Paul Theroux - Hotel Honolulu

Buddy was saying, "She won't be a problem. When a woman has a body like that, you know she's got nothing between her ears. She's real simple."

Lionberg was looking at the girl, whose back was turned to them.

"They either have looks or brains. I've never found one with both. Anyway, even if I did, I wouldn't know what to do with her."

Buddy honked his horn and prepared to leave. Rain did not look back. She hardly seemed to care that he was leaving her with this stranger, at this enormous empty house. Then Buddy shouted, and Rain turned and waved, and it struck Lionberg that she was either supremely confident or foolishly naive. But when she saw the house, she would be thrown. Then she would not want to leave — they never did. She would see it all with a hopeful hungry gaze.

"Shall I send someone for the rest of your things?"

"These are my things." She picked up her small bag.

Lionberg was trying to imagine what essentials were in the bag.

"It's real warm here," Rain said. "You don't need many clothes."

"It's not that warm."

"I've learned to do without," she said.

She seemed to be reproaching him — that was how Lionberg felt. But that was typical: most people tried to remind him that they had nothing, which was usually the prelude to their asking for something. "I'd kill to own something like that," a woman had once said to him, of an Annamese celadon bowl.

"Buddy's from the rich side of the family," Rain said. "His side's got everything."

"Lucky them."

"They've got the problems, too," Rain said. "Like I say, they've got everything."

Was she cleverer than she seemed? This was concisely subtle. Lionberg wanted to tell her that some people had managed to succeed without becoming dysfunctional. But the conversation was making him feel uncomfortable, because with all this talk about money — Rain saying frankly that she had none — they were walking off the terrace and into the

house through the thrust-apart sliders, and Rain had turned and was looking at either the Hockney or the telescope.

Lionberg said, "It's a Celestron, the best one they make. I took the labels off. I don't see the point of brand names."

"Right. But you just told me what it was."

He hated to be contradicted, and he found himself counting before he replied.

"It's got wonderful optics. I photographed that comet last April."

Rain said, "Actually, I was looking at that bird."

"It's a white-rumped shama thrush," Lionberg said. "Yes. It's lovely. Listen."

The shama was warbling and whistling, a tumbling sweetness that was polyphonic, like falling water made into sparkling lozenges of pure sound.

"Much nicer than a lark or a nightingale," Lionberg said.

Rain smiled. How could she have heard those songs?

"It's a native of South Asia. They've only been in Hawaii since the 1930s. It's not a shy bird."

"It's real pretty," the girl said.

"Like your name."

"It means queen in French, except my parents couldn't spell."

She was standing in the living room next to the sunken sofa and the wall of African masks, a rack of Fijian war clubs, the large rock-crystal fish, the celadon, the paintings, the aquatints, the fine mats and baskets, the koa bowls, the Tunisian carpet, the Ming dragon of glazed porcelain. The plain black stereo played a Vivaldi cello concerto.

"I like your hat," she said as she walked off the veranda.

It was a baseball hat with a mass of torn stitching where it had once been lettered The Plaza. He said, "I'll turn the music down."

"Whatever," she said. She seemed not to have noticed the music.

She was still listening to the song of the shama thrush perched in the hibiscus hedge.

The bird flew boldly to the lawn, nearer her, and pecked at an insect, then returned to its perch in the hedge.

"I'm kind of hungry too," she said.

"What would you like?" Lionberg said.

But the girl was reaching into her bag. "I've got a sandwich. Buddy made it. Look, it's huge."

Eating is one of the pleasures of life, Lionberg was thinking as he watched her eat the sandwich. Standing up, in the middle of the lawn, it was all hurry and denial — she wolfed it down, cramming it into her mouth and nodding as she chewed. The very idea of this made him smile.

All this time chewing, her mouth full, she was apologizing with her eyes and her pretty fingers.

She was licking her fingers when she said, "Mind if I go for a swim?"

For an instant he thought how clever she was to have noticed the pool when she had noticed so little else of the house.

"Go ahead. It's not ornamental — it's a real lap pool."

"I meant the beach."

"I'll give you a lift."

"I need the walk," she said, and waved with her back turned as she

left.

He was surprised by how lightly she had come and gone. But he did not feel rejected, for she would never understand why he could not go with her, that he never walked down that busy road. For him it was unsafe — so he had been told — and it was not a risk he wished to take or a question that ever arose these days. He couldn't remember when he had last left his compound.

From an upper window he watched her on the road and then walking down the hill. Fifteen minutes later he watched her through binoculars as she swam off the rocks at Sharks Cove.

Usually visitors said, "How about a tour?" and he reluctantly took them through the ground floor of the house, showing the less valuable items. He kept all visitors from his study and his bedroom, and he had

stopped showing his library — people had picked up books, opened them and saw his underlining and notes, and he felt as violated as if they had read his mail or his diary. Some books had gone missing. He believed they had been stolen.

Lionberg did not want anyone to know him. Everyone made an attempt. It seemed odd that Rain had not tried. Yet he had expected it and prepared himself for it.

Carrying Rain's bag into the guest house, he was amazed by its lightness, yet apparently everything she needed for her days in Hawaii was in it. He thought of looking, just to see what the girl regarded as necessities, but he resisted, slightly disgusted by his impulse.

After lunch he worked among his flowers, feeding his gardenias and washing the leaves with a soap mixture where they were covered in smut from the aphids and ants. It was strange the way the ants kept the aphids as domestic animals on the shrub, but this ant-farm arrangement, fascinating though it was, crudded and killed the leaves. And this year the flowers were beautiful, with a piercingly sweet fragrance.

As he washed the leaves, bringing the green back, he looked out for Rain. To hear her approach better, he turned the Vivaldi off.

It was rare for him to know a day without music. But he had a reason today — he did not want Rain to be locked out. The security system had been designed to exclude anyone from casually entering. So there was

no music. He needed to hear the bell or she would be left standing in the street, perhaps for hours.

There was no music, but there was no silence either, for silence was unknown on a hot afternoon on the North Shore of Oahu. A thousand birds loudly contended, in addition to the whine of insects and the distant growl of a descending plane. He heard doves cooing, the whistling of bulbuls, and the complex song of the shama, which Rain had commented on. Most people were deaf to birdsong.

"Hello."

How had she gotten in?

She seemed to understand that he was flustered, even to divining the reason. "I came through the side gate."

"That's the service entrance. It was locked."

"I guess it wasn't."

"It's supposed to be locked. And there are motion sensors."

Rain was smiling. "Well, here I am!"