Putting the Mean Back in Meaningless (Part 1)

My first Friday back from the continent, I was brimming with hate and bad habits. And the stink of the valley of the sun and Mexican whores clung to my clothes like kookaburras and one week on top of the roof on my latest project for Chevron had my face blistering like corn tortillas.

I was busy in Kailua, studying for a midterm on the endocrine system with several of my peers. They all look up to me like a cultural icon and I feel that it's all I can do to show up on a Friday evening once a month to grace them with my knowledge. I don't necessarily know that much about the endocrine system, but I can lie with the best of them. And after all it was Friday night and a good idea to touch base with them as far as The Plan.

Coastguard Joe was nursing a hangover like a mangy dog lapping its own wounds after beating day and crazy Shane was headed to Kaneohe for god knew what kind of freakishness with his people back at the commune. Everyone else was either pregnant or locked in to study for the night. So with lack of better prospects I dialed local thinking globally for jack the Mormon. One of my estranged contacts and current treasurer of the local rugby club. He answered the phone sounding of death but explained that it was just the surf, jammed in his nose with sand and nori. He demanded that I meet him and his people at the green room of Indigos with Alvarez and Tim the social chair for some weird architect party on the 4th floor off Smith Street.

For some reason I'm always the first one to Indigos. But I had no room to complain. Five dollar parking until 6am and red stripe bottles on special, I ordered one for myself and set about looking for Alvarez near the remnants of devoured happy hour pupus.

Someone reached out touching my red QN Electric shirt, looking like she'd just made contact with complete enlightenment with a glazed look that positively screamed of over-the-counter narcotics. "Sorry," her friend said, "She just thinks you're hot."

"Huh. Thanks," I grunted pleasantly. "But I'm not really and soon I'll be drunk and not even recognizable. Don’t waste your time with me."

I wandered away from them looking for friendly faces but finding none I headed back for the green room and took a chair at the bar hoping not to be spotted and labeled a social leper. The mood was calm for a first Friday with the art walk remnants drifting through and the happy hour delinquents sauced to the rafters glaring at the green lanterns and wondering where the time went.

"Could you hate this place anymore?"

It was a blonde woman easing onto the rail in tall black boots and leather mini skirt looking for all intents like some kind of artist ran off the main drag of first Friday and caught up in the frivolous maddening concept of too many martinis. She glared a hole through me to a gang of dopey looking goons of six foot plus hovering in the entryway.

"Are you kidding me?" I replied already regretting joining the conversation, "I'm capable of more hate than you could ever imagine."

She giggled sheepishly and covered her mouth.

One of the apes grabbed a steel chair and smacking it down in between her and me picked her up and plopped her down saying, "It is chair. You sit." In a dirty eastern block accent. He loped away and we exchanged names. She was a German mobile correspondent for the New York Times called Annah. Apparently she had accepted the wrong drink from the wrong guy and now the goons were closing in

"What do you do?"

"I am a project coordinator. I coordinate the rape of the land out here for the Chinese." I explained, knowing I might have to do it several more times depending on how much longer she stayed on board.

"My husband owns marks garage." She announced for no good reason at all.

"What does that mean? That he can have me killed? You don’t scare me. Is he some kind of Joey Buttafuoco mechanic?"

"It's an art gallery."

"Don't lie to me. I know what a garage is. Is that him? The one with the chair. He seems like a real gentleman. Well spoken and cultured to the yellow teeth."

No she said. Those were some Russian mobsters. She couldn't get away from them. They felt they owed her a little something after the drink. And I told her I had to agree. Nothing is for free young lady. Obviously they knew this brutal truth. Chivalry is a long dead pastime of fools. We are all thriving in a give and take ritualistic society and to buck the tide is like standing in the way of a train. Better to get in line for it, grit your teeth and have your ticket punched.

She laughed again and told me to stop making her do it on account of she just had gum surgery. I shook my head and dared her to repeat what I'd just said.

"What do you do?" she repeated with chemically induced amnesia.

I’m a massage therapist specializing in the removal of evil spirits from your shoulder blades and also hand and foot reflexology. She nodded and gave me her hand then wanted to know what I was drinking. Couldn’t she read? It was right in my hand in front of her. Why so many questions? How many fat short brown bottles are there in this place? Where was Alvarez?

Red Stripe of course. It was on special. It tastes like steel drums. She headed for the bar for two more, dropping her martini glass with a crash that silenced the crowd. I brandished my beer at them and they went back to murmuring at the lanterns.

The Russian mob moved in on me. The ring leader approached with a loping gait, semi threatening and steaming like hot vodka.

"What do you think about staying away from her?"

I couldn't help but laugh. "What do you think about the rising cost of mail order brides out of Moscow?" Was the only reply I could muster. “I think its stupid personally, but I'm just sitting here. Leave me alone.”

He laughed and stuck his fist out for me to smack my own against, nodding his head all the while in some kind of twisted show of communist brotherhood. I responded by grabbing his wrist and planting a sopping red stripe kiss on his knuckles. He shrieked and fled back to the breezeway.

Just then Tim showed up with his blonde woman bursting at the bra seams. I introduced them to the German reporter and explained that I may have drawn unnecessary heat from Russian gangsters, but that it was nothing I had any fear he couldn’t handle. Sick your military goons on them and be on your way…

Alvarez was in the next bar where the atmosphere was cooler and better to curb my hot blood for the moment. I told Annah she could stay here or come. It didn’t matter to me. She struggled from the stool and followed us next door where Alvarez was seated around a table with several of his fresh faces smoking dried apricots from a huge glass hookah bong with rose inlays and devouring a mountain of French fries he had apparently lifted from the kitchen on his way back from the toilet.

“Where is your husband anyway?” I wanted to know finally, “I keep expecting some huge deranged mongrel to spring from the shadows with a monkey wrench and massive bleeding hemorrhoids.”

"No, we're separated."

I see. You say you're married to keep me honest when I’m minding my own business and saving you from the Russian mob, but get a few red stripe in my stomach and the truth is revealed. A mistress of deceit.

I headed back to the Green Room, leaving my phone with Annah to field all calls, to fetch one more round of the fine Red Stripe and close my tab before things got out of hand. I got two for the road, as Tim was itching to leave and get to his roof party. He had provided the sound system and was showing obvious signs of concern. I returned with the brown bottles, stuffed with maraschino cherries only to find Annah gone with the wind. Alvarez explained.

“She started telling us we were all stupid compared to you. I told her you would probably kill her for saying it but she wouldn’t give up. She said she was off to find you and take you home. I said it was bullshit, it’s only 8. but there was no talking to that bitch. She’d made up her mind. So I said you went out the back way for a chew.”

I knew the rest before he finished. The Russians were lying in wait like serpents in the muck. They snatched her up in their talons and bolted for higher ground. Even as Alvarez wrapped it up, we all knew exactly what cruelness was befalling her as we spoke. It was the law of the jungle, which we weren’t here to enforce or practice. Just take note of. We’d done all we could to protect her but there comes a time to let all things go. And that time was now. We exited onto Nu`uanu and scattered in the hot evening trades to our vehicles to retrieve the second B in BYOB feeling better than everyone, unfaltering judgment and the blasé arrogance to do or say just about anything to wash the horrible memory of Indigos, the Russians and criminal intent from our heads.