Tag Archives: My Hawaiian Penthouse
My Hawaiian Penthouse
Let’s get one thing clear, right from the start: I never liked the word boytoy;I much preferred heir. As in heir to the incalculable millions of Sir So-and-So or sole heir to the vast McCormack fortune. That kind of heir.
Even as a child, that’s how it was with me. I knew what I wanted. As my mother used to say (and here’s to her), I had a flair for the dramatic. But then, she should know. She used to flick her cigarette in my direction and snarl, “Keep that up, buster, and you’ll be out on the street faster than I can finish this drink.” Which would’ve been pretty quick, given how the woman loved her liquor. She could’ve been a star, provided she’d stayed off the sauce—and never married my father and not lived her whole life in Holly Hills, Michigan. In other words, another life. But she didn’t. Instead, my mother invested her dreams in my sister, leaving me to make my own mistakes.
I’m not saying she was wrong. That’s just how she was. My mother couldn’t figure out how to fit me into her life. Sometimes there’s not enough room for more than one person. I wasn’t like the boys my mother remembered from when she was young. I never worked in a gas station. The only part of a car I ever liked was the backseat, where I could pretend my father was the chauffeur. “To the mall, James,” I’d command—not that he paid me any attention, and not only because his name was Tom.
This was back in the seventies in a place called Holly Hills, Michigan where the mall was about the only sign of civilization—and even that was ten miles from my parents’ one-story ranch with the sad little birch tree out in front. Every Saturday morning, the chauffeur dropped my mother and me off at one of the local strip malls where my mother got her hair done. And it was there, sitting like a twelve-year-old lord-in-waiting at Addison’s Beauty Salon, that I discovered a magazine called Town & Country.
For years, I’d had this suspicion that my life in Holly Hills was a tragic acci-dent. But it was not until flipping through Town & Country’s glossy photo-graphs of tuxedoed men and socialites happily wandering the grounds of their sumptuous estates that I realized my true birthplace. There was this one pho-tograph that drove me to distraction, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I was going to steal the magazine. My mother, meanwhile, was busy with her stylist, Arlene, gossiping about the latest teen suicide in town. There’d been a rash of them that year, which was incontrovertible proof that I wasn’t the only one wishing to leave Dodge. And so, as nonchalant as Fagin, I slipped that issue of Town & Country under my red sweatshirt and pretended to read Motor Trend instead.
Of course my mother noticed something as soon as she came over to fetch her coat. She yanked that magazine out from under my sweatshirt and asked, “What do you think you’re doing?” The pages of my Town & Country fluttered in the air. “Did you see that, Arlene?” she asked. “Teddy’s mooching your mag-azine.”
Arlene Addison was a decent sort. Her daughter Vicki had got pregnant at fifteen, so she knew about life’s little accidents. She took pity on me and said, “That one ain’t even mine. I think Joyce Watson left it last week.”
This was not the reaction my mother was anticipating, and perhaps not one that she desired. She was temporarily flummoxed, and she looked again at the magazine, silently taking in its cover of a nubile brunette in full equestrian gear, a white-columned mansion in the distance. “What you want with this, anyway?” my mother asked.
I shrugged, not wanting to tell her I was living in the wrong house. “Art,” I said in a low voice. “We need pictures for art.”
Arlene Addison looked up from her sweeping. “You want that magazine?” she asked. “It’s yours, Teddy.”
And now my mother had no recourse. She jabbed me in the chest with my Town & Country and said, “Next time you ask.”
The photo for which I risked my mother’s wrath was of a massive drawing room with floor-to-ceiling windows swathed in deep burgundy curtains. Leather chairs flanked a console while a crystal chandelier glowed from above, and to the left, in a somewhat shadowed foreground, sat a distinguished-look-ing gentlemen. With a drink and a cigarette, the man in the velvet smoking jacket gazed across the room at a silk-gowned woman. Her back bare, her hair swept in a chignon, the woman faced the window, looking out—at what I could not tell.
This was a kind of life I knew solely from old movies. Some mornings I would litter my bed with wadded-up tissue and wait for my mother to wake me for school. Then, coughing, I’d point to the tissue. Upon witnessing my Camille, my mother would, most often, jam a thermometer down my throat, but there were other mornings when she didn’t feel like fighting. Instead, she’d tell me, “Fine, stay home. But you are not to leave the house while I’m at work. You hear me? You leave this house and I’ll hunt you down. And don’t answer the door, neither. And don’t bother your sister when she gets home from dance. She’s got to rehearse. And no cookies and no ice cream. Do some exer-cise. You get hungry, there’s carrot sticks in the fridge.”
As soon as I had the house to myself, with my parents at work and my charming sister at charm school, I parked myself—with ice cream and cook-ies—in front of the TV. And for the next five hours, I went where Hollywood took me, where men wore black tie and women glided across crowded ball-rooms, laughter trilling behind them. But then, all too quickly, it was four o’clock and my mother was home from the school where she was secretary to the principal. I could hear her car crunching over the gravel drive and I hurried back to my room, collapsing on my bed in a melodramatic heap.
Every day, as soon as my mother walked in the door, she had two drinks. One while standing in the kitchen, her purse still swinging from her forearm, and the second with a cigarette as she sat in the living room, slipping off her shoes and jewelry. This was her decompress time, and both my sister and I knew not to disturb her. Instead, I lay still in my bed, my eyes closed tight, dreaming of a mansion with marble floors and a butler to answer the door and champagne bubbling from fountains …
And when finally I awoke (from a long, deep sleep), that’s exactly what had happened. There I was, little old Teddy Sears from Holly Hills, Michigan, living in a twelve-room apartment at the top of River House in the middle of Man-hattan. I had to pinch myself. Me, sleeping in a Regency bed, complete with an ornately carved headboard. And Flemish tapestries on the walls, and a water-color by Gainsborough. It was all too much. There was fresh coffee on a break-fast tray, and a vase of pink hydrangea in a celadon jade vase. I could hardly believe my own reflection in the George III gilt wood mirror. The sun so bright, it dazzled the oriental carpet. I rose and stood by the window, gazing out onto the East River. Marveling that I was here. Here where I belonged, here at home, at long last.
Of course, this transformation had not happened overnight. It wasn’t as if I’d awoken in Oz wearing ruby red slippers. Rather it had been a journey, a years-long journey, with a great deal of clawing and climbing. It had taken nearly everything I had to get this river view. And looking out onto the choppy water, I couldn’t help but think of those who had tried to scale Manhattan’s heights—only to wind up at river’s bottom, their feet shod in concrete. Harold had always said it was a deceptive river, deeper than you’d expect, with deadly rip currents. “Treacherous,” he used to say, “just like Manhattan. You’re not careful, it’ll chew you up. But not me; I’m a survivor.” Well, not actually, he wasn’t—not any longer. Now it was I living at River House. Not that the apart-ment had changed much—save for a few less pink quartz Ming trees sold to Christies. Amazing what you got for a couple Chinese artifacts these days.
And to think that once upon a time, I’d never heard of River House. Harold always said it was the preeminent Manhattan address. But there was much I hadn’t known back then, and much that Harold had taught me. Harold Arm-strong was a Wasp, one of those old school, blue blood Wasps. As he liked to say, it didn’t much matter who came over on the Mayflower when it was your family who built the ships.
