Haole Wood (19 page)

“Anything?” He grinned at me. “Now I know why the Boss gets so hot and bothered over all the plea bargains his flock tries to make. What do you mean, you will do anything? Say ten Hail Marys? Not eat baloney on Fridays? How about giving up all contact with Dr. Jac?”

I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was serious. “Sure. Yes. Fine, I’ll never see or talk to Jac again. Now tell me, who did it?” My heart speeded up as if I were watching an episode of
Amazing Race
and a team I didn’t like headed for first place.

He held his hand out to me. As I went to take it he whipped it away. “Psyche. I do not have that kind of power. Do you really think that by not following some human emotion or not giving into some human frailty you will unlock secrets of the universe? I cannot give you answers like that. That would be cheating, like skipping to the last page of a book to figure out what happens.” He looked at me. “It would be like going on the internet to find out who wins some reality show before you sit through the two-hour finale.”

I became super interested in steeping my tea. “Who would do such things?” I said quietly, my back turned away from him so he couldn’t see my face. I guessed he could see right through me, because he laughed, and not in a ha ha you’re so cute and funny way.

He agreed. “Yes, it is more of an I caught you red-handed way.”

I slammed my mug of tea on the counter. “I can’t believe I was willing to deal with you. My grandmother is probably going to be given a trial date for murder in less than forty-eight hours. Her attorney told me that means they’ll probably revoke her bail and send her back to jail until her trial. Why won’t you help me? You’ve got to be here for a reason. Surely, you are supposed to do good deeds?”

He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “
Supposed
is such a strange word.”

“Well? Are you or aren’t you supposed to do good here? And why can I see you? I thought we weren’t supposed to see our guardian angels?”

“Technically, you’re not.”

“So?”

“So,” he stared at me and folded his hands and looked like he was preparing to recite a speech. “It is my mission to ensure the life path progression through guidance and compassion, protecting and ushering the sublunary organism into a higher-energy dimension of the cosmos while not interfering with individual choice,” he said in a singsong voice, like he had been forced to memorize it, like the “Pledge of Allegiance” or “Gettysburg Address.” “Even if said unit is making unfathomable choices,” he added.

“Nice talk,” I said. “You kiss the ring of the Supreme Being with that mouth?”

He chortled. Literally, the folds of his skin slapped together like a shuffling deck of cards.

“If you are my Guardian Angel, what am I to you? What do you call me? Am I your client? Customer?”

“Honey-Girl, I am just playing with you. At least you have a good sense of humor.”

“Is that anything like having a nice personality?”

He nodded. “It does get you more bonus points.”

“So, tell me, what do you call us?”

His dimples invited me to smile along, then he ducked his head. “I cannot tell you.”

“’Cause then you’d have to kill me? Well, you’ve pretty much killed my chances for a happily ever after. What’s the big secret?”

He folded his arms. “You asked.” He looked upward. “She asked,” he spoke to the ceiling. “WTFs. We call you WTFs.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Right?” He laughed. “You have to admit, that is amusing.”

“I’ll bite. What does it stand for?”

He cocked his head and looked at me kindly.

“Knock it off. I know what it means here on earth. What I want to know is your definition.”

“Ah, we are just having a good time. We call you WTFs because it stands for warm-blooded temporal forms.”

“Thanks. I think.”

He inclined his head.

“So, everyone has a guardian angel?”

“Of course. Who knows where all the WTFs would be without us.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not in all that great of a place right now.”

“Maui?”

“Please. You know what I mean.”

“You WTFs all put on such a good show. You have no idea the hours of entertainment you provide.” He smiled, looking very pleased with himself. “The struggle for you all to understand what is of true value, when it’s right there in front of your face, inside that little-bitty space.” He tapped his forehead. “You just are. So just be.”

“Gee, thanks. Will you tell me your name?”

“You really want to know?”

“Of course. I always like to formally name my hallucinations.” I waited but he didn’t say anything.

My nose twitched, then tingled. I sniffed the air and furrowed my brows. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Smells good, huh?”

“Yeah, really good. I don’t get it.”

“That’s my name.”

“Your name is a smell?”

He nodded. “I knew you would not get it.”

