"Want to see my place?"
She knew there was no greater risk than going alone with a man to his room. But older women did it, and she had started to love him. He was older than any boy she knew, and because of that she trusted him.
Besides, she knew where he worked, Hoku Honda. She had begun to understand, from something as ordinary as the pressure of his hands on her feet, that she was his secret friend.
"Promise not to hurt me?"
"I would never hurt you."
The room was on the ground floor of a house just off Kapahulu, behind the shave ice place and across the street from an elementary school. She could hear the small children playing. So recently she had been that age and playing! She thought, But I am not a schoolgirl anymore.
The haole guy was happy again. He sat across the room so that she would not be frightened. Then he rolled up the narrow carpet and asked her to walk up and down the wood floor as hard as she could, stamping her heels. In his chair, moving his lips, he seemed to be praying.
That day, leaving the house, he said, "I want to buy you something nice. What do you want?"
She said, "I'm saving up for something special."
He folded a twenty-dollar bill in half and put it into her hand. He did the same the next time, after the movie (Lethal Weapon), where he had held her feet again; and after the beach, where he had taken pleasure in gripping her feet and hoisting her to a tree branch in the park; and after parking awhile to watch the Honolulu lights from the road on Tantalus. It was not always a twenty he gave her; sometimes it was a ten or a five.
The only request he made was "Please wear your shoes."
Those secondhand shoes! She was self-conscious about them; she wanted to tell him where she had bought them. She was worried he might have minded, because wearing someone else's shoes was like a trick. Sometimes she wished he would kiss her lips instead of her shoes, stroke her nipples the way he stroked the shoe buckles. And she wanted to touch him. She had feared that he would want more; now it was she who wanted more.
He was still her secret friend, but there wasn't much to keep secret: his mouth on her shoes and the Polaroids he took of them, and the time he said, "Step on my face," but playfully, in Kapiolani Park, lots of people around, many flying kites. Once he cleaned the shoes, "my secret way," by licking them.
It was not enough. She thought that he might please her more if she pleased him more. She took all the money he had given her, borrowed some, stole a little from her mother's purse, and bought the best pair of shoes she could find at a consignment shop, swapping her own for ten dollars (she had paid twenty-five for them, but it had been worth it).
"Manolo Blahnik. Killer spikes," the salesgirl said. And then she called him at Hoku Honda, something she had never done before. But she was confident now. His helpless staring and his secrets had made her feel powerful.
The shoes were red, sexy, with steeper heels than the old pair.
"Manolo Blahnik. Killer spikes, yah?"
The haole guy was polite. He smiled. But he closed his eyes and murmured when she said she had swapped the other shoes. He did not touch her, did not even touch her new shoes. He said he had to meet a customer about a leasing agreement. She never saw him again.
"First love," the girl said, though she felt that way only after it was over. And that was how my wife became worldly.
59 The Private Party on Mauna Kea Street
"I could write one great story," Puamana said. "Except I went never learn write."
I got that all the time, because of Buddy's "He wrote a book!" But as my mother-in-law, Puamana commanded my attention. I listened politely. She said nothing more.
"Just tell me the story," I said.
"You won't believe."
"Those are the ones I usually believe."
This woman, she said — speaking quickly, nervously, as though she had thought about the woman in the story a great deal but had never uttered these things aloud — this woman was married to a man who was so lazy he hated owning shoes with shoelaces. The woman bought him all his best clothes, the silk shirts, white pants, a plantation hat with a feather band. He liked Oakley sunglasses. He had three pairs.
But he so seldom went out of the house, he hardly wore his beautiful clothes. Most of the day he stayed home watching television, a large- screen model his wife had also bought him. They lived on Nuuanu, near the corner of Beretania, in a new apartment block that had a wall around it
and a doorman. When he was bored with TV the man stared out the window at Chinatown, at nothing in particular. The wife paid the rent. She paid everything. It had never been necessary for the man to work.
Most women would have killed him, or left him for another man, or told him to get a job. But his wife loved him. She was grateful that he accepted her, delighted when her gifts pleased him. She was like a slave, like a child, like a possession. She adored him and became terrified when she thought that, should she ever lose him, she would be lost herself. He was her husband, her father, her boss, her master, her lover. Her own father had been abusive to her, and she had been rescued by her mother and raised in the hanai system by a foster family, a friendly couple. Her own daughter, conceived accidentally one night in Kahala with a stranger, was being raised in this way too.
These days she worked on Mauna Kea Street, returning with her salary and tips in cash. You would be amazed at what waitresses could earn in Waikiki. Hostesses made much more. She was a hostess.
The house rule was that relatives must not show up on the premises. There wasn't even a question of her husband's agreeing to this: he didn't care, didn't even ask about the job. The woman's support and generosity had made the man indifferent to her work and her odd hours — she set off in the middle of the afternoon and returned home well after midnight, sometimes at two A.M. She always found her husband at home, usually asleep after an evening of drinking beer, watching TV and the Honolulu habit of low-stakes gambling. They both slept late, then they had sex — his rolling on top of her, that fumbling, was her reward.
"He got real heavy," Puamana said, giving the words weight.
Most people would have said that this arrangement was doomed to fail, but the truth was that it worked very well. The woman did not complain. Far from it, she was grateful for her life and the passive fidelity of her husband. She worked even longer hours, so she had more money to give him. Eventually, pocketing the money, it was the man who complained, in this way: "You're out all night. You have no time for me."
Because she was working! Buying him clothes! And recently a PlayStation with lots of games! Anything he wanted!
In a meek voice, stroking his hand, she told him that. Still, he grumbled, but unconvincingly. He knew how dependent he was on her money. He had begun to gamble more recklessly. She barely remarked on that. She even encouraged him a bit, seeing his gambling as something that would make him more dependent on her. He stopped complaining, though she could tell from the way he ate — working through his heaped plate but with almost no appetite, just a habit of stuffing himself — he was discontented.
A video camera, a CD player a La-Z-Boy recliner, a waterbed — she bought him these and more, and more clothes. He seemed to cheer up. He must have liked the clothes, because he wore them and went out more, to the bookie's or to game rooms. Sometimes the woman returned home and found he wasn't there. She'd wait anxiously until he showed up, smiling.
"I worry that you'll leave me for another woman."
"Never. There's no one like you."
It was what she wanted him to say, so, naturally, she doubted him. But she also allowed herself to think that, by working very hard and giving him everything, she had managed to please him. Married life was strange and a struggle. Had she succeeded? Had her sacrifice been rewarded?