Chapter 3: Waikiki

Chapter 3: Waikiki

The flight to Hawaii from Boston was fourteen hours long and it was the stuff that nightmares were made of, not just for me, but for the parents of the screaming infant on the last and longest leg of my flight, eight hours. Scientific fun fact: noise-canceling headphones, general engine drone, and two orange juices with a liberal nip of vodka, okay two nips, have zero effect on the piercing wails of a determined infant.

I landed in Oahu and immediately my suspicions were confirmed that Hawaii was exactly as I had imagined, just like Jurassic Park, misty and densely populated with ferns. I fervently prayed that one of the large cargo crates would crack open and forth would spring a raptor to devour the parents who thought it would be a good idea to bring a screaming infant on an eight hour flight from Portland to Honolulu. But alas, no dinos. Moreover, the sky was gray and drizzly, not exactly heartening.

That Saturday night I stayed in Honolulu, which sad to say, looked a lot like the financial district of Boston. Pearl & Francis put its interns up in one of the hotels in the area so that one could get one’s bearings and figure out where to go for work on Monday. As I laid there in the darkness of the cool room, I wondered if I hadn’t just made a huge mistake. I was feeling incredibly homesick, disheartened by the rain, and exhausted from the trip.

The next morning, I awoke and the sun was shining. I showered and took a cab to Waikiki to discover that I was going to be living a block and a half from its most famous beach.

The Ohana West Waikiki was a large hotel with palm tree décor and coral-print carpeting. It smelled of coconut tanning oil. My room was on a floor with a recreation room where I can look down and see the sparkling rooftop pool. My balcony, or lanai as it is called out here, overlooks the Denny’s and Miramark hotel. If I craned my head to the left I can see the hotel bar. Things were looking up.

I threw on some shorts and a tank top and went out to investigate. I first wandered down Kuhio Avenue and into the International Market Place, or rather, I got lost in the market place, looking for the path that purportedly led to the street the beach was on, but instead I kept coming out to a koi pond. The koi were fat and jolly and fun to look at it. Plus I could always spear and eat one if I couldn’t find my way out of the market place.

Eventually I found a food court, where I discovered one of many heavens on earth. Enter the Dole whip. Dole whip is like dairy whip except without the dairy, instead it’s made from fruit. It sounds…weird…but it tastes delicious. So I got a pineapple dole whip, for sustenance, just in case I never made it back to my hotel or found the beach, and explored the jewelry stands with shining pearls and polished jade necklaces where the vendors were trying to good-naturedly muscle you into purchasing their wares. Okay, they weren’t so much good-natured as more like seagulls fighting over clams on the beach.

I wandered into a clothing store, initially looking for a fun beach towel, when I saw a rack of string bikinis, their strings swaying in the gentle breeze. I looked around, suddenly feeling guilty. My mother was not the hugest fan of string bikinis. Of course, my mother wasn’t here, and besides, I’d never even tried one on. I grabbed a rebellious armful, gave the girl a hopeful smile and headed for the curtained-off dressing area.

Miracles of all miracles, I found one. I actually found a white string bikini that fit me and looked good on me. The tag said it was made with Aloha. I purchased it, glancing around me as if my mother might pop out at any second and demand I put it back. My first day on Oahu and I was already turning into a rebel.

Eventually I did find the exit and headed down the main boulevard that runs parallel to Waikiki Beach. On my left were high end shops, like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, interspersed with local places like Honolulu Cookie Company, Hawaiian boutiques and ABC stores, which I found out later, are located on every block and sell everything from fresh fruit to cigars and Hawaiian-themed prophylactics (think big kahuna and coconut themes).

And to my right was the beach.

I crossed the wide street, Kalakaua Avenue, the beach was thin and narrow with light colored sand interspersed with sparse patches of green and palm trees. The beach itself is only about two miles long. Its name means fresh spouting water. Or as some natives will tell you, swamp. At one end reigned Diamond Head and Kapiolani Park. Diamond Head was a large volcanic crater that looks out over the ocean. It was so strange to see something so looming and green, rising above the hotels.

At the other end lay the equally famous hotels, the Moana Surfrider, the oldest hotel first built in 1901, and the Royal Hawaiian, or the pink hotel. Wikipedia told me that Waikiki Beach was a once a playground for Hawaiian royalty and still played host to the rich and famous. I did my best Robin Leach in my head and snickered.