“I get it. Your ID is associated with a scent.”

“What does it smell like?”

“I have no idea.” I sniffed and sniffed. I lifted my head trying to take in the aroma. “I can’t tell. I don’t recognize it. It’s not bad.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t say it was perfume or anything.” I sniffed again. “It’s different. What is it?”

“Actually, it’s pretty common. I just amped it up so your brain could register it. There are millions of smells, but you sample maybe ten thousand or so.”

“Why aren’t I more frightened?” I shook out my hair and couldn’t help smiling at him.

“What did you feel when you smelled my name?”

“That I wished I could spell it, perhaps.”

“Tell me. Describe how you felt.”

I shut my eyes and smelled for his name again. I couldn’t identify it. I couldn’t say, “Oh, that’s lavender, or cinnamon, or wet dog.”

“No,” he interrupted me. “How do you feel? Shut your eyes again.”

I inhaled and pretended I was at yoga, trying to meditate. My mind was blank. Nothing going on here. I exhaled. Hm. I breathed in again. I started to feel safe. I felt as if I was connected, to something. I strained to feel more. If I had to guess, I’d say it felt something like a glimmer of the tiniest version of an emotion that might border on—

“Say it,” he said. “Admit it.”

I opened my eyes and shrugged my shoulders. “Fine. I get your name.”

“Say it.”

“Whatever.”

“Out loud.”

“Stop it.”

“I can do other smells,” he warned me. “You should smell my buddy’s name.”

I started to smirk but the
irk
fell right off my face as the stench hit me. I doubled over as vomitous fumes of decay assailed me, robbing me of any ability to beg him to stop. My knees hit the floor as my hands covered my face, trying to block out the gross foulness. Just as suddenly, it was gone, replaced with my guardian angel’s scent. It smelled like warm milk, fresh, pure, white, frothy perfectly steamed milk. I felt like a newborn baby, snuggled by my mother. I dropped my hands and took in a gulping breath.

“You smell like warm milk. You smell like hope. Satisfied?”

“Very. Thank you.”

“Milk Man,” I said, standing up. “I know your name, just not your job description. I haven’t seen any guidance from you. What am I supposed to be doing? Where’s the help? I’m asking you.”

He blew a rude raspberry noise. “Girl. We all have our gifts. Some just open them later than others.”

You suck, I thought.

“I heard that,” he said. He laughed and faded from sight as my grandmother came into the kitchen. The whiff of hope granted by my guardian angel helped me focus. It was time I took matters into my own hands.

“Halmoni, everything is going to work out.”

I made a face, both at the disappearing mirage and at the taste of my tea. “Morning,” I greeted her. “I’ve made you some tea.”

“Not that,” she said, dumping the contents of her cup down the drain. She got out a different canister of herbs and opened up her silver tea infuser.

“Sorry. I’ve got a lot to learn.” I watched as she chose herbs for this particular day’s breakfast brew. She used a fistful of what looked exactly like the mulch from my dad’s garden back home. I smelled a hint of lemon with a waft of chamomile. I thought she added an extra dollop of ginseng to my infusion. “Thanks, Halmoni. I can use all the help I can get.”

After tea, she pulled out the big kettle again and set it to boiling with the kukui nut oil concoction to soak and seal in sun protection into the fabric for the wraps.

We finished breakfast together. I ate a huge plate of fried rice with ketchup. It was just about eight o’clock when I heard voices bubbling up to the house. It was my team.

“Aloha, good morning,” Lois called out, letting herself inside. She carried a big, white sewing machine. “I’m going to go set this down,” she called out as she headed down the hall.

I offered them all tea and breakfast, but they said they already ate and wanted to get down to business. “We’re going to cut the patterns first, so your grandmother can steep the needed pieces,” Lois said. She and Maria began pinning newspaper to the fabric.

The day flew by. I played the roll of supervisor-slash-tea server. I helped my grandmother hang the fabric out to dry, ironed the material so Lois and Mary could sew it, and helped clean up the scraps—all the while wondering if this was going to be a wild Hawaiian nene goose chase.

