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Feeling burdened, I type Hawaii into Google, with different combinations of other keywords: woman, spirit, mirror, message. The number of hits is huge and the stuff I dip into reminds me of Wanda. This place is full of paranormal sightings. It must be something in the water.
There are lots of names from Hawaiian folklore – Uli, the heavenly mother, and Pele, the volcano goddess. The menehune, little people like leprechauns who come out at night and do good works, and the Night Marchers, prowling spirits of ancient Hawaiians. I don’t feel a connection to any of them but I open a file and paste in their descriptions just so it feels like progress.
Thousands of other strange sightings come up. Like the faceless woman who appears in the mirror of a public restroom at Kahala Mall. Countless women standing at the basin have seen her combing her hair behind them, and when they turn around she isn’t there. But my sighting was in a private bathroom and my woman was all face and no body. It isn’t her.
Someone else describes levitating off her bed and almost being sucked into a mirror. She was just able to resist, and afterwards a team of ghost-busters rid her apartment of evil spirits hiding in the sculptures and statues. Wanda is removing the mirror, but I wonder what her menagerie might be hiding. Except they’ve only ever seemed eccentric, not at all sinister.
After an hour I’m on a feng shui site: Don’t put a mirror opposite the bed in case you get trapped in the in-between state between sleeping and waking. The mirror wasn’t opposite my bed, but I’d just woken up. It’s possible I was still in that in-between state when I saw the woman. Then the sighting would just have been an extension of the dream.
A dream where I was plunging into the sea.
Shit.
As long as I can remember it’s been with me, my fear of the sea. After a big wave nearly drowned me as a toddler. Stella says that afterwards just the sight of my little bikini made me scream so they kept me away from the beach. Until I was older. And by then it was too late. I’ve lived with it. After all, swimming isn’t like breathing, it’s more like horse-riding – you can go your whole life without ever having to do it.
Then late last year I won a green card and all fifty states were at my feet, but every time I closed my eyes and stuck a pin in the map, it landed on Hawaii. I kept dismissing it, but it kept turning up, even when I spun the map around. Then my research showed it was the perfect place to start a seminar business – a magnet for the conference crowd, the heady mix of paradise and business guaranteeing success even for a small operator with the right skills and a good website. Hawaii became my ticket for leaving Sydney – and Andrew – in a cloud of dust. But when the plane descended into Honolulu...the image is still there in my mind, a tiny dot of land in the middle of all that...ocean.
A face appears in the mirror above my desk and I gasp out loud before I realise it’s Derek.
Derek Delaney, freelance writer and new-age tragic. We met in this corridor the day I arrived with a chair and a flatpack desk. In the last three months he’s gone from stranger to neighbour to friend. The big sister I never had.
When I turn around he’s propping up the doorjamb. Or is it the other way round?
“Are you jumpy or do I look that scary?” he asks.
I breathe out. “Not scary, more like...‘scenic’.” His brown hair has formed a volcanic-style peak and his lime shirt resembles the crumpled hills behind our office. “While you’ve been sleeping on a park bench, I’ve been...perfecting my telephone technique.” Almost true.
“Puh-lease. That’s the kind of talk that gives me a headache.”
“And staying out all night’s got nothing to do with it?”
“You know I hate clairvoyance this early in the morning.”
Wrong. He loves clairvoyance any time of day.
“You make it so easy, DD. Your clothes are crumpled, your chin is sandpaper, your eyes are bloodshot...and you’re clutching a coffee...in each hand. Been doing anything you can tell me about?”
Derek’s the inventor of a variation on the traditional luau which he’s renamed gay grinds. The partying and feasting usually ends after dawn at his current ‘crash site’. It explains why he doesn’t work from home. He needs an office to fake a professional image.
He yawns. “Updating the twenty-four-hour restaurant guide for Lonely Planet. A night of tax-deductible gluttony.” He takes a slug of coffee from each mug. “The only hitch is the deadline. Close of business today.”
“Good timing, leaving it till the last minute.”
“Yeah, but I do my best work under pressure, remember?”
“Only if you’re awake. Come on, leave the coffee, what you need is a power nap.”
Like a trusting toddler he lets me lead him next door and settle him into his armchair. He keeps a blanket in the filing cabinet because the old air conditioner runs on high or not at all. Most days Derek huddles over his keyboard like King Kamehameha in his cloak.
As I tuck him in he opens one eye. “You don’t look so well-groomed yourself.”
“Just a bad hair day. I’ll wake you at two.”
Back at my desk I abandon Google. How dare this woman intrude on my life and in such a confronting way. I’ve got plans. To make a name for myself on the seminar circuit, not delve into unexplained appearances and uncorroborated threats.
I start on Derek’s coffee and flick to my inbox. Several emails have come in overnight from the Moonshine website. The name Moonshine came to me just after I arrived, and the hint of something illicit generates a good hit rate – but after three months of solid follow-up, my conversion to paying customer is zero. It keeps me awake at night, my shrinking bank balance, as the weeks slip by without an income. I’m in danger of believing one of Andrew’s early jibes:
You’re not brave enough to succeed on your own.