The beach was crowed and the scene was exactly what you'd expect, tans running the gamut from pink and painfully blotchy to perfectly bronzed, the air smelling faintly of sweat and coconut sunscreen. There was beach volley and surf board rentals and umbrellas staked askance in the sand, children splashing in the surf and sunbathers stretched out to greet the sun.

I sat on a green, manicured hump of short grass and watched the ocean sparkling in the sun. Children were swimming and teenagers were paddling out on their surfboards. I blinked. It was November and I was sitting in shorts on a beach. I sat here for some time contemplating my incredible good fortune. Ben had been right. This was the best decision I’d made in awhile.

To my right I saw a large statute of a man with outstretched arms and nothing on but swimming trunks, standing tall with a surfboard behind him. There were violet and white leis draped from his arms and everyone with a camera was stopping here for a picture. This had to be the famous Duke Kahanamoku statute. The Duke was a local legend, a swimming prodigy, Hollywood actor and modern father of surfing. There was a restaurant further down on the beach named for him and the tour book I’d purchased told me this was a not to miss spot for something called Hula Pie. I didn’t know what that was, but I was planning to find out.

After sitting for awhile, I headed left toward Diamond Head. I came to a little outside enclosure, nothing special to draw the eye, four granite posts and a roof, it was what was going on beneath it that drew me in: chess. Chess played by locals, bent over their boards intent and oblivious to surf and vacationers all around them. I stood there transfixed, watching a bare-chested older fellow in a wispy strawhat battling a younger, mustached man. The youngster didn’t have a chance, strawhat had him boxed into a corner with his queen and rook. Checkmate was only a matter of time.

I know what you’re thinking, tropical paradise, tan guys playing volley ball with no shirts, sun-speckled waves and warm sand, and what grabbed my undivided attention was chess?

In my defense, I never claimed to be cool.

“You play?” A woman with creases in her face but jet black hair approached me me. She was wearing a sun-faded sarong wrapped neatly around her tan, thin frame.
I nodded. “I’m not very good.” An entirely true statement. My Dad taught me to play when I was younger and though I’d never taken a single game off him, I planned on waiting until he was very old and dribbly, preferably mentally deficient, and then I would pounce. He’d still probably beat me, but at least the odds will be more level. My problem is, I’m rash and don’t think enough moves in advance and chess demands that you think ahead.

The woman smiled and patted her satchel. “You play me. Young people, they don’t play chess anymore. But we play.”

I felt like the untalented female version of that kid in that movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer” when he finds Laurence Fishburne playing chess in the park. My loss in all three games was swift and merciless, but, we’re outside playing chess, and this was very exciting for me, to play chess in Hawaii. The woman seemed to like me and she invited me back to play next week at this time.

I wanted to try my hand at tanning so I headed back to the hotel and changed into my string bikini. You laugh, but, I’m not a great tanner. It’s not just that I’m fair skinned. It’s been drilled into me, and rightfully so, that skin cancer is a terrible way to die young, and so I’m a bit zealous with sun screen. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever actually used a tanning product. And despite my enthusiastic use of sunscreen, I have just three hues: corpse white, shiny burnt red, and peeling reddish fade to tan. So when I said, I was giving it a try, I meant it.
The other problem, I guess, was that I just couldn’t lie there and do nothing, and reading was difficult because of the glare and uncomfortable positions. Sure you can read on your tummy, but not so much on your back. Enter the i-pod audio book. So I laid there on Waikiki beach, losing track of the hours and listening to Bill Bryson explain the history of everything.

At some point, I was vaguely aware that the sun would be setting soon. I gathered up my belongings, shook the sand off me as best I could and headed back down the beach where I came across a hula demonstration on the beach. One of the hotels sponsored a show several times a week that featured a different Hawaii story. Today’s legend centered around a young girl who wanted to marry a guy below her caste and so she went off looking for some spirit in the forest and danced for him so that the spirit would let her marry beneath her. Yes, I realized that I butchered the poetics of the story, but I’d gone and gotten lost in the dance and music. The hula was at times violent, fervent and sad and swaying at others. I couldn’t take my eyes off the dancers’ tiny bare feet making soft thuds in the grass. But people began murmuring around me, turning their heads over their shoulders and I followed their gaze: the orange colored sun was sinking over a calm, dark blue sea, and it was smearing the sky red and pink as it sank. I’d never seen a sunset like this one before.

