Virtual Hawaiian Vacation- Reluctant Companions- Serial BLOG

As the rain patters softly on my roof and I think about the winter yet to come, perhaps a virtual vacation from the cold and damp is in order. I wrote this awhile back thinking to publish it as a short story. Seems most publishers think it too visceral...too descriptive. If you like to be carried away in a dance of words meant to caress your longing for a quiet place, a warm, sultry escape, perhaps you will enjoy---Reluctant Companions.

******

Cameron shrugged the duffel bag from his shoulder onto the blonde wood of a table on the lanai. The deep shade of the palms hugging the bungalow made the contrast all the sharper between the cool of the deck and the sparkling aqua of the sea beyond. A wisp of hair tugged across his face and he thumbed it quickly behind his ear.

“Bloody warm breeze,” he muttered narrowing his eyes to focus on the islet set half mile off shore, its jagged crags jutting from the water in echo of a violent volcanic past. The soft foliage clinging to its vertical cliffs rested against each set of waves as they moved tirelessly toward shore. He paused a moment to consider the shallow approach of each perfect white curl, mist blowing off their backs as they moved steadily forward. How different from the stark crags of the Scottish shore, the gray sea pounding against the rocks, recipients of the temperamental North Sea. Scotland was about as far away from Oahu’s north shore as Earth from moon.

He cringed at the memory of the pins and needles rain stinging his face. That’s what he needed now, though…a little dose of freezing Scottish reality to numb his senses. Anything was better than—thump, percussive impact and vibration resonating upwards from his feet.

“What the…” He twisted around, scanning the jungle thicket to his right. Nothing. He dropped his eyes to the wood of the deck. The hairy brown orb of a coconut wobbled under the rattan foot of a lounge chair. “Shite… another twelve inches over and it’ov been my brains, not some tropical piece of…” A shudder quaked between his shoulders. He shook his arms to rid himself of it.
“Get a fookin’ grip, Cameron,” he said. Why the hell was he so damned jumpy?

Jeep keys still in hand, he closed his fist around them and pivoted to have a better look at the bungalow. Rustic..yeah, Marvin had been dead right about that. His manager’s ruddy-complexted simper flooded his internal screen.

Eyes fixed on him from under sandy lashes; he’d scowled at Cameron’s protests.

“It’s half way back to L.A., you’ll be finished with the Japan press junket with no further commitments until last of July in Queensland.” Marvin raised a bulbous glass of sherry in toast to his orders for Cameron to ‘relax’. He gazed into the glass, gently swirling the amber liquid, its perfume filling the space between them.

“And if I told you I’d rather spend my hiatus with me mum in Aberdeen?”

“I’d say you need your head examined even more than I’d thought.” The watery reflection of the room shivered through the sherry, refulgent in the fading light of the Tokyo sunset slicing through the wall of glass at the fortieth floor office window. “Besides, mate,” Marvin winked, “You’d be doin’ me a huge favour. I need someone to wipe the cobwebs from the hammock on the lanai, and you need to lose the starch from those knotted shoulders of yours.

Cameron slouched in reaction to Marvin’s aspersions. “I can decompress just as easily in L.A.”

Marvin lowered his chin, flashing an incredulous frown.

“Okay.” Cameron threw his arms up in surrender. “One week.”

“Two”

“Ten days?”

“A fortnight, man…or I swear--”

“Okay, okay,” Cameron pressed palms toward him.

“Right. You leave tonight. Arrive with the sun at Oahu International. My Jeep awaits you in long-term parking.” He dug into the front pocket of his suit trousers. “Here’s the keys,” and flung the shiny cluster at Cameron.

Snatching them from mid air, Cameron held them suspended from open palm.

“They aren’t to a prison, you know. My bungalow is sought after by many a---"

“Woman fancying a piece of Marvin Gray’s famous ‘action’.”

Marvin’s face split into a roughish grin. “Weel if you’ve got it, lad--”

Cameron closed his hand around the keys, raising his fist toward his manager. “I’m only doin’ this so you’ll stop your incessant pestering.”

“Such a sentence. Only a criminal guilty of overwork is deservin’”

“See you in L.A., then… fourteen July.”

"Cheers.” He raised his sherry, one eye cocked in humorous approval.

***

“Look, Chellie. Marvin told me I could pop in anytime.” Rachel’s fire-engine pout glistened like a ruby against the porcelain of her fair skin. “It’s just a stinking barmaid job. You need to regroup a lot more than you need a few lousy tips from the letches that come in here every night.” The harsh theatrical light emanating from the bulbs surrounding the mirror in front of them made Rachel look older than her thirty-five years. “Sides,” she took Chellie’s fingers and squeezed. “You’ll have your dad’s trust money, so no worries.”

