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WATER DROPS QUIVERED on the hood of my 1959 Thunderbird as I drove out of the Wiki-Wash. The two-tone turquoise and white paint job gleamed in the afternoon sun. This was one of those times I was glad I’d had my car shipped over to Hawaii.
The times when I’m less glad usually involve my mechanic, Earl Miyashiro of Miyashiro Motors. Earl keeps telling me I should give up on my temperamental Squarebird and buy something more reliable. Maybe my car does handle like a leaky boat with a broken rudder, and a two-year-old Toyota wouldn’t rack up repair bills that rivaled my student loan payments. But there’s no car built today that can make my heart sing, and I don’t care what kind of funny looks Earl gives me when I say things like that. I would go to someone less judgmental and literal-minded, but Earl is the only auto mechanic on the island who will go near my car.
My sparkling T-bird and I headed over to Donnie’s Drive-Inn for a late takeout lunch. Merrie Musubis, the Drive-Inn’s biggest competitor, has better-tasting food, no question. But Donnie’s Drive-Inn has Donnie Gonsalves.
Donnie spotted me at the takeout window and came over just as the server was handing me a big Styrofoam bowl brimming with my Sumo Saimin.
“No knee da kava?” The young woman asked me.
As I was trying to parse her question, Donnie intervened.
“Did you need a cover for your bowl, Molly?” he translated.
“Oh. No. No, thank you. I was going to eat here.”
Donnie called back into the kitchen that he was taking five minutes, and led me to a clean picnic table. Cleanliness is the one outstanding feature of Donnie’s Drive-Inn. The seating is all outdoors and the food is nothing special, but every surface is spotless. The floor, the tables, the restrooms, the service windows. Immaculate.
“Molly, this is a nice surprise.” Donnie slid onto the bench opposite me. Even toward the end of the lunchtime rush, he looked cool and unruffled. His black hair, graying slightly at the top and sides, was trimmed short and perfectly in place. His red Donnie’s Drive-Inn polo shirt looked freshly pressed, a sharp crease down each sleeve. He had the top two buttons of his placket undone, as he always did. Never one, never three. I used to wonder why even his casual shirts always looked like someone had ironed them until I found out he sends his clothes out to be professionally laundered. Someone actually does iron them. I suppose that makes sense for someone like Donnie. He has a lot more money than free time.
“I heard the news about Kathy Banks,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Of course, he had already heard the news about Kathy Banks. The coconut wireless is faster than any newfangled fiber-optic network. Heaven help anyone who needs to keep a secret in this town.
I set my Sumo Saimin bowl between us to share. I’d been planning to gobble up the whole thing myself, but I didn’t want Donnie to sit there and watch me plow through a giant bowl of noodles, fish cake, and fried Spam. Besides, he hadn’t let me pay for it, so not sharing would have seemed selfish.
“Was she the one from the office that’s always giving you trouble? Her name sounds familiar.”
“No one’s giving me trouble, Donnie. I mean, I might have had some minor disagreements with the Student Retention Office. But I didn’t hate her or anything. You’re right, it was sudden. It’s kind of hard to believe.”
I sighed and gazed into the golden depths of the Sumo Saimin Bowl. “In an instant, everything’s changed. She’s actually gone.”
“That’s always hard,” he said, “when someone passes on, and you weren’t on good terms. There’s no way to make your peace.”
“I was on good terms with her!” I insisted. “At least I wasn’t not on good terms with her.”
Donnie smiled knowingly and turned his attention to lunch. He slid a pair of wooden chopsticks out of their paper packaging, snapped them apart, and rubbed them together to smooth the splinters.
“Is your school going to close for a half day or anything?” he asked.
“Oh, no. What happened to poor Kathy Banks isn’t going to slow down the machine at all. You’d think at least the Student Retention Office might take some time off to mourn her or something, but no. The Student Retention Office never sleeps. In fact, you know what? I just found out they’re inflicting a fresh atrocity on our university even as we speak.”
He smiled, dug his chopsticks into the bowl and pulled out a knot of noodles. “Is this what you were telling me about using professors’ online ratings for hiring and firing?”
“No, that’s already a done deal,” I said. “And we have the ratings thing under control anyway.”
“Do they know you guys write your own reviews?”
“I’ll tell anyone who will listen, but the SRO people just keep saying, Crowdsourcing! Crowdsourcing! As if it’s a magic spell. It seems like you don’t have to be very smart to get a job in the Student Retention Office. Anyway, the latest thing is that they’re lobbying to rid of our general history requirement. Because, you know, history is hard and boring and Today’s Millennial Digital Native doesn’t want to waste time studying all of those old dead people. The faculty are going to get together and try to fight it, but you know, by the time administration asks us for our opinion, the decision’s already been made.”
“So your students don’t like having to take history?”
Donnie plunged his chopsticks into the bowl. Watching the bands of his sleeves strain over his well-developed biceps made me lose my train of thought for a moment. Donnie doesn't have time to go to the gym, but he doesn't have to. He spends his day hauling around stainless steel cooking equipment and pallets of frozen food in a crowded, steamy kitchen. I could never do his job. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. After so many decades of schooling, I thought, I have remarkably few practical skills. Come the apocalypse, I’ll either have to get myself into a supervisory position, or end up as a protein source.
“Of course they don’t like having to take history,” I said. “They don’t like having to take anything. I can think of a few who probably wish we’d mail them their degrees, and cut out all of that tedious learning stuff in between.”
“You don’t have any students who are that bad, do you?”
I’d had at least one who was that bad, and worse. Donnie’s beloved son Davison, as it happens.
“Oh, no, of course not,” I said quickly. “I’m exaggerating to make a point. I have wonderful students. You know that.”
Davison had taken, and barely passed, my IBM class (that’s Intro to Business Management). Gonsalves fils was an unrepentant cheater and a lying suckup, among other things. I had been greatly relieved when Donnie moved him to a fancy private college on the mainland.
The way Donnie spoils his son is probably the only thing that causes real tension between us. Whenever the subject comes up, though, all Donnie has to say to win the argument is, “Wouldn’t your parents do this for you?” And he’s right; they would try to shield me from the consequences of my own actions if they could. The difference is they would have the decency to make me feel guilty about it for the rest of my life.
In any event, I’ve come to realize honesty is not the best policy when it comes to the topic of young Davison Gonsalves. It’s easier to let Donnie believe that I adore his demon spawn every bit as much as he does.
“Aren't the students your customers?” Donnie asked. “Why not just give your customers what they want? If my customers want their Sumo Saimin bowl without kamaboko, they can have it.” He gestured with his chopsticks at a D-shaped piece of fish cake, white edged with hot pink. “That’s kamaboko, by the way.”
I already knew what kamaboko was.
“It’s fish cake,” he explained.
"The students are not our customers, Donnie. And a college education is not a bowl of noodle soup.”