“I never met them. I never even saw the boat. He invited me, but after we went camping, I hung out with you instead of going with him. Remember?”
Lulu narrowed her eyes for a moment, and then kept reading.
“It was an unusual looking boat, kind of like a little galleon, wooden hulled, double masted. I guess they thought if they did their repairs here, the boat wouldn’t be recognized. But as it happens, a friend of the owners had the same idea. Take their boat out of the water at the little dry dock, ‘Iao side, way cheaper than O’ahu. No radio contact since Midway, six weeks ago. No SOS, nothing. Too fishy, so the guy called the cops before even going on deck to see what was up.”
“He told me he sailed from Tahiti with friends. He said his friends were working on the boat and he had to go help them. But, until we came back from camping, he kept putting it off.”
“To be with you.”
“He did go for a few days to help after we got back from the crater, but then he came back and we moved into Michael’s house for a few days. Remember?” She didn’t mention the scene at the courthouse in Lahaina.
Lulu nodded. “The party was nice. It felt like we were a family. I’ve hardly ever felt that, and I’ve been travelling for years.”
“If he’d helped them full-time they might’ve been done before now.”
Lulu folded the paper shut, glanced around the restaurant, lowered her voice. “Let’s finish this conversation somewhere else.”
On the beach Lulu said, “Imagine getting away from cops by diving off a dock and swimming.” She laughed a little. “Who else could pull that off?”
“Everyone knows what he looks like now,” Tanya said.
“He’s at large. He might come looking for you. What will you do if he does?”
“It won’t work. Even if he goes to the airport he’ll be recognized now. He can’t go to Mei’s, anywhere.”
“You don’t know Mei. She’s slippery. You could ask her.”
“No. It’s the same. Everyone saw us together. They all know I was with him. I have to leave.”
“Why not wait and see if he makes contact?”
“No.” Tanya took the folded up piece of paper out of her pocket, unfolded it, showed it to Lulu. “The mouse is back on the page. I knew the moment I saw it, everything was over.”
She and Lulu lay low at Baldwin Park, expecting the police to appear at any moment. But they didn’t. Probably because, two days later, Jim was apprehended, boarding a boat in Lahaina, as the owners prepared to leave for San Francisco. Offering to crew for nothing.
Just as Tanya had thought, everyone in the restaurant stared and whispered. Mei gave them a corner table, said softly, “They were watching. They knew he was a sailor, could crew for other people. That it would be how he’d try to avoid airports.”
She offered no judgement either way. Tanya was grateful, ate enormous almond cookies and sipped green tea. When they tried to pay Mei waved their money away. “The police won’t bother you now. Also, you don’t know. See how the trial goes. They say they didn’t kill the owners, that they found the boat abandoned on Midway, the dinghy overturned on the beach.”
“It doesn’t make sense. They should’ve radioed the harbour master in Honolulu. The boat’s papers would’ve said the owner’s names, their home marina.”
Mei nodded. “They said they were too afraid. Their own boat was damaged; they barely made it from Tahiti. They were afraid to tell anyone, wanted to get here first.”
Tanya nodded. “It’s stupid for them to say so much before the trial.”
But perhaps that meant they weren’t real criminals.
Just inept thieves and murderers.
“It’s not true,” she told Lulu when they got to the beach. “If that was true they would’ve sailed her into the Ala Wai. He told me once the repairs were done they’d go to northern British Columbia.”
“I don’t want to know these things,” Lulu said. And then, “Do you wish it had gone another way? If all of you had worked on the boat you might’ve been done and gone and in BC by now.”
Tanya nodded. “The Queen Charlottes or somewhere even more remote.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“We’d have gotten a few months, is all.”
“Maybe years.”
“Why are you and Mei both speaking in his defence?”
“You were a different person after your time with Jim. You were so obviously fucked up before, everyone noticed. Now you’re kind of all right.”
“Maybe I was his penance. Maybe after what they did on Midway, he knew he needed to help someone. Buy his life back from God. He wasn’t a killer, in spite of his record.”
“What was it for?” Tanya had been reading the papers too.
“Possession. Grand theft auto.”
“A logical progression from there to grand theft boat.”
“Am I supposed to laugh?”
“Do you good. What say you we blow this pop stand, fly to Seattle? I can borrow the money. I have a friend with a restaurant there; we can work. Even you, if I ask nicely. Unless you want to wait, see how the trial turns out. Visit him in jail. Where is he?”
“Honolulu. No bail. Trial’s not for months.”
“Maybe his friends killed them, not Jim.”
“Maybe.”
It was possible. But she remembered again all the times under the waterfall when she’d wondered if he’d kill her. Maybe she was picking up on the boat owners’ fear, their last thoughts clinging to him, ever since that rainy night on Midway when they’d lost everything.
“You know when we were camping and we got high I always worried he’d kill me, even though he seemed like a kind man right from the moment I met him.”
“Where’d you meet him? You never said.”
“At the temple feast. We didn’t talk even though I noticed him right away. And then I got back to the park after and there was the usual fire. I was staring into the flames and then when I looked up, there was his face. I thought I was imagining things,” Tanya laughed. “Anyways, like I said, maybe what I heard was their feelings coming off him, their fear of him, the couple who owned the boat. I always thought I could tell a killer, they’d give off a vibe. The thing is, even though we broke up, you’re right, he was good to me. He got through to me like no one ever has, not even you, Lulu. I feel so much more myself than I did before. And no matter what he did on Midway, you can’t take that away.”
Tanya remembered now, how just before he’d walked away from her when she’d sat on the courthouse steps crying, he’d reached into his pocket, come out with Mouse, offered her the little animal. “You take him,” she’d said.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“He’s not the seafaring sort.” He’d kissed her on the forehead. “Perhaps it’s better this way.” What did he mean? She hadn’t asked. “No matter what happens, don’t think too badly of me. I’ll remember you always.”
She remembered how complete strangers so often seemed to hate him. It wasn’t just that he was unkempt and wore torn clothes; lots of people did that. Maybe they could smell it on him, what she couldn’t. Grand theft boat. Murder. Almost all had looked at him this way, as if he weren’t fit for human company. Except for Mei, and Michael, and Lulu, and Plumeria. But he’d had a chance to charm them, as he had her. Or else they’d been part of his penance too, part of his desire to take a new tack at this difficult problem of being human.
After their talk Lulu had gone into town again, back to the laundromat to fold, first telling her not to run away, but it was silly, really. Where was there to go? Tanya left the beach for the fire pit in its scraggly patch of lawn, started the night’s bonfire. The backpackers would be arriving from their day trips soon, and those who knew who she was would want to ask her questions. She got the drums out of their hiding places in the bushes. Tonight, she’d drum so loud she wouldn’t hear a thing.