A vise of grief clamped around Chellie’s heart again, each reminder a resurgence of the hollow void the loss of him left inside her.

“Sorry.” Rachel looked into the mirror at Chellie’s reflection as she stood beside her,then over her shoulder to engage her friend’s eyes. “Do it for me then, hun. Robert and I really need some time alone.”

Chellie gazed into the transparent plead of Rachel’s expression. Her boyfriend, Robert, had his own place on the other side of Santa Monica. Yeah, they could just as easily shack up there as at the apartment she and Rachel had rented on the beach for the summer.

Biting her lower lip in submission, Chellie cobbled a smile. “Okay, Rach, but you’ll call me if you need anything.”

“I need you out ‘a my hair, girl, “ Rachel smiled up at her. “Enjoy the tradewinds.”

Chellie turned toward the exit, stopping just short of the door and looked back. “Thanks.” She smiled in bittersweet appreciation.

***


Two days of solitude, and Cameron had just now come to take Marvin’s advise, leaving his swim trunks hanging from the taut hemp rope supporting the hammock stretched palm trunk to trunk out back of the bungalow.

He’d slathered extra sunscreen on the bits where the sun never shone, hoping to ease into an all over tan. His next role as the father of a precocious eleven-year-old girl stranded on an island off Australia’s Gold Coasts could well benefit from some real melanin to protect him from the ravages of the tropical sun.

Not a living soul within twenty miles had been Marvin’s assurance. No official road, not even on the map, the thatched roof, open-air bungalow could just as easily have been made by the skilled adventurer Cameron was about to portray in his next film down under.

Smarting from a recent lawsuit he’d had to bring against one of the national rags, he was more wound up than usual.

As a matter of fact, unless one knew what one was looking for, the lines of the bungalow melted brilliantly into the camouflage of the jungle that surrounded it. Lush pippin green plants grew parallel to the beach, screening its existence from sea or air approach.

Cameron had spent the better part of his first afternoon at “Gray’s Getaway” exploring the variety of vegetation stretching the curve of beach in front of his new home. The leaves of what he assumed to be a pothos, were ten times the size of any he’d ever seen. Waxy variegated shrubs mottled red, yellow and orange swayed as part of the underbrush. Canopy-like trees, umbrella spread branches dotted with tufts of pinkish white flowers, interlaced with the fragrant white bouquet offerings of plumeria. They grew in symbiotic relationship throughout the forest. And then there were the banana trees interspersed at irregular intervals---each of the feathered leaves sprang from a central core, a flag to the tropical moisture that kept them abundant.

Every colour was vibrant, each lungful of air pure, sky bright against the dancing puffs of cotton floss clouds, and the sea a symphony of blues so intense even his sunglasses couldn’t diminish the brilliance.

He’d sat on the sand, watching the mushrooming of the clouds high into the sky. As the afternoon progressed, the moisture pushed against the perpendicular shoulders of the mountains, misting the peaks in soft oblivion. Just before the heat became oppressive, the rumble of thunder heralded relief. As a curtains of rain swept in, a warm womb of showers so soft one might think it liquid air enveloped him, a return to the primal warmth and comfort of amniotic embrace.

Rain had never been friendly, not central to survival as this soothing temperance felt against his skin. Rain had always been a cold nuisance, a reminder of the biting striations of gray that painted the Celtic skies more oft than not.

He loved the moodiness of the Scottish landscape. The mist flirting with juts of towering granite, wafting over oceans of heather, moisture in undulating waves as it approached off the North Sea.

He thought of many a night he’d lie awake to the thunderous outbursts on the slate roof over his head. The snug gentle abrasion of his mum’s hand stitched comforter wrapped about him, he in an envelope of warmth whilst all of nature’s fury raged outside.

Even those early childhood memories couldn’t compare to the allure of the gentle fingers of fluid that ran down his back and chest as he stood here on the Oahu shore, arms outstretched to the sky.

Maybe, just maybe he’d be able to relax after all.

***

She held the unfurled map over her head in one hand, carpetbag satchel in the other. “Fifty’ll have to do,” she shouted to the cab driver over the symphony of drops against leaves as the evening storm pelted. Thin cotton shift quickly succumbing to the weather, she dashed toward the cover of a wrap around porch set on the stilts of the dripping bungalow before her.

Swiss Family Robinson, the first words that came to mind, accompanied by images of a sprawling tree house perched in the arms of a goliath Banyan tree. What she ran toward was nothing near as grand, but at least it would provide much needed shelter from the downpour.

Scurrying up slick steps, she ignored the assistance of the bamboo railing in favor of speed. Dashing through the open door, she lowered the sodden map from her head and dropped it and her satchel to the floor. She swiped the front of her dress with her hands. No use, it was drenched and clung to her like plastic wrap.

