Paul Theroux - Hotel Honolulu

That woman is my wife! the man wanted to say.

He kept visiting the apartment on Mauna Kea Street — visiting his wife, for the other hostesses did not interest him. He was like a fanatic, a desperate addict, and he lost all inhibition. His former gambling now seemed to him childish. This was what true gambling was, and he was winning. In the smoky, seedy apartment his marriage was complete. Sex there left him in a gratified rapture that he savored in a way that he had never felt before. He loved his wife, could not imagine loving her more. He now went to the private party on Mauna Kea Street every day. He was the slave now.

This was a wonderful reversal of roles. But there was more, for time passed and one day he didn't pay, absolutely didn't have the money. So his wife paid. The next day the same thing happened. Denying her the money meant that she had to pay twice and had less to bring home. The man could not afford to pay, and yet he had never needed his wife more.

Put in this unusual position, the woman was accused of stealing, of conspiring with a client (it often happened with Japanese men in search of Honolulu mistresses), who she could not admit was her husband. She lost her job at the private party.

The Korean owner said, "You're lucky I'm just letting you go. I could pay someone to hurt you."

But the woman was already hurt, as much as if she had been physically injured. With a reputation for stealing, she could only work as a streetwalker, which was unsafe and poorly paid and despised by her husband.

She became a hostess in a restaurant and didn't earn enough to pay for the apartment. Her husband lost interest in her and they split up, though she said she still loved him. Eventually, she reclaimed her daughter and raised her in a hotel, working at odd jobs for friends, and sometimes it was hula lessons, and sometimes sex for money.

Visiting journalists, brazenly demanding a week of freebies in exchange for a few paragraphs in a colorful puff piece, were unknown to me until I began managing the Hotel Honolulu. Stephen Paifrey had asked for a free week, comp room (nonsmoking), meals included, and did we have an in-house masseuse, and could I get him a deal on a rental car? These potential guests always asked to see me, and they'd announce, "I'm a travel writer." I associated this term with the people who recounted their experiences in knowing articles in the glossy in-flight magazines found in the seat pocket next to the barf bag. They always enjoyed themselves hugely, and product placement was their specialty. Palfrey's promise, one that I had heard from others, was that he would write a glowing review of the hotel.

"Why do I find that prospect so difficult to imagine?"

He missed my irony and said that travelers would flock to us. Even "a mention" mattered, so he patronizingly indicated. Subtlety was never a strong point with these travel people, either in person or in print. And although they had the frowny faces and short attention spans of toddlers, and complained when they weren't being cosseted, the travel pieces they wrote about having a marvelous time seemed absurd as well as dishonest.

"Travel at its best," one of them wrote about the Hotel Honolulu.

Travel at its best, in my experience, was often a horror and always a nuisance, but that was not the writer's point.

I would have slung Palfrey out, except that Buddy insisted we needed the publicity — we never bought ads and we had no public relations. And Buddy, claiming to be ill, seemed needy, and believed he was colorful. He wanted to be known to the wider world.

For this one week, Palfrey said bluntly that he was willing to feature us in his column and would write about our food. "I've done lots on food and beverage. I could cover your brunches." We had miserable brunches. Peewee's loco mocos, Spam musubis, and Serious Flu Symptoms Chili. There was hardly a sandwich served in our coffee shop that did not have the imprints of the server's thumbs.

Palfrey also added, in an enigmatic aside, as a further inducement, that if anyone in the hotel had a dog that needed attention — "And the key to a dog's nature is that they require constant attention" — he would provide it: would walk the dog, feed it, primp it, deflea it, whatever. "I'm kind of lonely," he said. He badly missed his own dog, a Labrador retriever, which he had had to leave at home on the mainland because of Hawaii's strict quarantine laws.

"And I know Queenie's miserable, too."

Left-at-home pets were a frequent topic among the guests: I miss my pet, my pet misses me, want to see a picture? People at the hotel

moaned in soppy self-pity, and I just wanted to howl at them for their pathetic fatuity. Filipinos here eat dogs, I wanted to say. On Buddy's advice, I agreed to Palfrey's staying for a week, though I said we had no dogs. When I suggested he could busy himself with Puamana's Popoki, he winced, as dog lovers do at any mention of cats. I requested his credit card imprint as a deposit.

"What would that be for?"

"Breakage, pilferage, minibar, and miscellaneous charges, let's say."

He sighed in a defeated way and handed over his credit card as well as his business card, on which he was listed as Stephen Palfrey, B.A., and under his name, Adventure Travel, Society of American Travel Writers, American Society of Media Photo graphers, and American Kennel Association.

"Not just Queenie. I also breed Labs," he explained. "Can I have your business card?" He winked at me. There was something unnatural in the way he did it, contorting his face. "I might want to mention you in my piece."

I wondered what he would make of my card.

"Your name rings a bell," Palfrey said.

"I can't imagine why," I said, defying him to produce more evidence.

My certainty made him waver. "I think there's a fairly wellknown writer by that name."

"But you see I'm the manager of this hotel," I said. "What did this namesake of mine write?"

Palfrey admitted he had read nothing. Mine was just a hard- topronounce name on the cover of a book he had once seen somewhere. Unfortified, he caved in and smiled wanly, sorry he had raised the matter.

That was the beginning, but days before his free week was out, Palfrey had packed his bags and signaled to me that he was leaving.

"I don't have enough to write about."

He was booked on a midnight flight to the mainland, and so between his checking out and the arrival of his taxi I heard his story.

A woman in Paradise Lost had sat on a stool next to him and said, "Boxers or briefs?" Then another one, at a bar on Kalakaua, had sidled up to him and asked if he wanted a date. He said no. She repeated it, seeming to corner him, but he finally got away.

That had been his first night. I wondered whether I should tell him this was nothing unusual. The next day, at Irma's Diner, having eaten a plate lunch, and killing time over his coffee, Paifrey looked up and a woman said, "Hi." When he smiled and returned her greeting, she sat down across from him and began talking about herself. A radiologist, she

had come here from a suburb of Pittsburgh. The money was good, but housing and food were expensive and it was really hard to meet new people, and she said, "What are you doing tonight?"

"I'm pretty busy," Palfrey said, startled into a transparent lie by the sudden question. He was not busy at all. ("The funny thing was that I was lonely," he told me. "Ever had a crying jag?") But the woman radiologist was panting, sucking lemonade through a straw, wearing green scrubs.

She was bigger than he was, and distinctly mustached and chubby. When she finished her drink, she sat with her mouth open, looking hungry, as though he were a piece of meat. Palfrey left Irma's in a hurry.

"You felt like a piece of meat?" I asked.