Chapter Forty Three

 August 2003

I go to Waikiki for my last week in Hawaii. I check into the hostel and am put into an empty dorm. I go for a walk in the evening. It's different here from the north shore. Busier, more built up. I think maybe I should have stayed in the tranquility of the north.

   I sit on a bench, looking out to sea. A man sits next to me. He is tall and thin with dark skin. He looks like he's in his late thirties. He talks about how he's struggling to find work, how it's hard for native Hawaiians. I awkwardly make sympathetic noises. He asks me where I'm from.

   'England,' I say.

   He frowns at me. 'You don't look English.' 

   I shrug. I don't know what to say. I don't know what it is about me that doesn't look English.

   He asks me if I want to go and eat with him.

   I shake my head.

   ''Please,' he says. He tries to persuade me but I tell him I have to go.

Back in my dorm a man has moved in. He's short for a man with long blond hair in a messy ponytail.

   'Hi.' He smiles at me, his eyes moving over my body. 'What's your name?'

   'Amy.'

   'I'm Justice.' I don't think that's his real name. I can almost hear him thinking that it didn't sound as cool out loud as it did in his head.

   He's twenty two and from Maryland. He pronounces it 'Marrilun.' I never knew that was how you say it. 

   'Do you want to be friends?' he says.

   'Um. Okay.' I can't really say no. 

   'How long are you here for?'

    'A week.'

    'Only a week.' He looks at the floor, then quickly moves his head as if watching something I can't see fly around the room.

   'Do you want to go for a drive?' he says.

   'Okay.' Why did I say that? I ask myself. 

   He grins. He seems excited. 'So we'll go now?'

   I can't get in a car with this man I've just met. Look what happened in Sydney. The way he's looking at me it's clear what he wants. What will he do when I turn him down? What will he do if he pulls off my top and discovers I'm pregn- I'm not pregnant.

   'Actually, no.' I say. 'I don't want to.'

   His blue eyes cloud with confusion.

   Why am I like this?

   He sits on his bed. I sit on mine. I get my book out of my bag and start to read.

   'Do you mind if I smoke?' he says.

   I look up. He's rolling a joint.

   'Yes,' I say. I'm afraid of American drug laws. Afraid of the effect the smoke could have on the baby.

   There is no baby.

   'I don't know what the law is in England,' he says, 'but here if someone gets caught using drugs then no one else in the room with them gets in trouble.'

   I have no idea if that's true.

   He lights up and stands by the window, blowing smoke out.

   I watch a cockroach crawl under Justice's bed.

   Justice puts his joint out and sits on his bed. 'Can I turn out the light?' he says.

   'You want to sit in the dark? 

   'We can talk in the dark.'

   I shake my head.

In the morning I go to the beach and lie on my sarong in my bikini. A cockroach crawls onto my leg, high up my inner thigh. I stifle a scream and brush it off with my book. It crawls onto my foot. I brush it off again. It crawls onto my sarong, towards my stomach. I stand up and run up the beach with the sarong and shake it out in a place with no people.

   'You had a little friend there,' says a man with small children when I go back to my towel and book. 

   'Yeah.' I say.

In the evening I'm sitting on my bed reading.

   'Can I sit next to you?' says Justice.

    'Okay.' I should have said no but... I don't know how to say it politely and there's something about Justice, something that tells me not to upset him.

   He sits in silence while I read.

   'Can I lie down with my head in your lap?' he says after a few minutes.

   'No.' I say. The thought of his face so close to my stomach, my ba- there is no baby- is sickening.

   'I just want to be close to you,' he says.

   I shake my head.

   At night I sleep with a knife with a retractable blade in my hand.

I go on a free trip to Pearl Harbour. And all I can think is that it's sad what happened here but nothing compared to the devastation of Europe in World War 2. I feel bad for comparing suffering, loss and death. Those things are never competitions.

   When I get back to the hostel Justice has put a note on my bed. He watches me read. 

   The note says he really likes me. He has never had a friend before. I don't find that surprising. It says PTO at the bottom of the page. I turn it over and it's blank.

   'Why did you turn it over?' Justice stands up, he's coming closer I can feel something emanating from him.

   'It says PTO.' I point at the note.

   'Oh.' I can see relief flowing through his body. 'I thought you turned it over because you didn't like what I'd written.'

   He sits next to me. 'So what do you think?'

   'I-' I don't really think anything.

   The door opens, a man comes in. A new occupant of the dorm. Aaron. He's a student, staying here while he waits for his accomodation to be ready.

   I'm not alone with Justice anymore.

   

I go on another free trip that takes me all around the island. I am somewhere sitting on a beach running sand through my hands.

   The tour guide sits next to me. 'Did you know,' he says, 'this sand is brought in from elsewhere?'

   'No,' I say. 'It's not...?'

   'It is. The natural sand here is black, from the volcanoes, so they bring the white sand here.'

   I don't believe him. How can you replace a whole island's sand? And wouldn't black sand be something to bring the tourists in?

   At the hostel Justice has left another note on my bed. He likes me so much, it says, he's never met anyone like me before.

   Justice is talking to Aaron. I think he's high, talking gibberish. He walks out.

   'Do you know that guy?' says Aaron.

   'No,' I say.

   'What a weirdo.'

   'Yeah.'

   The door swings open. Aaron walks in and grabs the note he left me. 'My bad,' he says as he walks out.

   He must have been listening outside, waiting to see if Aaron and I would talk about him.

Aaron leaves the next morning. 

   Justice stands over me. 'Do you know what a friend is?' he says.

   'Yes,' I say. 

   'Do you? Do you?'

   I watch two cockroaches scuttle by the wall.

   Justice steps back, falls backwards onto his bed. 'We are friends aren't we?'

   I nod. I don't think we are. I don't want to be his friend but it's not safe to say that.

   'Can you act like a friend?' he says.

   I nod.

I go to the beach. Cockroaches crawl around me. I keep moving to stop them crawling on me.

   At the hostel Justice is reading the Gideon bible.

   'This is amazing,' he says. 'Do you know Jesus?'

   'No.'

   'How sad.' He shakes his head. 'You don't know Jesus.'

   There is a cockroach on top of my backpack.

Later I'm in the dorm by myself when I hear Justice's voice echoing loudly from somewhere in the hostel.

   'She's just so- oh my god and everyday she wears these tiny shorts and top and I just can't- oh my god.'

   'Dude, dude, calm down,' says another man. 

   'But she's only here for a week.' Justice's voice is close to a wail.

   Men are pathetic.

The next day I'm sitting in the communal area of the hostel. I'm writing what I think I need to Steve. No. What I would say to Steve if I was pregnant. But I'm not.

   I can't find the words so I write in French. I don't know the word for "pregnant." 

   Je vais about un bébé I write.

   I don't know if that's the correct way to say it. It's a direct translation of I'm going to have a baby but I don't know if that's how a French person would say it.

   Desolé. Je suis desolée.

   Sorry. I'm sorry.

   Justice's hand is on my shoulder. I flinch. 

   He asks me what I'm writing.

   'Nothing.'

   'You're going soon,' he says.

   I nod. 

   'Do you have an email address?'

   'Yes.'

   'Can I have it?'

   'No.'

   'What about your home address?'

   I shake my head.

   'Then I guess we'll never see each other again.'

   I shake my head.

   'At least not until we're both in heaven,' he says.

   There is no way I'll be getting into heaven.

Chapter Forty Four

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