CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I don’t try very hard to disabuse Shanelle of the notion that Mario Suave has a crush on me. Not while we’re returning to our room so I can change out of my blood-soaked dress—because Shanelle determined we were still going to the luau, macaw bite or no macaw bite—nor while we make our return trip downstairs to join the festivities already in progress.
After all, there are sadder prospects to ponder than that of a gorgeous, successful, desirable man panting after your bones. And it’s a nice change from imagining myself crownless and incarcerated for homicide.
There’s a large gently sloping grassy area between the hotel and the beach and that’s where the luau takes place. By now the sun is down and Party Central is illuminated by strings of white lights encircling the palm trees and the tiki torches Keola lit at sunset. The delectable aroma of roast pig fills the air. As Shanelle and I approach, we see long buffet tables covered with brightly colored sarongs and runners of fishing nets strewn with shells and sand. The tables are ready for the platters of food that will emerge soon from the kitchen. Tall baskets are scattered here and there, filled with stalks of brilliant red ginger. A band is playing Hawaiian music, complete with ukulele and slack key guitar. Slim young lovelies with wreaths of pink plumeria on their heads have begun to hula, their hips swaying under raffia grass skirts. Behind the music we hear the surf’s timeworn rhythm.
If anything, the assembled multitude is more raucous than it was before. That’s because the mai tais are flowing and everybody’s been “lei’d.” Ha ha. Shanelle and I order libations of our own and stand back to assess the crowd. “My mother and Jason are here somewhere,” I tell her.
“I see Trixie,” Shanelle says. “Look who she’s talking to, over there by those two leaning palm trees. Misty Delgado’s husband.”
So she is. The husband—tall, buff, and blond—looks good dry as well as wet; the last time we saw him was poolside, when he reduced a
Ventura Aerial Tours
brochure to confetti.
“Maybe Trixie can pry some useful information out of him,” I say.
“Maybe it’s a good sign for Misty that he’s still here in Hawaii,” Shanelle adds. She starts laughing and pointing. “Look!”
“Oh God.” One of the young hula women is trying to rope my mother into learning to hula. Hazel Przybyszewski is having none of it. She scowls and scuttles away, slapping the woman’s outstretched hand when she persists. “She’s going to slap that woman’s face next if she doesn’t give up,” I say.
The woman soon finds a more willing pupil. Jason.
I watch as my husband, in white pants and the silk tropical print Tommy Bahama campshirt I bought him for the islands, winks at the woman and shimmies his hips. She giggles and gestures for him to mimic the hula’s gentle sway. Which he does. Perfectly.
Shanelle lets loose an admiring whistle.
“He always could dance,” I tell her. Jason may have put on a few pounds since his football days, but he can still shake it when he wants to.
The next man to grab our attention is His Highness Keola Kalakaua, clad in a sky-high headdress and Hawaiian loincloth. He positions himself next to the band and commandeers the microphone. “
Aloha, ahiahi
,” he croons. “That means good evening in my beloved language of Hawaiian.”
“Oh, no,” I whisper to Shanelle. “He’s going native.”
“Welcome to the Royal Hibiscus luau,” he goes on. “I hope you are enjoying the
pupu
appetizers and getting ready for the main feast.”
My mother sidles up next to me. “Did you see what your husband did?” she hisses.
“Hello to you, too, mom.”
“If I were you, I’d tell that so-called hula teacher to keep her hands off what doesn’t belong to her and never did.”
“That’s okay, mom.” I eye Jason, who’s been abandoned by the hula girl and is now standing next to Dirk Ventura. The chopper pilot is his usual dark and chiseled self. I’m more worried about
his
influence on my husband.
“That’s another one.” My mother cocks her chin at Keola. “Does he even own a pair of pants? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him anything but half naked.”
Shanelle chuckles. “That may be how he looks best, Mrs. Przybyszewski.”
By now Keola is regaling the crowd with tales of his royal lineage. “When my ancestor King Kalakaua had his fiftieth birthday luau, a long time ago, man, he had fifteen hundred guests to feast. We don’t have so many tonight! I’m glad.”
