Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink (27 page)

We head out past the exhausted families in their Hawaiian shirts and Crocs as well as the deliriously happy new couples waiting for the shuttles to their rental cars, and over to a parking lot surrounded by bright green palm trees in contrast to the black asphalt of the parking lot and streets. Outside, the air feels warm and … misty almost. Not humid exactly, just misty. Plus, it smells like flowers. This is, seriously, the strangest airport I’ve ever been in. Good strange, but strange.

“Do all of the Hawaiian airports look like this?” I ask as we get to Jeff’s bright red Mercedes convertible.

“No. They all look different,” he tells me as he throws my suitcase into the trunk. “When you land at the Big Island, the airport is built on top of old, black volcanic flows, so it looks like you’ve landed on the moon. In Honolulu, it looks like San Diego with flowers. Kauai is so green, you’d swear dinosaurs will come up and nuzzle you at baggage claim.”

As we climb into our seats, I see a pink bakery box on my passenger seat. “What’s this?”

Jeff smiles. “Cupcakes. Open it.”

I sit down and put the box on my lap. I open the box to see two cupcakes: one slathered with white frosting, the other with beige, each with a small, white ribbon poking out. “What did you do?”

“Pull one.”

“Which one? Didn’t you rig them?”

“Because that’s gone so swimmingly when Nic does it?” Jeff asks.

I debate which cupcake to pick. Left? Right? Left? Right? “Are they both the same flavors?”

“No. One’s lilikoi with a vanilla frosting, the other’s chocolate with a salted caramel frosting.”

“Lilikoi?”

“Passion fruit. Local flavor. You’ll hate it.”

I smile—he totally rigged this. I take the chocolate one, as he knew I would, and pull out my charm. I don’t recognize it. I put it in my mouth, lick off the cake, and look again. It’s a silver charm of a Hawaiian shirt. “I’ve never seen this charm before. What does it represent?”

“It means your future is in Hawaii. Wait … What a coincidence!” He puts up his hands and makes a show of presenting the area. “And here you are!”

I smile. “You’re awesome.” I take a bite of my cupcake. “But what if I had chosen the other one?”

“You can pull it and find out if you want to.”

“No, I don’t want to take your cupcake.”

“I didn’t say you could have my cupcake,” Jeff says immediately, “but you can have the charm.”

Curious, I pull the ribbon out of the top of Jeff’s cupcake to see a silver charm covered in cake, which I lick off. “Ick.”

“I told you, you wouldn’t like it.”

I look at the charm, which is a Hawaiian flower. “It’s beautiful. But what if I had picked this one?”

“Then congratulations! That charm means your future is in Hawaii! Now give me my cupcake.”

Jeff winks at me as he puts down the top on his car. Within a few minutes, we have pulled out of the airport and are driving from Kahului Airport down to Kihei, on the southwest side of the island, about half an hour away.

You know that awful drive you have to take from the airport into the city—no matter where the airport is or which city you’ve traveled to? There’s no such thing in Maui. There are no million-lane freeways or highways anywhere on the island, and the drive out of the town of Kahului is stunning.

Soon we are on the Mokulele Highway South, which is all of two lanes, and we are speeding past sugarcane fields on both sides of us, their green stalks swaying in the breeze. Above one sugarcane field is a rainbow that spans a full half circle, from one side of the field to the other. I have never seen a rainbow that complete. If someone had put a picture of this on their Facebook page, I would have assumed it was photoshopped.

And then we get to ocean. Stunningly blue ocean.

I spend most of our journey pretty much repeating different combinations of the same three phrases: “Wow”; “Oh my God”; and “That’s beautiful.”

When Jeff makes a left onto South Kihei Road, we begin driving through the town of Kihei. On my right side is nothing but ocean. “Do you live close to the beach?” I ask.

“Several blocks up. But I’m on a hill, so there’s a nice view of the water from most of the rooms in the house. My bar is about a half mile away from the house, on the bottom of the hill. It’s right across the street from the beach, so the views on our lanai are pretty spectacular. Since your plane was so late, I need to drop you off at home, then race over to go open. I can come pick you up in a few hours if you want to see the bar.”

“No, no. I want to come with you to Male ‘Ana now,” I say excitedly, beaming as I grab his shoulder lightly.

