Paul Levine - Riptide

Keaka was startled, but only for a moment. “What a pleasant surprise. My two wahines together. Lila, unlike you, Little Lee knows which side to choose in a fight. Even after what happened in Miami, she is with me, though she doesn’t care much for you.” He turned toward Little Lee. “Lila used to be my friend and lover, but lately the bitch has been hanging around with haole scum.”

“Let him go,” Lila said again, firmly. But whatever power she once had over him was gone. Keaka just smirked at her, enjoying the situation, his two women there to witness his power, his unsheathed masculinity on center stage. Lee Hu had wrapped a towel around her small body and glared at Lila. ‘

Keaka held out his arms as if to embrace both women. “We will all go to the camp, to my hale. It will be like old times. It is a fine place for a man and his wahines to make love.”

“Has it come to this?” Lila asked. “Are you conquering me, too?”

“If you had been loyal to me, it would not have been necessary.”

He gestured with the gun to begin moving. Keaka stayed at the rear, holding the Uzi lightly by the vertical clip. The path was rugged and uphill, strewn with rocks and overgrown with barbed limbs. Every step brought a branch in the face, sharp twigs cutting across neck and shoulders. Lassiter’s feet were bleeding from tiny cuts and his head throbbed with pain. His legs barely moved. His mind kept playing tricks on him, black-and-white footage from World War n, the Bataan Death March.

They came to a clearing where a small fire glowed orange. Lee Hu threw two logs into the coals and sparks flew into the night. Keaka stood by the fire and Lee Hu knelt before him as if she were his subject, and he the king. The image brought something back to Lassiter. What was it Lila had said that first night in the restaurant? Keaka thought he was the reincarnation of Kame-ha-ha the Great or something. Another crazy thought, Lassiter said to himself, wondering if he was delirious from the salt water and one smack to the head. And then suddenly, it became clear to him, so clear that he laughed.

“What’s so funny, haole? Do you find your own death humorous?”

Keaka stood there with legs spread, hands on his hips, his Hawaiian manhood thick and proud, tumescent from the excitement of a kill, maybe more exciting than the other kills because two women were here to watch.

“Lila said you think you’re a king,” Lassiter said. “And what you look like is the king of Siam, Yul Brynner in The King and I. Strutting around with your hands on your hips, only difference is he wore silk knickers, you’re letting your pecker hang out, but either way, I keep waiting for you to sing ‘Shall We Dance?’”

Lassiter laughed again, a wild laugh, and Keaka studied him silently. Lassiter looked him square in the eyes. “What’s the matter, King Cantaloupe, do you find this a puzzlement?”

And then Jake Lassiter began singing. And dancing. Hands on hips, feet splayed east and west, he pranced around the clearing and belted it out, an old show tune filling the jungle half an octave off-key, Lassiter describing the King’s “confusion in conclusions he concluded long ago.”

“What about it, Keaka?” he asked when he was done warbling. “Will you fight to prove what you do not know is so?”

Keaka self-consciously took his hands off his hips. It was working, Lassiter thought, a distraction from what Keaka wanted, which was for him to grovel and beg for his life. Forget it, Lassiter thought, he would die first. Then a rueful smile. Yes, that’s exactly what he would do. But for now he was onstage in the clearing, a space about the size of the area between the bench and the bar. He had performed there before for judges and juries. Now Keaka was the court of last resort, and Lassiter was acting for his life.

Lila knew what was happening, was laughing and applauding. Lee Hu looked confused, and Keaka was sullen.

Lassiter kept up the patter. “What’s the matter, Keaka, don’t you like Rodgers and Hammerstein? Too bad, they’re my favorites. When I was in college, I played Jud Fry in Oklahoma! Hey, you’d be good in that role, it’s the villain, but I guess you’re not into Americana. Wish I could remember the last verse of the king of Siam’s song, maybe you could join in, something about doing his best to live just one more day.”

“Shut up, haole!” Keaka barked. For the first time his eyes betrayed doubt, fear that he was the butt of some joke.

“No, I’m going to keep talking. And you can shoot me if you like. If that’s what great warriors do — strike down shivering, unarmed men. Will that impress your wahines?”

Keaka crossed his arms in front of his chest to make the biceps stand out and said, “You deserve to die. You miserable haoles stole our land and diseased our women and — “

“Don’t look at me,” Lassiter said with a shrug, interrupting the diatribe. “I don’t even own a condo and my urologist will testify I’ve never had crotch rot.”

Keaka raised his voice. “You made kala, money, your god. You are descended from pigs and goats — “

“There you go again,” Lassiter said, “insulting my ancestry. Reminds me of a trash-talking tackle from the Jets. Yo momma this, yo momma that.”

Lila Summers was laughing again, signaling Lassiter that this was the right approach: show no fear, mock the king. Lassiter wondered how long he could keep this up, when would Keaka end it with a short burst from the Uzi?

“Whadaya going to do, Keaka, kill me? I can see the headline, JUNGLE MUSICAL CLOSES; ENRAGED CRITIC KILLS STAR.”

“ Haole, you think you are so funny.” Keaka’s eyes were black slits. “Do you want to die laughing?”

“Sure, laughing or screwing,” Lassiter said, and Lila roared. “A dying man gets one last wish and Lila knows what mine would be. You don’t have any red satin sheets in your tepee there, do you, chief?” It was going so well Lassiter planned to come back in another life as a stand-up comic.

Keaka scowled. “Lila, you like the haole ‘s jokes, maybe you’d like to die with him.”

“If that’s what you want, it’s your gun,” Lila Summers said without a trace of fear.

Turning to Lee Hu, Keaka said, “The slut is only half a woman. She has no soul, so she cannot reach climax. Li’a, Goddess of Desire, hah. She is without desire. She is dead inside.”

“Hey, pal,” Lassiter heard himself saying, “if you can’t cut it in the sack, don’t blame her. When we played hide the sausage in Bimini, I had her lit up like a slot machine hitting jackpot. The birds fell from the trees and the fishes leapt from the sea. I’ll tell you, Keaka old buddy, when that woman comes, she registers a ten on the Richter scale, shock waves all the way to Pasadena.”

Lassiter was running out of tales, but he didn’t want to stop. Somehow, he thought that Keaka wouldn’t shoot a babbling man. “I’m not one to kiss and tell, but that’s the way it is. And from what I hear, you’re just a little quick on the trigger. Slow down. You’ll enjoy the scenery more.”

Lila picked up the cue. “Keaka always thought it was my fault that he couldn’t satisfy me. Jake, you’re the most exquisite lover a woman could ever want. In Bimini, I thought I would die from the pleasure. What do the French call it… petit mal, the little death.”

“Liars!” Keaka fumed, but his voice exposed doubt, and his manhood dropped a bit. Lassiter decided against making a crack about that. It was a fine line he was walking — one insult too many or too deep and the Hawaiian’s confusion could turn to rage. But it was working, Keaka’s mind occupied, thinking of the shame of the haole unlocking the mystery of his wahine, while his warrior’s body betrayed him.