Paul Theroux - Hotel Honolulu

Allison passed us on her way out of Paradise Lost, the end of Happy Hour, and smiled. Trey did not hesitate. He cut me off in the middle of a sentence and approached her. I heard Allison saying, ". . drink" and". . in my room. Give me a few minutes."

Trey was transformed into a panting, tail-wagging dog with a wet twitching nose and slaver on his lips. His tongue was too thick for him to make any sense when he spoke to me. But the next day he told me that he had gone upstairs, that Allison had met him at the door wearing her

honeymoon peignoir, and that they had made love on the sofa and on the floor and against the wall, at her insistence. Afterward, in the bed, she challenged him to guess why she had changed her mind. She laughed at having stumped him, and she explained in her practical way that in the past few days it had dawned on her that Dave would eventually be unfaithful, months or years from now.

"It's sad, really," she said. "But since it always happens — doesn't it? — I wanted to be first."

After describing her mood change in the room, how she went from being all business to crouching and calling him "Daddy," Trey clawed his long hair and said to me, "Hey, boss, would this be the wrong time to ask for a raise?"

The following year, Allison Furman and Dave Womack returned to the hotel. I said I would upgrade them again, putting them in the same suite, "for the memories." But they said they were just dropping in to say hello. They were staying in another place, down the beach. It had a kitchenette with a microwave and a small refrigerator, and it was, as they put it, "competitively priced."

The only difference between a Hawaiian wedding and a Hawaiian funeral, Buddy Hamstra said, was that there was one less person singing at the funeral. How could I laugh when he was telling me this at his own wife's funeral? Though he knew he had shocked me, he slugged me on the arm and said it again, much louder.

"Want to come to my wife's funeral?" he had asked me, then he howled, "Hey, that's a dynamite pickup line!"

Loudness was comedy to him, and his howl was whiffy with alcohol. He was so drunk that day he was staggering, but that was comedy too. All human frailty was funny to Buddy, especially his own, and death was just a practical joke. He demanded I take the day off to attend.

Stella's coffin was on the beach, so festooned with big bright edible- looking flowers it looked like a salad bar. The mourners, all hot-faced people in shorts, stood barefoot in the sand, singing and twitching their damp aloha shirts — Buddy's dusky children by his islander wives, his two grandchildren, surfers, strippers, illegal immigrants, Boogie-boarders and aunties, as well as Buddy's rascally pals and old business cronies, leathery fishermen and opihi pickers, and all Stella's family from the mainland. Their bare feet, as lumpy and expressive as faces, said everything about their lives. Buddy's children had a common characteristic: If they didn't

understand something, they opened their mouths. Death was the sort of befuddlement that made them slack-jawed.

It was one of those brilliant orchidaceous days on the North Shore of Oahu, under the towering palms. A silky breeze lisped through the needles of the ironwoods edging Sunset Beach. The cliffs behind us were as dark and leafy as spinach. Somewhere nearby a radio was playing, an insolent voice giving a weather report and then a sales jingle about fast food in Honolulu, but it was just more comedy for Buddy. Down at the beach, a man was casting into the surf, working his fishing rod like a coach whip. The breeze carried a scent of flowers. The greeny-blue Pacific, the dazzling sunlight, the new blossoms — it was all bright with life, and the tears on the cheeks of the dark fresh-faced people were like another aspect of their health.

Just offshore, the smooth-sided waves at Banzai Pipeline were rising and bursting toward us, collapsing loudly, dissolving in thick froth and fizz. While the rest of the mourners sang, the surfers kept glancing back.

"The Pipe's cranking," one said. He turned away from Stella's coffin.

"It was junk this morning," another said.

"I'm stoked," the first one said. "Look at Piggy in the tube."

A surfer in gleaming shorts, braced on his board, traveled under the curling lip of the large wave, arms outspread, his head washed by foam.

Then the singing stopped and Buddy tramped forward on the sand, looking unsteady. Several people snuffled. Melveen, his eldest daughter, blew her nose, a rat-a-tat that turned heads. Garlands of leis were piled to Buddy's ears, and he held a glass of vodka in one hand and simpered as though he were going to burst into song.

"Stella's not mucky. She's watching us, she's listening, and she's huhu because some of you are crying." Buddy said. "Stop crying over her wooden kimono. Put away the Kleenex — she's not mucky!"

He had the snorting stubbornness of a huge hairy animal, with an important belly, a raspy voice, and a Tahitian tattoo, a plump blue fish picked out on his arm, because of his nickname, Tuna.

"Funny thing happened on our honeymoon," he said, stepping close to his wife's coffin. The coffin tilted as he hooked his foot on one of the sinking sawhorses that propped it up. "This was in Moorea."

He told a story about his arrival at the hotel on the little island off Papeete, where he noticed that everyone was wearing the same T-shirt — the gatekeeper, the gardeners, the Tahitians Weedwacking the lawn, the women at Reception, the room boy, the bar help, the waiters. The image on the front of each T-shirt was indistinct, but exactly the same — perhaps a political figure? No, up close it was a furiously scowling Polynesian woman, a silkscreened portrait of Momi, the second Mrs. Buddy Hamstra.

"Thanks, needledick," he said, leaning over Stella's corpse to speak to one of the rascals, Earl Willis, who had sent two hundred Momi-face T- shirts all the way to Moorea. "That's when Stella realized she was marrying trouble. Big pilikia!"

"You cemented up my lua and stuck a stop sign in it," Willis said. "I couldn't shee-shee."

"Because you're a needledick," Buddy said. "Hey, people, lay off the crying!"

The singing resumed. The surfers distracted me, and looking out toward the ocean I saw a pod of whales, plumes rising from their blowholes, as they made their seasonal way to Kauai. I thought, I am happy. It seemed to me that this was what a funeral ought to be. On this beautiful day I saw continuity, an eternal return, only harmony. Nothing died.

After that song, Buddy said, "Anyone hungry? We got fresh opihi and Spam musubi and lots of good grinds in the house. Hey, let's eat!"

We were glad he was drunk. It dulled the pain. It set an example. Pretty soon everyone was drunk, and when I looked back and saw Stella's coffin, casting a black boxy shadow on the white sand, I remembered what Buddy had said, about there being only one person at a funeral who was not singing.

When the funeral turned into a party, I saw four goldfish swimming in every hopper in the house.

"Buddy always does that when people are drinking," a man said, seeing my puzzled face as I left the little room. To be helpful he added, "Everyone's using the mango tree."

He introduced himself as Royce Lionberg. He said he lived on the bluff behind the beach. There was something about him, his serenity perhaps, his gentle smile, his apparent health, his confident look of achievement, that made me envy him. He seemed very happy.

The music was loud and Buddy was dancing with one of Stella's old girlfriends. The dark woman had long hair and a corona of pretty flowers on her head. She performed a smiling, sinuous hula for Buddy, who looked terrible: slow, fat, breathless, his eyes glazed and heavy-lidded with alcohol. At the time, I put it down to bewilderment and suppressed grief. Then he saw me.