Here Today, Gone to Maui (8 page)

When I woke up on our second morning in Maui, Jimmy was gone again. Against all odds, he had left a note.

 

 

Had I not told him about the pineapple-mango scones? I couldn’t remember. According to my itinerary, we were supposed to be watching the sunrise over Haleakala right now. And then we were going to bike down the volcano. I never should have made the itinerary: planning and Maui just don’t work. Or maybe it was planning and Jimmy that didn’t mix.

I took my coffee and a scone out to the lounge chairs. After two days, it felt like a treasured routine: the whale spotting, the contemplation, the soothing sounds of someone playing a guitar in a nearby condo.

When I returned to the condo and found it empty I felt a tinge of worry. The little red car was flimsy. What if there had been an accident? But a few minutes later, Jimmy strolled in, forcing a smile but looking tense around the eyes. He was taking the credit-card incident hard. He’d barely spoken when we’d returned last night, just pulled a T-shirt over his boxers, kissed me on the top of my head, and gone to sleep.

“I brought you a bagel.” He held up a paper bag.

“Thanks, but I already ate.”

He grimaced. “The scones. I totally forgot. Sorry . . .”

“It’s okay,” I said. “They were kind of dry.”

He dropped the bag on the table along with my guidebook. “There’s this beach up the coast I’ve been wanting to dive. Snorkeling’s pretty good there, too. You want to do that today?”

“I’d love to!” I said, thrilled that he wasn’t springing another meeting on me. The volcano could wait for another day. Or another life.

“It’s this spot past Kapalua—Slaughterhouse Beach. It’s supposed to be awesome, really secluded and pretty.”

“Nice name. You never dove there before?”

He shook his head. “I usually dive around Kihei, further down the coast.”

“We can go there if you want.” I am nothing if not flexible.

“Nah.” He waved his hand. “This’ll be fun, and it’s closer. The water’s a little rougher up here, but that just means we’ll have to get there earlier, before the wind picks up.” He eyed the digital clock. “Shoot,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Well, I have to pick up my air tank. The dive shop is in the opposite direction, toward Lahaina, so I can’t just do it on the way. If we left right now, we’d be okay, but there were some calls I wanted to make for work . . .”

The credit-card incident hung between us. He wanted to be a good provider, which meant working harder. And he wanted to give me a good vacation, which meant working less.

“How about I pick up the air tanks while you stay here and make your calls?” I suggested.

His face relaxed. “You wouldn’t mind?”

 

 

The guy behind the counter at the dive shop wore a faded Chicago Cubs T-shirt, soft denim shorts, brown rubber flip-flops, and an expression of Zen-like relaxation. His sandy hair was wavy and damp. I wondered whether he had dropped out of college to come to Maui or if he had finished his education first. I wondered what his parents told the neighbors.

Farther back in the store, another guy examined a flipper display before making notes on a clipboard.

“I’m here to pick up an air tank,” I said to the young, sandy-haired guy. “For Jimmy James? He called earlier.”

The briefest flicker of confusion crossed his face. “We don’t have anything for a Jimmy James.” He blinked, the tension erased. “We had a call from a Michael James.”

“Oh, right—that’s his real name.”

He disappeared into a back room and came back hauling a silver tank. “Just one?”

I shrugged. “I guess. If that’s what he ordered.”

He put the tank on the counter. “I’ll just need to see his PADI card.”

“His . . . what?” I remembered something about PADI from my brief foray into diving.

“His PADI card?” He held his hand up, his fingers in a
C
. “It’s about yay big? It shows that he’s a certified diver.”

“I . . . don’t have it.” I glanced at my watch. If I went back to the condo to get the card, we’d be even later than we already were.

“I can’t give you the tank without the card. Sorry.”

The guy with the clipboard looked up. “You mean Michael James from Jimmies?”

“Yes.” I blinked at him with surprise.

He stuck the clipboard under his arm and sauntered over. “Nice guy. We used to buy wetsuits from him, but . . .”

“What?”

“They were a little unreliable—at least, the people in his office were. Said things had shipped when they hadn’t, sent the wrong stuff. He keeps trying to get us to give them another chance. I might take him up on it, one of these days. So you’re his . . .”

