Then her mouth was on mine and she was clawing off her swimsuit as desperately as we’d fought the riptide, and I was out of my suit and on top and inside of her, the slippery velvet of her mingling with grating sand, driving myself into her, her knees lifted, accepting me with little groans that escalated into cries echoing off the ridges around us, heels of my hands digging wedges in the sand as I watched her closed eyes and her open mouth and the quivering globes of her heaving breasts as those puffy aureoles tightened and wrinkled with vein-pulsing passion, and then we were both sending cries careening off the canyon-like walls, drowning out the roar of the surf, before collapsing into each other’s arms, and sharing tiny kisses, murmuring vows of undying love that in a few moments we’d both regret.
She was the first to have regrets. She trotted back out into where the water came to her knees and she crouched there, to wash herself out, her fear of the tide overriden by another fear. When she trotted back, and got back into her suit, she sat on her towel and gathered her arms about her, trying to disappear into herself.
“I’m cold,” she said. “We should go.”
We both got quickly dressed, and this time she led the way up the rocky footpath to where our car was parked near the Blowhole overlook.
As we drove back, she said nothing for the longest time. She was staring into the night with an expression that wasn’t quite morose, more…afraid.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
Her smile was forced and her glance at me was so momentary it hardly qualified. “Nothing.”
“What is it?”
“It’s just…nothing.”
“What, Isabel?”
“That’s the first time…you didn’t use something.”
“We were all caught up in it, baby. We damn near died out there. We got worked up. Who could blame us?”
“I’m not blaming anybody,” she said reproachfully.
“It won’t happen again. I’ll buy a bushel of Sheiks.”
“What if I get pregnant?”
“People try for years and don’t make babies. Don’t worry about it.”
“All it takes is once.”
We were gliding by fancy beach homes again; I pulled over in the mouth of a driveway. I left the motor running as I reached over and touched her hand.
“Hey. Nothing’s going to happen.”
She looked away. Pulled her hand away.
“You think I wouldn’t make an honest woman of you, if it came to that?”
She turned and looked sharply at me. “I can’t marry
Then it hit me.
“Oh. Oh yeah. My last name is Heller. Good Christian girl like you can’t go around marrying Jews. Just fucking them.”
She began to cry. “How can you be so cruel?”
“Don’t worry,” I said, putting the car into gear. “You can always tell ’em I raped you.”
And I did what I should have done earlier: pulled out.
15
Was I the only one it struck odd? That the scene of the crime, or at least the scene where the crime began, was also the site of the trial?
Every morning of the proceedings, the quaintly neoclassical Judiciary Building, outside of which Joe Kahahawai had received his bogus summons, was guarded by a phalanx of dusky police in blue serge uniforms insanely un- suited for the sweltering heat. The baroque building itself was roped and sawhorsed off, helping the cops keep back crowds about two-thirds
Only seventy-five seats inside were available for the general public, and these precious pews had the colored servants of the
Each morning, the scream of sirens scattered birds in banyans and stirred the curious crowd as a caravan of motorcycle police leading and following two cars (two defendants per car, under Navy guard) made its delivery from Pearl Harbor. The two seamen rode together—Jones and Lord, short, burly, uncomfortable in suits and ties, tough little kids playing dress-up—cigarettes drooping from nervously smiling lips as they emerged from the Navy vehicle into the waiting custody of uniformed cops, who escorted them into the courthouse. Tommie, dapper in his suit and tie, made a slight, sad-looking escort for his patrician mother-in-law (in a succession of dark tasteful frocks and matching tam turbans), who seemed at once aloof and weary. Like Joe Kahahawai’s golden ghost, the statue of King Kamehameha took all this in, unamused.
Every day, everyone who went inside—from defendant to spectator, from reporter to Clarence Darrow himself (and the judge, too)—got patted down for weapons by cops. Next, they passed by an adjacent courtroom that had been turned into a bustling pressroom—desks, telephones, typewriters, telegraph lines, accommodating a dozen or more reporters from as far away as London—before entering the small courtroom with its dark plaster walls and darker woodwork, lazily churning ceiling fans, and open windows looking out on whispering palms and the
