Sisterchicks Do the Hula (21 page)

“Is it cold?” I knew the question was ridiculous the instant I asked, but I was standing outside, barefoot and wearing
shorts and Darren’s big, white shirt. And I was perspiring like crazy.

“It’s freezing,” Darren said. “How’s the weather there?”

I remembered Laurie’s rules for calling home and talking to husbands. What was number two? Something about sounding a little tired and a little sad?

“It’s been okay. Friday it rained all day. Just poured. Our luau was canceled because of it.” I added a little sigh.

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah.”

I was thinking of how ridiculous it was to pay roaming fees to Connecticut to talk with my husband about the weather. I knew once I got home I’d be able to give him all the details face-to-face, so I cut to rule number three and gave the ol’ one-two closing punch in the right order. “I miss you, Darren. I love you so much.”

“I love you and miss you, too. All of us do. It’s not the same around here without you.”

“I’ll be home in a few days. Tell the boys I love them.”

“I will. Give Emilee a pat from her daddy.”

“Okay. I’m patting her right now.”

“Hey,” Darren said. “I just looked at the clock. It’s after midnight here.”

“I know; it’s getting late. I should let you go.”

“No, I’m saying it’s after midnight … so it’s your birthday. At least it is here. Happy birthday, Hope.”

“Thanks.”

I hung up feeling stunned. I wasn’t ready to be forty. I went inside, sat on the edge of the bed, and contemplated how I happened to get so old so fast.

Laurie stepped out of the bathroom, her skin glowing with the coconut-scented after-sun lotion she used.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I called Darren.”

“Uh-oh. Another dish soap crisis?”

“No. He told me, ‘Happy birthday.’ In Connecticut I’m already forty.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing you’re not in Connecticut right now, isn’t it? Because you’re still thirty-nine in our time zone.”

I offered a weak smile.

“I know.” Laurie perched on the edge of my bed. “Here’s an idea. Let’s celebrate by catching a plane to Hong Kong.”

“What are you saying? Traveling east is going to keep me young?”

“Sure. If we time it right and catch the right flights, we could keep you thirty-nine almost all the way to Helsinki!”

“Nice try, Laurie. Thanks.
E
for effort.”

“You are seriously bummed about this, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t think I would be. It sort of sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?”

Laurie nodded sympathetically. “It’s not so bad once you get to the other side. I know a woman who had never surfed a day in her life. After she turned forty, she was out there surfing like Gidget with the big boys.”

Laurie had no way of knowing that her successful attempt to shoot the curl with Moondoggie carried a sting of regret for me since I wasn’t even able to try.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Just tired. It’ll feel good to get this sand out of my shorts.”

“Has the time come for some serious Oreos and Reese’s Pieces? You say the word, Hope, and I will brave all twelve divisions of those big bad wolves in the elevator, if you want a little comfort food.”

I laughed, but it sounded shallow. “No, I think my tastes are changing. If I’m going to have chocolate, I want the really intense stuff.”

“I know what you mean. Dark chocolate truffles with cappuccino filling. Now that’s something I always have room for. Two little bites, and I’m satisfied for the rest of the day. Of course, those two bites probably pack as many calories as I’d end up having in a stack of Oreos, but I’m convinced that dark chocolate truffles will cure anything. They are definitely my new take-two-and-call-me-in-the-morning favorite.”

“Chocolate sounds pretty divine right about now.”

“Why don’t I call room service and see what they can bring up to us?” Laurie walked over to the desk and opened the padded binder to the room service dessert menu. She read off the list of delectables.

I stopped her when she got to the cookie list. “That’s what I’d like: a couple of those white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. And a glass of milk.”

“Good choice for a bedtime snack.” Laurie picked up the phone.

“Yeah, my last meal as a thirty-nine-year-old,” I said glumly. “Tell me when it arrives. I’ll be in the shower.”

