12

First things first, work before play. It’s a hell of a way to live, but the taskmaster who resides in my brain doesn’t put away the whip until I’ve got things tied up in a neat little package for him. In the few remaining hours before our flight to Hawaii, the land of sugarcane and coconuts—the most potent of aphrodisiacs for any Diplodocus female, for some reason—there’s a stop I need to make closer to home. West Hollywood comes before South Pacific.

Jules has come in useful for favors before, down-and-dirty details that a dino in drag—especially one who works in the reconstruction business—has more access to than a straight bum like myself, and I need to hit her up one more time for a little assistance on the case. But she doesn’t pick up the phone, even after I let it ring for nigh on three minutes. Doesn’t answer the private line at home, either, which can mean only one thing: Jules is helping out her friends.

The Shangri-La is a small nightclub perched on the west end of West Hollywood, barely dangling over the line between undifferentiated LA and highly differentiated Beverly Hills. The owner is an Iguanodon named Patrick who, though not gay or a cross-dresser himself, has a sweet spot in his heart for those whose friends and families don’t understand or appreciate their lifestyle. Word on the street is that Patrick gives out more in food, drink, and spending money than he takes in. Must be true, because when I arrive out front, a huge spray-painted banner hanging over the club entrance reads: shangri-la grand closing tonight! everyone must go!

But despite the demise of the only dino drag club in greater Los Angeles, the party inside rages as hard as ever. Music blasts from speakers recessed into the walls, green confetti rains from the ceiling in an unending torrential downpour, and a bevy of beautiful dinosaurs of indeterminate gender bop and hop on stage, on the dance floor, at the bars, in the bathrooms. This is truly hedonism at its finest.

“Jules around?” I ask the bartender, a passable Audrey Hepburn I haven’t seen around here before.

“Who’s asking?” she shouts over the noise, her voice low, gravely, the kind of thing you hear out of construction workers. Needs some practice if she’s gonna make it as Holly Golightly.

“Rubio,” I tell her. “I’m a friend.”

Audrey gives me the once-over, and, after deciding that I must not be that much of a threat, nods her head toward the back door. “You know the knock?”

“My favorite tune,” I drawl, but sarcasm is wasted on the gal.

A quick knuckle-rap of the theme from Yentl, and soon I’m granted entrance to the smallish dressing room tucked behind the stage. Jules is here, done up nice for the event, a short, black skirt showing off a pair of finely shaped legs I know to be surgically enhanced. In fact, I was there when Jules was shaving off the final layer of epoxy from them a few months ago, but the knowledge only increases my admiration of her talents. The matching halter top hides little of the ample chest attached to her guise, and as she bends over to pick up a dropped bobby pin, I nearly fall into the Grand Canyon of her cleavage. “Gotta hand it to ya,” I say as I enter the dressing room, “you’re making a lot of real human women look bad.”

“I’m not here to boost egos, honey,” she replies, consciously replacing her initial smile with a cultivated pout. “I’m here to shine.”

After a hug, a peck on the cheek, and a full-body embrace, I am quickly bombarded by a host of others who want a piece of the Rubio action. Jules’s friends have always been a hoot, every one a dear, and I’ve done my share of work for them in various capacities, never charging more than the bottom line, often throwing in a free snoop shoot or two for good measure. I think they get off on the fact that I’m a real PI, Bogie-made-flesh, tail notwithstanding.

“Darling!” cries one such friend, a dead-on double for Judy Garland’s raven-haired daughter who, when he’s not masquerading as Liza Minnelli up in WeHo, is actually Hector Ramirez, a Coelophysis and toxic-waste shift worker at a chemical plant in Carson. In her best Cabaret strut, Liza sidles up to me and throws a sculpted leg around my waist, squeezing tight. “You’ve come for the action?”

All around me, male dinosaurs are buckling up more than their fair share of dangling appendages (using an improvised P-clamp, for obvious reasons) and shoving themselves into female human costumes, all in the name of fun and a little bit of soul-searching. It weirds out most of the dinos I know, but to me a guise is a guise is a guise.

“I’ve come for help,” I explain. “I need Jules to help me out with a few things on this dog of a case.”