In those last years before commercial aviation, Harold had traveled the world on yachts and ocean liners. He had albums filled with photographs that reminded me of the movies I adored. Back then, back in the thirties, Harold had been a fresh-faced youth, his thatch of flaxen hair combed off his forehead. Which was how Harold always wore his hair, right to the end: combed back and cut tight, with a razor-sharp part. Only the color had changed, from flaxen to snow-white.
And dogs, he liked dogs, especially French standard poodles—always in black, and every one named Zippy. After Zippy I, there was Zippy II and Zippy III, because, the thing was, Harold’s poodles were prone to seizures. One minute yapping for food, the next dead on their backs. Poor Harold had as much luck with dogs as he did with boys. But it was all going to be different with me; that’s what he thought, and so did I.
I was twenty-five when I met Harold Armstrong and lured him into my web—except it wasn’t all that. I wasn’t quite so clever back then, coming from Holly Hills and not so long out of school. My BFA in Theatre hadn’t exactly taken Manhattan by storm; in fact, the only lines I’d been paid to recite were the daily specials. So I’d headed back to Michigan—or rather I’d been chased back by MasterCard. Fortunately, Teresa hadn’t forgotten me. Teresa Lom-bardi, my old roommate from Hell’s Kitchen. It was thanks to Teresa that I met Harold Armstrong. Teresa was getting her MFA in Directing and she’d called, saying she had a gig for me. Without even hearing the details, I said yes. Turned out she was directing a production of Godspell—at a church theater, no less. My dressing room doubled as the men’s bathroom and half the cast couldn’t hold a tune, but it didn’t bother me. Nothing mattered except that I was doing a show in New York—and no one back in Holly Hills had to know any more than that.
We did six performances. One week of rehearsals and six performances between Thursday and Sunday. The audiences were mostly Christian youth groups bussed in from Pennsylvania, but they could’ve been seals for all I cared. I was high on applause. And then just before the curtain on Saturday night, Teresa told me the producer was out in front. She said Mr. Harold Arm-strong had piles of family money and that he lived at River House near Beek-man Place. I think my eyes glazed over then. She told me to look for the geezer with the snow-white hair. “You can’t miss him,” she said. “He always brings a boytoy.”
Second row, center—I spotted him right away. Mr. Harold Armstrong with his boychick beside him. I gave him the eye. This was my make or break oppor-tunity, so I figured why the hell not. And furthermore, I looked hot in my low-slung bell-bottoms with a tight little tee, my hair all blond and curly. I proba-bly looked the best I’d ever looked. And when it came time for my solo, I sang “Day by Day” like I was Marilyn singing “Happy Birthday” to the president.
And wouldn’t you know, Harold returned for the final two perfor-mances—alone. And he showed up at the cast party too, because basically he was the only reason there was any production at all. We were at a midtown hotel, in one of the lounges off the ballroom. There must have been fifty or sixty guests, and when all of us in the cast made our entrance, everyone applauded. I was so overwhelmed, I got misty-eyed. This was the life I deserved: fame and celebrity, autographs and paparazzi. And over there, sitting in a big leather armchair like some kind of pasha, was Mr. Harold Armstrong. He didn’t use a walking stick then and he looked younger than I knew he was. So I grabbed a glass of champagne from one of the waiters and I went right up to him and said, “I’m Teddy Sears and I want to thank—”
“I know who you are,” he said, interrupting me. “You were very good, Mr. Sears. Pleasure to watch you onstage. Won’t you sit with me, keep me company?”
He had the strangest voice, like Katharine Hepburn gargling with marbles. At first, I thought he said, “Sit on my knee,” which I nearly did. Then I trans-lated his gurglings and realized what he meant. “Thank you,” I said, sitting next to him on what looked to be an overturned drum. “I’m so glad—”
But Mr. Armstrong interrupted me again, asking, “Why don’t you come back to my apartment for a nightcap?”
His directness took me aback. I might have hesitated a moment and swilled from my champagne, because the truth was, in spite of my bravado, I’d never been with a man old enough to be my grandfather. I flashed on an image of me frolicking naked through River House—with Mr. Harold Armstrong resolutely on my tail.
“There’s something I’d like to show you,” he said.
I nearly laughed; his lines were as crusty as week-old bread.
“You’ve a nice singing voice,” he continued. “And I’ve a Steinway you might
“No. Not the piano, I don’t,” I said.
“Another instrument perhaps?” he asked, his eyes fixing on mine. He had eyes like an eagle, or maybe it was the nose. His words hung in the air as we both parsed their meaning. And then breaking his gaze from mine, he said, “Well, it’s up to you.”
Yes, wasn’t it always?
He had taken me to River House the night of my Broadway debut—which was how I liked to think of it, because actually the church theater did have a Broadway address. From the cast party, Harold Armstrong had whisked me off to River House, on the far east side of town. And I was impressed. The ten-foot stone columns with a manned gate and the circular cobblestone drive. There were so many flunkies in gold-braided uniforms that I might have mistaken the building for an embassy. And Harold nodding left and right as we marched across the marble floor through the vast lobby with its porcelain urns and vases filled with fussy floral arrangements and a Louis XIV reception desk where an attendant stood at attention. The elevator had a chandelier. And it opened right onto the vestibule of Harold Armstrong’s fourteenth-floor apart-ment. It was his own private elevator. Harold Armstrong owned the entire floor.
The receiving room was dimly lit, and stepping into it, I immediately felt like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. There was a kind of mustiness in the air and all these oil portraits of Harold Armstrong’s relatives on the walls illuminated by dark-shaded alabaster lamps and nearly threadbare carpets covering the black-and-white tessellated marble floor. Immediately, a large black standard poodle started barking and jumping all over me, and I was wise enough to make like I adored dogs. This was Zippy II, and Gretchen was attempting to restrain him but she was this tiny German woman, her hair a helmet of curls just released from the hairdresser (which I recognized instantly from the many Saturday mornings spent with my mother). And I said, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” even as that canine monster knocked me back onto a silk damask settee.
There were rooms, an endless series of rooms, or so it seemed to me in my flabbergasted state. I followed Harold through the library and past a dining room that was the size of the apartment Teresa and I had shared years before. And then I asked if I might use the bathroom and Harold directed me back toward the reception room, but I might have taken a wrong turn, perhaps even deliberately, so as to see what more there was to see. I found myself peering into bedrooms with private bathrooms the size of garages, one of which I did use, where I opened a closet door to see a stack of plush green bath towels reaching nearly to the ceiling.
When I found my way back to Harold, he was seated in the main drawing room on one of two sofas that flanked one of the room’s two fireplaces. He was sitting there expectantly, leaning forward almost, and as I entered the room he started to rise and said, “Oh, there you are.” And while it seemed he was addressing me, perhaps his words were directed to Gretchen who, bearing a sil-ver tray, was also entering the room, albeit from another doorway. Gretchen walked with a limp, and something about her posture reminded me of Boris Karloff, and I worried that at any minute the tray might slip from her hands, sending the glasses and decanter shattering into a million tiny pieces. That did not happen. Instead, she placed the silver tray on the lacquered table between us, whereupon Harold said, “That’ll be all, Gretchen,” whereupon I knew that she’d been dismissed to her own small suite of rooms with her own small toilet in some distant realm of the vast apartment and no more would she appear for the remainder of the night.
