Aloha's End (c) 2006 By Michael F. Zangari Chapter Twelve: The Wrong Movie

Aloha’s End
© 2006 by Michael F. Zangari

Chapter Twelve: The Wrong Movie

The morning chill burns offs quickly.
TrueWest is sitting on a chipped concrete bench of a small Buddhist garden that is thirty feet outside from the entrance of the Big Bean. The wall behind it is stacked lava rocks which are charred and burned black. Benny Aloha said that it is one of the few surviving walls from the great Honolulu China Town fire of the 1900s, the fire that destroyed the strength of the Chinese immigrants as an economic force in Hawaii. The rock themselves are part of the Hawaiian temple that originally stood here. The co-opted the rocks when they build the city hall building. There is a rock fountain. And a doorway frame that leads nowhere. The original building is gone. He says the doorway is haunted.
TrueWest loosens his bolo tie, tugging at the koa wood fish hook at his throat. The aloha shirt opens like the mouth of a fish at his neck. A thin silver chain lies against his newly sunburned skin.
He’s as red-brown as a coffee bean.
He pushes through the wooden door of the café into the wall of air-conditioned air. The smell of the freshly brewed Kona coffee and rotting bamboo come to him subtly like incense in a temple.
It’s lounge lizard dark.
There is not host of hostess or sign that says “seat yourself.”
It’s like the empty passenger car of a train of an old train.
His eyes adjust to the light as the torches flicker the darkness.
The torch light reflects off the polished wood of the tables like moonlight on the water.
The place is nearly empty.
TrueWest can see a woman in a leopard kin mini-dress sitting alone at a table.
She paddles at her coffee with a celery stick. It goes back and forth in perfect time with the lazy steel guitar on the sound system.
He takes a step into the club and stands wide, his boots firmly on the floorboards. Only the floorboards aren’t firm.
They yowl like a lone coyote as he steps.
The woman looks up.
She has dark sunglasses on, the lenses and frames as black as enameled chop-sticks.
TrueWest is thinking, “She must be blind” when she looks at him looking at her. She instinctively pulls her dress down her upper thigh. TrueWest notes the legs. They are as firm and strong, and pale as bull bone on the desert floor.
Her sunglasses slide down her nose.
She looks over the top of them at him.
He touches the brim of his hat and nods to her.
She touches her forehead and sends a little salute back.
He walks over to her table, creaking all the way.
TrueWest stands wide in front of her.
She sees his silhouette through the burgundy bottle wine of the glasses.
Then the detail of him slowly fades in.
“Howdy stranger” she says.
TrueWest nods again.
“I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy” she says.
She has hair like wet lava rock, as black as her glasses.
The top of one pale blue eye peeks over the rims of her glasses at him.
“Yes Ma’am” he says. “I am one.”
He cultivates the cowboy thing.
The mini-dress lady looks him over hat to toe.
He’s holding the hat over his crotch.
Then she looks at his eyes.
They are as clear as brown agate marbles in fried egg whites.
The have a gentle focus but they eat detail.
“Wai’ki’ki” she sighs “It’s got all kinds of people from all kinds of places.”
“Yes Ma’am” says TrueWest, “All kinds of people from all kinds of places.”
“So what brings you here cowboy?” she asks.
“I’m looking for a duck” he says.
“You’re looking for a what?” she startles and looks up.
Alert.
“A duck” he says, his consonants hard as flint He smiles. “At least he’s dressed like one.”
She looks at him for a couple of seconds, and then relaxes again.
“How does a duck dress?” she asks.
TrueWest has to think about that one.
He hasn’t considered it.
A wedge of light stretches across the room as the door opens and compresses shut.
A man steps into the club in yellow boogie board swim fins.
She takes “Never mind” she says.
She takes the celery stick out of her cup and sucks the coffee off of it. She uses it to point to the new kind on the block. “I’d say off hand that your duck has arrived.” She says.
It’s the duck. TrueWest is sure of it.
Hew has a rubber duck bill over his nose.
He has dark Neptune sunglasses on and a black Balata hat with the brim pulled down.
He goes profile to give TrueWest a clear shot at the rubber bill he’s wearing.
It’s quite a hooter all right.
“That’s the duck” says TrueWest. “I’d put money on it.”
“Let it ride cowboy” she says. ”Let it ride.”
“Thanks for the help” Says TrueWest.
He puts his hat back on.
“Thanks” for your help” he says. He touches the brim of his hat. “Ma’am.”
She touches her forehead again and pushes off with it. “It’s nothing” she says.
His eyes flicker over to her before they go back to the duck.
She watches the cowboy walk away from her table.
”Nice boots” she says, looking over the seat of his jeans.
The floor boards squawk and stretch with every boot step. He tries going slower and softer.
That doesn’t work.
He sounds like a pack of chickens as he traverses the floor.
Duck watches the whole show as it happens in front of him. The lanky legs in the cowboy boots, the hat, and the lady watching him as he does his funk walk down the wooden floor of the club.
“If you’re not TrueWest” he says. “I’m in the wrong movie” he says.