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“You should get a piece of black tourmaline.”

“A rock?”

“A crystal.”

Francis resisted the urge to call her a fruitcake. He was desperate.

“Okay. What do I do with it?”

“You put it on your root chakra. Black tourmaline stabilizes your root chakra and dispels negative energy.”

“Where's my root thing?”

Yuki turned around and showed him. Francis shook his head.

“You want me to shove a rock up my ass?”

“You place it on the outside.”

Francis nodded. “Then what?”

“Then put some patchouli around and relax. Let the energy in the crystal do its thing.”

Francis recoiled. “Patchouli? Like a hippie?”

Yuki shrugged. “It works.”

...

Finally he had it in his hands: a signed contract. A good one, too. The network and the studio were paying full freight and they weren't skimping; they wanted steaks, lobster, ahi tuna, fresh pasta, a smoothie bar, the works. They wanted him to keep a cook on call just in case the director or one of the stars
needed a grilled cheese sandwich or a bowl of tomato soup in the middle of the night. They even gave him a 15 percent contingency, in case he had to fly something special over from the mainland. He knew right away he'd have to arrange to get some decent prime rib sent over. Otherwise what was he going to do, serve prime rib of snapper?

After all that dilly-dallying, now he could get down to brass tacks. He could start hiring drivers, cooks, assistants, maybe a cute girl to work in the office. He could start opening accounts with suppliers: the butchers, bakers, and greengrocers. From what he could tell from the locals' eating habits he'd probably need a warehouse full of Spam and a fleet of his own fishing boats. It seems like that's all they ate over here.

Jack was happy. Stanley's driving didn't even bother him today. Finally he was going to see some return on his investment. It had been a gamble, bringing all this gear over to Honolulu, but Jack was a gambler. He lived in Vegas, didn't he? But now that they had their foot in the door—well, it would be difficult to get them out.

He grinned at his son. “What did I tell you?”

Stanley smiled. “You were right, Dad.”

“From here on in it's smooth sailing.”

Stanley cleared his throat. “So, Dad?”

“Yes?”

“When we set up the payroll accounts, I want to tithe ten percent of my money to the church.”

If Jack had been driving he would've driven off the road. “Are you out of your fuckin' mind?”

“Why does it bother you? It's not your money.”

Jack turned and looked out the window. “Can't you
blow it on booze or drugs or something? Why give it to the church? Why don't you take up scuba diving?”

Stanley looked straight ahead. He wasn't going to get into this with his dad. In fact, he was going to do what he thought was right, and he didn't care what his father thought.

“Why don't you mind your own business?”

Jack did a double take. “What'd you say?”

“I said mind your own business. I don't tell
you
how to live.”

Jack wanted to say something but thought better of it. In fact, he realized that Stanley was right. It wasn't his business.

Jack didn't say anything for a long time as the rental car crawled slowly through the streets of Honolulu. After a while, he turned to Stanley.

“Could you drive faster, please?”

...

In the old days, when someone was discovered to be an Ai-Kanaka, a man-eater, he was hunted down and, as tradition tells it, chucked off the nearest cliff. They were clever, those original Hawaiians. They didn't mess around. No judge, no jury. No lawyers, no reasonable doubt. You're a man-eater; off you go.

Joseph didn't think Wilson would be thrown from a cliff, but he worried about him. The gods don't think too highly of cannibalism either.

And then there were the gods of law enforcement. Joseph could just see some well-meaning high school kid coming over to clean the gutters on Sid's roof. What would they
think of a pile of bones? Even if the authorities overlooked the cannibalism, Joseph was pretty sure that murder was still against the law.

Of course
he
wasn't a murderer or an Ai-Kanaka. He was just the cook. Joseph understood that this didn't let him off the hook, either judicially or culinarily. He was still guilty.

Joseph sat on the couch in his little house and stared out the window. He wasn't thirsty. He wasn't hungry. In fact, he hadn't been able to keep any food down except the occasional papaya. He'd even tried a simple bowl of rice. It didn't stay down long, so he'd given up trying to eat for a while.

