“This is Lala Kealoha,” Troy said.
She smiled as Troy mentioned my name. “David Kimu has spoken often of you.”
“Is David a friend of yours?”
“I’ve met him here a few times. But he is a long time aikane of my brother Umi.”
“Do you live here?” I waved at the small village behind us.
“Not now. I have a waitress job in Lihue. I’ve been visiting my grandmother. Troy wanted to do some sketches and I stayed over a few days to pose for him.” She turned to go. “I’ve got to fix kaukau for Keoni — he wants to start back as soon as he eats. See you later on Oahu.”
“Where will she stay in Honolulu?” I asked Troy.
“With her brother. David took me to meet him the day after we were at your house. Suppose we kaukau too? Fish and poi?”
“You mean you really like it? Few tourists do.”
“Never gave it any thought. That was what we had here and it tasted fine to me. Let’s go.”
We ate with the Hawaiian family Troy had been living with, a meal consisting of steamed laulaus (salt salmon, butterfish, and pork wrapped in ti leaves), poi, and coconut pudding. All this time I was wondering when Troy would mention his wife.
He finally did while we were waiting for Keoni. I sat in the shade as Troy stretched out, bare to the waist, in the sun nearby. “This feels good,” he said; and then, quietly; “How’s Mavis? I suppose she was the one who sent you.”
“I haven’t seen her. But the Garrisons told me she hasn’t been feeling well, and I thought you should know.”
“What’s wrong with her?” His voice was completely emotionless.
When I told him he made no comment. Presently he said, still in that same flat voice, “Before we were married we planned to travel, have all kinds of adventures. The first six hundred we saved, we went to Mexico. Mavis hated it — the people, the heat, the little village where we stayed. She got dysentery and we had to come home. She was months getting over it. When medical bills began to pile up I took on a few commercial jobs to get us out of the hole. They liked my stuff. They paid — good Lord, how they paid!”
His face began to twitch. He rolled over and looked out at the green sea. “Can’t get enough of this sun,” he said. “Been soaking it up like a blotter since I came here.”
Shortly after Troy came back, Mavis invited us to lunch and swim with them. We lay under an umbrella at Waikiki and chatted; or rather, Anne and I chatted with Mavis while Troy brooded at the horizon. When Mavis asked him once if he felt all right, he started and then said abstractedly of course he did, he was just going nuts watching the colors of that water.
It was a brilliant day and the Kanaka surf was running. Far, far out were the dark heads of swimmers waiting for the next big comber. Nearer shore the water was tranquil, a shimmering turquoise and emerald, jade and chrysoprase and tourmaline.
I said to Troy, “It’s the reef that causes it.”
He sent me a grateful look. “Variations in depth? Of course! Then the light makes different refractions. This light!” He almost groaned the words. “Those poor fools in New York are so used to living under a pall of soot that they never see—”
The rest was a mumble.
I didn’t properly register his pronoun, because my attention switched to Mavis. “How do you keep that lovely golden color?” she was asking, admiring Anne’s legs. “You’re blonde, too. I just turn pink and my skin hurts.”
“Difference in pigmentation, I suppose.” Anne added generously, “Of course, my skin isn’t nearly as delicate as yours.”
I noticed then that Mavis’s hair was streaked and faint spidery lines showed at the edge of her sun glasses. She was closer to Troy’s forties than I’d realized.
When I mentioned this later to Anne she said, “I thought so, too. It’s probably important to her to look young and fragile. I feel sorry for Mavis.”
“Why?”
“Because she lives with a man who is completely creative, while she can create nothing.”
“Artists aren’t the only creative people in the world,” I protested, surprised to find myself defending Troy’s wife. “Building a good marriage, having children, those things are—” My voice faded. Then I said triumphantly, “How about that perfect apartment of theirs?”
Anne’s bare shoulders moved. We were in the bedroom and she sat at the dressing table getting ready for guests who were coming to play Mah Jongg. She picked up her lipstick and leaned toward the mirror. “I had another letter from Leila Morgan yesterday. I meant not to show it to you for a while, but — it’s in my white purse, hanging on the back of the closet door.”
Part of the letter said: “Please tell Mrs. Purcell that her decorator was here recently to report success in finding a duplicate of the silver girandole which was stolen. He also said that he copied this decor for her, at her direction, from the Paris apartment of Madame Juliette Gauntier, the aunt who reared Mrs. Purcell. The decorator was touched by her sentimental desire to recreate the background of her childhood. You should have heard Hank howl when the man left. People envy us our luck in being here, they rave about Mavis Purcell’s exquisite taste and originality. What tickles Hank is that he remembers doing a feature on her for his home town paper, the Milwaukee Journal. She had just been chosen one of those beer beauties, which gave her a start in modeling. Her name was Maria Schlanger then, and she’d never been nearer Paris than Milwaukee...”
I sat and stared at Anne’s reflection. She went on tying a ribbon around her hair and said nothing. “Where,” I finally asked, “do you suppose she got the idea?”
“For the apartment? From a book of interiors, possibly, or some old copy of a Paris magazine. Don’t look so shocked, Johnny. It’s a harmless act. I wouldn’t have shown you the letter if I hadn’t been so pig-headed about making my point.”
“You made it.” I stood up. “I’m going to have a drink.”
I made a double collins, then put on some records and sat down to finish my drink and wait for Anne. I couldn’t concentrate — I was trying to remember some of the German I had picked up in the E.T.O. When I finally got it, what kept running fantastically through my mind was the fact that Schlanger means snake — and there are no snakes in Hawaii.
The next day Mavis called to announce that Troy was ready to go to work. “Those models have finally arrived. He’s found a place in some valley where he wants to take you, to discuss illustrations for the first installment.”
“What valley?” I asked, but she couldn’t remember. I suggested picking Troy up and she said she would tell him to be ready. Mavis’s voice sounded strained and I remembered Troy’s habit of getting drunk before he began a job. The sooner he got that binge over with, the better we’d all feel.
The valley was Manoa, a favorite residential district of Oahu, but the road Troy took me on was one I might never have found without direction. We drove through the thickly settled section, past old houses deep in gardens, past newer modern dwellings and apartment buildings, to the head of the valley and a narrow lane which twisted up a hillside and ended at two frame cottages whose high foundations were deep in red ginger. A single hard-surfaced drive served both houses, widening toward separate garage buildings. Concrete steps led down from small rear porches, and on one of these a tall smiling man appeared and greeted us.
His name was Umi Kealoha, and Troy had been directed to him by David, Umi said, “Will you come in? My sister will be back soon.”