Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink (30 page)

I delighted in everything I looked at, just in Jeff’s neighborhood. People coming out of their houses to get the Sunday paper (who knew people walked out to get an actual paper in this day and age), families dressed for church or a beach day piling into the car, the kids laughing and happy and not even realizing they’re growing up in the prettiest place on earth.

I jog down to the beach, completely empty even though it is a magnificently beautiful day. I watch a woman sip her coffee in a paper cup while walking her golden retriever. Another woman, with a stroller, jogs up to her and gives her a big hug. A woman walks out of the grocery store, carrying her canvas bags filled with food. Older men play chess at a table near the beach.

I keep running.

When I walk back into the house (or should I say stumble back into the house; I may have overdone it), I am greeted with the wonderful scents of coffee and bacon.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Jeff cheerfully greets me from his kitchen while scrambling eggs with a rubber whisk. “How do you like your eggs?”

“In a brownie.”

“Scrambled it is!” he says cheerfully as he scrapes the eggs out of a Calphalon frying pan and into a large serving bowl. “Wait until you try these eggs. They come from chickens down the street who, I’m sure, Leilani wants to run over. Unfortunately, the bacon is not from a local producer. Pork is huge here, and we cannot seem to raise enough pigs on this island for everyone to snack on. But it does come from a smokehouse in the Midwest that is quite good.”

“Sounds amazing,” I say, walking toward the kitchen. Jeff’s house has an open floor plan combining a large living room, dining room, and gourmet kitchen. And from every one of those areas you can see the ocean through gleamingly clean, floor-to-ceiling windows that showcase palm trees waving in the breeze in front of a wall of blue water. This is the first time I’ve been able to see Jeff’s house in the daytime, with all of the curtains open, and his view on full display. “Holy crap. You have an amazing view of the ocean.”

“It’s Hawaii. There are Denny’s here with amazing views of the ocean. I have freshly brewed Kona coffee in the thermos, there’s Danish on the table, and your bacon and eggs will be ready momentarily.”

Jeff brings the bowl of eggs and a plate piled high with bacon to the table, already set for two people, complete with cloth napkins. “Breakfast is served.”

“Your house is perfect,” I say as I sit down and pour myself coffee. “I’m almost afraid to touch anything.”

“Please. You should see this place after I’ve thrown a party,” Jeff says as he takes a seat. “Last June, I woke up to a duck waddling around my living room.”

“And by ‘duck’ you mean…?”

“I mean an actual duck. Get your mind out of the gutter.” He hands me an envelope. “Your winnings, sir.”

I take the envelope, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You know, from
Casablanca
? Louie says, ‘I’m shocked to find gambling’? ‘Your winnings, sir.’”

“I know what movie you mean. I meant what winnings?”

“Your tips from last night.”

I try to hand him back the envelope. “I can’t accept this. I was just helping out.”

“No, no. We have a rule: everything goes into the tip jar, everyone gets an equal cut. No exceptions.”

“You’re letting me stay here, and you bought my airplane ticket. Yesterday was the least I can do.”

“Take it. We each cleared over five hundred dollars last night. Use it to book a massage or something.”

“I can’t accept…” I’m not sure I meant to snap back the envelope so quickly as I ask, “Wait—five hundred dollars for one night?! Is that normal?”

Jeff’s face lights up. “Seeeee … Now you’re thinking about it. Is it normal? Hmm. For a Saturday night, yes. But I assure you, we don’t do that well on Tuesdays, and it’s why I don’t even bother being open on Sundays or Mondays.”

“Can I go back on Tuesday?” I ask, still staring at my wad of cash.

“You won’t make that kind of money. Saturdays are our big night.”

“That’s okay. I had fun. I want to do it again.”

He shrugs. “Okay, that’ll give me more time to find someone permanent.” He takes a bite of bacon. “In the meantime, since the bar is closed today, I figure we’d go snorkeling and have a picnic lunch at Kapalua Bay, followed by cocktails and a tiki-torch ceremony at the Westin in Ka’anapali, and then on to dinner somewhere fun.”

My eyes light up. “A tiki-torch ceremony? Like a real one?”

“No, like a fake hotel one. But it’s like a luau: if you’re in Hawaii, you gotta go at least once. Come on. Chop, chop.”

Within ten minutes, I have wolfed down my breakfast, taken a shower, thrown on a swimsuit, and packed clothes for later in the evening.

