Aloha's End Chapter Nine Kiss Kiss Kiss

Aloha’s End

by Michael F. Zangari © 2006 with all rights reserved.

Chapter Nine: Kiss Kiss Kiss

Frank Bravanoti, the guy they call “the duck,” opens his eyes.
The morning light is breaking over the mountains and streams through the screen of the window.

The birds are already arguing in the mango tree.
The chitter is intense and interwoven with incredible precision. One bird zings the other. The second bird picks up exactly where the last one left off without skipping a beat.
It’s like a crazy barrel house piano roll, tack hammer rattling.
Frank gets up, showers, shaves and dresses.
He pads over the wooden planks of the floor down the hallway to the kitchen.
Rosa is sitting at the kitchen table doing bills.
She has on her half lens reading glasses with the skinny frames. The chop stick ear pieces are as black as her hair.

She studies the bill intensely and occasionally looks up a word in the dictionary she has on the table. She has short nails. cut close but painted an emaculate pink. Her fingers trace down the coloums of figures. She's just back from work and hasn't changed her cloths yet, the crisp blue food services uniform is ironed and lightly starched. She's stitched her name over her heart in silk cursive .
She works for the airlines, making salads.

Frank walks quietly up behind her and puts his arms around her.

“Morning Rose petals” he says, kissing her forehead.
She inclines her head towards him and her glasses slide down her nose.
The new coffee beans are on the table with the salsa and peppers.
Frank picks up the canister and reads the Spanish. “Café’ Supremo.”
“It’s from Mexico,” she says, her accent as thick and rich as the smell of the beans. “Jose brought it this morning with his wife’s coookies.”
English is her fourth language. She grew up Spanish, Indian and French in Mexico City near the pyramid of the moon but she was born in Iowa City near the University. She is internacional, of a mixed earth and alien heritage, but she's an all American working woman. Rosa Riveting. She likes the Red Sox.
“You can grind” she says, looking over her shoulder, over the rim of the glasses with big green eyes. She motions to the coffee with her Mayan nose. Her full lips pulling smile.
Frank catches her energy go a little lude and hugs her again, rocking her a little.
“Thanks” he says.
He picks up the canister and shakes it like a maraca.

They are loosely packed.

The coffee is essential. He is cloudy and dense in the morning. Caffine gives him a little window to think clearly, bufore dulling him out.
The Moloka'i ass kicker gold coffee is is already perking in the pot, the steam rich and dense.
His cup is by the pot with the milk and the sugar.
He fixes his mobile mug, dumping in the sugar and the milk.
“I have an interview in town this morning” he says. “I need to catch the bus.”
“You have a job interview?” she perks up just like the coffee bubble.
“No. I got a call last night from a journalist, a famous one, TrueWest from the network television? He wants to meet me.”
Rosa’s shoulders go down like the coffee after-perk, the gush inside the bubble contained and dripping back into the pot.

Her shoulders slump. “He has got a job for you?”
“You don’t understand” says Frank.
Not the English, anyway.
Rosa understands the situation though. More talking.
Frank looks down.

“It’s about the lawsuit. Maybe we’ll get a break. Get some coverage.”
“Your situation is very complicated” she says.
“Yes” he says. “It is.”
Rosa lowers her head. She goes back to the bills.
She looks up again with just eyes.
“You will wear the beak?”
He looks into Rosa’s eyes. “I have to, I’m the duck.”
“You are a very strange man patito.”
“Yes. But good.”
“In the bed too? I heard about you” she says. “The nibble of your little beak.”
“Good?” Frank laughs. “I better be.”
He leans across the table and kisses her lips.
When the kiss breaks off he pinches her shoulders and walks out of the kitchen, down the hallway to the bedroom get his beak.
He goes into the bedroom and takes a teak wood chest out from under the bed.
He opens the gold clasp and the lid. The rubber duckbill is inside lying in a blue velvet hollow.
It is yellow-orange with the hint of a pink tongue.
It is a quarter mask, just big enough to cover his nose. It’s smaller than a classic Daffy, but pert and proud in loft.
It’s quite a quacker.
He bought it in a little antique store in Chinatown for a good price.
He takes it out of the box and stretches the string.
The flare and dive of the trumpets hit the morning quiet like a bomb. Frank jumps.
The chatter of the castanets and martial rhythms fill the little house in an avalanche of sound. The beat drives. The trumpets fanfare and blend.
It is the music of the bullfight.
Rosa has cranked the volume up full blast.
The boards of the house are shaking.
She runs to the bedroom door to see Frank’s reaction.
The big green-brown eyes dance.
He looks back at her in amazement.
He doesn’t expect support. But he gets it
With a great formality he dons the rubber beak. He holds it before him.
He stretches the elastic string around his head to hold it on and lets it snap on the back of his head.
He turns profile so the size of it becomes dramatic as it comes off the face like a ski jump.
He bows.
Rosa throws him a fresh gardenia from the garden. She is in the doorway.
“When you return I will weak your legs with love” she says.
“I will sling the bull” slays Frank. “And return to your arms.”
“When will you return?” Rosa plays with the top buttons of her blouse. “How long will I wait?”

It pops open.
Her mouth opens in an exaggerated “o’ of surprise.
Frank looks at the sweet cleavage of her breast, damp, still powdered.
His eyes are burning like Roman candles do before they pop and shoot. The sparks spark sparks in the dark of them.
He doesn’t think about it.
He goes to her like an arrow from a crossbow.
He goes down with her weight, her arms closing around him.
“Patito” she sighs.
The gravity gets good between them.
They roll out onto the bed, their arms are filled with each other.
Frank goes in slowly so he doesn’t smash the beak or damage Rosa’s nose.
Their lips lock on and they kiss carefully.
Rosa is smiling underneath the kiss. The beak tickles her nose.
Even if her English were expert she would not understand why this relationship works. But it is man and woman, these confusions.
The man and the woman are different, yes?
Rosa always says that as long as there is a mystery, there is love.
The mysteries are the attractions, Comprendes mi amour?
Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.
It’s like drinking water after a long hot hike, the kisses.
“I couldn’t live with out you Rosa” Frank says.
Rosa pangs inside before she goes delirious and closes her eyes.