I took my time under the refreshing spray, shaving my legs and conditioning my short hair twice. I asked myself why it seemed like such a big deal to turn forty. All along I had been saying that it wouldn’t bother me. Laurie and I were here to celebrate, not mope.

Exiting the bathroom with a puff of steam following me like an albino parrot on my shoulder, I glanced around for the milk and cookies tray.

“Not here yet?”

“No, they said they had a backup of orders in the kitchen, and it would take longer than usual.”

I stopped and listened. “What is that noise?”

Laurie motioned to the wall behind our headboards. “Our neighbors are having a party in their room.”

“You don’t suppose it’s the Division Twelve guys, do you? I hope they’re not going to be at it with the loud music all night.” I listened again to the peals of laughter and loud voices. “How many people do you think they have in there?”

“Too many. If it doesn’t quiet down by the time we go to bed, I’m calling hotel security.”

Lowering myself into the chair at the desk, I said, “What happened to our cozy little hideaway hotel?”

“They booked a large convention. I know the objective is
to fill all the rooms, but it does change the feel of the whole hotel, doesn’t it?”

“It will probably be bedlam around the pool and at the beach tomorrow. We had a hard time finding available lounge chairs the first day we were out by the pool. Imagine what it will be like with so many people here now.”

“Maybe they’ll be in meetings all day,” Laurie suggested.

“Or in bed with a hangover.”

“It’s a good thing we kept the car another day. We can find a less crowded place to spend your birthday.”

The cookies and milk showed up. I got comfy on my bed and began my dunking ritual. I tried to soak each chunk of cookie to just the right degree of sogginess before pulling it from the glass of milk and getting it to my mouth without dribbling.

“You’re pretty good at that,” Laurie said, taking nibbles of her cookie.

“Thanks.”

“It’s kind of like my little-known skill of roasting a marshmallow to a nice toasty brown without catching it on fire.”

Just then the rowdy neighbors hit our common wall with such a thump that Laurie and I involuntarily ducked.

“That’s it. I’m calling the front desk. This is ridiculous.”

I scooted closer to the center of my bed, away from the large pictures hanging over the headboard and tried to continue my cookie-dunking ceremony with a little dignity.

“It’s like in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
,” Laurie said. “Do you
remember the wild party Holly Golightly had in her tiny New York apartment?”

I shook my head.

“Mickey Rooney was the neighbor who ratted on them, and Audrey Hepburn had to sneak out on the fire escape wearing a dress.”

“Oh.”

“I can tell you, I’m not waiting until women from next door start using our lanai as their fire escape and try to sneak out—Hello? Yes, I’d like to speak to the manager, please.”

Within three minutes she seemed to have solved the problem because she hung up and gave me one of her goofy, lipless grins. “Guess what?”

“Surprise me.” I lowered another chunk of cookie into my glass of milk.

“We can move to a different hotel.”

“Tonight?”

“No, tomorrow morning. The other hotel is part of this chain, but they don’t have any conventions going on so they have lots of empty rooms. It’s another Kalamela something.”

Plop
. I lost the last bite of my cookie into the deep white.

“Not the Kalamela Mauka. Tell me you didn’t switch us to the Kalamela Mauka. It’s not four blocks from here, is it? With a one-eyed dental assistant and a drooping ficus?”

“No, this hotel is half an hour away.”

“You’re positive they didn’t say a half a
mile
away?”

“No, he definitely said half an hour away in a less congested
part of the island. It has a private lagoon.”

“It may have a private lagoon, but what is the hotel like? What is it rated?”

“I think it’s a five-star. He said it was built less than a year ago. That’s why they aren’t fully booked. People don’t know about it.”

“Is our room rate going up a lot?”

“That’s the best part. When I complained about our noisy neighbors, he apologized for the inconvenience and said we could switch hotels and keep the same rate.”

“You just said
if
we switched hotels. It’s not a done deal, then?”