There was no fire in the fireplace. But then, between the cognac and Harold’s anticipation, there was no real need for extra heat. I could sense his excitement, now that he had me in his lair. He could hardly pour the cognac into the snifters, his hand was shaking so. I stared at the linen napkins embroi-dered with small blue roosters—cock-tail napkins, as it were. And even before we’d sipped from our glasses, Harold Armstrong had leaned forward a little and said, “So you’re a gay, aren’t you?”
A gay, he’d said. As if he had never before used the word gay. I had to smile as I nodded. “Yes, I’m gay,” I said.
“Good then,” he said. “We should get together.” He toasted in my direction before downing his cognac.
Meanwhile I waited for some kind of signal. I had no idea how we were going to “get together” from our current positions. He was seated on one sofa and I opposite him on the other, and I had the sense there were eyes watching us, if not Gretchen’s, then those of a houseman or a security guard—as well as his mother gazing down on us from a portrait above the mantel.
He said to me, “Would you like to play the piano or shall we go to my rooms?”
I noticed then the Steinway at the room’s far end. There really was a piano. “I … I don’t play … the piano,” I said.
“Good, then shall we?” he asked, his arm motioning in a gesture that made me feel I should rise and follow his lead.
His bedroom was not one I had peered into. In fact, it appeared to be smaller than the other bedrooms I had glimpsed. His bed was narrow, with a headboard ornately carved and almost higher than the bed was long. And somehow I knew then that this was Harold Armstrong’s childhood bed. This old-moneyed gentleman still slept in the bed he’d slept in as a child.
Undressing me, unbuttoning my clothes with shaking fingers, he said, “Bingo. There we go.” And then Mr. Harold Armstrong looked up at me and said, “My, but you have a nice one.”
It wasn’t much, but it was enough. And later, between the sheets, he clung to me so tight, as if I might slip away. He said, “We have to get together again, kid.” And right then I had the feeling I might have hooked myself a keeper.
My Hawaiian Penthouse
Harold knew Hawaii before the jet age. That’s what he often said. He often said things often. “Sugar shacks, that’s all there was,” he’d say. “Nothing but sugar shacks on the beach. The Royal Hawaiian on one side and nothing else but sugar shacks. It was a different world, kid.” Harold made sure you knew how long he’d been coming to Hawaii, which in his case was ever since the thirties. Back in those days, it was a five-day cruise from San Francisco to Hawaii. Harold had traveled on all the great ocean liners: the Olympic, the Lurline, the Queen Mary, the Berengaria. The White Star and Cunard lines. “The Olym-pic,” he’d say, “sister ship to the Titanic. But not me; I’m a survivor.”
Hawaii must have seemed very exotic back then: that string of islands out in the middle of the Pacific, no mainland for thousands of miles. Harold’s mother had come upon Hawaii on one of her trips to China, and thereafter she brought Harold with her. There was a painting of Harold done around that time, him with the ocean in the background. Harold was very good-looking as a young man, as handsome as an Arrow shirt model. Or more accurately, Harold was a Fitzgerald hero come to life, complete with Princeton pedigree.
One time I asked Harold about his time at Princeton—he was there during the Depression—and he said to me, “Well, it wasn’t so bad. I used to have Mother’s chauffeur wait outside the front gates rather than come to my rooms. Some people had it rough. Not too bad for my friends. My roommate kept his polo horses on campus.” That was how he could be, my Mr. Armstrong. You couldn’t accuse Harold of having the common touch. He was so certain of his place. And it was that sense of entitlement to which I related.
Of course, unlike Harold with his many pots of gold, I had only my wits when I first saw Hawaii. I remember vividly that first drive in from the airport, Harold pointing out the sights: Diamond Head and the beaches, and where Doris Duke used to live. And then we turned onto the main drag with all those high-rise hotels and high-end merchandising and right then I knew: this was Park Avenue on the Pacific and, by hook or by crook, I was going to get me a piece.
For years, long before I’d entered his life, Harold had stayed at the Royal Hawaiian, taking the same suite of rooms for the month of February. There were others before me, escorts who had traveled with Harold, but as soon as I saw the deluxe four-room Kahanamoku Suite which overlooked both the gar-dens and the ocean, I was determined that from here on I would be Harold Armstrong’s only traveling companion.
And so I was for the next couple years—at least to Hawaii. The problem was, I didn’t live in New York, and Harold didn’t invite me to come live with him at River House. I wasn’t always in Harold’s line of vision—and there were other boys who were. A trust fund tart, for example, with whom Harold had traveled on the QE2. And also Harold’s masseur, a young Russian whom Harold had taken to Bermuda. Harold was good to me when we traveled together, no doubt about it. But these other boys made me nervous. I knew I had to secure my investment, as it were, and as luck would have it, my oppor-tunity arrived the third year we traveled together to Hawaii.
Due to a winter storm in New York, our flight had been delayed and we were quite late getting into Waikiki. Harold was peevish, as he often could be when Mother Nature interrupted his personal schedule. He had no tolerance for her whims, or for any conciliatory behavior by the purser in first class. And when, at the Royal Hawaiian, it was revealed that his suite had been offered—mistakenly, of course—to a honeymooning Japanese couple, Harold was nearly apoplectic. “Send them packing,” he said, with no interest in the fact that the newlyweds might be sleeping—or not. Nor did Harold have any interest whatsoever in the corresponding Diamond Head Suite on the hotel’s northern side. Suddenly, Harold wanted nothing more to do with the Royal Hawaiian. After a near-lifetime involvement with the hotel, Harold was closing them out.
He could be like that. And it helped not a whit that the newlyweds were Jap-anese: Pearl Harbor had kept Harold from ever eating sushi. The truth was, Harold could recall any and all who had ever maligned him. With mounting fury, he would recount how his headmaster had neglected to mention his name at graduation (more than sixty years before!) and how he had risen from his seat in the cathedral and said, “There’s one more, and that’s me.” And how another time, at the family Main Line manse outside Philadelphia, the gar-dener had refused Harold’s request to rake the leaves from atop the swimming pool—and as Harold made very clear, he’d given that gardener a thing or two to think about. It didn’t matter how insignificant the slight; in this area, Harold’s memory was faultless.
For the next couple days after the Royal Hawaiian’s boo-boo, Harold was not at his best. Even at the Halekulani, where we took a suite with a private ele-vator, two bedrooms, and a wraparound lanai, it took Harold about a pint of Stoli before he calmed down. And the next morning, when a gigantic fruit bas-ket arrived from the Royal Hawaiian, Harold was still fuming. “Who’s that from?” he asked, though the label, card, and ribbons were all stamped with the Royal Hawaiian’s logo. “Well, I won’t touch it,” he said. “They can all go to hell.”
Clearly it would take more than a fruit basket to appease Mr. Armstrong. And it was while sitting at the fruit-laden table on our private lanai overlook-ing the turquoise Pacific as the sun shone on another day in paradise that I had an epiphany: now was the time to clutter Harold’s brain with real estate offer-ings.