We then head up the coast.

F
ORTY
-
TWO

After a lovely forty-minute drive up the Honoapiilani Highway (pronounced Hah-noe-ah-pee-ee-lah-nee. Doesn’t that sound much more exotic and fun than the San Diego Freeway or the Union Turnpike?), we get to the town of Lahaina, and Jeff pulls his car into the Foodland parking lot. “This, my dear, is Foodland—the island’s neighborhood grocery store. There’s also one in Kihei that’s open twenty-four hours a day, so if you need dental floss at three
A.M
., you’re set.”

We walk through the parking lot in what in any other part of the country I would consider hot and muggy weather and into the delight of crisp, cool air-conditioning.

Jeff grabs a plastic, green basket, and we could be walking through any supermarket chain on the mainland—save for all of the sunscreen, masks, and snorkel gear on display near aisle three. We make our way to the seafood section, where I see a large sign on the wall behind the counter that says
HAWAII’S HOME FOR POKE
.

I turn to Jeff. “What’s poke?” I ask, making the
e
silent.

Jeff grins at me. “Actually, it’s pronounced
poh-kee,
and it is one of
the
Hawaiian delicacies you must eat while you’re in Maui.”

I check out all of the varieties of poke through the deli’s glass. There are bright red chunks of fish that don’t seem to have sauce, brownish-pink chunks with a light brown coating and herbs, white chunks swimming in some sort of marinade, and about a million others, all displayed in sparkling stainless-steel trays. “Looks like raw fish.”

“There’s some cooked stuff. But mostly it’s raw fish marinated in soy sauce and anything from wasabi to seaweed to tomatoes. Poke is a Hawaiian staple. There are a million kinds, and it’s all fresh. And poke doesn’t just refer to raw fish. Poke is a Hawaiian verb that means ‘to section, slice, or cut.’ So it can refer to anything that is sliced or cut, including edamame.”

A middle-aged gentleman sporting the name tag
JOE
walks up to us and cheerfully says, “Hi, folks. What can I get for you today?”

“We’d like half a pound of your ahi, a half pound of the salmon, plus let me get half a pound of the garlic soybean poke and…” Jeff turns to me. “Do you like fermented black beans?”

I involuntarily make a face. Jeff laughs. “Okay, I’ll take that as a no.” He turns back to Joe. “Let’s just do half a pound of shrimp ceviche.” Then he turns back to me. “Plus, I have a sauvignon blanc to go with all this that’s going to make you so happy, you might buy a silver wine charm for your bracelet.”

Moments later, we have plastic containers of various types of fish and are heading toward the produce section. “I know it’s a cliché, but we’re getting a pineapple. Oh, and I forgot…” He takes my hand and walks me over to aisle four, the canned section. “Check this out.”

In front of me is a wall of Spam. All kinds of Spam: classic Spam, lite Spam, Spam with less sodium, something called Spam spread. “Ew…”

“Don’t say that. The stuff is pretty popular on the island.”

“Not enough sauvignon blanc in the world…,” I insist, shaking my head.

A few minutes later, we are back in Jeff’s car and heading to Kapalua Bay, which is a sheltered white-sand beach near the Ritz-Carlton hotel. We have to wait a few minutes for a space in the small parking lot off to the side.

Once parked, we pull out beach bags filled with various snorkeling gear Jeff has acquired over the years (masks, flippers, and snorkel tubes) and one large picnic basket.

I cannot yet see the beach as we get out of our car, walk past some public restrooms and through a rocky tunnel, but then the path opens up to palm trees and gloriously sparkling water.

As we walk along the light sand beach, Jeff asks, “Have you ever snorkeled before?”

“Other than in a pool when I was ten, I have not.”

“This is the perfect place to do it because the water is so calm. See how there’s a reef on each side?” Jeff points to a reef to our left, and I can see it begins a C-shaped cove with a reef on either side of the bay to keep the waves from coming in, ensuring that the water stays calm and clear.

I inhale a deep, cleansing breath, and revel in the salt smell. “Very peaceful.”

“Yes. The fish think so too. The other benefit of this place is you can just walk out into the water. Some places, like Molokini Crater, you have to take a boat to get to. Here, you can grab your mask and snorkel tube, walk out into the water, swim past the breakers, and, boom, fish everywhere.”

