Seize the Night

“Maybe some crocodile,” Bobby said sourly. He frowned. “I thought the second troop was supposed to be a lot better engineered than the first. Less violent.”

“So?”

“Big Head didn’t look like a pussycat. That thing was designed for the battlefield.”

“It didn’t attack us.”

“Only because it was smart enough to know what the shotgun could do to it.”

Ahead was the access ramp down which I had traveled on my bike earlier in the night, with Orson padding at my side. Bobby angled the Jeep toward it.

Recalling the sorry beast on the bungalow roof and the way it had hidden its face behind its crossed arms, I said, “I don’t think it’s a killer.”

“Yeah, all those teeth are just for opening canned hams.”

“Orson has wicked teeth, and he’s no killer.”

“Oh, you’ve convinced me, you absolutely have. Let’s invite Big Head for a pajama party. We’ll make huge bowls of popcorn, order in a pizza, put one another’s hair up in curlers, and talk about boys.”

“Asshole.”

“A minute ago, we were brothers.”

“That was then.”

Bobby drove up the ramp to the top of the levee, between the signs warning about the dangers of the river during storms, across the barren strip of land to the street, where at last he switched on the headlights. He headed toward Lilly Wing’s house.

“I think Pia and I are going to be together again,” Bobby said, referring to Pia Klick, the artist and love of his life, who believes that she is the reincarnation of Kaha Huna, the goddess of surf.

“She says Waimea is home,” I reminded him.

“I’m going to work some major mojo.”

Mother Earth was busily rotating us toward dawn, but the streets of Moonlight Bay were so deserted and silent it was easy to imagine that it was, like Dead Town, inhabited only by ghosts and cadavers.

“Mojo? You’re into voodoo now?” I asked Bobby.

“Freudian mojo.”

“Pia’s way too smart to fall for it,” I predicted.

Although she had been acting flaky for the past three years, ever since she had gone to Hawaii to find herself, Pia was no dummy. Before Bobby ever met her, she had graduated summa cum laude from UCLA. These days, her hyperrealist paintings sold for big bucks, and the pieces she wrote for various art magazines were perceptive and brilliantly composed.

“I’m going to tell her about my new tandem board,” he said.

“Ah. The implication being there’s some wahine you’re riding it with.”

“You need a reality transfusion, bro. Pia can’t be manipulated like that. What I tell her is — I got the tandem board, and I’m ready whenever she is.”

Since Pia’s meditations had led her to the revelation that she was the reincarnation of Kaha Huna, she had decided that it would be blasphemous to have carnal relations with a mere mortal man, which meant that she would have to live the rest of her life in celibacy. This had demoralized Bobby.

An elusive squiggle of hope appeared with Pia’s subsequent realization that Bobby was the reincarnation of Kahuna, the Hawaiian god of the surf. A creation of modern surfers, the Kahuna legend is based on the life of an ancient witch doctor no more divine than your local chiropractor. Nevertheless, Pia says that Bobby, being Kahuna, is the one man on earth with whom she could make love — although in order for them to pick up where they left off, he must acknowledge his true immortal nature and embrace his fate.

A new problem arose when, either out of pride in being just mortal Bobby Halloway or out of pure stubbornness, of which he has some, Bobby refused to agree that he was the one and true god of the surf.

Compared to the difficulties of modern romance, the problems of Romeo and Juliet were piffling.

“So you’re finally going to admit you’re Kahuna,” I said, as we drove through pine-flanked streets into the higher hills of town.

“No. I’ll play it mysterious. I won’t say I’m not Kahuna. Be cool. Wrap myself in enigma when she raises the subject, and let her make what she wants of that.”

“Not good enough.”

“There’s more. I’ll also tell her about this dream where I saw her in an awesomely beautiful gold-and-blue silk holoku, levitating over these tasty, eight-foot, glassy waves, and in the dream she says to me, Papa he’e nalu — Hawaiian for surfboard.”

We were in a residential neighborhood two blocks south of Ocean Avenue, the main east-west street in Moonlight Bay, when a car turned the corner at the intersection ahead, approaching us. It was a basic, late-model, Chevrolet sedan, beige or white, with standard California license plates.

I closed my eyes to protect them from the oncoming headlights. I wanted to duck or slide down in the seat to shield my face from the light, but I could have done nothing more calculated to call attention to myself other than, perhaps, whipping out a paper bag and pulling it over my head.

As the Chevy was passing us, its headlights no longer a danger, I opened my eyes and saw two men in the front, one in the backseat. They were big guys, dressed in dark clothes, as expressionless as turnips, all interested in us. Their night-of-the-living-dead eyes were flat, cold, and disturbingly direct.

For some reason, I thought of the shadowy figure I had seen on the sloping buttress, above the tunnel that led under Highway 1.

After we were past the Chevy, Bobby said, “Legal muscle.”

“Professional trouble,” I agreed.

“They might as well have had it stenciled on their foreheads.”

Watching their taillights in the side mirror, I said, “They don’t seem to be after us, anyway. Wonder what they’re looking for.”

“Maybe Elvis.”

When the Chevy didn’t double back and follow us, I said, “So you’re gonna tell Pia that in this dream of yours, she’s levitating over some waves, and she says, Papa he’e nalu.”

“Right. In the dream, she tells me to get a tandem board we can ride together. I figured that was prophetic, so I got the board, and now I’m ready.”

“What a crock,” I said, by way of friendly criticism.

“It’s true. I had the dream.”

“No way.”

“Way. In fact, I had it three nights in a row, which weirded me out a little. I’ll tell her all that, and let her interpret it any way she wants.”

“While you play mysterious, not admitting to being Kahuna but exhibiting godlike charisma.”

He looked worried. Braking at a stop sign after having ignored all those before it, he said, “Truth. You don’t think I can pull it off?”

When it comes to charisma, I have never known anyone like Bobby: The stuff pours off him in such copious quantity that he positively wades in it.

“Bro,” I said, “you have so much charisma that if you wanted to form a suicide cult, you’d have people signing up by the thousands to jump off a cliff with you.”

He was pleased. “Yeah? You’re not spinning me?”

“No spin,” I assured him.

“Mahalo.”

“You’re welcome. But one question.”

As he accelerated away from the stop sign, he said, “Ask.”

“Why not just tell Pia that you’ve decided you’re Kahuna?”

“I can’t lie to her. I love her.”

“It’s a harmless lie.”

“Do you lie to Sasha?”

“No.”