Steven Kent - 100 Fathoms Below

Naval Station Pearl Harbor, November 16, 1983

USS Roanoke , SSN-709, sat moored to the dock, half submerged in the calm waters of the harbor. In the dim twilight, when colors and details began to fade to the same flat gunmetal gray, the submarine might have looked to an outsider like some gigantic sea creature, lashed to the dock by thick ropes and braided steel cables, its tower standing tall like a dorsal fin. But not to Warren Stubic, petty officer third class. To him, it looked like where he was going to call home for the next three months.

Roanoke was scheduled to launch tomorrow at 1530 hours. After that, he was staring at an underway spent entirely at sea. Three months without the sun. Three months without liquor. Three months of hot-racking—sharing a bed with three other guys in six-hour sleeping shifts because there wasn’t enough room on a submarine to give every enlisted man his own rack.

Three months without women. That prospect in particular struck him as intolerable.

He had only one thing in mind for the night before the launch, and that was to have fun. But unlike other sailors, he didn’t see the fun in drinking until he puked. For Stubic, fun meant getting his dick wet.

Waikiki, ten miles away, was the closest center of nightlife. By the time he got there, the last purple tinges were fading from the sky as darkness settled in. He was surprised to find the city hopping even on a Tuesday night. Servicemen from Naval Station Pearl Harbor, hard to miss in their flattops and buzz cuts, towered over most of the locals. The strip along the beach had been developed for tourists and people with money to spend, neither of which accurately described Stubic, although tonight he had enough cash with him to afford all the fun he wanted. On sidewalks as crowded as any in Tokyo or Hong Kong, he walked past fancy hotels with liveried doormen, sushi restaurants and fish houses, tacky gift shops, and kiosks selling oysters that supposedly had pearls in them, not that he’d ever been dumb enough to buy one and find out.

There were girls everywhere, and the kind he liked: Polynesian, with long hair and short skirts. But they were local girls, and he had already discovered the hard way that local girls came to Waikiki looking only for local guys. His fellow servicemen had figured this out too, and now mostly had an eye out for tourist girls—of which there were always plenty at Spats, the popular dance club on the first floor of the Hyatt Regency. Gaggles of interchangeable blonds with sunburned faces and peeling skin. None of them interested Stubic the way the local girls did. Luckily, he had discovered a way to satisfy his appetite for local flavor without risking any more rejections from Waikiki girls or having to settle for some drunk American tourist.

He turned off the strip and onto a side street, where the mega hotels gave way to smaller inns and apartment buildings—three- and four-story affairs that looked shabby compared to the beachside properties. He pulled a card out of his pocket and checked the address printed on it. A pretty Filipina—a dark-haired slip of a thing in a bikini top and denim shorts—had given it to him the last time he came to Waikiki. He had tried to pick her up on the strip, but she wasn’t interested. Instead, she handed him the card with a twinkle in her dark-brown eyes, telling him this was where he needed to go if he liked local girls.

“Pretty girls for good prices,” she had told him in a detached, indifferent voice. Hawking different merchandise, the well-practiced catchphrase wouldn’t be out of place on a grocery store circular.

He found the brothel at the far end of a quiet alley, illuminated only by the stars above and an aisle of lit candles along the floor. He looked around nervously to make sure no one was watching. Honolulu had plenty of brothels, especially near the naval station, but that didn’t mean it was legal. If anyone caught him, he would spend the night behind bars and face disciplinary action in the morning. But luck was on his side. The street was empty. He hurried into the alley and through the door.

Inside was a large, softly lit waiting room decorated with erotic paintings and sculptures. A wizened old woman sat behind an ornately carved wooden table. She was Filipina too, like the girl who had given him the card. Stubic saw enough of a resemblance in the old woman’s face to wonder whether this was a family operation. When he closed the door behind him, she looked up and welcomed him, but that was both the start and the end of any small talk. No point in wasting time—they both knew why he was here.

“What kind of girl are you looking for tonight?” the old woman asked. “She can be whatever you want her to be.”

Stubic was surprised by her perfect English, a stark contrast to the terse, clipped pidgin that so many of the Filipino immigrants spoke. He told her what he wanted—petite, long hair, young but not jailbait young—and realized he was describing the girl on the strip who had given him the business card. The old woman’s expression remained stoical as she picked up the phone on the table and spoke into it in a language Stubic didn’t understand. It didn’t sound like Ilocano or Tagalog, the two main Filipino languages spoken in Hawaii. Something about it sent an unexpected chill down his spine.

“It will just be a moment,” the old woman said, hanging up. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

While he waited, Stubic looked at the art on display around the room. He felt himself particularly drawn to the only figurine that wasn’t of a naked woman or a sensually embracing couple. It looked like a mask of some kind, composed of feathers, or maybe they were flames. The features were human but also not, in a way he couldn’t quite pinpoint. Its lips were peeled back in a terrible, angry grimace.

As the seconds ticked by, he became uncomfortably aware that he was the only customer in the waiting room. He didn’t hear anyone elsewhere in the brothel, either. He’d been in enough of them to know that usually you could hear men’s voices talking or, if it was their first time, laughing nervously. This place was dead quiet.

To fill the awkward silence, Stubic pointed to the strange sculpture and asked the old woman, “What is this?”

“ Aswang, ” she said.

“ Aswang, ” he repeated. “What does it mean?”

But the old woman just smiled at him and pointed to a door in the wall behind her. “She is ready for you now.”

He walked past her table to the door, uncomfortably aware of the old woman’s eyes following him, watching him closely. Stubic opened the door and stepped through into the next room, which was lit only with the soft, warm glow of candles. And, like a dream, there she was, the girl from the strip. She had traded in her bikini top and shorts for a beautiful silk kimono. Her jade-green eyes sparkled. Stubic paused. He didn’t remember her having green eyes before, but when she smiled and took his hand, her skin soft and warm on his, he didn’t care anymore what color her eyes were. More titillating art decorated the walls of the room. Off to one side, a hallway, dark as a cave, led deeper into the building. She sat down on a red plush couch against the wall and patted the cushion beside her.