He had talked about it before, how his mother had always wanted a little estate on the island’s leeward side. But alas, before Mrs. Armstrong could buy so much as a pineapple, she’d caught pneumonia while walking the decks on a return voyage from Southampton. “I told her to put on a fur, but she wouldn’t listen,” Harold often said. It was his mother’s misfortune that kept Harold looking like an Alaskan fur trapper whenever it snowed in New York.
And so, knowing what I knew about Harold’s deep affection for his mother’s memory, along with his fear of icy New York sidewalks, I called a real estate broker we had met the year before and made an appointment. “We’ll just go have a look-see,” I told Harold.
It certainly didn’t hurt that the apartment atop Moana Towers looked down on the Royal Hawaiian in the distance, or that it belonged to a Japanese inves-tor with money problems. Harold read the situation right away and named a bottom-feeder’s price. “My revenge for Pearl Harbor,” he said, offering an all-cash deal with a list of stipulations. Not only was Mr. Watanabe’s apartment to be sold as it was, right down to the Baccarat crystal and the Frette linens, but also the Lexus in the parking spot—Harold wanted that too. Furthermore, the deal had to be completed within the month, or all bets were off.
It certainly didn’t hurt that the apartment atop Moana Towers looked down on the Royal Hawaiian in the distance, or that it belonged to a Japanese inves-tor with money problems. Harold read the situation right away and named a bottom-feeder’s price. “My revenge for Pearl Harbor,” he said, offering an all-cash deal with a list of stipulations. Not only was Mr. Watanabe’s apartment to be sold as it was, right down to the Baccarat crystal and the Frette linens, but also the Lexus in the parking spot—Harold wanted that too. Furthermore, the deal had to be completed within the month, or all bets were off. was a listing in a brochure, and the next, it was his vacation home. And a lovely one at that, twenty-seven floors above the yacht harbor, its double-length lanai facing the ocean, and the sort of view that realtors used in their listings: sunsets and fireworks and that line of luxury high-rises all the way to Diamond Head. Oh, and way down there? The pink palace? That would be the Royal Hawaiian.
It was March when we took occupancy. “Not too shabby,” Harold said, sink-ing into a chair in the long drawing room that ran nearly the length of the lanai. As for me, I never wanted to leave. Four bedrooms, four baths, and a large entry hall—it was the mansion in the sky I’d so long dreamed about. And right away, Harold decided he wasn’t returning to New York, not until the for-sythia were in bloom.
At this point, I’d known Harold for almost five years. He’d been good to me, treating me to Hawaiian trips and offering me tokens of Wasp affection such as crystal paperweights and Seiko wristwatches. But I had my future to think about. There was no money in the bank, so to speak. I was nearly thirty and, when not traveling with Harold, my life was nothing like the photograph from Town & Country.
Back in Michigan, there was a man named Clifford Turner. I’d met him at the gay bar one night after my shift at the Two Forks Dinner Theater. Cliff owned a house on a lake. Or rather, you could see a bit of the lake if you climbed atop the car he kept on cinder blocks in the backyard. It wasn’t my idea of paradise, not by a long shot, but facing thirty, my options were narrow-ing. Cliff was a diamond in the rough, as was his house, and while it wasn’t a project I was anticipating, I figured I could make it work—if I had to.
Until that point, however, all my chips were on Harold. He and I were tak-ing lunch out on the lanai atop Moana Towers. Harold could sit for hours out there, his gaze fixed on the Pacific, the yachts bobbing in the harbor. Already it was a view I wanted to call my own. I sipped from my tomato juice (with the merest splash of vodka). “Isn’t that yummy?” I asked.
Harold nodded without looking up from his plate. He always ate the same lunch: a lightly scalded and skinned tomato, scooped out and filled with tuna fish, and three saltine crackers. At River House, it was Gretchen who prepared his meals, but here at Moana Towers it was only the two of us as yet, and apart from a cleaning woman, I represented Harold’s entire household staff.
“Aren’t you eating?” Harold asked.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. I had to watch what I ate. Which basically meant I was always hungry. Which was why I drank so much. Or so I coun-seled myself. Weight had been an issue for me. All through childhood, my mother used to yell across the department store floor, “Teddy, the hefty boys department is over here.”
Harold pushed away his plate, his signal that he was finished. At home in New York, he would have hit the foot bell and Gretchen would have come wobbling in from the kitchen. Gretchen was nearly as old as Harold, who was eighty that year—the year he bought his Hawaiian penthouse.
“Would you like another drink?” I asked. “Or just your papaya?”
“Are you having one?” he asked.
“Maybe a little one,” I said, whisking away his plate.
In the kitchen, I took a healthy swig from a glass I kept near the backsplash.
There were no calories in vodka, not according to the label. Then I sliced two papayas and carried them, with our drinks, back out to the lanai.
“Papaya, papaya,” Harold said, rubbing his hands together. Papaya was Mr. Armstrong’s favorite fruit—apart from me. And the others.
We ate in silence, and when Harold was finished, he looked at me from behind his sunglasses. Ever since someone had mistaken him and his snow-white hair for Cary Grant, Harold had taken to wearing large Ray-Bans. Never mind that Mr. Grant was long dead. Harold looked at me from behind those oversized sunglasses and asked, “When do you have to be back in Michigan, Teddy? Aren’t you moving in with that Ford fellow?”
That’s what I’d told Harold: that Cliff was a Ford heir. An old friend of the family’s, and therefore, no reason for Harold to be jealous. “Actually,” I said. “I thought I might stick around until we hire someone full-time. And besides, who else knows how to get you up in the morning?” I winked at him—and my reference to our little secret.
“You’re a good boy, Teddy. You take care of the old man,” Harold said. He placed his linen napkin on the table and folded his hands across his stom-ach—which was bigger than mine. “What about your job at the theater?”
And right then I knew for a fact there was no way I was returning to Two Forks Dinner Theater to direct their production of Medea. One little phone call would take care of that. And while I was at it, I might just as well phone Cliff and tell him I was working on my own waterfront view. “It’s more impor-tant that I make sure everything’s comfortable for you,” I said to Harold. “I can’t very well leave you all alone, now can I?”
“Florence is here,” Harold said. “I don’t ask for much, you know.”
“Florence comes in once a week,” I said. A lovely Filipino, Florence had come to us on the suggestion of the neighbors—and she was no threat to me. Unlike that sneaky little Russian masseur back in New York, Florence was never going to massage Harold into surrender. “You need someone here every day, Mr. A.”
“Yes, well, I thought you were leaving this weekend,” Harold said. “So I called David Findlay and he’s flying out here to keep me company. I want you two to meet. He’s a very nice boy.”
I nearly choked on my papaya. Of all the tarts in the world … David Findlay had haunted me before, back during my brief run in Manhattan. Granted, I’d known him more from a distance—given that David Findlay and I hadn’t trav-eled in the same circles. Teresa had called him a rentboy, but I’d recognized in David Findlay a different league altogether. David was well connected—and specifically to a gentleman who had died and left David a pile of money.
“Are you finished, Teddy?” Harold asked, ready to rise from his chair. “Because if you are, it’s time for this horse to giddyup.”