“Jules is busy,” coos Liza, to which my plastic surgeon friend—pins stuck between her lips, hands fiddling with a piece of loose flesh—nods her head. “Besides, if you want the dirt on a fellow, who better to ask than me?”

“I’m sure you could crack the Pentagon, doll”—they love it when I talk this way, makes them feel like they’re inside the movies they try so hard to emulate—“but I’m gonna need Jules’s help on this one.”

Jules looks up from her work—trying to stitch up Rita Hayworth’s rump, the pinup model’s glutes squirming all over the place, refusing to let the master do her job. “Whatever you need, I’ll do it,” she mumbles, a needle clutched between her thick, red lips. “I’ve got two mask lifts today and this butt-cheek implant, but as soon as Rita stops fidgeting, I’m here for you.”

“The information might be a pain in the ass to get,” I warn her.

“Best kind.”

“And you might have to cross a few Progressive paths. . . .”

“It’s only getting better.”

Eventually, Jules finishes up her work and sends the redhead sensation wiggling back out to the dance floor. “Okay,” she says, sticking the needles back into an apple-shaped pincushion, “lemme tell you something about your Progressives.”

“They’re not mine—”

But she’s not interested; the gal’s already on a roll. “I’ve got three girls who are all bent out of shape ’cause of those bastards, you know that? Whitney won’t go on tonight because she’s nursing a black eye, and even though I offered to sew on a new cheekbone, she’s too rattled to perform.”

“What—what happened?” I ask.

“Progress happened,” she drawls. “I was working on some costumes back at the Wax Museum for some of the ladies, and when they left, they headed up Hollywood way. Next thing they knew, they were down some alley, and a herd of blueshirts were on ’em, slamming away, shouting that they were freaks, they were unnatural, they were making it harder on the rest of us . . .”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” I stammer, unsure of whether or not to apologize for a group I personally dislike yet in whose company I am about to spend the next three days.

“Forget it. I’ve got to go stage-manage in five minutes. But for you, I’m around. Any way I can help you bring down these prehistoric pieces of crap?”

I run down the details we’ve accumulated on the Progressives, omitting the more personal details such as my occasional hallucinations and more than favorable impressions of Circe. Recently I’ve been trying not to admit them even to myself.

“You think it’s smart to go to this thing?” she asks me once I’m all done. “Seems like a hard place to keep your head screwed on straight.”

“I’ll try,” I promise. “But I need some help from you. You know photos, right? You’ve got scanning equipment and all that?”

“Beyond the beyond, darling.”

“Good. I’ve got photographs—” and here I produce the meager few shots I was able to get a hold of in the past few days: Jay with his waffle-loving dad; Crystal, the gal who met the wrong end of a rifle at the hands of bungling warehouse thieves; a few other Progressive expats who made it to safety before completing the journey to the great beyond. And in every photo, their loyal deprogrammer, those who helped free them from the mental ravages of Progress.

“This one’s a nice shot,” she murmurs. “Good light work.”

“I need you to try and identify everyone in these shots. Get beneath the guise, give me some idea of who’s down there.”

“Whatcha lookin’ for?”

“No idea,” I say with all honesty. “I was hoping you’d stumble onto something.”

Jules scoops the photos into a bundle, rolls them up tightly, and stuffs them into her blouse, much as she did with the cash Ernie handed her a few weeks ago. I wonder if she’s got a safe down there. “I can do some extra snoop work if you want me to,” she offers.

“Thanks, Jules, but I can handle that.”

“You sure?” she asks me. “I’m itching to get after those sons of bitches, and my friends are always ready and willing to help. Gina’s on the force out in Riverdale, you know.”

“She’s a cop?”

“Shhh, keep it down. They don’t take to us all that well, so she keeps it a secret. Twice-decorated lieutenant. I made her a special set of tits with a hollow inside so she could hide her handcuffs. They’re fabulous. She could be a real help—”

“Thanks, but—”

“Ain’t nobody like a drag queen can move in and out of a place without being noticed.”

“Liza’s already offered,” I explain, “but I’ll be okay. See what you can do for me, and I’ll call when we get onto the island.”