We pick a spot in the middle of soft sand and put our stuff down. Jeff pulls a pair of blue flippers out of the bag and throws them to me. “If you want to go even further out, you can use these.”

“Flippers!” I say, my face lighting up. I carefully put them on my feet, then walk around to test them out as Jeff lays out large beach towels for us to sit on.

“How do I know if they are the right size?” I ask as I carefully lift my knees up and down, admiring my new shoes.

“What is it about women that they always want to walk around in their flippers? It’s not a strappy high heel. It’s a flipper—one size fits all.”

He has a point. I do look kind of silly walking in my flippers. It’s like walking to the ice-skating rink in your skates—you can’t look graceful. “Do these flippers make my butt look big?” I joke.

To my surprise, the beach is not very crowded, and it’s also very quiet.

I pull a mask from the bag, along with a snorkel tube. “So what do I do now?”

“Defog your mask, and go to town.” Jeff pulls a small bottle of “defogger” out of a bag and tosses it to me. “Only use a drop or two.”

“Right,” I say confidently. I open up the bottle …

Then stare at it.

Jeff is pulling various gear and sunscreen out around us and hasn’t noticed me yet.

Finally I look at him. “Let’s play a game where we pretend I’m the stupid tourist.”

He smiles. “You don’t know how to defog a mask?”

“I didn’t even know
defog
was a word.”

He laughs, takes my mask, puts a drop of goop from the bottle on the inside of the mask, and rubs it in. Then he does the same with the other side, then hands me the mask. “Go to town.”

As Jeff prepares the picnic (including pouring himself a glass of wine from a plastic decanter), I stand there, confused as to what to do next. “So I’m just going to walk out there,” I say, pointing to the water in front of us, not five feet away, “and there will be fish?”

“No. You want to walk over to the north end of the beach and snorkel around the rocks. There’s more fish at the reef. The water’s calmer, so it’s clearer, plus sometimes there are turtles.”

“Me? Aren’t you coming?”

“With my fear of sharks? God no.”

“You have a fear of sharks?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you moved to Hawaii?”

“Don’t sound so
Jaws IV
about it. We have land in Hawaii.” He pulls out a colorful hardback book entitled
Fish of Hawaii
. “You want to take a look at this before you start? It shows you what a humuhumunukunukuapua’a looks like. Did you know that that used to be Hawaii’s state fish?”

I look back at the water, confused. “Are there a lot of sharks out there?”

“You mean ones that eat snorkelers? No.” He opens the book. “Oh, parrot fish! Those are good too.”

“You’re actually going to read a book about fish rather than see them for yourself?” I ask incredulously.

“What can I say? It is the delightful quirkiness that is me,” he says, returning to his large book and leafing through the pages.

I cross my arms and lean on one hip, trying to give him my best look of pity.

Jeff takes a sip of wine from his pool-safe wineglass, unfazed. He knows I’m trying to make a point, but refuses to look up from his book.

“Oh, come on!” I plead. “If there is one thing I have learned in the past few weeks, it’s to stop reading about life and get off your ass and start experiencing it! You have an entire other world less than ten feet away, and you’re just going to let it slip away from you because of fear.”

Jeff looks up. “That was the plan, yes.”

“You can’t make life decisions based on fear,” I say firmly.

Jeff sighs. “Fine.” He puts down the book and pulls a mask and tube from his bag. “But if you see a shark near me, punch it in the nose.”

I look at him blankly. “Wait, is that a thing?”

“Actually, it is. It disconcerts the shark.”

“Well, it would certainly disconcert me.”

Jeff defogs his mask, and the two of us walk to the north end of the beach to snorkel along the rocky reef. I carry my flippers and put them on just before we wade our way in. Once we are waist-deep in the water, Jeff tells me to put on my mask, put the tube in my mouth, and lean into the water.

Immediately after sticking my head in, I see some bright yellow fish with stripes flit past. These I would find out later are called butterfly fish. A bright blue fish then swims right past me. I wade farther into the water to see a school of silvery fish with large yellow and white stripes going across their sides. I fall into a floating position at the surface of the water and use my flippers to propel myself into deeper water, hoping to see a Nemo fish (called a clown fish—they’re orange), some blue parrot fishes, or maybe a humuhumunukunukuapua’a, which are multicolored, and I think look as if they’re wearing yellow lipstick.