He needed me to assist him. He was a man of eighty who used a cane, and sometimes two. And sometimes a wheelchair, though that was more often a ruse to race him faster through an airport. I handed him his cane and helped him to his feet. “What would you do without me?” I asked, mostly to myself.
“What’s that?” Harold asked. He cocked his head like a canary hearing a cat in the vicinity.
“I’m sure we’ll have a swell time,” I said. “You, me—and David Findlay.” There was no way I was leaving the premises now, not with that gold digger in sight. Enough was never enough with that sort—and now he was coming after mine.
“David’s a very nice boy,” Harold said, as we lurched slowly across the lanai. Harold was always a bit unsteady after his noon cocktails. “He’s never been here before. I think he’s going to like this apartment.”
My mind filled with visions of David Findlay being feted through Hawaii, arm-in-arm with Harold, the two of them parting a crowd of wealthy guests who applauded their entrance.
“Slow down, Teddy,” Harold said. His cane slipped from his grasp and clat-tered onto the lanai. “Dammit, Teddy, that’s the second goof-up today.”
Suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore. “Why not call David Findlay?” I snapped, kneeling for Harold’s cane. My blood pressure rising, I nearly flung the cane over the balcony.
Admittedly, this was not my finest hour, but I was in a state. David was one of the others: David Findlay had accompanied Harold on the QE2. And also David Findlay sometimes escorted Harold to the opera and to the theater—because, unlike me, David Findlay still lived in Manhattan. And now David Findlay was coming to Hawaii to plunder—
I had to get a hold of myself. My hand on the small of his back, I escorted Harold to his bathroom. And when he was finished, I put him down for his nappie.
“Aren’t you joining me?” he asked, looking up at me, his hands crossed over his chest.
“I’ll be right outside,” I said, closing his bedroom door. “Someone’s got to clean up the lunch dishes, you know.”
But first, I filled one of Mr. Watanabe’s Baccarat tumblers with Stoli and tossed it back. It took off the edge. It gave me a shot of adrenaline. Now that I knew Harold’s—and David’s—plans, I had a very clear picture of what needed to be done. I couldn’t waste another minute.
From the study, I called Two Forks Dinner Theater and told my boss that I was unable to return as planned, given that I was in Hawaii directing South Pacific (a joke that probably went right over his head). Then I called Cliff. He was working at the garage. “Harold needs my assistance,” I said, hearing machinery in the background. There were no two ways about it: my Cliffie was a grease monkey. And there must have been something warped in my person-ality to find that oddly attractive, but this was no time for Freud. “I won’t be home for a couple more weeks,” I said.
“Aw, babe,” Cliff said. “I’m missing you bad.”
I felt a stirring in my loins, which I tried to squash. Cliff knew how to bang me, but there were some things more important than the headboard hitting the wall. “I’ll be home soon,” I said. “So you keep your pants on.”
Suddenly, I had no job and a little bit less of a boyfriend, but I felt oddly empowered. I made another cocktail and called Lenore. Lenore was Harold’s travel agent, a battle-axe who’d booked Harold’s every trip since WWII. She sounded exasperated when she picked up. “What does he want now, Teddy?” she asked.
I tried to remember what time it was in New York. Maybe she’d been sleep-ing. “Oh, nothing, Lenore. It’s just that—well, Harold wants to cancel that ticket for David Findlay. Seems there was some sort of confusion.”
“What are you talking about, Teddy? I was on the phone with Harold less than an hour ago. He told me to upgrade David’s ticket to first class. Maybe I should speak with him. Put him on, would you?”
First class? Harold was flying David to Hawaii first class?
“Teddy, are you there?” Lenore barked. “Get me Harold.”
“Hold on, Lenore. I think he just slipped in the shower. I’ll have to call you back,” I said, hanging up.
First class. As if David couldn’t pay his own way with his own pile of gold. I walked over to the wet bar and topped off my drink. One thing about this apartment, there was a wet bar in all the right places. Mr. Watanabe had done his share of entertaining—probably geishas at that. And now it was Harold’s turn. I caught my reflection in the mirror. “May the best boy win,” I said, toast-ing to myself.
From Harold’s bedroom door, I stared in at him sleeping. He slept atop the bedcovers, wrapped in a blue terrycloth robe. Afraid he wouldn’t sleep at night, Harold didn’t like to nap too long, and it was my job to wake him—usu-ally with a kiss. At the moment, however, I was more inclined to smack him with a ripe papaya. It was one thing to travel with David Findlay—and quite another to parade him around right under my nose.
I grabbed Harold’s little black leather agenda from his nightstand and flipped it open—right to the Friday where Harold had penciled in my depar-ture. And right next to my exit on Friday, there was David Findlay’s monogram on Saturday. Not even a whole day between the changing of the tarts.
“Teddy?” Harold murmured, rolling toward me. “What time is it?”
I slapped his agenda against the nightstand so that it cracked like a whip. “Time to get moving,” I snarled. “The sun’s going down.”
I helped him into the walk-in shower where I lowered him onto the marble shower bench. “It’s not good getting old,” Harold said.
“Yes, well, think of the alternative,” I said. That shut him up.
In his dressing room, his shower finished, Harold plopped into the arm-chair in front of the mirror. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Teddy.”
“You might remember that,” I said, fingering the row of Hawaiian shirts that lined Harold’s closet. He bought them whenever we passed a souvenir shop, unable to resist the cheap prices. There was something in his Yankee blue blood repression that yearned for loud tropical prints. And with his deep tan and a navy blue linen blazer, his snow-white hair combed off his forehead, Harold could look quite dapper, even in a cheap shirt. “Very nice,” I said, fixing his collar. “You’ll wow the ladies tonight.”
“We don’t want that,” Harold said, as I knelt down to tie his shoes.
“Yes, I know, they’re all gold diggers,” I said, parroting a line of Harold’s—which tonight felt more like mine. “Every last one of them,” I said. “Now, let me take a look at you.”
“Give the old man a hug, you rascal,” Harold said, his arms opened wide enough to hug a refrigerator. He patted my back stiffly. Harold wasn’t a man comfortable with physical expression. From what I knew of his childhood, Harold’s parents hadn’t been around much and what affection he’d received had been doled out by nannies—affection as a reward for a job well done.
I nuzzled his neck, my hands on his shoulders. “You’d miss me if I was gone,” I said. Then I pushed him lightly away, propelling him toward the lanai. “Now, go on with you. There’s a sunset coming on, and maybe tonight you’ll see the green light. And you need to think about where you want to eat for din-ner.”
In the kitchen, I fluttered about, fixing a silver tray with two drinks and two cocktail napkins and a silver bowl of goldfish crackers, just the way Gretchen would have done at River House. Harold was a man of habits. He liked his sun-set cocktails. And he was particular about where he took his evening meals. Because as much as Harold Armstrong liked his privacy, he also appreciated a little fuss when he entered a restaurant.
“Yoo-hoo. Teddy,” Harold yelled from the lanai. “You’d better get out here.”
“Just a damn minute,” I muttered. He could be so impatient. I reached for the phone and dialed Lenore’s office. She’d be gone by now, but I wanted to leave her a message, tell her to cancel my return flight and leave the ticket open-ended. The way things were going, I might never leave Hawaii.