We end with a hug and a promise to each other to be careful. I give her Dan’s number at the LAPD in case she should run into trouble, then make my way back through the Shangri-La, snaking through the dwindling crowd. There’s dancing and singing and tasting and loving and all sorts of naughtiness going down tonight, but as I’m leaving, it feels more like a wake than a true party. It’s all a mask atop the mask—behind the laughter and the smiles is the knowledge that six hours from now, there will be no place left in Southern California for these folks to hang their wigs.

* * *

 

Notwithstanding the myriad articles on the subject produced over the years by the world’s greatest academics, I can say with all certainty that right here and right now is truly a Velociraptor’s natural habitat: lush, leafy trees, temperatures hovering somewhere in the mid-seventies, water lapping at my feet, subservient creatures scurrying around (though never underfoot), enough fresh herbs to last a lifetime. And a blended virgin daiquiri with extra coconut shavings and a massive multicolored parasol of which even Mary Poppins would be envious.

Jurassic, my ass. The Westin Maui Hotel and Suites is where it’s at.

We got to Hawaii a day early—my idea—ostensibly in order to prepare ourselves for what is sure to be a trial by fire, but really just to get out of Los Angeles before Minsky realized we conned him into bankrolling another client’s case. Which is not to say that it’s entirely impossible that Star Josephson has fled to the enchanted islands; it’s just highly unlikely. Better chance finding her in another flophouse in North Hollywood, but you’ve gotta start an investigation somewhere, and Maui’s as good a place as any.

I’m all by my lonesome out here, soaking up the rays, sipping my drink, and clearing my mind of detective effluvia. It tends to build up after a while, junk information clogging my neurons, and I should really hire a housekeeper before it clogs the entryway with a pile of false leads and red herrings. Ernie was sunning himself here on the pool deck for some time, but he recently picked himself up and waddled away, complaining about the heat building up inside his guise. I suggested to him a long time ago to upgrade his old Americraft guise to a newer Japanese model with PoreRight breathable skin, but the old wanker’s resistant to change.

The pool is a remarkable feat of engineering achievement, a series of waterfalls and plastic slides interweaving through one another into a giant Gordian knot of liquid entertainment, and I’m sure I’d be more enthused about it if it didn’t attract such a young clientele. A mess of bratty little human children scamper by one by one, strobing out the sunlight on their way to the local splash-fest, their screams piercing an otherwise tranquil afternoon. As one toddler stumbles by, my nostrils inform me that he’s already made a mess of whatever diaper is beneath that bathing suit; as he jumps headlong into the pool, I resolve to stay dry for the rest of the day, or at least until the chlorine has had a chance to work its delousing magic.

I brought a book, a nice thick tome by some fellow with an unpronounceable middle name and astounding linguistic skills, but I’m barely into the second page when I catch a whiff of pine. Instinctively, I raise my eyes, shielding the glare from the sun with an outstretched hand. Before I know it, that hand is grabbed, pumped, released, and grabbed again. I’ve got just enough time to sit up before I’m shaken once more.

“Good to meetcha,” says one of the silhouetted figures in front of me. “My name’s Buzz.”

“I’m Vincent,” I mumble.

“Wendell,” says the other one, his voice eerily similar to the first.

My eyes take their own sweet time in adjusting to the light; when I was a kid, these peepers went from pitch-black to screaming halogen in milliseconds, but with every passing year my aging pupils lose a bit of their edge. Eventually, I’m treated to a view of a tall, lithe fellow with an elongated face and protruding chin in a shrieking Hawaiian print shirt and baggy shorts—

And another tall, lithe fellow with an elongated face and protruding chin in a shrieking Hawaiian print shirt and baggy shorts. With the same hair. And the same eyes. And the same nose. And the same voice.

“We’re twins,” they sing in unison. The chorus effect is astounding.

“I see that.”

“Smelled ya from over there, I did,” says Buzz.

“ ’Bout the same time I smelled ya,” Wendell chimes in. “We’re like that.”

