sometimes they come around. Speaking of time. We should get back and eat breakfast. All this fresh air has me starved.”
Joni pulled her up and they headed back to the hotel. Halfway back, they caught sight of Matteo Russi leaning against a coconut tree. Lu waved. He didn’t wave back.