“Teddy,” Harold yelled again, banging his cane against the glass table.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I said, slamming down the phone. I finished my drink and poured myself a fresh one. “I’m coming,” I shouted.
“You’re going to miss it,” Harold shouted right back.
I gripped the silver tray tightly. Dealing with Harold sometimes required the utmost in self-control. All too easily that tray could slip from my hands and clip him on the head. “Here we go,” I said, using my sweet-as-punch voice.
“I think there’s going to be a green light,” Harold said. Local legend had it that if you saw the green flash on the horizon, then you were destined to return to Hawaii. Of course, seeing this green flash was like finding a four-leaf clover, but that didn’t deter Harold. He expected that green light almost every sunset.
I followed his gaze out over the Pacific, to the ball of fire going down. “You know what, Mr. A?” I said, with newfound conviction and certain of my return. “You just might be right.”
My Hawaiian Penthouse
David Findlay arrived right on time. It figured. That was the kind of dumb luck he had: his flight never late and his luggage never lost. “And then this limo driver asked if I needed a ride,” he said. “And I figured, why not? I mean, he was cute. One of those hotties indigenous to this island, you know?”
We were standing in the kitchen. I stared at him, astounded that something so beautiful could speak four-syllable words. “Yes, well, that’s the aloha spirit,” I said, my hand shaking only a little as I poured vodka into three glasses.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help? I feel like I should—”
“No, thank you,” I said firmly. “You wouldn’t know—Harold likes every-thing just so.” I flashed him a smile to show I meant no harm—not yet, any-way. “Here, you can take these goldfish crackers out to Harold before he starts braying.”
I couldn’t help but eyeball his butt as he sauntered from the kitchen. Unlike some people in this apartment, David Findlay obviously went to the gym more than once a year. He was taller than I’d remembered, and with his perfect white teeth and his dark hair cut close to his head, he could’ve been a model. I hated him on sight—or rather, I wanted to bang him all night, which were probably two sides of the same coin.
It wasn’t fair, him looking so good after a twelve-hour flight. Then again, Harold had flown him first class. I took a slug from my drink while assessing my reflection in the kitchen window. One thing I had going for me was my full head of hair, thick and frosted at the tips.
“Teddy? Yoo-hoo. We’re a bit thirsty out here,” Harold called.
And my box, there was that too. I looked good in a swimsuit with my assets on display. “Coming,” I yelled back. Maybe I’d have to shake my moneymaker in Harold’s face a little more often.
“Bingo,” Harold said, taking his drink from me. “Did you get David what he needs? You must be hungry, David. A strapping boy like you.”
“This will do nicely,” David said. He raised his glass and toasted, “To Hawaii—and your hospitality.”
“Here’s a bathrobe,” Harold said, sliding a cellophane-wrapped package across the table. “One size fits all. I thought you might like it. We’re very infor-mal here. No need to dress for breakfast. I just wear my bathrobe. I don’t shower until after breakfast.”
I seethed into my drink. Already it was starting.
“Why, thank you,” David said. “That’s very thoughtful.”
I finished my drink in no time—because basically I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The two of them were carrying on about people they had in com-mon, New Yorkers mostly. And seeing as I didn’t live in New York, I drank. And while I drank, I observed how David did it: how he managed to be courtly with Harold, while winking at me every so often as if we were conspirators.
“And you had an audience with the queen that year, if I’m not mistaken,” David said.
Yes, Harold had met the queen, which was what a million got you when you tossed those smackeroos at Westminster Abbey. And now he was going to regale David with every single detail, which I’d already committed to memory on the off chance that Harold might need a prompter. I slipped away to the wet bar and was back in no time, no doubt not even missed. The next two weeks were going to be rough on the liver, but once David was out of the picture, I’d lay off the sauce.
“What was her name, Teddy?” Harold asked, finally deigning to acknowl-edge my presence. “You know the one. Bit of a dull knife.”
“How should I know?” I snapped. “I wasn’t on that cruise. You took some-one else.”
“That was me,” David said. “Did you see the photos, Teddy? There was this woman named Mary Maybelle who trailed us everywhere. I think she wanted Harold—”
“That’s it. That’s her name,” Harold said. He toasted to David. “It’s good to have you around, kid. I don’t know why I didn’t get you out here before.”
David smiled coyly. “Well, you know how he could be.”Hewould be David Findlay’s benefactor: the one David had shoved into the grave and covered with dirt. A man named Miles. Miles Something—though certainly not Standish. Maybe Miles To Go.
“I used to see him every year at the Pilgrims’ luncheon,” Harold said. “Quite a nice fellow. I told Miles to bring you around more often.” He looked expect-antly at David. “Well, I guess he wanted to keep you for himself.”
“Miles could be a bit protective,” David said, smiling. “I think he worried I was an ingénue lost in the wilds of New York.”
“You mean possessive,” I said.
“Excuse me?” David asked.
“You never met him, Teddy,” Harold said.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion,” I mumbled. Who were these two to tell me I didn’t know what was going on right under my nose?
“No wonder everyone raves about Hawaii,” David said. “It’s luscious just sitting here.”
“The air,” Harold said. “I don’t know why, but I always feel better in Hawaii. Mother used to say it cleared her lungs.”
“And this apartment, Harold, it’s beautiful,” David said. “Congratulations.” “Lucky for me, I got quite a deal on this place,” Harold said.
“A person could get used to it,” David said, “and never want to leave.”
I nearly gasped at his audacity. He might just as well have asked for the deed.
“It’s one of the world’s great resorts,” Harold said. “I like it much better than the Riviera. I never cared for Miami. Too many of the chosen.”
“Harold,” I said. “That’s enough.”
“Well, it’s true,” Harold said, smirking into his glass. He could be a naughty boy, saying what he knew he wasn’t supposed to. “Don’t you agree, David?”
“Yes, it suits me just fine,” David said. “And I’m so glad you stayed, Teddy.”
He raised his glass to me. “You know, we knew each other slightly when Teddy used to live in New York. But then you left so abruptly and we lost touch.”
“Well, I’m here now,” I said.
“To you,” David said, toasting. “Harold said you were leaving, so I was afraid we were going to miss each other.”
“Ships passing in the night,” Harold said.
“I had a sudden change of plans,” I said. And as long as this gigolo was around, I’d keep on changing plans.
“Harold mentioned you were moving. Some place in Michigan, right?” “His pal is a Ford,” Harold said.
“Your boyfriend is one of the Fords?” David asked.
“He’s not my—He’s an old friend of the family’s. His name is Clifford.” “Clif-ford Ford?” David asked. “Is that really his surname?”
I hadn’t thought about that before. “Sometimes he goes by—Yes,” I said. “It is.” He was rattling my nerves. “Anyway, the point is, of course I’m not leaving Mr. Armstrong here all alone. We need to find someone full-time who can help around the house. Harold likes his routines. Isn’t that right, Mr. A?”
“I don’t ask for much,” Harold said. “It’s my knees. Doc said I should’ve had that fancy operation. And now, it might be too complicated. Takes me a little longer now, that’s all.”
“Oh, Harold, you look great. So healthy and tan,” David said. “Your skin, it’s gorgeous.”
