Paul Theroux - Hotel Honolulu

"Dis a word, brah," he said before I could question it.

"Pidgin," Marlene said, and defied me to challenge her. "Dis a language. If you know it, maybe you make more better words."

"Shim,' it English," Keola said. "Use in construction."

Something in the way he pronounced it, conshruction, made me doubtful, so I challenged the word. Because it wasn't Pidgin, neither Peewee nor Marlene backed him. "Too bad we don't have a dictionary," I said. Keola lost a turn.

Peewee put down "less," and for his turn Keola put "fut" in front of it. Futless?

"It mean confused," Marlene said, speaking for Keola. "In Whyee."

I said, "You're peeing on my leg and telling me it's raining."

Futless was how I felt when the game ended and Marlene sulked as she was declared the winner. I came in last, behind Keola, who had always seemed to me a borderline moron. But I wasn't discouraged, just fascinated, for in my office I looked up the word "shim" and saw that I had been mistaken. It was a tapered piece of wood used as a brace or a filler, as Keola had said, in construction.

The next evening, when the shift changed, I was eager to play again. Trey took Peewee's place. Marlene was still gloomy-looking. They challenged me on "kerb," I challenged them on "laff," and let the other words pass: "owch," "dri," "gaz," "yo," and "dis." Keola was way ahead of everyone. Trey put down "toni" and glared at me.

Instead of challenging "toni," I took my turn and converted this worthless fragment into "ultonian."

Marlene grunted, shaking her head.

"It's an adjective. Relating to Ulster."

Marlene was already flipping through the American Heritage Dictionary — she had brought it in a plastic shopping bag because of my previous day's challenge of "shim" — and she triumphantly told me, holding the fat volume in my face, that no such word was listed in it.

Losing this challenge, I lost my turn. On my next turn I used the word "ergo." "Sound like a funny kind of word," Keola said, and challenged it. I confidently looked it up and showed it. "It's Latin for therefore."

"Latin! That hybolic!" Marlene said, and put down "pau."

"I know it means end in Hawaiian," I said. "But I guarantee you it's not in that dictionary."

"Because of it one frikken racist dictionary," Marlene said. "We used to get licks from the teacher in school for using Whyan words."

"Maybe she wanted you to learn English."

"Maybe she was a stupid howlie like you," Marlene said, her eyes shining in anger.

Trey put down "Dion" and explained, "Celine."

Marlene, still furious, said, "Howlie bitch. Got a face like a horse."

"But da kine horse I would fuck," Keola said.

Trey declared the game over, rubbing it in by saying, "This game is pau." Each player's points were added, and Trey came in first, Marlene second, Keola next. I came in last again.

On the third night, Marlene refused to play, but Sweetie said — it was news to me — that she loved playing Scrabble, and so with Peewee and Keola we resumed, passing the sock, selecting letters, making words that were not words — "jin," "hink," "dred," "carni." I didn't care. I loved witnessing the creation of a whole new lexicon. Peewee challenged me when I put down "quod," and he was annoyed to find it in the dictionary.

In spite of missing a turn, he was still ahead, for he knew (and I did not) that an em was a sea eagle, an ai was a three-toed sloth, and a zho was a sort of yak.

Using the "a" in "ai" to make "figa," Sweetie said, "It's a real word, promise to God," and slipped her thumb between her fingers, thrusting upward with this fist, a gesture I now recognized, but how did she?

"Some surfer dudes do that," Keola said. "The ones from Brazil."

Keola made "roop," Peewee made "fi" ("like 'hi-fi"), and I tried to use my "x." Only after I made "axe" did Keola point out that I could have made "axle" on the other side of the board. Peewee put down "casa." I gave it to him because it was one letter short of the corner, which would have given him a triple word score.

Adding an "1" to the corner square to make "casal," Sweetie collected the triple word score and said, "I'm out. I win."

"Wait a minute," I said.

Sweetie giggled and said, "Casal' means double bed. Like queen size. The big beds."

While I stared at Sweetie, Keola said, "The ones you do boomboom

on."

Sweetie said, "It's Brazilian. Like 'figa."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Just smart, I guess."

The sense of blood rising through my body, heating me, making me short of breath, kept me from asking more questions about the Brazilian surfer who had taught my wife those words. And anyway, much to the delight of the others, Peewee, who had been placidly paging through the dictionary, found my name in it.

"Usage Panel!" he crowed, and pointed at me. He showed the page: there was my name. "He on the dictionary Usage Panel, and the bugga come last!"

I never played again. It was not only that, playing Scrabble, I realized that my workers didn't like me very much, and that my wife had a past; it was perhaps the truth of Keola's saying, when he consoled me, "You know, brah, not all the words you say are in the dictionary."

Weeks after Rain Conroy's visit, Buddy called, apologizing to Lionberg for imposing the girl on him and inviting him for a drink.

"I've got my hands full at the moment," Lionberg said.

That was pride and humiliation. He was paralyzed, could not move, hated his thoughts. Superstition kept him around the house, trying to complete just one task in the routines he had set for himself. But he was stuck in a chair, frowning at the lawn. He did not want to develop new habits — meeting Buddy down on the beach or going into Honolulu to eat one of Peewee's hamburgers at the hotel. He had never been idle before, but now he was worse than idle. He seemed to be suffering massive trauma to his brain, the words doctors used to describe a serious head injury. He had heartache, too, for which any thought on his part would cause him more pain.

He hesitated to ask the question in his mind, but he risked it anyway. He said, "What do you hear from Rain?"

"Oh, she's back in her box," Buddy said. "Probably at the diner, and doing her volunteer work."

"Is she still working at the diner?"

Lionberg had said too much. Buddy didn't know anything. He was careless, he was free.

Never before had Lionberg been restless in his house. He was not miserable but discontented. The feeling helped him recall times when, very young, promises were made but were not kept. His uncle saying, "We'll have to get you over on the boat some- time," but it never happened. His mother saying, "If you're good, maybe you'll get binoculars for your birthday." But there were no binoculars. Times of impatience, of being kept waiting, of longing — most of all knowing that no one would give him anything, that he would have to make his own life and fend for himself in this vast, mobbed, indifferent world.

This affair was out of his hands. So he took another look at his possessions and was consoled by them once more. He resented Rain for making him doubt their value. They were his achievement. The Matisse could be restored.

For some days he disliked Rain for making him feel vulnerable and full of doubt. He saw her as shallow, casual, breezy, presumptuous — just young. She had stayed and patronized him. And she was the worst kind of coquette — teasing him, arousing him, putting her mouth on him, sucking him off, saying, "That's not sex," then going away.

Yet he never reflected this way without concluding that she was a perfect flower, that there was nothing to dislike, that all the flaws were his. She was innocent and, even out of her depth, she was buoyant. He longed to see her again. He thought, Yes, love is a girl.