Once I got to the ocean, though, I stopped thinking. I swam out beyond the breakers, where the surfers waited, and then swam parallel to the shore down toward the old marine stadium. I did a couple of trips like that, back and forth, until my legs and arms started to feel like jelly. Then I floated for a little while, looking up at the crisp blue sky dotted with a few lazy clouds. As it started to get dark I realized I had to get in, to grab a quick dinner and drive out the Kalaniana’ole Highway to Terri’s house in Wailupe.
I found my towel on the beach and started drying off. While the towel was over my head, someone said, “You’re not surfing tonight.”
I looked up. It was the guy I’d seen on Lili‘uokalani, sitting up on a beach towel a couple of feet away. I realized I’d probably seen him on the beach a couple of times, but hadn’t taken much notice of him, thinking he was a tourist. But now, after my reaction to him back at my apartment, I got nervous, feeling like there was a big empty place at the bottom of my throat. “No, I surfed this morning,” I said, trying to sound casual, but sure my voice was squeaking. “I just wanted to do a little swimming tonight.”
He nodded. “I swim every day, but I haven’t gotten up the nerve to try surfing yet.”
“You should try it, it’s fun,” I said, trying to keep the towel around my swimsuit to avoid any embarrassing revelations. “People around here are pretty friendly about giving advice.” I paused. “I could give you a couple of pointers some time, if you want.”
“That’d be great.” He stood up and walked over to me, with his hand outstretched. “I’m Tim, Tim Ryan. I just moved to Waikiki a couple of months ago.”
I gave up holding the towel and shook his hand. I told him my name and asked what he did. Fortunately my interest in him wasn’t too evident, and I could relax a little.
“I’m an attorney,” he said. “It’s boring.”
I laughed. “Not from my perspective. I’m a cop.”
“Really?”
We talked for a couple more minutes, and then I caught a glimpse of his watch. “Jesus, it’s late. I’ve gotta run. Maybe I’ll see you around this weekend. I can give you that surfing lesson.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” He looked directly into my eyes and smiled, and I felt a shiver run down my back. I smiled myself, a goofy kind of grin. We shook hands again, and I picked up my towel and headed down Lili‘uokalani toward my apartment.
He was a nice guy, I thought, as I walked. This was a perfectly innocent conversation. I’d never been sex-mad, like some of my friends in high school and college, imagining that every time a woman talked to me it was because she wanted me. I hoped I wouldn’t change now. Tim Ryan was probably just a good guy who was interested in making some friends and learning to surf. Of course, there was the way he looked at me, and smiled. I realized then he must have noticed me watching him earlier that evening.
I’d been around the sex wars long enough to know what that kind of smile meant. It was funny to realize it meant the same thing from a woman or a man, but I knew then that I was going to sleep with Tim Ryan, and for the first time in my life I thought, that’s okay. It’s like I was giving myself permission to be who I was, and that felt good.
I had barely enough time to microwave myself a couple of frozen burritos and jump into my clothes before I had to leave for Terri’s. When she and Evan got married, her parents gave them a honeymoon in Europe and the down payment for this house, a four-bedroom ranch on the makai side of the Kalaniana’ole Highway. On the mauka side of the highway, the Wiliwilinui Ridge is very steep, but it opens out to a flat plain and a little peninsula that sticks out into the Pacific. It’s a dramatic vista, the stony mountains coming almost to the water’s edge, with Koko Head in the distance.
The neighborhood, full of ranch-style homes with broad lawns, is protected from the busy highway by a yellow brick wall. If you don’t look up at the mountains or the towering palm trees, you could be anywhere in suburbia-sidewalks, basketball hoops in driveways, lots of boats on trailers. Terri’s house isn’t on the water, but Wailupe Beach Park is right next door. There’s a nice lawn, and a semi-circle driveway, and a row of tall coconut palms. When I drove up it was dark and the neighborhood was quiet. I could see a light on in the front window.
Terri heard me pull up on the gravel driveway and came to the front door. She looked even prettier than she had in high school. She was still slim, and her brown hair was cut in the same page boy she’d had since she was a teenager. Back then, when I didn’t understand the feelings I had for guys, I wanted to marry Terri Clark. She was smart and funny, along with being beautiful, and we used to pass each other notes in algebra class.
Then we went to college, and I realized the gulf between us. Terri’s family was rich, while my father was a small-time contractor who’d have been delighted to get the contract to remodel one department in one Clark’s store. I went to Punahou on scholarship, while Terri’s family paid full freight, and donated money whenever the school came calling. My parents wanted me to go to UH but I convinced them I had to go to the mainland, and I ended up at UC San Diego, majoring in surfing. At least, that’s what I spent most of my time doing. I actually majored in English because the classes were often in the late afternoon and I could surf in the morning if the conditions were right.
I came to understand, when I saw Terri at home during those college years, that she was out of my league. She came back to Hawai‘i with her degree, summa cum laude, but without a husband, and started working in the Clark’s at Ala Moana, standing behind a counter in the perfume department. She told the other girls it was just a funny coincidence that her last name was Clark.
After six months behind the perfume counter Terri joined the management training program, and when there was a burglary at the Ala Moana store she was assigned to deal with the police. That’s when she met Evan Gonsalves, and no one was more surprised than I was when they announced their engagement.
In the years since then I’d seen her occasionally, more so after I gave up on being a professional surfer and came back to Waikiki. I went to the christening for her son, Danny, and the regular Christmas party she and Evan held every year. We talked about Punahou a little, and she always asked who I was dating.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she said as I walked up to the front door. I kissed her cheek and she took my hand. I followed her into the graceful living room, decorated with her family’s antiques. The room was dominated by a mahogany sideboard that had been brought to the islands by her missionary great-grandfather, and it was filled with fragile Chinese export porcelain. But her couch, covered in a floral fabric, was overstuffed, and there was a child’s plastic train on the highly polished coffee table, so the room wasn’t as oppressive as it could have been.
She gave me a splash of single malt scotch over ice in a crystal glass, and we made some small talk. Finally I said, “So tell me what’s wrong.”
“You have to understand something,” she said, facing me. “I love Evan. I wish I could convince him that I love him for himself, that he doesn’t have to constantly fight to keep up with my family. But I can’t.”
“What do you mean, keep up with your family?”
“Buying things.” She held out her wrist to me, to show me a thick gold bracelet set with tiny emeralds. “Yesterday was my birthday. This is what he gave me.”
“It’s beautiful.”