The boy was gushing like a waterfall. Harold beamed while I thought I might puke.
“I tell you, it’s the air,” Harold said. “It does everybody good. You’ll see.” He shook the ice in his glass and placed it closer to me, my cue to get him another. He never even met my eyes, just kept looking at David.
I had half a mind to toss that glass over the balcony. Maybe that would ruffle the feathers of these two birds. But instead I stood and loudly asked, “Mr. Armstrong, might I get you a refill?”
He looked at me then. “I might have another. Just a wee one before dinner. How about you, David? Will you join me?”
David sipped delicately, like a hummingbird at a thimble. “Actually, I think I’m all set,” he said.
“Oh, finish that,” I snapped. “We don’t deal well with abstinence.”
That got his attention. “Well then,” he said, “can’t have that now, can we?” And watching me all the while, he downed the rest of his drink.
We were in this to the finish; I knew it right then.
At dinner, he grilled me like a journalist on TV. I would’ve enjoyed it if Harold hadn’t been sitting right there. I could’ve given David Findlay the glossy-paged version of my life, the one I’d lived through that photo from Town & Country magazine. But with Harold sitting there, his squinty eyes fixed on me, I had to stick to the more prosaic version. In other words, I couldn’t lie.
I couldn’t lie because a few years before, I’d had a breakdown in front of Harold. Three bottles of Chateauneuf du Pape and several large snifters of cognac had turned me into a babbling fountain of truth, whereupon I’d told Harold more or less every horrible and depressing thing about my childhood and my family, as well as my encounters with collection agencies and the repo man. It hadn’t been pretty. I hated that Harold knew all the sordid sorrow of my past, although the upside of this outburst had been Harold’s proposal that we travel together. He’d offered travel as a kind of respite from the general chaos of my life at that point. So out of my drunken humiliation, at least there’d been that.
“Teddy was accepted at Princeton,” Harold said. “He’s quite a smarty-pants, you know.”
“Princeton. That’s impressive,” David said.
“Yes, I was accepted,” I said, smiling at Harold, “but I couldn’t afford it. Michigan was cheaper.” Alas, this was not the whole truth, so help me whom-ever. Rather it was one little white lie I’d managed to salvage after my break-down. Realizing how important Princeton was to Harold, I’d given Harold this line, and he’d bought it. And furthermore, Harold was often the one who brought it up. It seemed to give him great pleasure that he’d chosen an almost Princetonian as an escort. A member of his class, as it were, albeit one whose family had fallen on hard times. “Of course, it would’ve been nice,” I said, “but my parents are Michigan people.” Which I thought finessed quite nicely the question of their non-existent college education.
“Michigan State or U of M?” David asked.
He was truly relentless. “Uh, hmm,” I said, biting a tiger prawn in half as I stared back at him.
“You’re an only child, aren’t you?” David said. “I can always tell.”
“No, I have a sister,” I said too quickly.
“Really? I would’ve sworn—What’s she do?”
I forked the rest of the prawn and stared at it deliberately. Too happy to have trumped his intuition, and now I was trapped. My sister was a cosmetician. My sister was a cosmetician at the very beauty parlor where my mother once had her hair done every Saturday morning. And Harold knew this too, because he’d met my sister when she’d come to New York for a beauty products con-vention. “She’s an entrepreneur,” I said.
“A what?” Harold croaked.
“Venture capital?” David asked. He sipped from his wine, eyeing me from the glass’s rim.
Stalling for time, I turned to Harold and asked, “You want me to cut that for you?”
“What’s that?”
“The prawn,” I said. He was having some difficulty.
“No, I’ve had enough,” he said. “But I might have another drink. Are you having one, Teddy?”
“So your sister’s in venture capital?” David asked.
“Of a sort. Cosmetics, pharmaceuticals,” I said, signaling for the waiter. “I can’t talk about it now, but L’Oreal might buy her out.”
“What’s that?” Harold asked. “Are you talking about Taffi?”
“Your sister’s name is Taffi?”
“It’s an old family name,” I snapped, as the waiter came scurrying over. One thing about Hawaii, it was all about the customer. “We’ll have another round,” I said.
“Actually, I’m perfectly sated,” David said.
“Sit on this,” I said. “We’ll have another round.” And then I smiled fiercely at David and patted his hand. “I think we’d better fasten our seat belts,” I said. “It might be a bumpy ride.” Either he caught the reference or he didn’t; at that point, I didn’t much care.
The truth was, I should’ve kept an eye on Harold rather than continue vol-leying with David. The next thing I knew, Harold was slumped over. “Harold, you okay?” I asked, touching his shoulder.
“What’s that?” he asked, raising his chin from his chest.
Harold could drink. He came from the old school, when Prohibition made career drinkers. But then again, maybe back at the apartment I’d been giving Harold the drinks I’d been making for David. Very strong drinks.
I dabbed the drool from his shirt. “Mr. Armstrong?” I cooed into his ear.
“You all right?”
He sat up a bit then, blinking his eyes. “Shall we go, Teddy?” he asked.
“What? No dessert?” Suddenly I had a perverse desire to make a public scene. “They probably have papaya. Can you say papaya, Mr. A? Papaya, papaya.”
“Maybe we should go,” David said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. It was a nervous tic of his, as if some morsel on his face might permanently mar his beauty.
“We’ll go when Mr. Armstrong’s ready,” I said. I was thinking about a liqueur, a bit of cognac to finish off the meal.
“We might pay now,” Harold said, with a bit of a slur. He brought his drink to his lips and missed, soaking his shirt. “Damn it all,” he said. He wiped weakly at the watery stain.
“All right then, let’s go,” I said. “Clearly I’m drinking with amateurs.” And just as I motioned for the waiter, Harold’s head fell forward.
Immediately, David and I jumped from our chairs and worked to right Harold. How many drinks had he had? Had I overdosed him? The maitre d’ hurried over, asking if there was a problem, if we needed assistance.
“Obviously,” I said, as Harold’s cane clattered to the floor.
“There’s a wheelchair in the back,” said the maitre d’, whose name was Louis. He’d been good to us in the past.
“That’s a very good idea,” David said.
“I don’t think he needs—”
“Yes, go get it,” David said, overruling me. “Harold, you okay? Can you hear me? What’s that thing you’re supposed to do when someone’s having a stroke?”
“David,” I hissed. “He’s not having a stroke. He’s drunk.”
“I think you’re supposed to ask him to smile. Harold, can you smile? How many fingers am I holding up?”
“This is absurd,” I said. “You’re fine, aren’t you, Mr. Armstrong?” The truth was, his face looked almost as white as his hair.
“I’m all right,” he murmured. “Just need some air.”
I glanced at David who was giving me the evil eye. “What? I didn’t do any-thing,” I said. I could tell he was blaming me—and if Harold went down on my watch, he’d make sure everyone knew it.
“Should I go get the car?” David asked.
“Yes, why don’t you do that,” I said, fishing for the car keys in my pocket. But just then, Louis was back with the wheelchair. A lovely model, one of those collapsibles, it popped into shape at the twist of a lever, and with that, we lowered Harold into the seat. “Okay, Harold, here we go,” I said, and off we went through the Surfrider’s dining room, which, as luck would have it, was entered by a staircase. So we had to backtrack and parade down the main aisle, past the gaping hordes, and out through the terrace doors onto the pool area where blue-haired tourists clustered for the evening hula show, a show which now included Harold in a wheelchair slumped like a bag of potatoes.
