To save them money, the architect said that he would supervise the construction, and he hired his own subcontractors. Often, calling from the mainland, Alex was surprised when the architect picked up the telephone, or Kristen did and handed it to the architect. He told the man he was grateful for his close attention and long hours. As for Kristen, the man said, "She likes being on-site. She's getting involved." Alex heard the girl giggle.
"When they saw the wood it smells like popcorn!" he heard Kristen
say.
"Isn't that special! It's what I would want if someone were designing a home for me," the architect said. "I know the pitfalls — you don't. And even if you did, you'd probably be risk averse."
Instead of commenting on "risk averse," another turn of speech that drew his attention, Alex asked the architect where he was from. The man's answer, "The Bay Area," told him nothing.
Alex returned one weekend to find four enormous Tongans building a wall of lava rock in front: the architect's idea, Kristen's design — she'd sketched it herself — which Becky approved. The man also urged them to get their furniture custom made in Hawaii: "No veneer. Solid koa. Why not?
The koa forests in Hawaii are nearly depleted. The wood will be unobtainable in a few years."
Agreeing to this meant more visits to the mainland, and setting up a mainland office, just a fax machine and a telephone in a small rented cubicle in Los Angeles, which Alex hated yet endured: the dream house was taking shape.
"I notice you usually relax like me in a chair after work," the architect said, tapping his head in a knowing way and then sketching on his pad. He had decided to design the furniture that would be custom made. Scraping with his pencil, he said, "I'm going to rough out a chair with a real high back and lumbar support." Scrape, scrape. "Nice wide arms. Tiny little details matter the most."
There was no point in letting a harmless expression like "tiny little details" bother you, and yet it did bother Alex. He made the mistake of mentioning it to Becky that evening in the stifling apartment in Kaimuki, and she turned on him.
"You're never satisfied! Here he is, designing a chair for your own butt, and you criticize the way he talks."
She was angry because he had also mentioned the architect's harping on "home" and repeating "very unique." Under this onslaught Alex was embarrassed ever to have thought of himself as a hunter-gatherer.
Not long after that, he was in Los Angeles and eager for news of the house, which was nearly finished. He called Becky. She surprised him by saying, in a telephone voice she kept for strangers, "Yes, what is it?"
He had heard her say that into a phone to telemarketers.
"It's me," Alex said, hoping that she was speaking this way because the line was bad.
"I know it's you."
Then he knew something was wrong.
"What is it?" he said. "Is Kristen smoking again?"
Becky said, "We have to talk," and hung up.
The headwinds that impede a plane flying from Los Angeles to Honolulu most winter days can add as much as an hour to the normal five- hour flight. That happened the morning in January Alex Holt flew home, knowing that something was seriously wrong but not sure what. He was heartsick. Becky met him at the gate at Honolulu Airport among the people offering leis and shouting in glee and carrying signs saying Paradise Tours Meeting Point, or uniformed drivers with placards reading Dr. Kawabata or Mr. Dickstein. And when he greeted her, he found himself too weepy and inarticulate to speak. Becky hurried on ahead while Alex found a skycap to help him with his bag. Driving from the airport down the H-1 Freeway, she glanced at him in the passenger seat, saw his tears, and said, "Listen carefully. I have something to tell you. I've been seeing Ray." Ray, of course, was the architect, whom Alex had never thought of as having a
name you needed to know, any more than the skycap who had jogged his bag on the luggage cart.
"Seeing Ray" was supposed to mean everything. In the silence that followed Becky's saying this, Alex imagined some of the implications.
Seeing the man naked was mainly what he imagined. Seeing him laugh, seeing him talk, seeing him make promises, not seeing anyone else.
At the Kaimuki apartment, also in silence, he said, "Where's Kristen?"
"She's staying with friends. She doesn't want to see you."
The apartment seemed more spacious, but that was because it had been emptied of most of the furniture.
Becky said, "I've moved my things."
"Where to?"
She seemed genuinely amused. "Where to!"
"Kahala?" He saw the house in his mind as Becky began to leave. He said, "You said we needed to talk."
"We just talked." Again she turned to go.
Alex said in a pleading voice, "Can't we talk about our marriage?"
"Don't do that to me," Becky said. "You're trying to bring me down."
"What was wrong?" Alex was in tears again.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "I've already processed it."
"Processed" was one of his words — had to be.
Becky filed for divorce. She asked for child support. Kristen stayed with her. "She needs a stable home." They were by then living in the house in Kahala, and Alex suspected but could not prove that the child support was going toward the mortgage. Alex challenged her on this, lawyers were hired, a suit filed, and in her deposition Becky said that Alex had been neglectful, constantly away on the mainland, and verbally abusive. She said that she suspected him of child abuse, "inappropriate touching and fondling" and spending much more time than was normal with her teenage daughter.
"She hit me with a pretty good lawsuit," Alex told me.
Without money for a lawyer to contest her claims, Alex dropped the suit. At that point he checked into the Hotel Honolulu and, after telling me his story, got very depressed. "Kind of suicidal, but it wore off." Then, some months later, he heard that Becky, calling it "tough love," had thrown Kristen out of the house for smoking pakalolo, and that Kristen was living with her Samoan boyfriend somewhere in Nanakuli. Alex said he was sorry about it, but "I pretty much try not to let it bother me."
I said, "I want to know a bit more about Kristen."
But he wouldn't tell me more. He said that talking about this whole thing, and especially about her, had only made him feel kind of worse.
48 The Happiest Man in Hawaii
Once, after an excellent bottle of wine in the hotel, Royce Lionberg fixed his lawyer's lie-detector eyes on me and said, "I know you're going to write about me." I had first met him at the "service" for Buddy's wife Stella, the happy funeral. Apart from Leon Edel, he was the only person in Hawaii I had met who had read my books. He expressed genuine shock that I now managed a hotel. The statement about using him in my writing was intended to take me by surprise. I told him what was in my heart, "Never," and he believed me.
I did not tell him the reason I said it. I would not have attempted to deceive him. He lived on the North Shore, up the hill from Buddy, a mansion on a cliff. He visited the hotel once or twice a month and indulged himself in a Buddy Burger (Peewee spiked the ground beef with vermouth) and a bottle of Merlot. He had retired early because of his brilliant instincts and his sense of timing. He was a man without any regrets. He also used to say, "People come into my house and think, What can he do for me? What can I get out of him?" He smiled when he said it, knowing that he was way ahead of these people.
But I wanted nothing from him — that was why we became friends. I said "never" because he was impossible to write about, though I could not explain this without offending him.