Aloha's End by Michael F. Zangari, Chapter 18: The Dog That Did It In Her Yard

Aloha’s End
© 2007 by Michael F. Zangari with all rights reserved.

Chapter Eighteen:

‘We are in real trouble here” says Duck.
TrueWest thinks Will Rogers. The only people who should say “we” are editors and people with bugs.
“I’m broke. I can’t get work. We are being squeezed like an empty bottle of ketchup.’
Rosa squeezes duck thigh. He smiles sadly.
TrueWest shrugs. “That’s what happens to whistle blower” he says. “It’s a grand Yankee tradition. Don’t mess with the cash flow. I think it’s one of the devil’s Ten Commandments. It cuts two ways, like most devil law.”
“I’m not whining about this, it’s my choice. But it’s hard to watch your life being torn apart from the core. It impacts the family first. I may have to leave my wife and kids so they can survive.”
Rosa smiles sadly. “Duck is the dog that did it in my yard’ she says. “I am angry at him.” She looks at him and shakes her head. “Life was very simple before this happened. Now things are very complicated.”
She turns the ring on her finger.
TrueWest looks at the piece of cheap costume jewelry.
He appraises it.
Two bucks, Candy machine booty.
Duck smiles and cover her hand with his. The fingers slip in twine like puzzle pieces making a picture.
“I gave Patita that ring. It cost me a couple of bucks to get it out of the machine with the wheelie claws. I liked the color of the plastic stone. A dark ruby garnet.”
TrueWest imagines Duck at the machine, entirely intense and focused, wheeling right and left before the drop, nudging a little right and hipping it to shake things up and settle the ring.
“I had planned to get her a better ring before all this happened.” He says.
“I like it” she says, looking aside and down, then up again like she’s been caught at something. “It’s my hoodoo ring. I call the spirits to protect.”
“She twists it when ever she worries. Lately she twists the thing like the steering wheel of a hot rental car taking the curves on the way down the volcano to Hana on Maui.”
“He is obsessed.”
She looks at the rubber duck nose.
“He will not give it up or wait until we are strong.”
It’s a very old argument.
“I want justice” Duck says, with a little too much emphasis.
TrueWest takes it in.
It is intense, but loose at the same time. They are a good couple. He likes them.
He dips the sashimi in the bowl of hot mustard and slops it into his mouth. It burns before the raw fish cools his tongue.
He eats a sliver of ginger.
He drinks his drink.
He picks up another limp slice of ahi, yellow fin tuna and dips it in the mustard.
“In Mexico, making love is more important than ideas” says Patita. “Ideas change.”
“Imagine that” says TrueWest. He does.
“She needs less hoodoo and more honeymoon” says Duck.
He looks aside.
‘You are a dog, duck” says TrueWest, “Get another kind of job, any job, and forget about this crap. It can’t be that important.”
Another round of drinks comes.
The band goes into the second set. They play Hawaiian reggae and R & B.
La Patita makes it obvious that she wants to dance. She’s doing it in the chair, making both Duck and TrueWest nervous.
“She’s got more joints than other people’ says Duck, looking at her move in the chair and noticing TrueWest’s interest as well.
“Musica Latino” says Patita. “Katchi katchi.”
The congas and timbales ricochet off one another. The beat moves fast like hula drum rhythms.
“That’s Hawaiian….” Says Duck.
“Enough gibble-gabble” she says.
She grabs Duck by the shirt, then TrueWest.
“You gonna dance?”
“Do we have a choice?” asks TrueWest.”
“No” says Duck.
La Patita parts the crowd on the dance floor like Moses at the Red Sea. She’s about five two, but assertive. She’s in there fast, stripping off her top to the pueo underneath.
She’s into a hot little skank before TrueWest and duck can straighten their shirts.
“How does she keep that thing on?” asks TrueWest.
“She doesn’t always” says Duck as his duck nose slips down.
Patita looks at them like they are dirt, then smiles them down to smile.