Sujata Massey - Shimura Trouble

“Hawaii’s totally different,” Kainoa said. “People here weren’t put in the camps. Nobody stole their land-”

“That’s not exactly true. If you look at the whole chain of islands in Hawaii, about twenty thousand were taken to camps on the mainland. In our case, Uncle Yosh worked at the post office, so he was accused of reading classified military mail.”

“Yosh Shimura-you talking ’bout the old buggah who raises koi? I didn’t know he was interned.”

“Yes, he’s the one.” I took a sip of coffee. “Hey, this latte is perfect. Maybe it was the double shot.”

“I’d think you would have ruined it with the honey you added,” Kainoa said.

“It’s my new habit; I’m trying to cut down on refined sugar.”

“Whatever,” Kainoa said. “And regarding your crazy family business, don’t even think about it no more. You got enough going on with your father. You don’t need more life troubles.”

“What do you mean by that?” His tone had startled me.

Kainoa looked at me. “You want to stay in good health, keep up your running, go swimming, try the honey in your latte. Where you might get hurt is going somewhere you shouldn’t, especially on this side of the island.”

“Are you talking about the Pierce lands?”

“No, I’m not.” Kainoa looked at me levelly. “I’m talking about the past. And it’s just a tip, because I’d hate to see a nice girl like you get hurt.”

HAD KAINOA BEEN threatening me? I wondered as I lounged in the pool with my father a few hours later. No, I decided. It was just the language gap between us. All of a sudden, I wished I really was a kamaaina, and not just another hapa-haole stumbling her way through misunderstandings.

The sun had warmed the pool to the most amazingly pleasant temperature, and the sky was beautiful and cloudless. The sun was high, but gentle trade winds kept me from overheating. From my supine position, I heard rumbling. Someone was talking; my father, no doubt. He was the only other person in the pool with me, and he’d been talking almost nonstop, all through the morning’s workout of exercises taken from my new bible, Move and Groove Past Your Stroke !

I felt a hand slide under my back, and I jerked upright to find myself looking not at my father, but a much younger Asian man with spiky, gangster-style hair and small eyes with a strange glint in them. His upper body was typically hairless, but it was puffy with flab, atypical for any Japanese man, especially one in his twenties. And, unbelievably, he kept his hands under my back.

“Need help float?” he said in a heavy accent-not pidgin, but Japanese.

“Get away!” I twisted away, sputtering, because I’d swallowed a bit of water at the shock of the touch.

“Wakarimasen,” he said, and lounged on a blue Styrofoam noodle, the kind of water toy children were more likely to play with.

So he definitely was Japanese, and he was pleading that he didn’t understand English. I didn’t bother continuing the conversation in either language, but splashed back to my father, who was lounging against the pool wall, reading.

“Did you see the Japanese guy with the noodle? He just touched me!”

“Oh really? That’s Jiro Kikuchi,” said Uncle Hiroshi, who had been lounging in a chair wearing a sun-shielding visor that covered almost his whole face. “If he likes you, maybe that’s a good thing!”

“What?” I was incensed.

“He’s the developer’s son, Rei,” my father said. “We met earlier when you went into the restroom. I was just talking with him in Japanese, and then for a few minutes with his roommate.”

Now I remembered what Kainoa had said about the younger Kikuchi and his caregiver. I followed my uncle’s gaze to a short, bronzed man in his thirties with thick black razor-cut hair wearing a Speedo suit and reading The Annals of Psychiatry behind a pair of dark sunglasses.

“Did the roommate mention that he’s a psychiatrist?” I asked, recalling Kainoa’s information.

“Yes, how did you guess?” my father answered. “His name is Calvin Morita, and he’s just like you, Rei, partly Japanese and partly American. He went to Yale for his undergraduate and medical degrees. Since you didn’t care for Kikuchi-san, shall we introduce you to Dr. Morita?”

“No!” I got out of the pool and found a chair far away from the matchmaking brothers, where I buried myself in The Waikiki Widow, the Juanita Sheridan novel that was next in the series I’d started on the plane. I hadn’t finished two pages before Calvin Morita strolled over.

“Are you Doctor Shimura’s daughter?” he asked with the long vowel sounds of the Midwest. I nodded warily.

He crouched down close to me. “I’m Calvin Morita, and I live in the house over there.” He waved his arm in the direction of the end of the cul-de-sac, where the Kikuchi mansion lay. “I was wondering if something happened in the pool.”

“Yes. Jiro Kikuchi just came up and grabbed me when I was swimming.”

“I’m so sorry. He’s got some psychological issues.”

“Perhaps he does, but he still should be kept from touching women like that.”

“It’s called schizoaffective disorder.” Calvin gave me a penetrating look. “He’s fine most of the time, but sometimes he expresses himself in a way that we would consider…boisterous. I know it’s hard for a layperson to understand. I take care of him, so please accept my apology for not doing a very good job.”

I examined Calvin, who was neither good- nor bad-looking, just completely average, except for his physique. Such blown-up muscles on a man who was barely five foot six inches tall was ridiculous. And what kind of a doctor had so much time in his day that he could pump iron?

“You might want to stay very close to him, or avoid public swimming areas.” I glanced over at Kikuchi, who seemed to be focused on rubbing himself against a noodle.

“Oh, he’s fine, just a bit frustrated at times. And regarding supervision, it doesn’t work well when I’m in the water with him. He feels as if he’s being babied.”

“Well, you’re doing splendidly at not hurting his feelings then.” I stood up, because I noticed that Jiro was getting out of the water. It was time for me to jump back in. I waved at Calvin and without another word dove smoothly under the surface. This time, when I came up, my father was beside me.

“Are you feeling better now?” he asked.

“Not really.” I was treading water, and my father joined me.

“Well, let’s take your mind off the present and talk about the situation with Edwin,” my father said. “I want to explain why Hiroshi and I are so concerned about it.”

“Hey, I’m concerned too, but that doesn’t mean I want you to throw a lot of money into paying a lawyer to chase a dubious proposition.”

“I’m not happy to become involved in Edwin’s personal life either, but Hiroshi and I must do something to amend for what our great-grandparents did to Harue Shimura by sending her to become a laborer in Hawaii.”

“But you can’t apologize to her. She’s dead.” As we talked, I kept my eye on Jiro Kikuchi, who was watching us, but seemed content to be poolside, for the moment, with Calvin.

“I received a telephone call from Edwin this morning, while you were running,” my father continued. “He pressed me for an answer, and I have delayed until dinner tomorrow evening.”

“Where? At their place again?”

“No, ours. I would have asked you first, but you were gone. We can all cook together…”

The last time my father cooked, he’d started a fire. Hastily, I said, “I’ll cook the meal like I’m doing all the others. The only catch is I don’t have a really good cookbook with me-I’ll have to think up some impromptu things, I suppose”