sides of the street whenever I could. I help the person, if I can, and at the same time I try to provide a compassionate voice inside the station. Was this e-mailer someone I already knew-or just someone who recognized my name? But how could he have gotten my personal e-mail address? I was careful about giving that out.
Or at least I’d tried to be. During my dark time, after breaking up with Mike, I’d hung out online a lot, and every now and then I’d given out my e-mail address for some hot cyber sex, or as a way to hook up with some guy I met online. The more I thought about it, the more I figured this guy was someone I’d known-perhaps, I thought wryly, in the biblical sense.
I used my cell phone to call the number from the e-mail. “This is Kimo,” I said. Fortunately, Kimo’s about as common a name as you can get in the islands. Since I didn’t know who I was calling I was reluctant to start out with name and rank.
“Thank God,” the man said. “I have been very upset about what to do.”
He had a South Asian accent. “Well, let me see if I can help. You know something about the fire Sunday night?”
“I do not wish to talk about it on the phone. Can you meet me?”
I looked over at Ray, who was listening to the conversation from across the desk. “You at UH?”
“Meet me in front of the law school library. Half hour?”
“I’m downtown. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Will I recognize you?”
“I know you,” he said. “And when you see me, you’ll recognize me, too.”
He hung up. “You want to take a ride up to UH?” I asked Ray.
“Sure. Let me call Julie and tell her I’ll meet her up there.”
Clouds had swept in off the ocean, wrapping Diamond Head in ribbons of white, and a stiff breeze shook the palm trees on South Beretania Street as we left the parking garage. In the half hour that it took us to climb the hilly roads to Manoa, though, the trade winds had swept the clouds away and a brutal sunshine glared off every reflective surface. I parked at a meter near the law school. “You want to go over there alone?” Ray asked.
“Why don’t you hang back, but keep me in visual.”
He nodded, and I strolled up to the law school library, where students were congregating on the concrete steps and under the giant kukui trees, and walking on the paths. Somebody was playing Keola Beamer’s Wooden Boat, and the gentle rhythm of the slack key guitar made me smile.
I was looking at a notice board covered with decades of staples and the remnants of hundreds of flyers when a guy appeared next to me.
I did recognize him, though I’d never known his name. As I thought, he was one of my hookups from MenSayHi. com, an island dating site for gay men. He was about five ten, very handsome, with short, dark hair and skin the color of a coffee bean.
I knew the first time I signed on to MenSayHi. com it was a mistake. All it would take is one disgruntled trick to report me to the department, or start spreading vicious rumors about me being a sloppy bottom who loved to get plowed, and my career could go up in flames. I already had guys teasing me about working for the Department of Homo-land Security, or snickering behind my back. Cops are among the most homophobic guys I’ve ever met, pouncing on the straightest guy who mentioned seeing a chick flick, asking if he’d started pissing sitting down- anything to get a rise out of you.
But when it came to getting laid, I was willing to take a few risks.
I’d tried meeting guys in ordinary ways. I’d met my first boyfriend on the beach, and I’d met Mike on the job. I’d picked up, and been picked up by, guys at bars and clubs. But after I broke up with Mike, I didn’t want to go out. I just wanted to get laid, frequently, and in ways that reminded me what a lousy human being I was for the way I’d dumped Mike without giving him a chance to explain.
So I logged into MenSayHi. com and answered a couple of ads, and had some sexual encounters that went from bland to disturbing. The things I got off on scared me a little-mostly men treating me badly, physically, tweaking and slapping and pounding various body parts. Somehow I got punishment confused with sex; I thought because I’d been a jerk when I broke up with Mike, I should be treated that way by every guy I met. I’d always been a little intrigued by S amp;M, and I indulged myself and my throbbing dick.
A few of the guys had simply been closeted, though, and if I recalled correctly, this was one of them. “I’d rather not give you my name, if you don’t mind,” he said. I couldn’t place the accent, though it was South Asian.
We walked off to a bench in the shade of a big kukui tree. I saw Ray leaning up against a palm across from us, watching, and I said, “I remember you. You didn’t give me your name then, either.”
“My situation is difficult. My wife doesn’t know what I do. Her father is paying my law school tuition, and he will cut me off and force my wife to divorce me if he ever finds out.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “I thought this was about the fire?”
He frowned. “I was here at the library Sunday night. Studying. I got a text from a man I had met on MenSayHi. He was working late, had the whole office to himself. Wanted me to come over.”
“Office on Waialae Avenue?” I asked.
“Across from that shopping center that burned. We finished, like maybe ten o’clock, and I walked out to my car.”
“Where was your car parked? In the lot in front of the office building?”
The guy shook his head. “I was afraid someone might see my car. So I parked around the corner, on that side street that dead-ends into Waialae Avenue.”
I pictured it in my head. “Facing toward the street, and the shopping center?”
He nodded. “I sat in the car for a while, thinking. I knew that what I had been doing was wrong, and that I needed to stop.” His mouth set into a frown and his brows came together. His palms were sweating and he wiped them on his pants.
I knew the feeling. I’d had it myself, more than a few times. It wasn’t until I’d come out of the closet that those feelings of shame began to fade away.
“After a while I knew I couldn’t just sit there forever, and I was about to leave. I saw this guy, like a ninja or something, all dressed in black, come running out from behind the shopping center. From where I was parked, I couldn’t see where he went, but about a minute later, a dark sedan came zooming across the parking lot, turned onto Waialae Avenue, and drove off.”
A group of students passed us, laughing and fooling around. One of the guys was shirtless and buff, and I watched my caller’s eyes track him as he passed. I could see beads of sweat pooling on his forehead. “Just then my cell phone rang, and I saw that it was my wife. She wanted to know when I was coming home.”
He wiped his forehead. “I told her that I was just leaving the campus. She wanted me to stop at the ABC Store near our apartment and get some milk for the morning. We talked for a couple of minutes, and I was so scared that she knew I wasn’t at the library at all.”
A gray cloud passed overhead, heavy with rain, throwing us into shadow. “When I hung up the phone, I turned the car on and rolled down the windows. As I drove away, I smelled smoke and realized it was coming up from behind the center, and I called 911.”
“That was pretty good of you,” I said. “Considering the circumstances.”
“I’m not a bad person. I believe in the law.” He paused. “I saw you on TV, and I thought I could trust you. That you’d understand.”
A cool breeze swept past us, rustling the dead leaves under the kukui tree. “I do. I understand. Tell me about this ninja. Man or woman?”
“Definitely a man. I saw the way he ran.”
“Height? Weight?”
He shrugged. “Too far away to see much. Maybe a little on the chunky side, average height, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention.”
“How about the car. Did you notice anything about the car as it drove away?”
“Fancy sedan,” he said. “BMW or Mercedes. I have to drive a piece of crap Toyota. I tell you, as soon as I pass the bar I’m leasing one of those nice cars.”
“Color?”
“Dark blue,” he said. “With a white interior.”
“You saw that in the dark?”