“Of course not. Hope, I wouldn’t change reservations without talking it over with you. We can stay here if we want. Or we can change. At least we have an option. And the other hotel has a complete spa, which I found out is something this hotel is sadly lacking because I was trying to set up a surprise pedicure for your birthday.”

A loud bang against our wall jolted the picture above my bed so that it tilted to the left. I looked back at Laurie. “Private lagoon, huh?”

She nodded. “And don’t forget the complete spa.”

“I’m in.”

Then, thinking I was so clever, I added, “Go ahead. Make reservations for two for breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

“No, Hope, you see, you don’t actually eat at Tiffany’s. In the movie … it’s … oh, never mind.”

I
know they say that nothing happens overnight, but I think getting old is the exception. I woke up feeling old. I felt achy and stiff and grouchy. Laurie said it was all the swimming from the day before.

She had her bags packed and was ready to make the hotel switch before I was out of bed.

“Take your time,” she said. “It’s your birthday. You can do whatever you want. How about if I go down to the espresso cart and get us some lattes?”

“Make mine a jumbo,” I said. “With all the fat and all the caffeine and all the whatever else they can throw in. Marshmallows, if they have them.”

“How about chocolate? I’ll get you a nice big, fat brevé mocha latte with an extra shot. It’ll perk you right up.”

“Whatever.” I felt as if I’d taken a dangerous leap to the
wild side by starting the first day of my forties without a nice cuppa tea.

“I’ll make a coffee drinker out of you yet,” she said on her way out the door.

“Yeah,” I spoofed to the now-empty room. “Like there’s even any room for coffee after you put all that fun stuff in the cup!”

I rolled over and thought,
It’s good to be under Laurie’s wing on such a day as this
.

Bumping around the room, I packed my things. All my clothes seemed to have expanded or somehow billowed with the flowing breezes they had been in, because I couldn’t get everything compact enough to close the suitcase. I borrowed the plastic bag in the closet that was marked for dry cleaning.

Laurie returned with two croissants, a plastic container of fruit salad, and a coffee-scented beverage. She also had a fresh-from-the-gift-shop purple orchid lei over her arm, which she graciously placed over my head.

“Aloha, birthday girl.”

I sat there, on the edge of the bed, in my pajamas with a purple lei around my neck and a foaming latte in my hand. I felt like a clown posing for an ad for a circus cruise to the Caribbean.

“Try putting a little pineapple in your system,” Laurie suggested. “If the pineapple doesn’t do it for you, go directly to the mango.”

I popped a pineapple chunk in my mouth and slowly sucked on it as if it were a throat lozenge.

“The shock of turning forty will wear off in a few days. Trust me.”

“I’m so glad we came here,” I said. “I never expected to slide into such an emotional slump.”

“I’m glad we came, too. We’re going to have a wonderful day. You’ll see.”

Laurie’s enthusiasm made her sparkle. It was a challenge, though, to coax my spirits to rise to the same level as hers. She seemed to understand my quietness.

In the same way that I had wholeheartedly defended Gabriel Giordani’s reputation while Laurie quietly examined statues of barnacle-encrusted blue whales at the art gallery, Laurie now went after this day with enough fervor and elation for both of us. I was free to float through it any way I could.

I soon discovered that Laurie’s idea of wholehearted fervor and elation was to slip into our red-hot convertible and drive like a female mud wrestler ex-con out on parole.

Ten minutes out of Honolulu, the freeway cleared of morning traffic. Few motorists seemed interested in going in our direction. The road was wide open, with three lanes of straight black asphalt, daring Laurinda Sue to punch it.

And she did.

I tried to think it was fun. I really did. I grinned from ear to ear, when she was looking. When she wasn’t looking, I gripped the door handle, gritted my teeth, glued my feet to
the floorboard, and groaned so deep inside that Emilee woke up. I do believe those next twenty minutes zooming down the freeway opened up a whole new avenue of my prayer life.