A guy in an aloha shirt sat in an open convertible next to me, talking on his cell phone. He had a laptop computer in a black leather bag on the seat next to him, and a foam boogie board on the back seat. I wanted to get out in the surf myself, to put the murder of Hiroshi Mura, Uncle Chin’s illness, and Jimmy’s situation aside for at least a few minutes.
The van ahead of me had a UH decal on the back windshield and a bumper sticker that read, “Nothing is lost in the kingdom of God.” I was thinking about that when Jimmy asked, “How old were you when you first had sex?”
“What brought that on?”
“Just asking.”
“Man or woman?”
“You slept with girls?” He looked interested.
“Mostly,” I said. “Until pretty recently. I had a lot of problems with being gay.” That was an understatement, I thought.
“So how old?”
I had to think for a minute, do the math. “With a girl, I guess I was about your age. With a guy, nineteen or so. I was in college. I suppose I could have when I was in high school-looking back now, I see I had opportunities that I was too scared to take.”
“Scared how?”
“Jeez, you don’t mind asking hard questions, do you?”
He slumped against the side of the door, one long, slim leg crossed over the other, his rubber slipper dangling. “You don’t have to tell me.”
I inched the truck forward then sat on the brake. “I had all these confusing feelings. I knew I was supposed to like girls, that there was stuff I was supposed to do, to want to do. And I liked girls, I had lots of friends who were girls, but they didn’t, I don’t know, get me excited. Then there were these feelings I had, like in gym class, and these kind of romantic daydreams of guys touching me, and I knew those were wrong. So it was all a big mess.”
“Did you like doing it with girls?”
“Jimmy,” I said, whining in spite of myself. Traffic moved forward a little more, and I looked at my watch again. “I guess so. I mean, it’s nice to have that physical contact with someone, even if it’s not, I don’t know, exciting. I ended up having sex with a lot of women, and it was usually nice, but not great.”
“And with men it’s great?”
“It can be. I don’t have a lot of experience with guys, Jimmy. I can’t give you much advice.” I gave him a sidelong glance. I wondered if he had any other clothes anywhere. He was staring out the window, trying to be nonchalant. “Have you been on the streets long?”
“A couple weeks.”
“When’d you start hooking?”
“And you complain about me asking questions!”
“Turnabout’s fair play. I answered yours.”
“When I had to drop out of school and leave my friend’s house, I ended up in Ala Moana Park, sleeping on the beach. I met this guy there, late one night. He told me I could make some money. That was maybe, two weeks ago.”
“You use protection?”
“I just suck, Kimo. I won’t let anybody do anything else.”
“It’s still dangerous. With people you don’t know, you should get the guy to wear a condom.”
He laughed. “Like that’s going to happen.”
“You gotta promise to stop hooking, at least for a while,” I said. “While you stay with these people.”
“What am I gonna do for money?”
I opened up my wallet. I had about fifty dollars in it. I gave it all to Jimmy. “Take this. I’ll get you some more. And you won’t have to pay for anything there, like food or anything.”
He took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
The lane next to me moved a little and I swerved into it. We made almost a block’s worth of progress. I could see Uncle Chin’s turn just ahead, tantalizingly close. “I think you’re a good kid. If you hadn’t come forward with the information you did, you might still be living with your dad. So I feel bad about that.”
“I think you’re really nice.” He reached over and put his hand on my thigh. “Really cute, too.”
I picked up his slender pale hand and put it back on his own leg. “Don’t get any ideas. Sometimes people care about you without expecting anything back.”
“Yeah, right.”
I looked over at him. “Get this one thing straight, Jimmy. I like you, and I care about you, but I do not, repeat do not, want to have sex with you. And it has nothing do with you. If you were ten years older, then, well, maybe. But you’re not. I don’t think it’s right for adults to have sex with kids, whether they pay or just do it to be nice. I don’t think it’s right and I won’t do it.”
“All right, don’t get excited.”
We finally moved forward enough to make the turn up into the Heights, and I felt like I could let go of a deep breath I’d been holding.
LIVING IN DIFFERENT WORLDS
It appeared that Aunt Mei-Mei had been cooking non-stop since I left, and she had set up TV trays in the master bedroom so she, Uncle Chin and Jimmy could all sit and eat together. I sat with them for a while, eating some of Aunt Mei-Mei’s special Hunan chicken, and then I left them in that room decorated with embroidered prints and black lacquer, sitting at their tables, eating and watching the news on TV. They weren’t talking much but it didn’t seem like a strained silence.
On my way home, I called my parents and told them what I’d done. My father thought, like Aunt Mei-Mei, it was a good idea, that taking care of Jimmy would give Uncle Chin something to live for. My mother was worried, though.
“You know this boy?” she asked. “Does he come from a good family?”
“His father runs a pack-and-ship place in Chinatown.”
“Are you sure you can trust him?” my mother asked. “Uncle Chin and Aunt Mei-Mei are old, and Uncle Chin is sick. What if this boy causes trouble?”
“Enough, Lokelani,” my father said. “If Kimo says this is a good boy who needs help, then we all help him if we can.”
We ended the conversation by saying that we were all looking forward to seeing each other the next evening at the party for the Hawai’i Marriage Project. My mother and her two daughters-in-law had apparently been burning up the phone lines discussing what to wear, and my father complained about having to wear a suit. Business as usual in the Kanapa’aka household.
I spent most of the next day working all my old cases, reviewing my notes, tapping away at the Internet trying to find information, reviewing autopsy reports and generally working hard and getting nothing accomplished.
Just as my shift was ending, Sandra Guarino called me. Cathy Selkirk’s partner, she was the director of the Hawai’i Marriage Project, and she was so upset she could hardly speak. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Bastards,” she said. “Somebody tried to trash our office this afternoon.”
I calmed her down a bit, then looked at the clock. I blew a deep breath out. If I hurried, I could stop at the Marriage Project office on my way home to get dressed for the party. “That would be terrific, Kimo,” Sandra said. “I’m sure Robert would feel a lot better.”
Robert, I thought, as I drove the couple of blocks from headquarters over to the Marriage Project. Harry had fixed us up; Robert was a first or second cousin of Harry’s girlfriend Arleen, and they’d been anticipating double dates, because Robert and Arleen were so close.
Robert had skinny bird legs and two front teeth that he always felt were too prominent. He’d told me that someday he wanted to get braces to rein them in. And someday, too, he might motivate himself to get to the gym and fill out his muscles. But in the meantime, he was accustomed to making do with what he had. “A little eyeliner and a little blush could go along way toward making a boy look better,” he’d said, the one time we went out to dinner together.