many years apart.
He ordered us a couple of beers and we sat on high stools around a table with a mosaic tile top. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said, after we had sat together for a few minutes in silence. “I acted like an asshole. Tatiana says it’s easier for me to blow off steam than to actually confront my feelings.”
He put the bottle down on the table and it made a hard sound. “Here’s the thing. I don’t like fags. It’s as simple as that.”
I nodded. “I don’t either.”
He looked at me curiously. “But you’re a fag.”
I shook my head. “You don’t get it. You don’t like effeminate men. Guys who flounce all over the place and call you darling.”
“Like Tico.”
“Like Tico. But I don’t do that, do I?”
He hesitated. “Go on, you won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Once in a while you get like that. I always figured you were acting like the baby.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I can be a little faggy sometimes. But it doesn’t define my personality, is what I mean. I mean, I’m the same person I was before you knew I liked to sleep with men. Right?”
“I guess.”
“So you don’t have to put me in that group of people you don’t like, if you don’t want to.”
“I just got so mad,” he said. “It was like the fags had come and recruited my little brother. I wanted to go out and bash some heads.”
“Nobody recruited me.” I took a drink from the bottle. “This is the way I was born, just like you were born big and Lui was born sad-looking.”
“Sad-looking,” he said, and laughed. “You’re right. He always looks like somebody just ran over his dog.”
“Remember that dog we had, what was his name, Pua? Mom used to go crazy when he got up on the furniture.”
“She tried to keep him out in the yard, but you cried,” Haoa said. “You convinced her to bring him back in.”
“You guys put me up to that! I never would have cried otherwise.”
We laughed for a couple of minutes and drank our beers. “So do you fool around a lot?” Haoa asked after a while.
“I haven’t quite gotten it figured out yet. But I think when I was with women, I was looking for ones that wouldn’t tie me down, because I knew deep down it wasn’t what I wanted. Now that I can admit it, I just want what you and Tatiana have, and Lui and Liliha. Somebody to love, to hold onto at night.”
“I was so jealous of you,” he said. “You know I love Tatiana. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without her. But man, I used to see you with a different wahine every week, and it was like, I want to be there. Just let me be single one weekend, Lord. Let me have Kimo’s life for one weekend.”
I laughed. “Guess you don’t want it now.”
“So maybe I was mad because I was wrong about you, too,” he said. “I mean, here you were, living out my fantasy life, and then it turned out it was all a lie. It just kind of made me crazy.”
We had almost finished our beers when our father came up. “The landscaping looks good, Haoa,” he said. “You should be pau soon.”
Haoa nodded. He drained the last of his beer and said, “Got to get back.” He looked at me. “Take care, little brother.”
“You too.”
My father and I walked slowly back to his truck. “You saw your brother.”
I nodded. “We had a talk.”
“Good.”
“How about the job you’re bidding on?” I asked. “Did you get a look at it?”
“Nice job,” he said. “We can talk about it sometime.”
It was almost three o’clock by the time we got back to the office. I spent another hour or so on the electrical drawings, and then my father announced it was time to go home. “Benefit of being semi-retired,” he said. “You can make your own hours.” He looked at me. “Of course, if you were running this business for real, the hours are much longer. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“I won’t,” I said.
In the newspaper that evening there was a further article on Evan Gonsalves’s death. They had found a fingerprint on the jewelry box that matched Tommy Pang’s, making a strong connection between the two of them. There was speculation that, as a cop, Evan couldn’t live with the idea that he’d killed Tommy, and killed himself over the guilt. I thought it was rotten that the story had to break the same day as Evan’s funeral, and hoped somebody was keeping the papers from Terri.
After dinner I called Akoni at home. Mealoha answered and we talked awkwardly for a minute, her asking how I was and me saying I was doing okay. “Hey, brah, howzit?” I asked when Akoni picked up the receiver.
“Okay,” he said. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m getting by. Yesterday I went shopping with my mother, and today I went to the office with my dad. I don’t know who’s going to get me tomorrow.”
“You’ll get through this.”
“I read about the fingerprint match in the Advertiser. You really think Evan could have killed himself out of guilt?”
“I don’t know. Shit, you were my partner for a long time and I didn’t know you. How’m I going to speculate on Evan Gonsalves? Hey, by the way. We got notification that the girl in that drug bust, Luz Maria, she went back to Mexico.”
“You ever get to interview her?”
“Nope. Just saw the paperwork. And you know there’s no way we’ll talk to her now. If she knew anything about Tommy Pang she took it back to Mexico with her.”
We said our goodbyes and hung up. I was edgy, worrying that my case was still going on and I couldn’t work on it. What was I going to do? I ought to go home, I supposed. There wouldn’t be anybody hanging around my doorway, and it was a step toward getting my life back together. It was something. I packed my suitcase and assembled all my equipment-the roller blades, surfboards, all the other stuff I’d brought.
I carried it downstairs, and walked into the living room, where my parents were watching TV. “I want to go home,” I said. “I think it’s time.”
My mother looked at my father, and he nodded. “Why don’t you take my truck,” he said. “Your mother can bring me by to pick it up tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I started for the door, then stopped and turned back around. “Thanks,” I said. “For everything.”
Then I turned back to the door and went out into the night.
WHAT HE LEFT BEHIND
I was happy to be back in my own apartment. It was the first step toward regaining a life of my own. Before we’d left, my mother had plugged the phone back in and turned on my answering machine, and the red light blinked furiously. I left it for the morning light and went to sleep.
I woke up refreshed, and felt even better after a good long morning on the waves. I came back to my apartment around ten and switched the answering machine to play while I fixed breakfast. Eating my father’s cooking had awakened in me a desire to return to the comfort foods of my youth, and I watched the eggs carefully to keep them runny, so they would soak into the toast.
Most of the messages were from reporters who wanted to talk to me. There was a call from Harry in there, from Friday, I guessed, before he’d figured out I was holed up at my parents’ house. The last two calls, unexpectedly, were from Terri Clark Gonsalves, and she sounded upset.
“I need to talk to you, Kimo,” she said. “About Evan. Please call me.”