This was my first day in Waikiki and already I’d seen more things in a single day that made me smile, than I’d seen in a whole quarter back in school. Still, as happy as I was, I was also a little nervous. Tomorrow was my first day at Pearl & Francis.

Chapter 2: Aloha, Boston

The night before I left, Annie and Ben threw me a going away party at Punters which could only be called epic. Annie had convinced Steve to let her decorate the bar with cut outs of palm trees and hula girls and plastic flamingos. I wasn’t sure what plastic flamingos had to do with Hawaii, but they sure looked cool. She had set the dress code as tacky Hawaiian.

I myself was adorned in three dozen plastic leis, a coconut bra, and a grass skirt, all thankfully, on the outside of a little black dress. I hadn’t show up like this. This may come as a shock, but I didn’t own a coconut bra. When I arrived at Punters Ben had handed me a plastic bag when I walked in and said something to the effect that I had to put all this on or I’d be thrown out, which I seriously doubted since we were in the middle of a Noreaster. There was already four inches of snow on the ground, but still my friends came out in droves. So because I have no shame, I put the outfit on and then as each guest came in, they got to lei me. More often than not a friend would ask whether I knew that Aloha means ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’? I did know that, actually. I had now become proficient enough about my new home to know that. I had gone beyond two sentences of knowledge. Thanks to Wikipedia, I was at least up to eight and feeling pretty good.

“What’ll be, Cassie?” Steve asked. “Your drinks are on the house all night and we made you up something special.” He gestured to a pitcher full of something the color of tidy bowl.

“Aww, thanks, Steve. I’ll take that blue stuff.” I tried to not sound doubtful. I’d never drank anything the color of toilet bowl cleaner before, but deep down I trusted Steve.

“It’s a blue Hawaiian.”

It tasted like tidy bowl.

“So, I hear you’re off to Hawaii. Which island?”

“Oahu.” Although a month ago, I could not have told you this. I, of course, thought I was on the island of Hawaii. Then after that, I believed I was on the island of Honolulu. Finally, I looked at a map and determined that while there was an island called Hawaii (also know as “Big Island”), I was not on this island. I was on Oahu on which the capital of Hawaii, Honolulu, was located. This should demonstrate just how little I initially knew about the place I’d be living for the next three months.

“Oh that’s great! Wife and I spent a bit of time on Kauai. If you get a chance you should get out there. That and Big Island. Go see the volcanoes.”

Although I had already planned to go to Big Island to see volcanoes, I mentally added Kauai to my list of islands. I could take or leave Maui, Lanai was small, Molokai had been a lepers colony and Ni’ihau was forbidden to tourists and all other outsiders. “Will do, Steve.”

“If you do get out that way on Kauai, you gotta try this place, Scotty’s.”

“Scotty’s, right!” When bartenders recommend bars or restaurants, you go to them. That’s the rule.

Ben came around to my left and slid a friendly arm around my waist, “how it’s hanging, Cass Master?”

Ben had a lot of stupid nicknames for me, this one I particularly loathed. “Thanks for putting this together with Annie. It’s…” I gestured around the room where my friends were drinking tidy bowl beverages and dressed in bad Hawaiian print shirts… “like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“Well, I wanted to have a proper send off. Long flights are always better when you’re hung over. That and I’m gonna miss you.”

“Oh so you did grow some chick parts,” I teased.

“Something like that.” His eyes lit on a girl from our Corporate Tax class who was dressed in a mini that had a sunset on it. I didn’t even know you could get a mini skirt with a sunset on it. Clearly, I was not shopping at the right places. He drifted away giving a whole new meaning to the expression, skirt chaser. I smiled, I’m not sure I’d have had Ben any other way.

My cell rang and I checked it, I was relieved that it was my parents and not Tucker. I stepped outside to take it. Around me the snowflakes were falling hard and relentless. There were not the big soft fluffy flakes of that Bing Crosby sang about. These snowflakes meant business.

“Hi, Mom!”

“Oh hi, sweetie. I just wanted to check to see if there was anything you needed before you go.”