Although Joseph hated himself for what had happened, barbecuing the hitmen had done something good for him. He'd gotten in touch with some deep tribal emotions when he'd pitched those two haoles into the
imu.
It made him realize that he was Hawaiian. It was who he was. Nothing could change that. It was a primal impulse that he felt deep in his core, as if it were stitched into his DNA. He was Hawaiian, and moving somewhere else would never take that away from him. He could go anywhere. Do anything. He would always be who he was.

He realized that a people can only take being conquered, living as virtual servants in their own land, for so long. Joseph knew what the ancient kahunas would've said. The haoles are
pau.
Let's luau.

...

Jack lurched his walker into the foyer of the Teamsters office and stopped dead in his tracks. Sid turned and looked at him.

“What wrong wid you den? You look like you seen a ghost.”

For a brief, heart-stopping second Jack did think he was seeing a ghost. Sid loomed in the office in all his tattered T-shirt, beer-gut glory. But he wasn't a ghost. Not yet anyway.

“Get out of my way, asshole. I have a contract.”

Sid chuckled to himself and started to walk away. Then he turned back to Jack.

“Remember, when da show's over, leave da keys in da trucks an' go home.” Sid wagged his finger at him. “Don' forget now.”

“I had a stroke. Not Alzheimer's.”

Sid laughed. “Dat's a good one.”

He walked out of the building. Jack craned his neck and watched him go. The big man in his gym shorts and flip-flops, lumbering out the door, sweating like a hog but still very much alive. That annoyed Jack. It pissed him off. How many hitmen did it take to whack this fucking guy? Sid should've been dead, gone, disappeared by now. Jack didn't understand it. Maybe the creepy hitman had scammed him, but Baxter should've finished the job. I mean, how hard could it be?

...

Francis thought he was going to barf. The patchouli was assaulting his system, causing his olfactory glands to recoil in terror, his mouth to salivate, and his brain to release an infomercial's worth of bad memories.

A few of these memories had to do with a girl he'd gone out with in high school. Her name was Amanda and she dressed in a kind of post-hippie-world beat style. She wore multiple bracelets and bangles on her wrists, which jingled and clinked whenever she twirled her long hair. She did this
compulsively, so the overall effect was like sitting in a wind chime store during a storm. But it also had a kind of charm and complemented her uniform of peasant blouses and big flowy skirts with combat boots.

Amanda claimed to be addicted to patchouli, which she dabbed behind her ears and dribbled down her wrists. The cloud of perfume floated around her like a protective force field, spreading the magic of patchouliness wherever she went.

It's not that she, herself, was a bad memory. He had been in love with her. But when they kissed he felt uncomfortable, like he was kissing a sister he didn't have or, worse, like he was Frenching his mom. It was through Amanda and the power of her patchouli that Francis discovered he was attracted to men. So that now the smell of patchouli rekindled all those adolescent feelings of shame and self-loathing that went along with the discovery that you are just a little different from everyone else.

Francis lay down on the bed and placed the black tourmaline on his lower back in a close approximation of where he thought his root chakra should be. He didn't feel anything right away. He didn't know if he should. He thought about calling Yuki and asking her if he was supposed to be feeling something. But instead he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

...

Jack hoped the Korean stripper was working tonight. He'd been thinking of her, off and on, since the night the Sumo and his kid had threatened him in the club. Why did they do that? Didn't they know who they were fucking with? Not only
did they keep Jack from getting up close and personal with that hot Korean chick, they forced him to take drastic action. Jack comforted himself with the fact that they brought it on themselves. They really did. They pushed him too far, forced him to make some hard business decisions. As far as Jack was concerned, they had to pay a price for their actions. It was all their fault. But he'd paid a price himself. Jack realized he hadn't shot his wad once since that night.

