Damned in Paradise

“What?”

“It’s just…I shouldn’t say.”

“Something about her husband?” I asked, passing her the flask.

She took another slug, then said, “I haven’t seen Thalo since she and Tommie were stationed at Pearl Harbor almost two years ago. I don’t have a right to say anything about it.”

“About what?”

“I…don’t think he could satisfy her.”

“In what way?”

“In whatever way you think. He’s so…ordinary, dull, unexciting. She’s a romantic, fun-loving girl, but her letters to me…. She was bored with being a Navy wife. He was off on submarine duty all the time, she was lonely…no fun. No attention. And now this.”

“It’s nice of you to go to her side in this dark hour.”

“She’s my best friend,” Isabel said, and took another slug of rum from my flask. “And anyway, I’ve never been to Hawaii before.”

She fell asleep in my arms; I removed the glowing cigarette stub from her fingers, crushed it out in a glass ashtray on the nightstand, placed my flask there, and allowed the motion of the ship, plowing its way through the Pacific, to lull me.

But I didn’t go to sleep for a long time. I kept thinking about Thalo and Isabel, fun-loving girls skinny-dipping with boys.

And how Thalia Massie’s dull husband had helped kill a man to preserve his wife’s honor.

3

I leaned against the starboard rail with Isabel on one side of me, and Leisure on the other. Mrs. Leisure was next to her husband, and the Darrows were just down the rail from her, as our little group peered across deep blue waters. A balmy breeze ruffled hair, rustled dresses, fussed with neckties; the sky was as blue as Isabel’s eyes, the clouds as white as her teeth. She was a foolish girl, but I would love her forever, or at least till we docked.

“Look!” Isabel cried; it was a cry that would have made sense, a hundred and fifty years ago, when spying land meant fresh water and supplies and the first solid ground in weeks or even months.

But at the end of a modern four-and-a-half-day ocean voyage, it was just plain silly—so why did my heart leap at the sight of an indistinct land mass, dancing in and out from the morning clouds? Gradually revealing itself, growing larger and larger on the horizon, was the windward shore of Oahu, and as the Malolo rounded the point, we got a gander at a cracked gray mountain.

“Koko Head,” seasoned traveler Leisure informed us.

Maybe so, but it was a head with no more natural growth than a bald old man—a disappointing, and inaccurate, envoy of the island, as very soon the grayness of Koko dipped into a valley of luxuriant green foliage, including the expected gently waving palms and occasional flower-blossom splashes of color.

“There’s Diamond Head!” Queen Isabel squealed, pointing, as if informing Columbus of the New World.

“I see you’ve read the National Geographic, too,” I said, but I didn’t even get a rise out of her. Her blue eyes were wide and her smile that of a kid with a nickel viewing a well-stocked penny candy counter; she was even jumping up and down a little.

And Diamond Head was a magnificent sight, all right, even if a city kid like me wasn’t about to tip as much to my society page cutie-pie. After all, I came from the town that invented the skyscraper, and some paltry seven-or eight-hundred-foot natural wonder wasn’t about to earn oooh’s and ahhh’s from a hardboiled boyo like me.

So why was I staring goofy-eyed, like a hypnotist’s watch was waving in front of my mug? What was the magic of this long-dead crater? Why did its shape demand study, call out for a metaphor? Why did I see Diamond Head as a crouching beast, its gray fur furrowed, its blunted sphinx head lifted ever so gently, paws extended into the ocean, a regal, wary sentinel to an ancient land?

“See that small depression, on the ledge of the crater?” Leisure asked, though he was really instructing.

“Near the peak there?” I offered. Beneath the lower, greening slopes of the volcano nestled a lushness of trees and a scattering of residences that were pretty lush themselves.

“Exactly. The natives say an enormous diamond once perched there, snatched away by an angry god.”

“Maybe they couldn’t find a virgin to sacrifice,” I said. “Scarce commodity, even back then.”

That got me a nudge from Isabel. I wasn’t sure she’d been listening.

As the natural barrier of the volcanic sentry gradually drew away, the supple white curve of Waikiki Beach began revealing itself.

“That’s the Moana Hotel,” Leisure said, “oldest on the island.”

It was a big white Beaux Arts beach house got out of hand, with a wing on either end bookending the main building; a massive banyan tree and a pavilion fronted the hotel’s stretch of beach. Beyond this turn-of-the-century colonial sprawl was an explosion of startling pink in the form of a massive stucco Spanish-Moorish structure, a cross between a castle and a mission, spires and cupolas lording it over landscaped grounds aswarm with ferns and palms.

“The Royal Hawaiian Hotel,” Leisure said. “Also known as the Pink Palace.”

“Hot dog,” I said.

“Why so chipper?” Isabel wondered.

“That’s where I’m staying. The Royal Hawaiian….”

“I’ll be with Thalo, in her little bungalow in Manoa Valley,” Isabel said glumly. “She says it’s no bigger than the