She raised her eyes to appraise her surrounding. Why had the door been left full open? She looked over her shoulder. Ahhh…no door at all. Well this was a bit of isolation now, wasn’t it?

Scrolling her gaze around the room, if that’s what one might call something half open at the rear to the elements, she watched the water as it streamed in ribbons off the canopy over the porch. The walls were made of tightly packed bamboo, providing the open living area with windbreak, ventilation and view of the sea. The roar of water on foliage drowned any sound of surf.

A corner of cushioned rattan, one couch, two chairs, lined the panel of walls to the left. Half the rear open to the lanai, the other half a kitchen of sorts, with pots dangling over an island of cabinets placed toward the center of the grass mat covered floor. At the front or landside, were two freestanding rice paper partitions cordoning off the entire north quarter. She walked in slowly across the room, craning her neck around the corner.

Graceful gauze festooned from a central point at the ceiling over a bamboo frame and down in a waterfall of diaphanous elegance around a large oval bed. A single kerosene mariner’s lamp glowed yellow on the nightstand, illuminating the fabric of the graceful canopy in ethereal luminescence. A crescent of pillows lined the head of the bed, a crisp white sheet casually accordioned at its foot. Seashell beads hung in a curtain from the window’s opening, a screen between room and the fragrance of the jungle.

In the fading light, she could just make out the sweep of branches hanging heavy with red plumes of flowers springing along each branch like tongues of flame. The pungent loam of rich soil mixed with the heady sweetness of tropical blooms enveloped her in olfactory ambrosia.

Turning to have a look at the sea, she wandered to the lanai overlooking the beach. The moon was rising above the water, sun having dipped beneath the waves. There was still a touch of colour at the horizon, that curious otherworldly effect the last of the day emanates as the earth makes its final turn into night. Through the trees and across the curve of beach she could see the first of a silver trail of moonlight reflecting off the water. The bay was calm, each row of waves a blip in the otherwise marbled surface. Still, there was enough of a swell to catch the changing light and reflect it back as a gilding of each gentle crest. Chellie sighed, exhaling the stress of her day into the approaching night.

Alone at last, she could begin to gather the chards of her thoughts left shattered by the passing of her father. It had only been two months, but it seemed that defined the meaning of eternity. It was as though a wad of cotton had been placed between her ears, smothering her usual mental acuity into a pale caricature of its former self. She’d always know where she was headed, what she wanted and pretty well how to get there. It was never so apparent as now that the symbiosis between father and daughter was an integral component of her drive to succeed. He had been, after all, the founder and head partner of the firm of Stanley Melbourne and associates, the most respected and sought after entertainment law representatives in Los Angeles. Not much past boyhood when he’d fathered her, he’d been forced young to pull himself up by the bootstraps and make his way in the world. Her mother was but a fuzzy memory, having run off when Chellie was barely a preschooler. Her dad, ever the intrepid survivor forged ahead, working two jobs while putting himself through law school and making a worry free childhood for his only daughter. It had to have been a Herculean challenge, but she’d never seen him buckle, complain, or be anything other than “Daddy”.

Looking back through the paradigm of adulthood, she now realized the ultimate toll. The number one killer of Americans had claimed him too. His heart gave out as he'd jogged along Playa del Rey the morning of May 5th.

Damn, there they were again...the f**king tears. She dragged a remonstrative hand along her cheek, drawing in an uneven breath.

A movement, a shadow disturbed her peripheral vision just enough to jolt her from her anguish. Forcing her senses to sharpen, she sniffed back the need for a tissue and tip toed to the edge of the lanai.
Wrong part of the world for Sasquatch, she thought, briefly wondering if the Hawaiians had similar legend. Too laid back…Polynesian paralysis would prohibit such disturbing musings. They were the invention of overworked, stressed people trying to escape the insistent demands of the modern world. No such burden here in the land of Mahalo and hang loose.

She was about as far away from relaxed as an over processed perm.

The rain had ceased, but the liquid chorus continued from every leaf and petal as they shed the weight of the passing storm. Straining to differentiate foreign sounds from the thrum of droplets splashing along their journey from foliage to earth, she held her normal breathing in check, mouth open as means of silencing her own noise. Scrolling the immediate horizon like a cat burglar avoiding detection, she reached for the bamboo railing to steady her.

Bounding through the slick underbrush flashed the silhouette of a man in forward trajectory, a parabola of doom the likes of which she’d not seen since her friend Jill had taken a spill off her snowboard on the slopes of Lake Tahoe’s Diamond Peak. That had cost Jill six weeks in traction and her gift for belly dancing.

“Shite.” The booming male explicative sounded like the fated call of a condemned man.

...to be continued