“Aha.” Their scent is practically the same as well—a little acetone, some burning sugarcane—and their movements are similarly synchronized. As Buzz pulls up a chaise lounge to my left, Wendell drags one over to my right. They sit, flanking me, big goofy grins etched into those long faces.

It’s not odd for dinosaurs to come out in multiple identical births—I knew a set of Triceratops triplets, in fact, who treated me to a triumvirate of titillation at their aunt’s beach house in Ventura—but they tend to artificially distinguish their guises from one another once they’re past puberty and tired of the myriad tricks that can be played on others when you’ve got a look-alike sibling. Yet Buzz and Wendell don’t seem to have moved past this stage in their relationship. The closer I look, the more I believe that they’ve never even bothered to order two separate guises; most likely, they use one or the other’s ID number and just ask for two of the same costume to be manufactured each time they have to reorder.

“Is this your first time at the hotel?” Buzz asks me, pulling himself closer. “With . . . us? With our kind?”

“Yes,” I say, hoping this will end it, “it’s my first time.” I pointedly lift my book back to eye level and attempt to get in a few sentences; it’s pure show in the hopes that they’ll get the hint and excuse themselves, but I don’t have much faith in its efficacy.

“We’ve been here three times,” Wendell whispers to me, as if such a thing might be taboo. “We love it.”

Buzz grins, ear to mawkish ear. “Absolutely love it.”

“Three times . . . wow . . .” I’m trying to muster up interest, but it’s just not happening. “You don’t say.”

“You know how we paid for our plane fare?” Wendell asks me, a childish excitement spinning his words into small, individual chuckles of delight.

“Can’t say that I do.”

“We saved it up,” says Buzz.

“In change—”

“—in a jar—”

“—a big snowman jar—”

“—with pennies and dimes—”

“—and quarters and nickels. And three half-dollars that we got from our Uncle Joe.”

It’s the verbal equivalent of a tennis match trying to listen to these two, my neck twisting back and forth, trying to keep up with the shifting audiological focus. I opt for staring straight ahead and letting my ears do all the work.

“That’s a lot of change,” I say.

“We’ve been collecting since last year’s trip.”

“We always stay here before the journey,” says Buzz.

“The journey?”

Wendell shakes his head. “I like to call it an adventure. Buzz says journey, I say adventure. We’re different that way.”

“Of course you are.” I put on my best grin, beam it out to the twins, and start in on reading my book again. But it’s a little hard to concentrate with the brothers sitting to either side of me, snickering over some inside joke, mouthing whispered syllables to each other. Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber are starting to irk me, but I’m loathe to adopt an overtly hostile demeanor while ensconced in such a sedate environment.

I put the book back down. “And what journey would this be, then?”

The twins shoot each other a short glance, their slightly protruding eyebrow ridges raising in question to one another. “The great journey,” says Buzz.

“The mystical adventure,” says Wendell.

“The path to enlightenment.”

“The way to salvation.”

Oh, good. I was worried that I might not make my loony bin ratio today. “You guys here to preach to me?” I ask.

“Preach to you?” cries Buzz, clearly offended. “No! No, no, no . . .”

And then, as if in the same breath as his brother, Wendell scopes the area, sits back in his chaise lounge, and asks me, “Have you found Progress, brother?”

I sigh and toss my book in the pool. Nice vacation while it lasted, but the shop is open again and ready for business.

* * *

 

“They’re on the same flight out tomorrow morning,” I tell Ernie as we make our way down the hallway of the Westin Maui, nodding to the other tourists as we pass. There’s some type of virus going around the islands—forces complete strangers to smile and nod affably at one another, and I’m afraid I’ve got a bad case of it. I may need to go to New York for the cure. “Talked my ear off for an hour.”

“First-timers?”

“Fourth-timers. From what I gathered, they’ve already spent about sixty grand on these convocations.”

“Sixty grand apiece?”

“There is no ‘apiece’ with these two.”

“That’s a lotta spare change.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I say, and leave it at that. “Point is, I think I might have made some inroads with them; once we’re on the island, I’d like to try to get to know them better, see if they can give us some of the inside scoop. Maybe they knew Rupert.”

