Last Week Before Classes Start
WE HAD planned carefully to take off the last week before classes started and go away for a few days together. We had been working and socializing so hard that we hadn’t had much quality time together. We thought that a trip out of town would be the perfect solution. However, what we ended up with was beyond our wildest dreams. When we told Derrick one night what we were thinking of doing, he offered an option that we hadn’t considered. Our thinking had been focused on what we could do by car. We thought maybe we’d drive up to San Francisco, or go to Yosemite, or something like that. But Derrick had grander thoughts that were so far beyond anything we could plan that we hadn’t even considered such fantasies.
Derrick had a house in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. I didn’t even realize that Hawaii was more than one island. I thought Hawaii was an island—a single island. But he explained that the state of Hawaii was made up of many islands, with eight primary islands that were inhabited. He suggested that we go there for our week and relax in the sun and surf. Such a thing was so outside our realm of understanding that we didn’t know what to say or do. He saw us hesitating and said, “Come on, guys! You can do this! You’ll have a good time.”
“But what will we do there?” I asked.
“Well, you’ll lie in the sun, frolic in the surf, go out and eat fabulous food….”
“Okay. How will we know where to go to find this fabulous food? From the way you’ve described it, this place is a pretty big island. I always pictured Hawaii as this little itty-bitty place in the middle of nowhere, and now you’re telling me that there are hundreds of islands and that it takes an hour to fly from east to west!”
“Okay. It takes an hour to fly from the southernmost point on the island of Hawaii to the northernmost point on the island of Kauai. You’ll be only going to one island on this trip, the island of Maui, which is my favorite of the islands.”
“And how long does it take, for example, to drive all the way around that island?” I asked.
“Well, that’s complicated, because there are two halves to Maui. On one half you can’t drive all the way around, only about three-quarters of the way. On the other half you can drive all the way around if you have four-wheel drive, but it’ll take you three or four hours to do it, because part of the road is twisting and winding while another part is steep.”
“Enough!” I said. “Just stop. That sounds entirely too complicated. We just want to have a few days to relax and unwind and be together before we enter the next big unknown phase of our lives. And between school and work and homework and studying, we’re barely going to have any time until Christmas.”
“All the more reason to get some quality time now,” Moira said. “So, Elmer—”
“Please stop calling me that!” he begged one more time.
“That’s your name, buster. Can you get a couple of days off and take these guys? If you have three days there, that’ll allow one day for travel back. You’ll get some time to relax on the beach, which you could use—you’re getting as pale as Casper the ghost. And they’ll get to see the most beautiful place on the planet. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.”
He thought for a minute and then said, “Fine. But they’re probably not prepared for the nightmare of traveling with somebody who is recognizable wherever he goes.”
“Boys,” Moira said, addressing Bill and me, “I need you two to wear really dark sunglasses, look hulking, and act as his bodyguards. You’ll pretend to be running interference for him everywhere you go. Your mission is to keep him sheltered and safe from the masses of humanity. Think you can do that?”
Bill and I nodded our heads. “I think we can do that.”
“Good. I’ll set it up.” And just like my mother, she took charge of it and set it all up. And a few days later we found ourselves on another airplane, this time flying from Los Angeles to Kahului on the island of Maui. Even with sunglasses and a baseball cap and scruffy clothes, Derrick had been spotted repeatedly. So far, we’d been successful in fending off the fans who wanted to get close to him, to touch him, to say hello to him. It was totally contrary to his nature to be standoffish. Derrick was friendly and outgoing and talkative, but he knew that if he said hello to one person, there would immediately be twenty more right there wanting and expecting the same, and by the time you said hello to those twenty-one people there were ten times as many more waiting to take their place. It was a situation that knew no end, so he had to fight his nature and keep his head down.
On the airplane we sat in first class (nice!) and put Derrick in the window seat with Bill next to him. I sat immediately behind them so that I could keep an eye on things and be a first line of defense. When we got off the plane five hours later in Hawaii, Moira had a car and driver waiting for us, which made our exit much more efficient than it would have been if we’d had to go and rent a car and deal with more people. We were off the plane and out of the airport in under five minutes.
Twenty minutes after that we were walking in the front door of Derrick’s Maui house which was… well, spectacular! The house was massive. The views were simply stunning. The mountains on one side, the ocean on the other, islands dotting the horizon. Sun, surf, gently swaying palm trees. Oh yes, this was good.
Derrick got us settled into our part of the house and then gave us the grand tour of the house and the grounds. It really was an impressive property, and a lovely retreat to enjoy the sun and get away from it all. We arrived in the islands in early afternoon, so we had several hours of sunlight to enjoy. Derrick had the driver take us for a quick drive around some of the more central parts of the island to give us a sense of what was there. We also stopped at one place, but Derrick was mobbed instantly by an especially aggressive group of tourists.
From there we were driven to a restaurant partway back toward the house. They knew Derrick there and had dealt with people hounding him before, so they knew how to handle the situation. They put us at a table that was separated from the rest of the restaurant and free from traffic so that we could enjoy our dinner without being constantly interrupted.
The food was phenomenal. The fish was so fresh that it could have been in the water swimming around just an hour ago. This was so different than the fish that my mother had been able to get when we lived in upstate New York. Given a choice, I’d take the fish there in Hawaii and the way that this place prepared it.
Since we were dealing with three hours of time change, we wore down hours earlier than others who were accustomed to the local time. We returned to the house, and all were in bed and asleep very early.
The three days we spent on Maui were wonderful. Derrick left us alone each day if we wanted and was available to go and play if we wanted to go. We sat by the pool, we walked the beaches, we got to some fabulous restaurants, and we talked together for countless hours. It really was remarkable how much background we all had in common, even though he was ten years older than us.
All too soon it was time to leave the island and head back home. Even though we’d made the flight out, and I knew how long it would take to get back to California, it still amazed me that it was as long to go from Hawaii to California as it was to go from California to New York. It was remarkable how far we had come in experience in such a short period of time. Just a few short months ago, we had left New York unsure about the road ahead of us, and here we were, riding in first class from Hawaii with one of America’s number one movie stars, a man who was instantly recognizable practically anywhere he went. Quite a change from our days of hauling barbed wire and getting beaten up in the men’s room at school.