“Girlfriend,” I said, feeling sixteen.

He smiled and held out his hand. “Tom Paulson.”

“Jane Shea,” I said.

He was considerably older than the guy at the counter—about forty, I’d guess—but with the same easy, happy look. Clearly, he didn’t care what his parents told the neighbors.

“Glad to see he’s finding time for something besides business and diving. He’s pretty driven.”

I thought of Jimmy’s hours, his two jobs. “He has trouble slowing down,” I agreed.

Tom tapped the counter. “You can give her the tank, Connor. Her boyfriend is certainly certified. Though I’m amazed he didn’t come himself. He doesn’t usually miss a sales opportunity.” He grinned at me.

“He’ll probably call you at some point,” I said. “He stayed back to make some calls so we can hit the beach before it gets too late.”

“You’re diving today?” Connor asked.

“I’m just snorkeling. He’s the diver.”

I’d taken scuba-diving lessons the year after moving to California. During my first open-water dive, in the cold waters off Dana Point, I got water up my nose while kneeling on the ocean floor, adjusting my mask. I freaked out and sucked even more water into my sinuses, at which point I shot to the surface. When my instructor caught up with me, he said I should never, ever pop up like that. When I calmed down enough to speak, I told him it wouldn’t be an issue since I would never, ever dive again.

Connor said, “You won’t see much today. I was out this morning—the vizz was real bad.”

“Vizz?” I asked.

“Visibility,” Tom said. “The surge is pretty strong today, too. You might want to wait until tomorrow.”

 

 

Back at the condo, I told Jimmy what Tom and Connor had said about diving conditions, but he didn’t want to wait. “I’ve been dreaming about this dive for a month.”

I didn’t want to wait, either. If he didn’t dive, Jimmy might leave me for another sales call.

He pulled his license out of his blue canvas wallet and stuck it in a pocket of his swim trunks. He threw the wallet into his duffel bag, which he had yet to unpack or even move from the middle of the room. “You don’t want to take anything valuable,” he told me. “Stuff gets stolen out of cars and sometimes even off the beach.”

“Gotcha,” I said, thinking,
I bet stuff doesn’t get stolen off Kaanapali Beach.

 

We parked the red rental car next to two others in a tiny lot. The road was high, narrow, and twisty. A stand of rugged trees blocked the beach below. The instant I opened the door, a gust of wind hit me in the face.

“Maybe we can find someplace more sheltered,” I suggested.

“Nah,” Jimmy said, lifting his tank and dive bag from the trunk. “It won’t be bad on the beach. The cliffs will break the wind.”

I made my way to the top of the steps and peered through the trees, catching a glimpse of steel-blue water and whitecaps. “It looks kind of rough.”

Jimmy opened the back door and sat down, leaving his feet on the pavement. He reached in and pulled out a worn wetsuit. Once black, it was now more of a smoky gray.

I raised my eyebrows. “Don’t you, uh, sell wetsuits?”

“I know.” He smiled. “I have a couple of nicer ones at home. But this was my first, and I’m sentimental.”

He stuck his feet into the legs and pulled up the black rubber like panty hose, leaving the suit open and hanging at the waist. He peeled off his T-shirt and tossed it onto the backseat. He yanked on his booties. Next came the diver ritual: he propped his BCD (that’s the “buoyancy control device,” otherwise known as the inflatable-vest thingy) on the pavement and attached the tank to the back, pulling on a strap to make sure it wouldn’t slip out. He attached the regulator (that’s the air hose) to the tank, checked the tank, checked the mouthpiece, and clipped his hoses into place. The mask was easy: he pulled it over his head and let it hang around his neck before slipping his arms into the BCD and hauling it onto his back. He’d adjust it on the beach, after he zipped up the wetsuit. Finally, he snagged his flippers, which he’d put on in the water.

Now you know why I preferred snorkeling. Well, that and fear of drowning.

“You look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon,” I said. “In a good way.”

He tossed me the keys. “Hang on to these. We’ll leave the car unlocked—someone might break the windshield otherwise.”