“Good thought,” says Ernie. We reach the elevator bank and wait for a lift to arrive. Dinner’s already started, and I fear we’re going to miss out on the good seats. Buffet-style food is of no use to me if I have to walk more than thirty feet to get it. At that point, I expect a waiter to do the messy work.

“Meanwhile,” Ernie continues, “while you were sunning it up with the Bobsy Twins, I had myself a chat with the hotel desk clerks. Showed ’em Rupert’s picture—”

“And?”

“And I got nothing. But the valet was listening in and caught up to me in the hall afterward. He knew our boy—not well, but he’d carried his bags once or twice—and said that the last time he came, he’d checked in with a lady friend.”

That’s a new one; as far as we knew, Rupert hadn’t been seeing anyone for quite some time. Most of his relationships had been severed once he joined the Progressives, but it’s wholly possible that in the intervening years, he’d shacked up with another truth-seeker. Nothing like the warmth of another body to keep the spiritual fires stoked.

“Something to look into,” I say, and Ernie agrees. “Any description?”

“Stock. Asian, pretty, leggy.”

“Welcome to Hawaii. Scent?”

“No clue,” says Ernie. “Valet was a mammal.”

We curtail the conversation on the way down, the rest of the elevator cab filled with humans and their own . . . special odors.

The doors can’t open soon enough, and we pour out into the lobby, only to be shoved back a second later by a mass of redolent bodies. Dinos, all of them, and each one ruder than the last. They push, they shove, they make their way onto the elevator without letting us step off; we squirm and twist as we try to exit to the lobby.

“Big crowd,” I mutter as we spawn our way through to the other side.

“Progressives?” suggests Ernie.

“I don’t think so,” comes a familiar voice from behind us. I turn to find Buzz and Wendell dressed in their finest Hawaiian livery, decked out head to toe in delicately strung flowers. They look like floats in the Rose Bowl Parade, and I suck up a good amount of air to keep myself from laughing. No doubt I will be burping soon, but it’s worth it.

I do the introductions all around, and soon Ernie is inviting Buzz and Wendell to eat dinner with us at the hotel-sponsored luau. My initial instinct is to slap him across the back of the head—he doesn’t know what it’s like to talk with these two—but once again, my partner’s got the right idea. If we can get in good with the twins now, it will be that much easier to get to them once we’re on the island together.

“There’s a convention in town,” Buzz says as we head out of the hotel and down to the beach. “Accessories, mostly. Guise manufacturers, the big boys.”

Does he mean the major manufacturers or just those who create plus-size guises? My grandmother, Josephine, who suffered from a glandular problem that, as far as I could tell, forced her to eat everything in sight, was a regular patron of the Lane Bronto catalog, and I spent many a night listening to her prattle on about the difficulties of finding appropriately sized guises that also suited her refined tastes.

From a hundred yards away, the smells of the dinner buffet begin to work their way through the Hawaiian air and up into my nostrils, and for a moment, I catch a whiff of something that’s distinctly neither food nor drink. It’s herb—fresh, sweet herb—and enough of it to flash me back to Circe, to her own intoxicating aroma, to our brief, unreal romps through an impossible jungle. But there’s no seductress here, nothing in the way of yielding flesh and soft tail; there’s simply pu-pu platters, coconut rum, and all the foliage I can stand.

I think I’ll go get drunk now.

* * *

 

They roast pigs underground here. I don’t mean in a little as-seen-on-TV rotisserie or wimpy So-Cal backyard fire pit, either—we’re talking six feet down, Egyptian-mummy style, wrapped in foil, covered with sand, slowly cooked atop a pile of smoldering coals, and the resultant flavor sets off firecrackers of delight against my taste buds. And somehow, those bursting M-80s are managing to scurry their way off my tongue, up through my sinuses, and into the backs of my eyeballs, setting off a resplendent display of exploding reds and blues before my astonished eyes. Then again, it might just be the banana leaves talking.

“Good luau,” I mumble to Ernie. My speech hasn’t been affected quite as much by these leaves—the powers of which I never knew I was susceptible to until about twenty minutes ago—as has my vision, which continues to produce stunning hallucinations, mostly of an abstract variety.