I took a break in the living room. I needed to come up with a promotion sign. Hollywood Haute, I wrote on the notepad, underlining it twice. “Sun protective resort wear for sensitive skin.” It was long-winded, but said what I wanted to say. I hoped we weren’t overpricing the sunshminas, but Diane, who seemed to be a good businesswoman, didn’t have any problem. I could only hope that other tourists would feel the same way. I needed to earn some money and had no idea how long I was going to be stuck in Maui.

If I learned anything at all from that goober guardian angel of mine, I thought, it was that this was where I was supposed to be, for now. I felt so connected to Halmoni, I couldn’t leave her if I tried. I was so afraid they were going to send her back to jail, and then to trial. But I would do what I could to take care of her. I could imagine my guardian angel wanting me to thank Halmoni for allowing me to do a good deed or something.

Besides, it’s not like I had a job to go back to. It’s just all the uncertainties were beginning to get to me. I tugged on a strand of hair.

I waited for Jac to call, hoping he would let me know if he found out the test results from the fabric. Actually, I hoped he would just call anyway. He could tell me anything he liked. I tried not to daydream about being married to a husband who looked a lot like Jac, with a baby, (ditto the part about looking like Jac), in a quaint old house that I decorated, complete with a window seat with big plump cushions, upholstered in an old-fashioned aubergine velvet fabric.

“Hey,” Shayna interrupted. She walked down the hallway and stared at me for a few seconds before saying anything. “Looks like you’re out of sequins.”

I looked at her, my head tilted. “Out of the mouths of babes,” I said. I patted the couch. Shayna flopped down onto the cushion next to me.

“I feel like my whole life is out of sequence,” I told her. “When I was your age, I thought once I was a grown up I would have everything figured out. Well, that didn’t happen when I was twenty, and it still hasn’t happened and I’m already thirty. I thought I’d be wiser by now.” I patted her knee before she jerked it away.

“One week ago, my life was smooth sailing, you know?” I continued. “Pretty great, now that I think of it. I had the best job in the world and it seemed like I was on course for getting exactly where I wanted to be.”

Shayna nodded the nod of not wanting to upset the crazy person.

I loved my relationship with Shayna. There I was, thinking she thought of me as a mentor, and she was actually teaching me a little something. “I guess we are all so busy looking up and down and all around, and checking back on our past and wondering where we made mistakes, then busy day dreaming about the future, to say nothing about comparing ourselves to how well our friends are doing, that we miss what we are supposed to be doing.” I felt very smell-the-roses virtuous as I looked out the window and admired the orange and purple birds of paradise. “Sometimes the answer is right in front of us.” My smile was bigger than Shayna’s scowl.

“My life has been flipped upside down. You are so right, Shayna. I am out of sequence. I need to figure out what is most important and work on that.” I smiled at her again, but stopped myself from ruffling her hair. What a great kid. “How did you get to be so smart?”

“No. Really. You’re out of sequins,” Shayna said. She held up a small plastic package that had only four scattered pink plastic sequins inside.

“Right. I’ll just go get more sequins.” I stood up and grabbed my grandmother’s car keys. While I’m at it, maybe I should look for my sequence, too.

Late that afternoon, Lois called me into the steaming back bedroom. Five industrious women and a teenager on a mission created a miracle. “Here,” Lois said, handing me a tissue wrapped, ironed and folded sunshmina. “We’re finished. We made all twenty. Your sunshminas. By Hollywood.”

“Oh,” I said, crinkling the tissue paper. The rest of the sunshminas lay folded neatly on my grandmother’s couch. Tears filled my eyes as I shook out the red fabric wrap. “It’s exquisite,” I said. The jade beads threaded with sequins clicked as I tossed it over my shoulders, the fabric floating for a split second before draping over my body. I edged sideways to look in the mirror. In the reflection I could see the still, smooth faces gathered behind me, waiting to be invited to smile.

“Beautiful,” I stroked the fabric. They finally smiled. “You have all done such an amazing job. I can’t believe you finished already.” I fingered the seam. “The workmanship is so fine.” I looked up at them. “Thank you.” I reached for Lois’s hand, who frowned but let me squeeze her palm. “Thank you so much. You are incredible.”