“You want to go with me to work? Why? Aren’t you exhausted?”

“Nope. Got my fifth wind. I mean, look at this place!” I say, catching the wave of an adrenaline rush from my new adventure. “Plus, your idea of work is my idea of fun. Oh,
and
you’ve promised me a Lava Flow and a money-tree cocktail!”

“There’s no such thing.”

“You could just invent one,” I point out, having given this a lot of thought.

Because he totally could. Jeff’s bar “specializes” in signature honeymoon drinks, each of which supposedly brings good luck to one of seven areas of married life: love, romance, riches, health, luck, happiness, and fertility. I put air quotes around “specialize” because the drinks actually have nothing to do with Hawaiian fortune-telling, divination, or luck of any kind. They are just different concoctions Jeff made up over the years when he bartended to pay his way through college. He took his most popular love potions from that time, dubbed them
lama pa’ipa’i
(which is the Hawaiian word for “cocktail”), put them on his bar menu, then poured them into inexpensive souvenir glasses for newlywed couples to take back to the mainland.

Jeff calls the drinks “a bar version of fortune cookies.” I call them marketing genius. Couples bring home the glasses, which not only become sentimental keepsakes from their trip, but conversation pieces with friends, family, and future honeymooners. The couples happily gush about the place and send their honeymooning friends, who come to drink and take more glasses home, and the cycle continues on in perpetuity.

“Come on,” I badger Jeff. “You invent new drinks all the time. This could be your mai tai. What about something with Midori?”

Jeff furrows his brows at me. “You hate Midori.”

“It’s taking perfectly good liquor and mucking it up with melon. Can you blame me?” I watch as Jeff makes a left turn into a parking lot surrounding a huge thatched hut. “Wow. Is this it?”

“This is it,” he says, slowly passing the bar and parking his car in the back.

“It looks like a tiki lounge,” I say, surprised. Which is true—it’s basically a giant building made to look like a Pacific-island hut, composed of bamboo, straw, reeds, and dried palm-tree leaves, and dripping with lush tropical greenery and flowers. Replace the parking lot with the Pacific Ocean, and you’d have an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora.

“What did you think it was going to look like? A space station?”

“No, no. It’s just, if I were to imagine what the perfect bar in Hawaii would look like, I would pretty much picture this.”

“Well, good. If you think that looks tropical, wait until you see the inside.”

The two of us head inside, and I feel as if I have died and gone to heaven the moment we walk through the door. The walls are covered in rattan matting and bamboo. The tables and bartop are glass, but under each glass is a thatch table skirt. The stools and chairs are all wicker and painted bright colors. Tiki masks, statues, and totems dot the bar throughout. I pick up a mask that looks sort of like a scary God smiling at me and exclaim, “This is amazing.”

“Do you like it?” Jeff asks me proudly. “Every wood piece you see here is hand-carved by a local artist. And check out this sign.” He walks behind the bar to show me a large sign that says
ALOHA! HERE, YOU’RE OHANA!
“This was made of Hawaiian driftwood.”

“
Ohana
means ‘family,’ right?”

“I see you’ve watched
Lilo and Stitch
. Yes. Three words you need to know here”:
Ohana, aloha,
which means both ‘hello’ and ‘good-bye’ and can also mean ‘I love you,’ and
mahalo,
which means ‘thank you.’”

“Mahalo. I can’t thank you enough for inviting me.”

Jeff smiles. “No mahalo to you. I love having my ohana around.” He then takes my hand and leads me outside. “You have to check out the lanai.”

The outside area, which most Hawaiians call the lanai, is a dark blue wooden deck surrounded by palm trees, other kinds of pointy, green trees, and a myriad of colorful flowers. Bordering the deck in a perfect line every ten feet or so is one of my favorite things in the world …

“You have tiki torches!” I squeal in delight as I run up to one. “Can we light them?” I put up my hands in prayer. “Please, please, please.”

Jeff seems almost charmed by my reaction. “Most of the restaurants and bars in Hawaii have torches. It’s part of daily life here. And we can, but not until dusk. We actually make a bit of a ceremony of it here.”

“Like a religious ceremony?”

“More like a ‘Give everyone in the bar a shot of something tropical, compliments of the house, pick something fun on the jukebox, and get the party started’ kind of ceremony.”