“Good luau,” Ernie echoes. He’s morosely sipping at a fruit drink and pining away, probably for Louise. We’re sitting at a small table set up right on the beach, the plastic legs of my chair sinking into the sand, the water lapping up against the shore no more than thirty feet away. Above, a multitude of stars gather themselves into the predictable patterns: Big Dipper and Orion for the human set, Baobob Tree and Luna the Lizard for my own species’ zodiac.

Buzz and Wendell are also half in the bag, clucking their tongues like two farmers surveying their property, long rosemary branches dangling out of their mouths. “Whassa matter, Ernie?” asks Buzz.

“Don’tcha want some?” offers Wendell, plucking the spittle-coated weed from his mouth.

But Ernie just pushes it away, shakes his head, and returns to his drink. Slurp, pout, and slurp again.

“You gotta perk up,” I find myself telling him. “Find a dame. Have a go at it.”

A hard stare from my partner, almost a slow burn, but he can’t bring himself to draw it out to any effective length. I grin right on through. “Have another banana leaf, kid,” he mutters.

“Seriously,” I continue. “How long’s it been since you’ve got some in the sack?”

Now I’m getting the slow burn. And an impressive one, to boot. “In my day, we didn’t go around asking each other how we were feeling and how long it’d been since we’d been with a broad—”

“It’s a new age, Ern,” I tell him. “You don’t have to fess up, but you gotta deal with the rest of us.”

I try to get Ernie to open up that Pandora’s box of a heart of his, but the majority of my attention is suddenly, violently yanked across the back lawn of the hotel, past the volleyball net, the rent-a-snorkel booth, beyond the pool and the waterfall and the swim-up bar, all the way back to the hotel’s veranda—

It’s a Velociraptor. It’s a female. As Ernie would say, it’s a broad.

And what a broad. Her tail is long, curvaceous, enchanting, a Nile River of flesh. The snout strong and powerful, teeth flashing out like a row of diamonds. Eyes that glint with emeralds and the hint of more to come, a torso that holds the package together in just the perfect way, at just the perfect height.

She’s naked. And she’s coming this way.

“Ernie—” I stammer. “Ah—there’s—”

“Knock it off, kid.”

Making her way through the throng of humans, none of them paying her a lick of attention as her tail whips across their legs, their backs—raising great red welts on their flesh—her sight set on the luau, and, if I’m not mistaken, on our table. Two hundred feet and closing, Captain.

“Guys . . . ah, Ernie . . .”

“Knock it off, kid.”

“No—Ernie, listen—”

“Two years, okay?” my partner barks at me. “It’s been two years. You happy now?”

Two years? My god—I think I’d explode after two months without a little release. But even his admission of sexual dormancy isn’t able to break through my shock at watching an unguised Raptor walk smack-dab through the middle of the Westin Maui Friday Night Luau, past the pu-pu platter and on her way. She’s taking a long, serpentine path through the array of tables set up here on the beach, but I can tell from the set of flashing green eyes locked on mine that we are, indeed, her final destination. “Not that, Ern. Check it out.”

I nod toward the approaching dino—something odd, now—is that a hint of clothing I see? And where did the tail go?—and Ernie takes a glance. “Nice looking, I guess,” he says, and goes back to his drink.

By the time she’s arrived at our table, the hallucination has dissipated. What was once a stunningly nude Velociraptor female is now nothing more than a fully guised female dino of undetectable lineage. The guise is impressive from a mammalian standpoint—native Hawaiian, mocha skin, thick lips, long limbs, straight black hair down to her petite mid-back—but I’m disappointed that my mind has chosen this moment to wake up on me.

“Mr. Rubio?” she asks, tapping me on the shoulder. It takes me a moment to wrest control of my body—hyah, steed, hyah!—and nod my head in the appropriate gesture.

“There’s a phone call for you,” she says. “They’ve been paging you for half an hour.”

I blink, hoping to see that nude dino appear before me once again, but the Hawaiian mammal look-alike remains. “On your way back,” mumbles Ernie, “grab me another one of these.” And he returns to the solitude of his drink.