The crowd, pretty liquored up by this point, claps and whoops in agreement. I have a feeling it doesn’t take much.
Keola goes on to describe the main attraction, the kalua roast pig, with whom I’m feeling a certain kinship tonight given my own prolonged bleeding episode. That poor beast has been roasting for hours in a pit dug in the sand, lying among wet banana leaves and burlap sacks. His day is not going to improve from here.
“We have a lot of entertainment for you later under the moon,” Keola reassures us. “So relax and enjoy our native delicacies. Eat the pig, eat the
poi
, made from the root of the taro plant, and be sure to try the sweet potatoes, different from what you get back on the mainland, yeah.”
My mother throws out her hands. “He can’t even talk right! Why do they give him the microphone? Royalty, my you know what.”
My mother recovers from her agitation sufficiently to dine, and Shanelle and I need no encouragement. We spy other revelers shamelessly loading their plates, including Magnolia Flatt and Sally Anne Gibbons.
“Sally Anne’s in kind of a party muumuu tonight,” Shanelle mutters.
Indeed she is. Navy blue with a ruffle not only at the shoulder but also at the hem.
“She doesn’t look drunk yet,” my mother says. “But I bet she’ll be soused later.”
Given that our figures are going to hell in a handcart, Shanelle and I don’t even consider missing dessert. We dip into both the coconut cake and the pineapple pie. I’m licking the last of the cake frosting off my fork when a loud drumbeat amps up the excitement. A line of muscular Hawaiian men wearing loincloths, samurai-type headbands, and leis made of long grass run out near the band and strike fighting poses. Cheers and hollers rise from the crowd and get even more high-pitched when the posing men each brandish a baton that shoots out flames at both ends.
“This is what they call the flame dance,” Shanelle shouts to my mom.
My mother shrugs. “They start knife throwing, they can call it a show.”
The action gets more frenzied by the moment. Hula-dancing hotties shake their booty, baton-wielding macho men toss their flaming wands in the air, and the drummer pounds a beat so relentless I think I’ll hear it in my head till dawn.
Then I notice a piece of drama the luau organizers could not have scripted. Standing near the front, facing each other and shouting, are Dirk Ventura and Misty’s husband. I can’t hear what they’re saying but I can guess the topic is the hot tamale Misty Delgado. In short order the shouting match escalates. I watch as Misty’s husband jabs a finger in Ventura’s chest. Then Ventura goes one further and with both hands pushes Misty’s husband in the chest. He stumbles backward a few feet but then recovers his footing and races forward to punch Dirk Ventura smack in the nose.
Ventura flies backward, tripping as he goes. He lands flat on his rump but he’s not the only casualty of the punch. On his way down he topples one of the flame-throwing dancers in mid throw.
“Oh, no,” I breathe.
Oh, yes. Because the flame dancer, eyes wide in panic, careens sideways and watches helplessly as his fiery baton goes seriously awry. There’s no way he can catch it. Nobody can. It’s loose and spinning and it will go where it may.
Which is right into Sally Anne Gibbons. Shanelle and I aren’t the only ones screaming when the baton hits her corpulent self and sets her muumuu on fire. I watch in horror as Sally Anne staggers, her mouth open in a petrified yowl and her arms rising pitifully in the air. But who rushes to the rescue but Jason.
Quick as a flash he barrels into her and gets her horizontal on the grass. Then he whips his new Tommy Bahama campshirt up over his head and uses it to smother the flames.
It’s over in seconds. I’m damn impressed. Everyone else seemed paralyzed—including me—but in the heat of the moment, literally, my husband had the wherewithal to leap to the rescue and save Sally Anne from what might have been a terrible burn. As it is, she has got to be suffering. This makes my macaw bite look like a paper cut.
I ram forward through the stunned crowd like a woman possessed. I get to the front just in time to see Sally Anne raise her head, stare into the eyes of my half-naked husband hovering above her, and faint dead away.