He hadn't really been in the mood for a lap dance. But he hadn't been able to relax in his hotel room, either. He was too excited about the contract, too nervous about the fact that Sid was still alive. Jack wasn't naïve; he didn't just fall off the turnip truck. Even with the contract signed, sealed, and delivered, the Sumo could cause problems. He could jam things up, make them look incompetent, so Jack and his company wouldn't be able to work in Honolulu again. It would be easy. An outbreak of salmonella that shut production down would be enough to destroy Jack's reputation here.

And what was with Sid's cryptic comment about seeing a ghost? Did he know something? Had the plot been discovered and now the FBI was working with the Sumo to torture Jack and drive him crazy? Was this some unique Hawaiian revenge plot? Or was Sid really dead and Jack was now seeing visions? Just thinking about it gave him the creeps.

He had to get out. He had to burn off some of this nervous energy. It's not like he could take a stroll on the beach, painfully hobbling in the sand with his walker. Fuck that. He needed to blow off some steam. That's why he was here at La Femme Nu.

Jack had asked the bouncer if the Korean chick was working tonight. The bouncer had just looked at him and
said, “Which one?” What was Jack going to say, “The one with the big tits”? They all had big tits. So he sat at the edge of the stage watching a parade of women strut out in spike heels and stroke their asses up and down a big metal pole.

Not that they were bad strippers. Not by a long shot. They could hold their own with any of the girls at the Spearmint Rhino or Cheetah's in Vegas. But Jack was looking for one special woman.

He almost fell over when she came out. Even though she was wearing a pink wig, he recognized her right away. He hoisted himself to his feet and began stuffing her G-string with ten-dollar bills. He whooped and hollered, applauded and screamed. He wanted her to know he wasn't fucking around. He wanted her.

After her number she came and got him. Helping him navigate the dark space with his clunky walker, she led him to a private room in the back. Even with the air bags keeping him constantly erect, Jack felt a little stirring in his penis, an organic throb all his own.

He had been under the impression that the stripper was from Korea so he was surprised when she spoke excellent English. She informed him that her parents were Korean, but she was born and raised in Sacramento. Jack was just beginning to process this new information when she plopped him down on a chair, shoved his walker over in a display of passion, and started dancing.

She didn't hold anything back. Her bikini top came off immediately and she wasn't shy about jamming his face between her breasts as she thrust her crotch against him. Her breasts were big, packed to bursting with saline pouches. She danced in a frenzy; Jack thought his jaw might've been dislocated
when she spun around on his lap and one of her tits whapped him upside the head.

Unlike other lap dances he'd had, there was no tease to this one. She went right for his cock. She banged her bulging vulva against it with violent and aggressive thrusts and grinds, really digging in. Jack had never felt anything quite like this. He couldn't tell if it felt good or was some new form of senior abuse.

The pain was immediate and intense. Jack's eyes rolled up in his head as he unleashed a feral howl and flopped onto the floor, curling into a fetal position, screaming in agony. The stripper knew something was wrong and, being a consummate professional, she grabbed his wallet and fled the scene as quickly as possible.

...

Stanley raced to the emergency room as soon as he heard the news. It took him about twenty minutes to get there and another half hour to find parking, but eventually he made his way into the ER and found out what had happened to his father.

The doctor, a young Japanese-American woman with a taste for raunchy humor, met him in the corridor and gave him a quick diagnosis.

“Is my dad going to be okay?”

“He's stable.”

“What happened? Was it a heart attack?”

The doctor suppressed a smile. “No. The EKG came out perfect. His heart seems unaffected.”

“Did he have another stroke?”

She shook her head. “Were you aware that your father suffered from erectile dysfunction?”

Stanley had not been aware.

“It appears that, after his initial stroke, your father had some inflatable erection devices inserted in his penis.”

“You're joking.”

“According to what he's told me, the devices never worked properly and he has suffered from a constant erection ever since.”

Stanley was confused. “What does this have to do with whatever's happened to him?”

“Apparently your father was getting a lap dance from a young woman who, we've now learned, had several piercings.”