We walk across the sand, arm in arm, my legs a little wobbly either from the recent surprise or, most likely, the continuing effects of the banana leaves. “You knew who I was.”

“Why do you say that?” she asks. Her voice is soft, light, inflected with a slight Hawaiian accent. Perfectly melodic.

“I saw you coming for me back there. Did someone point me out?”

A light blush spreads across the skin. Nice capillary action on that guise. “I smelled you when you registered. I like your scent.”

I smile back and say, “I like yours, too.” But in all honesty, I’m having a difficult time finding one. The pine is there, certainly, but beyond that I’m a little lost. My olfactory detection skills are always slightly hampered by the usual vices—fenugreek dries my nose up something fierce, clogs my sinuses like I’m drowning—and I assume these banana leaves are having a similar effect.

“I asked the desk clerk for your name,” she admits. “I remembered you.”

“So when they needed someone to come find me—”

“I volunteered. Yes.”

Fair enough. Nothing like a nice little ego boost this late in the evening. I decide to play it out. “Is this what you do? Find guests who’ve been paged?”

She giggles, shaking her head coyly. “I’m in special sales, but I’m off for the night. This is just a favor to a friend at receiving.”

“You like to do favors?”

“Depends on who’s asking.”

“And what if I asked?”

A hair toss, a light shoulder shrug, nice human moves for a dino. “Then we might need to work out a deal.”

We’ve arrived at the hotel lobby, where I’m directed to a green courtesy phone. “You’ll wait for me?” I ask my new Hawaiian friend. “You can teach me to hula.”

The phone call is mercifully short. It’s from Samuel, and he wants me to know that the hydrofoil will be picking Ernie and me up at the dock at three o’clock the following afternoon.

“Unless you’d prefer to take the ferry,” he says. “It’s not quite as rough a ride as on the hydrofoil.”

“Might be nice,” I muse. “Open water, peaceful trip.”

“Takes about four hours, leaves from the port of Kauai.”

“That’s another island,” I point out.

“Right.”

“And how do we get there?”

“Hydrofoil.”

They’re not making this easy. “Forget the ferry; we’ll go straight from here. Hey—can you give me an idea of what toiletries I should bring? I’d like to leave some stuff here on Maui to lighten the load, but—”

“No toiletries,” he says.

“No, no, I’m talking about toothpaste, toothbrush, that sort of thing—”

“Exactly. No toiletries needed.”

“Oh.” I’m surprised—didn’t expect a full-service resort on a tiny private island. “So you’ll provide soap and whatnot?”

“Vincent, you’re getting back to nature,” says Samuel. “Don’t concern yourself with such matters. The only things that need to get on that hydrofoil tomorrow afternoon are you and Ernie.”

“And our check.”

A pause, but certainly not a long one. “Yes. And the check.”

When I hang up the phone and stroll back out into the main part of the lobby, I find my Hawaiian girl waiting for me on a plush tapestry-covered papasan chair. She matches the decor perfectly, and I wonder if the hotel ordered her out of some special catalog. I’d like to get myself put on that mailing list.

“I don’t know your name,” I tell her as I approach. “But when I ask a woman out, I always try to do it in a formal style.”

“It’s Kala,” she says coyly.

“Thank you. Would you be so kind as to accompany me for a drink, Kala?”

“You drink?”

“For nourishment only. I do, on the other hand, enjoy a chew. . . .”

She holds aloft a small black clutch purse, bursting with unknown pleasures. “I brought my own,” she purrs.

I feel like a teenager again as we huddle in a service nook off the lobby and tuck into the herbal delights Kala produces from her bag. A fair amount of locally grown date leaves—this is what they meant when they called it Maui Wowie—and some other native elements with which I have little prior experience quickly make their way through my digestive tract. There was a short period between the banana leaves and the phone call from Samuel when I had decided to quit the herbs altogether—even on a social level—go cold turkey, but in no time, I’m back off the wagon and rolling around in the mud below.

There’s a lot of touching, a little squeezing, a heap of kissing, and a growing desire to rip off my guise right here, right now, and have at it. We’re banging noses, bopping heads, uncomfortable enough in our costumes without herb-enraged lust complicating matters even further. My tongue delves into her mouth, seeking and finding the same, now snaking around hers; the caps pop off, allowing us free reign. I can taste the epoxy that holds that damned mask around her lips.

