Paul Theroux - Hotel Honolulu

"You finished?"

"No," I said. "Horror is a broken leg. A real novelist could have told him that."

"Like you?"

"Like I used to be."

"So what's 'salutary' supposed to mean?"

Rose said, "It teaches you a healthy lesson."

"Hybolic," Sweetie said. She remembered Rose's tone of voice — pedantic — without remembering the word or any of the pedantry. She wasn't annoyed; she was strangely fascinated, as though transfixed by a visible handicap. Sometimes people looking gouty limped across the lobby, and Sweetie followed them from the entrance to the elevator, frankly gaping.

"It's like the man at the beach. He was playing in the sand, but he almost died. That's worse than a horror story, because it's real," Rose said.

In time the man recovered from his injuries and went home. Rose said she was relieved. But a pattern had been established, and for weeks afterward Rose insisted that I put her to bed.

Tucking in this bright child was a lengthy business. And I was so preoccupied with Rose and my duties at the hotel that I was not aware of JFK Jr.'s visit until some days after he had left the island. Buddy told me, "Guess who was in town?"

I was wary of discussing this with Sweetie, but one day I raised the subject. It wasn't an idle question. After all, I knew, even if Sweetie didn't, that she was Kennedy's half-sister. Sweetie's friend Nainoa had given Kennedy his diving lessons. Had she met him?

She smiled, and color suffused her face, reddening her lips, lighting her eyes, making her even more beautiful, the coconut princess whom I had always found irresistible.

"What was he like?"

"I don't remember," she said.

When our rich friend Royce Lion berg, after making so many plans, buying a titanium watch and a new car, and putting a down payment on an African safari (gorillas in Uganda), saying how happy he was, how he loved life, how he had the perfect present for that girl he loved, Buddy's niece Rain in Nevada, then killing himself in the most deliberate way — not much ambiguity in the death of a man who drives himself to Pali lookout and hangs himself by slamming his tie in the door of his Lexus — when all that sank in, Buddy stopped talking about the future and was much happier. It was the past that mattered.

"I want you to help me write my life story," Buddy said. I reminded him of the episode he had dictated to me, with the moral "Never jack off a dog." But he said that was just the beginning. There was so much more. This mood of reminiscence suited him. He had chosen to be among people who could remind him of witty remarks he had made or outrageous things he had done. He stopped talking about his campaign to hold a topless hula competition, or start his own radio show, or open a gambling casino on a ship anchored offshore or a revolving restaurant on top of Koko Head crater.

"That's asking for it," he said. "Lionberg, when he made all those plans. That was bachi."

The local word for a self-inflicted curse — asking for trouble.

Nowadays Buddy went to bed very late or sometimes not at all. He was the worst guest I had known at the Hotel Honolulu: the last one to leave the bai the hardest to please at the coffee shop, the noisiest, the most demanding, and along with the departed Madam Ma, the most childish. But he owned the place, so what could I do?

Another thing about drunks is they repeat themselves, so for the third or fourth time Buddy was saying, "I want to go dancing."

Usually these nights he was too drunk to stand up straight, much less dance, but I stifled a yawn and humored him. It had been a long day, and I cringed whenever he spoke of his memories.

"With Stella," he said after a while.

Stella had been dead for years, but I took the remark to mean that he would dance holding the small heart-shaped jar that contained her ashes.

"Do you think dead people can see us?" he asked.

Like a child, he pleaded to be comforted at bedtime, though it was way past that. The Paradise Lost clock said two-fifteen.

"Maybe it's not a question of seeing. Maybe they know without looking. Kind of a consciousness thing."

What was I saying? Perhaps just hoping to soothe his troubled mind. He considered my explanation; I knew he was thinking of Stella. Alcoholic tears brimmed in his eyes.

He said, with a remembering whisper, "One time I was driving to town with Stella and she says, 'Let's stop and buy some mochi crunch.' I said no. We had an argument. Then it was over. We got to town on time."

I didn't understand it, yet I nodded as if I did.

"Why didn't I do what she wanted? Mochi crunch. It wasn't much."

He heaved himself against the bar and tipped his glass with a sigh — adenoidal, rueful. "Now she's dead."

This night, like most nights lately, he was regretful. I could not see any memoir here, yet he insisted he needed me to tell his amazing life story.

I said, as though to a sleepy fretful child, "Why don't you think of the good times?"

"I could tell you a million stories!" Seeing Pinky entering the bar, his face fell. He said sourly, "Look, here she is, the wind beneath my wings."

Even I could see that Pinky was sulking. Scowling, her fists clenched, wearing a purple jogging suit that was shapeless on her small frame, she had one of those pinched shadowy faces that hid nothing — indeed, exaggerated the truth in shadows, especially when she was low. What was she doing up at this hour? Perhaps suspicious, wondering whether he was womanizing.

"Cannot find the clicker."

Buddy turned away from her. "Try using the buttons on the TV."

"Then I have to get up and get up and get up."

"So that's a big hardship," Buddy said.

Seeming to squint at the word "hardship" like an insect in the air, fluttering past her face — she twitched, didn't recognize it — she scowled again, and I knew a fight was starting.

"Find me the clicker."

Buddy said, "I wouldn't piss up your ass if your guts were on fire."

The time was now two forty-five, and I dreaded the long day that was about to dawn.

"I think the room girl lose it," Pinky said. "Give me Diet Coke."

Tran had long since gone home. It was for me to fetch the drink.

Buddy said, "Don't give it to her unless she says 'please."

I was so agitated and overtired the glass shook in my hand, the ice cubes clinking. Pinky extended her arm in silence.

"Don't give it to her!"

"Give me — now!"

This was one of those moments of dazzling clarity when I knew without having to remind myself that I was fifty-seven years old, a former

writer and world traveler, a one-time literary success, who now lived on a small island with a simple wife and a small child, earning a low five-figure salary for managing one of the grubbier hotels in Waikiki, perhaps the only hotel manager in the world who was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, with the rosette in the lapel of my aloha shirt to prove it.

And I was holding a Diet Coke in my hand, standing between a quarreling couple, each of them nagging me, in a bar at almost three in the morning.

Buddy raised his hand to hit her. Pinky flinched, ducked, and muttered a word that sounded like "Freeze."

"She was brought up in a hovel in Cebu City, shitting in a bucket and eating woof-woof, running around barefoot. And now she can't live without TV and Room Service and, hey, pass the clicker."

"You make me so shame in front of peoples."

"He's family," Buddy said, meaning me.

Pinky pursed her lips and worked on the straw.

"Let me ask you something," Buddy said, and put his face near hers. "What was the best day of your life?"

"Don't know."

"Maybe when you married Mr. Meal Ticket?" It was his own self- mocking name.