I liked Hawaii; there was nothing ordinary about her. I liked the way she looked. The way she smelled. The remoteness. I liked the one person I had met. His calm demeanor. Everything seemed more relaxed here. When we stopped at a traffic light in the absolute middle of nowhere, Ben got out of the car and retrieved a couple of papaya’s from an unattended roadside stand. After depositing $1.00 in a lock box, he sliced them up and served them up before the light changed green. Delicious. He said they were better with a squeeze of lime, but they tasted about as good as any fruit I had ever sampled.
“So, how about a bed and breakfast?”
“I know a few B and B’s, but well, this is the busy season. I don’t know of one that will have a vacancy.” He pulled out a brochure from the glove compartment and scanned the list. “Let’s try Mahaina Kai.”
He made a U-turn in the middle of the road, took a right down a small asphalt road and stopped at a wonderful house, situated right on the sand.
Trudy welcomed us, but told us she was completely booked. She made a few calls to other B and B’s, only to find they all were filled too. We waved, loaded back into the car and started back toward town. We were stuck.
Ben turned off the meter at seventy dollars when he saw how defeated we looked at the thought of going back to that hotel. Over and over again he hummed a Hawaiian tune that was barely audible over the wind easing through the window. He had been doing it so long, Vincent had begun to hum along.
That Sara had done it again. I felt totally useless.
“I do know of a place that I thought was closed, but I heard someone say, the House by the Sea is still in business.” He made another U-turn and headed down a road even smaller than the one before.
When the road ended at the beach, the house was nowhere in sight; everything was grown over. Ben pulled up to a wall of unkempt bushes and an old cat darted from one branch to another. Layer upon layer of green brush lined a path that hadn’t been trod in years. Water puddles had made their home under the tall bamboo and filled ancient rows of some long ago garden. The air smelled of mildew and salt, with mildew at an overwhelming advantage. I swear I could even smell the mosquitoes.
"Palin, Joe the Plummer, McCain, Obama, ACORN, and Swing States all love Miss Edna's Coconut Cake"
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