We worked our way down the concrete steps, holding on to a green railing for support. Above us, heavy tree branches blocked the sky. The steps eventually gave way to a narrow, sloping, dirt-and-rock path. I was glad I wasn’t hauling any heavy gear on my back; my tote was bad enough.

“This looks like heaven,” Jimmy said when we finally reached the beach, practically shouting to be heard over the wind and waves.

I made a noncommittal “mm” sound. The pictures of the Hyatt looked like heaven. Kaanapali Beach looked like heaven. This looked . . . scary. It was beautiful, certainly, a crescent-shaped, white-sand beach surrounded by lava-rock cliffs and low-hanging trees. At the edges, sea spray exploded against soaring boulders; closer in, angry breakers rammed the beach. On a sunny day, the water would be a brilliant blue, but the gray clouds cast a foreboding glow, and whitecaps dotted the steel-colored water like peaks of meringue. If there were any whales jumping today, I wouldn’t be able to see them.

There were two other groups of people on the beach, their belongings clustered by some loose lava rocks. Jimmy led me down the sand, and I placed my tote bag next to a large boulder. Tough, scruffy pine trees grew straight out of the cliff and would have provided shade had there been any sun. There were no palm trees, no hibiscus—nothing to remind you that you were in the tropics. It looked more like Big Sur than Hawaii—and as beautiful as Big Sur is, I wouldn’t want to swim there.

Jimmy shrugged out of his BCD and placed it on the sand. He slipped his arms into the wetsuit and pulled on the long cord to zip it up the back.

“You going to snorkel?” he asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said, thinking:
What else am I supposed to do?

“Watch out for the coral,” he said. “It can really cut you up.”

“I will,” I said, thinking:
No shit.

A gust of wind, stronger than the others, knocked over my tote bag. Sand stung my legs. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked. “Aren’t you supposed to dive with a buddy?”

I trailed him to the water. Down the beach, one of the other groups began to pack up. Jimmy took a couple of steps into the surf, peering at the water in an attempt to find a sandy entry.

“I dive alone all the time,” he said. “I’d never dive a cave or a wreck by myself, but a little beach dive? It’s no big deal.” He took a few steps to the left. “I’m not going very deep, which means I can stay out for a while. Honolua Bay is right around the corner—it’s got tons of awesome fish and coral. Might even see some sharks.”

A wave broke near the shore and pummeled our ankles. Jimmy took another step to the left and leaned over to check the entry. “It’s sandy right here. You’ll be okay as long as you get your feet up fast. Use the waves.”

“It looks rough out there . . .” I said for the second time.

“On top of the water, sure. But twenty feet down? Not a problem. You remember that big tsunami in Asia? There were people diving when it happened, and they didn’t even know about the big wave till it was over.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m just a worrier.”

“I know,” he said. “And I love that about you.”

A wave swelled and broke, and he plunged in before another could knock him over. His back to the breakers, he pulled on his flippers in one smooth motion and then, still facing the beach, kicked back toward the open ocean, his inflated BCD keeping his head bobbing above the waves. He grew smaller and smaller until he made it past the rock outcropping.

He waved. I waved back.

And then he disappeared below the surface.

 

 

Jimmy’s “just rough on the surface” line was a load of crap. The sea bottom churned below me, fogging the water with sand and driving the fish who knows where. Maybe they were out in the deep water with Jimmy, I told myself. Where the ocean was calm and safe.

I don’t know how long I was out there. It probably felt longer than it was, what with clearing my leaky mask and gagging on the water when the waves broke over my snorkel.

Finally, I gave up and swam back to the shore, trying (and failing) to get in without being smacked by a wave. Back on land, I coughed out some of the salt water and dried myself as best as possible with my rough bathroom towel. Maybe on the way home we’d stop off at the ABC store and buy a couple of beach towels. Ten dollars each: only the best for my Hawaiian vacation.

I hadn’t brought an extra towel to sit on since the plan was to spend the entire time in the water. Jimmy’s dry white towel was tempting, but I left it in the tote. Even with the wetsuit, he’d be cold when he got out.

Bag in hand, I scooted under a tree with low branches and settled myself on an exposed root. My cell phone was at the bottom of my bag. According to the screen, it was 1:43 P.M. in California, which meant it was 10:43 here in Maui.