Speak of the devil there’s a new message from my ex this morning.
If you come back NOW, I’ll forget it ever happened.
It’s been like this ever since I left. We were childhood sweethearts, and he can’t believe it’s over, can’t believe I’ve slipped through his fingers and started a life without him. He had plans for me – for us – until I walked out, changed my name and humiliated him. But instead of asking himself why I ran away, he’s turned his hand to cyber-stalking.
Back to the web enquiries. Last night I came up with a new idea – a money-back guarantee. If they sign up for my Goals for Gold seminar and don’t get their money’s worth they get a full refund, no questions asked.
In spite of the wasted morning, there’s still time to catch the western half of the mainland before their day ends, then there’s China and Japan. I pick up the enquiry list and the phone.
***
As I’m popping downstairs for some sushi, Derek throws off the blanket and stretches, then sits at the keyboard and starts mumbling. “You know how it is, ravenous at 3am. And Honolulu doesn’t disappoint; you just need to know where to look...”
I suspect he’s been composing it in his sleep.
I catch up on updates from Sydney friends. It’s what I usually do over lunch, to manage my time, but today it’s keeping the woman and the message at bay. Because the incident hasn’t faded. Instead it’s exerting a pressure on me, a pressure not to ignore it.
The phone offers another diversion until I hear who’s calling.
“So you’re not dead,” a woman says.
My stepmother. “Hello, Stella.”
“Your father and I have wondered.”
“I’ve been busy.” I sound defensive. Stella always turns me into a child. “I’m sure Dad understands why I haven’t called. A new business always saps your time.” And a new country.
“Yes, you’re still his favourite. Until Gretel has the baby. You can’t compete with a grandchild. Especially now you’ve walked out on Andrew.”
“It’s just my selfish streak. Taking after Mum again.”
That shuts her up. Even though they were sisters, Stella’s never had a good word to say about my mother. Prunella died when I was a baby, then Dad married her sister, Stella, and they had Gretel. It means Gretel and I are half-sisters – and cousins.
“Why are you calling?” I ask. “I know when Gretel’s baby’s due.”
“If you care you’ll be here, I suppose. Not that I’m holding my breath.”
“How is she?”
“What, you haven’t spoken to her either?” She clicks her tongue.
“I follow her updates.”
But Gretel and I get on together like our mothers never did, so why haven’t I been in touch?
Stella cuts to the chase. “We don’t have an address for you. In case of emergencies.”
I give her the address of the Waikiki flat. And then regret it.
***
At four Derek’s back at my door. “I’m done. The editor doesn’t deserve me.” Don’t get him started on editors.
“Two hours, not bad.”
“I channelled it.”
“The restaurant guide? The astral traveller edition, is it?”
He grins. “How about you? Landed anyone yet?” He knows all about my lack of enrolments.
“Still no luck.” I tell him about the money-back guarantee.
“A no-risk seminar wrapped in a tax-deductible vacation. What’s not to love?”
“You tell me, but so far no-one’s going for it.”
“You’re trying too hard. Call it a day.”
***
I barge into the bathroom before I lose my nerve. But there’s no sign of it. The mirror’s gone and the woman and the message with it.
“I’ve taken it away,” Wanda says as she comes in behind me, “but say the word when you want it back.” She throws her headband on Doris and makes for the fridge.
“Why would I want it back?”
“Do you think she’s gone because the mirror’s gone?”
“I hope so.” I’m counting on it.
“But you don’t know. There’s a lot you don’t know, Selkie. About this woman. Why she appeared to you, a malihini. And I hate to tell you, but the mirror is your channel.”
I’ve got a Chinese takeaway, so I sit down and start eating straight from the container. Wanda makes one of her macrobiotic smoothies, putting bananas and yoghurt in the blender. She watches me begin on a bottle of wine.
“It’s organic,” I plead. “From Chile.” I show her the label. “Someone riding a bicycle so it must be natural.”
“Yeah. And think how much carbon went into transporting it.”
Wanda believes in eating local. As well as the sprouts she grows on the windowsill she’s a regular at Hi-Fibes, the health-food store in our basement.
I sip my wine and remember the woman’s eyes, the raw emotion of her gaze. Wanda’s talking about the guy who rents her the garage where she creates. How she’s fallen into bed with him, as I suspected. It just happened, because she’s always there at odd hours with the door open and he strolls in and watches her bending over her fish. She’s obviously happy, happier than I’ve ever seen her, but with my troubles I’m not in the right space to listen.
“Are you getting free rent?” I ask, then wish I hadn’t.
“Because I’m sleeping with him?” She puts her hands on her hips. “You don’t know me very well yet, do you, Selkie? I’d never prostitute my art.”
When she goes out my mind returns to the woman. Wanda’s right. There’s a lot I don’t know. Everything. And if I don’t know who the woman is, why she’s targeted me, how can I dismiss her message?
My fear of the sea is always with me, but the woman has stirred up something else. Something personal. I came to Hawaii to escape my old life, not land myself in deep water.