“Nope,” I said and braced myself. My mother was an Olympic-caliber worrier so I was prepared for the barrage of questions that were to follow.

“And you got all your shots?”

“Yup.”

“And you have the address of where you’re living.”

“Yup.”

“What about money, did you get traveler’s checks? Change your money?”

“Mom, Hawaii is a state. You don’t change money. They use dollars like us.”

“And Annie is going to take you to the airport?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s okay with that? Because otherwise, your father and I can come get you.”

“Nope, I’m good.”

There was a pause. “Ohhhh, my little girl is all grown up and going to Hawaii. We’re so proud of you, baby girl.” I smiled. You gotta let your mom do these things. She birthed you after all. However, I was starting to freeze out here and when I looked down, although I wasn’t entirely sure, I think the dye from the grass skirt was streaking my legs green.”

“I love you, I’ll call when I get there,” I promised.

I stepped back inside and listened to Elvis singing Blue Hawaii on the jukebox. Oh that Steve. No sooner had I stepped back into the main room of the bar when Annie made her way over with someone in tow. “This is Kai,” she said cheerfully.

I stuck out my hand eagerly. “Cassie,” I said, though I knew who he was. Kai Rogers was the other student who would be going to Hawaii with me. Pearl & Francis had a practice of taking two third year students each quarter, but they’d taken a chance on Kai, a second year, because he was from the island and I’m guessing, because he was no slouch in the academics department either. “So, happy to be going home?”

Kai smiled, big and wide. He was tall, but not overly so, with naturally tan skin and dark hair. He was absolutely adorable. “Definitely,” he said and pulled out his cell. “Give me your number, so you can call me when you get there. I can show you around. My parents want to have you over for dinner when you’re up for it. I was thinking the second night we’re there. Do you have a place to stay?”

I nodded gently. We were leaving tomorrow. I didn’t intend to live in a box under a palm tree. “I’m living at the Ohana in Waikiki.”

“Really?” His almond colored eyes went wide. “The hotel?”

I explained to him the troubles I’d run into with finding an apartment lease for three months and then I stumbled across this great deal where you could live in student housing at the Ohana. Better still, included with my rent was weekly roomservice, all utilities, and a super sweet cable package.

“Wow,” Kai said appreciatively. “My mom was going to make up the guest bedroom for you, as long as you wanted it.”

“Oh,” I said a little puzzled, wondered if he were being genuine. He sure seemed it. What a nice thing to do for a stranger. “That’s so sweet of you,” I said and I meant it. I had a feeling I was really going to like Kai.

I noticed that more than a couple of my friends were checking Kai out. Or maybe it was because he was wearing the only Hawaiian print shirt that looked good. I gave him the once over as subtly as possible. Yup, Kai was definitely a good looking guy.

“Well, give me a call when you land. I’d sure like to pick your brain on what it’s like to work for a big firm. I mean, I heard you’re going to Boulder, that’s amazing. Maybe you can give me some hints.”

Then it occurred to me. “Is this your first co-op?”

“It is.”

Wow, Kai certainly had his work cut out for him. My first co-op had been with a judge, whose clerk had patiently nurtured us and worked with us on legal research and memos. I couldn’t imagine being dropped into a firm my first time out. “If you show me around Oahu, I’ll show you around a law office,” I offered.

“You got yourself a deal,” he said and gave me that dazzling smile again. Wow for the second time, apparently the dentistry in Hawaii was really top notch.

When he had gone off to the bar, Annie arched her eyebrows. “He’s cute.” After a non-committal shrug on my part, she said, “well if you don’t want him, put in a good word for me when I come out.” She scanned the room. “No Tucker, huh?”

I shook my head.

“Excellent,” she said brightly, “let’s get you another drink!”

That quickly grew into a reoccurring theme on the night. When the tidy bowl mixture ran out Steve made something yellow and fruity. And then I drank four more of these.

The night wore on, the pile of leis grew thicker, and sometime a little after two in the morning, Tucker texted me, asking if I wanted to hang out before I left, like maybe right now. In a moment of rare good judgment under the influence, I ignored it. Soon after that Annie took me home. I woke up the next morning wearing nothing but leis and the imprint of grass skirt on my face. Class, class, class.

*****