“Why do you think people are so opposed to gay marriage?”
She took a sip of her decaf macadamia nut latte and considered. “Big question,” she said. “I think they fall into a couple of categories. People who accept the Bible as the word of God, for example, and when they see that passage from Leviticus they decide it has to be obeyed.”
“But just before that, the priests are telling people that if they mix fabrics they should be killed with stones,” I said. “The same for eating shellfish.”
“You’re trying to apply logic to something very emotional.”
“I have a different idea.” I took a sip of my raspberry mocha (caffeinated, of course) and said, “Let’s say there’s a guy who has some kind of same-sex urges. Maybe not strong enough to act on-but enough to make him uncomfortable. Could he feel like those urges are coming from Satan, and need to be resisted?”
“Sure. Remember Lucy Carson?”
That threw me, and I had to run through my mental directory to remember Lucy, a girl who’d gone to Punahou, our private high school, with us, and been arrested for shoplifting. “Yeah?”
“After she was arrested, she started going to church. She decided that it was the devil who was making her steal, and she could pray her way to honesty.”
I couldn’t remember what had happened to her. “Did it work?”
Terri shrugged. “Don’t know exactly. She went to college on the mainland and never came back. I heard a couple of rumors that she’d dropped out of school and gotten into some kind of trouble, but never anything more than that.”
“Getting back to my point, do you think the person who bombed the Marriage Project could be some kind of thwarted homosexual, taking out his frustrations on people who are able to be out, when he can’t?”
“Why can’t he?”
I described the man and woman Frank Sit had seen in the car. “If that’s his wife, he could be stuck in a marriage and unable to come out.”
“That’s a big assumption,” Terri said. “I’m sure that there are some guys who are uncomfortable around gay men because they’re not sure about their own sexuality. But it’s a big jump from making some homophobic cracks or avoiding gay guys in the locker room to building a bomb and detonating it.”
“What about the Church of Adam and Eve?” I asked. “Do you know about them?”
Terri frowned. “The Trust gives them money. I don’t agree with it, but Aunt Emma went to one of their meetings and she was impressed by the minister and his wife. I think they’re nuts, but mostly harmless.”
“I’m not so sure. I went to one of their revival meetings last month, and it made me uncomfortable. I could definitely see somebody getting the wrong idea from what they’ve been preaching and deciding to do something about it. Vigilante justice.” I hesitated, wondering if I should tell her about Kitty Sampson and her ideas about the church. But I knew that would shift the focus back to me and how I shouldn’t be doing something like going to church with Kitty behind her stepfather’s back, so I skipped it.
“You may be right,” Terri said. “Tell you what, I’ll look into the funding the Trust provides, see what kind of materials they’ve given us. If there’s anything wrong there, I’ll convince Aunt Emma to pull the plug.”
“Every little bit helps.” I finished my coffee and walked Terri to her SUV. “How’s Danny doing?”
Terri’s son had suffered a lot from his father’s death. He hadn’t spoken for quite a while afterwards, and then only gradually. “He’s getting better. It helps that his grandparents spoil him terribly. He always comes home from their house stuffed with treats and clutching some new toy.”
“Give him my love,” I said. “I’ll try and get out to see him sometime. He’s still got a lot to learn before he can call himself a surfer.”
“He’s only six, Kimo,” she said, smiling. “Give him a couple of years.”
When I got home, there was a message from Mike. I was embarrassed, even all by myself, about how eager I was to call him back. “So what did you do today?” he asked.
I told him about roller blading over to Gunter’s, and then going to the office. “I read background material until my eyes crossed,” I said. “I talked to my friend Terri about the possible motivation of our bomber, which I can tell you about when I see you. There was a message from Lidia, too. She found the formal wear shop where our guy rented his tux, but he paid cash and gave what appears to be a fake name, so that lead fizzled out. I ran off extra copies of the artist’s sketch for the vice detectives to pass around.”
“Sounds good.”
“Gunter made a good suggestion this morning, to pass the sketch around at some gay bars, see if the guy ever shows up at any of them.” I paused. “You interested in helping me?”
Mike didn’t say anything, but I waited. “I don’t think so, Kimo,” he said finally. “I mean, I know this is legitimate, job-related and all, but it’s just not something I can do.”
“You mean be seen in a gay bar with a known homosexual.”
“You know the kind of hell you’ve been through. You must still get some. You want me to go through that same shit?”
“You mean coming out?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
“That’s what it’s called, Mike. When a gay man accepts who he is and isn’t ashamed to let anybody and everybody know about it.”
“I can’t do that. What I do in my private life is my own business. I don’t want it to affect my job, what my family thinks, my friends, the guys I work with.”
“So you want to lie to all of them.”
“I don’t lie. I don’t come in on Monday morning with made up stories about the babes I scored over the weekend. I just don’t tell anybody anything.”
“Sounds like a pretty sucky life, to me.”
“Kimo, we had a great time Thursday night. At least I had a great time. I want to see you again.” He took a deep breath. “I want to kiss you again. I want to suck your dick again. I want to make love to you.”
“But you don’t want to be seen with me in public.”
“Not at a gay bar, for Christ’s sake. I mean, everybody knows about you, Kimo.”
“Fine, Mike. I’ll call Gunter. He’s probably done with his threesome by now. He won’t be embarrassed to be seen in public with me.”
“Can we have dinner? Tomorrow night? I want to see you.”
“I want to spend some time at the hospital with my dad tomorrow. I’ll call you in the afternoon.” I hung up the phone and then sat there for a while. I had been in love once before with a man, very briefly. He was an attorney from Massachusetts who had moved to Hawai’i so that no one back home would ever know he was gay. He was a low-profile kind of guy, and when my life erupted into the press he backed away fast. I wondered if Mike would be the same way. Was it something about me? Was I only able to fall in love with extremely closeted guys? How could I even daydream about a future with Mike Riccardi if I could never go to a bar with him, introduce him to my parents, meet his friends and family?
Maybe I ought to stick with Gunter after all. I picked up the phone and dialed his number. I arranged to pick him up later that night.
A GUIDE TO THE NIGHT
Though it was back downtown and I was already in Waikiki, I swung past The Queen’s Medical Center before going home. My father was still grumpy, but Haoa had smuggled him in a burger from Zippy’s so he was slightly more cooperative. He was definitely looking forward to going home when he finished his IV treatment on Monday, and I hoped nothing would happen to set him back. As he’d pointed out himself, hospitals were dangerous places. People died in them all the time.
I got home around five, grilled myself a piece of chicken and some veggies on my tiny hibachi, and then took a power nap. If I was going to be out cruising with Gunter I needed some more energy.
A few minutes before eleven, I was pulling up in Gunter’s driveway. He stepped out of his doorway looking like sex on wheels-a tight T-shirt that left visible a couple of inches of taut stomach, and skinny jeans that clung to him in all the right places. “Any ideas where we can go?” I asked when he got in the truck.