“You have a jukebox?” I ask, amused. “Please tell me there’s no ’N Sync or One Direction on your jukebox.”

“I’m gay, not a thirteen-year-old girl. Actually, the box has a theme—come see.” He takes my hand again and leads me back into the bar.

On one side of the wall is the jukebox, lit up with colored neon lights, and decorated with thatched reeds and tiny, carved tiki gods. Jeff shows me the music choices. “I burned all of the CDs it plays from my computer, and I only give people three choices: romantic first-dance songs to remind them of their wedding; Hawaiian music, because, really, there’s no way around that; and every song ever recorded by the Beatles.”

“Huh. I never knew the Beatles were known for weddings.”

“They’re not—they’re just awesome.”

I look at some of the selections, which include everything from “What a Wonderful World” to Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One.” I notice song D-4. “Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ cannot be a first-dance song.”

“Actually, it was. I only have songs customers danced their first dance to. But I must admit, several of those songs also fall into a secret last category, which I like to call ‘Get the drunk couple to start slow-dancing in my bar while I sell them two more twenty-dollar drinks, then call them a cab.”

I flip the pages of the songbook and continue perusing. C-1 is a classic. “The acoustic version of ‘Layla’ by Clapton. Nice…” Beneath that, I am surprised by selection C-2. “You have ‘Wonderful Tonight’ on here?”

“Of course. Classic first dance. But mostly it’s a tribute to you. Don’t you remember? It was playing during the first slow dance we ever had back in college.”

I feel horrible. After everything that had happened with Jay in the past few weeks, I had completely forgotten about that dance with Jeff. We had been dating about a month. He’s the reason I didn’t make out with Jay that weekend in college—I didn’t have time for a fantasy, I was too busy being happy in a real relationship. “That’s very sweet of you to remember. Thank you,” I say, touched. “Hey, you wanna dance?”

“Aw, sweetie, I can’t right now. We open in less than an hour, one of my bartenders just quit so I’m down a guy, and I have to start prepping. But we can later tonight.”

“I would be honored.” I clap my hands once. “So what can I do to help?”

“Nothing. You’d be bored out of your mind. I’m just going to be cutting up fruit, loading up ice, restocking wine bottles—nothing exciting.”

“Remember how we always had the rule that if either of us ever came to a party early, we’d put each other to work getting ready?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I’m here early, aren’t I?” I say excitedly.

Jeff considers my point. He shrugs. “If you want to help me, I will always take the help.”

And I am excited—this will be fun. I follow Jeff behind the bar. I have not been behind a bar since I was a little sister at Jeff’s fraternity in college, helping them serve drinks at their annual Pirate Party.

“Okay, we’ll start with the fruit. See these trays?” Jeff asks, pointing to three plastic fruit trays. “They need to be filled throughout the night with lemons, limes, cherries, and twists of orange. So we need to cut them up and have them ready for opening.”

“Cool.”

Jeff hands me a sharp eight-inch knife, and I begin slicing limes while he starts working on lemons.

Cut, cut, cut … I sure like the sound the knife makes when it hits the plastic cutting board, and the scent of the fresh lime juice smells like a bubble bath. Who knew something as simple as slicing limes could be so relaxing and good for the soul? As I continue to slice, I realize that it’s been a long time since I worked with my hands. I normally go from teaching math and grading papers all day to a home of television and microwave dinners at night. I don’t cook, I zap. I pretty much stopped cooking after I broke up with my boyfriend. Without an audience to appreciate my efforts, there was no point.

But clearly there was a point. It’s a welcome change to be doing something that’s brainless, yet gives me immediate, visible results. It’s a cheap road to instant happiness. Yay. Maybe when I get home, I’ll sign up for a cooking class.

Imagine having to go halfway around the world to figure out that something as simple as cutting fruit could give me so much pleasure.

My zen is interrupted as an exotically beautiful Hawaiian girl in a bright red tropical shirt and short, white miniskirt that shows off her perfect legs bursts through the door and heads right to Jeff.

She’s a woman on a mission. “Jeff, I need you to explain men to me. Again,” she commands, her tone a combination of anger and frustration. (Been there.)

Jeff, unfazed and clearly used to her outbursts, continues to calmly cut up lemons. “Honey, if I knew anything about men, do you think I’d still be single at my age?”