A minute later, laughter sets in. It’s always that way—first, the slow, mellow rush of the drug working its way through the system, waving a friendly hello at all the organs as it passes on through; then, with certain herbs, the sexual rise, but by the time it’s begun to knock on the brain’s front door, the giggling takes over. Speaking is relegated to a second-class activity; what with all the kissing, it’s difficult to breathe, much less get a full sentence out, “What—what is—whadda we got here—”

“Sugarcane. Bark.”

“Ruff.”

This sets off another twenty minutes of laughing and fondling, during which time we’re asked by an overly officious member of the hotel staff to take it outside or upstairs. This sobers us up for but a moment.

“Outside?” I ask her.

“Upstairs?”

A little sidelong glance at each other, some unspoken agreement on the delightful future of this delightful evening—and we race through the lobby, hand in hand, barreling through tourists and not giving a good goddamn about it.

We’re alone in the elevator, which is fundamentally good and right. Desire leaps up sixteen notches with every floor we pass, and it’s amazing that our guises are still on. I hate kissing through this mask, these teeth, but even lust can’t get me to violate the daily code of conduct—yet. If this elevator should stall, I’m fully certain that when the mechanic finally opens up the doors, he’ll find two overgrown lizards going at it with all the primordial fury they can muster.

But the lift makes it all the way to the top and soon we’re stumbling down the hall, our lips locked, mumbled nonsense syllables welling up from our chests, muted groans of craving that don’t—and shouldn’t—mean anything. My wild, wild hands are roving, trying to dig deep beneath that odd hourglass human guise in search of the true shape beneath, but every time I reach for her buttons or zippers, Kala whispers, “Not yet . . . not yet . . .”

We’ve reached the hotel room. It better be yet already.

As we crash into the room and stumble past an opened suitcase lying on the floor, I trip and go down hard, landing, with exquisite luck, faceup on the bed. Air whooshes out of me for a moment like a balloon with its knot untied, but by the time I’ve regained my breath I’m already laughing, calling out for Kala, reaching to pull her down with me and continue what is likely to become one of the better evenings in my considerable years of experience. But she’s curiously absent from my grasp, and as I sit up, the room not so much spinning as it is line-dancing, I call out, “You still here?”

“In the bathroom,” comes the reply, and I sigh and plop back down. Of course—time for the primping and the preening. In that respect, the female of the dino species is no different from that of the humans, except with the dinos there’s less makeup and more basic hide care.

“Worked here long?” I call out, knowing that if I don’t keep up a steady stream of chatter, I’ll pass out good and hard. As if on autopilot, my hands begin unbuttoning my guise, ripping off clamps and girdles, tossing the foul things to the beige carpet below. My natural flesh ripples as it comes in contact with the damp Hawaiian air, and my groin is waiting for similar treatment.

“No,” she replies. “You’re on vacation?”

“Working vacation,” I answer. There’s a nice odor invading the room, perhaps some potpourri coming in through the air conditioning, or maybe streaming in from outside. The foliage on these islands is like nothing else we’ve seen on the mainland, and I’ve been having a great time sniffing around like a dog looking for the perfect place to poop.

“What do you do?” she asks me.

This always gets ’em. “I’m a private investigator,” I say proudly. “I’m working a case for a friend.”

“That’s interesting.”

“It’s a job.” Part of my humble routine. Works like a charm.

But there’s no charm going on in here to match the one this Hawaiian beauty is working on me. There’s the unmistakable click of a lightswitch being flicked off—my wooziness intensifying with the sudden lack of light, head sinking into the pillow, arms leaden and motionless—come on, Vincent, this is something you’re gonna want to stay up for—and a tail flicks out from the darkness and slowly caresses my chest, the tip working its way down, down, knowing just where to go, just how hard to press, just when to release—waves of desire rising, lifting me off the bed, rising, straining, stretching—my mind fluttering away, letting itself drift, drift, and enjoy . . .

I hope Ernie doesn’t wait up.