All the while, I babbled into Harold’s ear a steady stream of baby-talk non-sense. The last thing I needed was an autopsy revealing the contents of his stomach, with me indicted for involuntary manslaughter. “Here we go, Mr. A,” I said, palming the valet a twenty as he helped load Harold into the car. Mean-while, Louis stood alongside the now-empty wheelchair—waiting for us to leave, perhaps fearful of litigation.
It never crossed my mind—and perhaps it was just as well—that I shouldn’t be driving. But it was Saturday night in Waikiki. Crowds of bovine tourists shared the avenue with streetwalkers in impossibly high heels, while a sea of miscreants on Vespas and Ducatis roared by me on both sides. I swerved off Kalakaua and zipped along the Ala Wai Canal. The lights were going my way—except for the one blinking yellow, then red, just as that drag queen on stilettos stepped into the street. I blasted the horn—and that girl leaped for the curb like her life depended on it.
“Jesus. You’re insane,” David yelled. “You almost hit her, Teddy.”
“Sorry. I won’t miss next time,” I said. I glanced over at him—whereupon he started to laugh.
“Did you see the look on her face?” he asked, snorting through his nose.
Alas, I’d missed that. I checked the rearview to see if there was a drag queen on my tail. But there was only Harold lolling across the backseat. “How we doing?” I asked David.
“How you doing, Harold?” David asked, turning around. “We’re almost there.”
David was picking up the slack. Together, it was possible we might get Harold home alive.
Through the lobby and up the elevator and into his bedroom—We were that close. I had him in his bedroom armchair, untying his shoesies. I thought if we could just get him undressed and into bed, maybe he could sleep it off. But then he moaned my name—and fortunately I had the good sense to grab the waste can.
“I don’t know what came over me,” he said, when his mouth was no longer full and he could talk again.
“That’s okay,” David said, though clearly it wasn’t, not from the look on his face.
“You want David to take this?” I asked Harold.
Instead of answering, Harold lowered his mouth into the can again.
“Washcloth,” I said to David. “Get two. Cool water.”
We cold-compressed Harold’s forehead and left a cloth atop his head, water dribbling down his face. “Must’ve been the fishies,” Harold said, struggling for dignity.
“Fishies, my ass,” I muttered.
“They tasted a little fishy,” Harold said.
“Very fishy,” David said, grinning at me now.
“We won’t eat there again,” Harold said.
“Can you empty this, David?” I asked, passing him the can, making sure he got a good look inside.
“Must’ve been the fishies,” Harold said.
“You ready for bed now?” I asked, mopping his brow. “Want me to get your jammies?”
“Won’t eat there again,” Harold said.
“No. That’s a certainty,” I murmured, unbuttoning his shirt. “No question about that.”
Once I had him undressed and into his favorite blue jammies, I helped him to bed, where he lay flat on his back, his gaze unwavering at the ceiling. “Bad boy,” he said.
“No,” I said. “Bad fishies.” I pulled the covers around his chin. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” I said, turning out the light and leaving him to contem-plate his performance.
Outside on the lanai, David leaned against the railing with a drink in each hand. “You doing double duty?” I asked. “Or is one of those mine?”
“Here,” he said, handing me a drink. “You know, I thought we might lose him.”
“Are you kidding? Harold Armstrong was pickled at birth. It was those bad fishies.”
David laughed and toasted in my direction. “We should go out,” he said.
“Are you kidding me? And leave Harold all alone?”
“Sure, why not? He’ll sleep it off.”
Was David Findlay propositioning me? Maybe the night was salvageable, after all. I clinked my glass against his. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Lemme go turn down the heating pad so he doesn’t wet the bed.”
It was something of a sure thing that whenever I entered a gay bar, I became invisible. Boys walked into me like I was a screen door—and then pushed by, out into the open air. David, on the other hand, walked into Hula’s like he owned the joint. Boys smiled at him like he was dessert before circling around to check out his ass. “I like this place,” he said, posing next to a huge banyan in the outdoor courtyard.
“I thought you would,” I said. The year before, one night when Harold had ticked me off, I’d been standing more or less where we were now and somehow I’d managed to engage an army boy in conversation—or else it was the drinks I’d bought him. At any rate, we’d gone to a parking garage, maybe in search of his car, and no sooner had I started kissing Sergeant Don’t-Tell than he was spitting at my feet. “Well, excuse me and my tongue,” I’d told him. Just my luck, I’d pick up a closet case.
“What about him?” David asked. He nodded toward a boy whose body could earn enough to feed entire African nations.
“What about him?” I repeated. The truth was, a gay bar killed my confi-dence. For some reason, I never wore the right clothes, and if I dared to dance, a space suddenly cleared around me. Given my history with gay bars, it was kind of odd to remember that Cliff and I had met at one. Quite a few leagues removed from Hula’s, but nonetheless, I’d been sitting on the pool table watch-ing Cliff play darts, him looking at me and me looking at him, and for once I’d had the feeling that maybe this time—
“Can I get you anything?” asked a waiter.
What a lovely specimen. They grew like pineapples on this island. He was smiling at me, probably because I was with David, but suddenly I didn’t care. “Absolutely,” I said. “Make them both a double.” I grinned wickedly at David who raised his eyebrows. “And your point is?” I asked.
“Nothing at all,” he said. “Nice to see you getting frisky.”
“Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I’m a barrel of fun once I get going. Let’s drink up and go to the dick dancers.”
The strip club was called Venus, which conveniently rhymed with penis. I’d been there before—and not only after I’d wiped army spittle from my shoe. Venus was the kind of gay bar I could handle because it was all about the money. It didn’t matter how you looked or didn’t look; if you had the money, you got the fun. And since I had a wad of twenties Harold had given me to buy vodka and goldfish crackers, and with David in tow, I had no doubt those dick dancers would be all over us.
There was a line out in front, filled with a gaggle of giggling Japanese girls. I tried to be tolerant because, after all, who didn’t love a faceful of Hawaiian pork? Those Hawaiian dancing boys were all that and a bag of chips. And once we were inside, there they were: six of them lined up on the circular stage, all wearing identical yellow rain slickers with yellow umbrellas, gyrating behind a wall of water as that eternal anthem “It’s Raining Men” blasted from the speak-ers. I could hardly contain myself; this was heaven on a stick. “Over there,” I said, leading us past a table of shrieking women. We found places at the bar, which circled the stage—front and house left, as it were. Prime real estate for lap service.
“What can I get you boys?” the waiter asked. Yet another pineapple lovely.
“Well,” I said, eyeing him from head to toe, lingering long on his phospho-rescent green teeny bikini. “Hmmm, let’s see—”
“Cocktails?” he asked, smiling.
Hawaiians really had a handle on hospitality. I waved a twenty under his nose and said, “You take care of us and we’ll take care of you. Let’s start with a couple martinis.”
“Are you sure?” David asked.
He could be such a killjoy. “Listen,” I said. “You drink martinis in here, it shows class. The boys notice. Watch, you’ll see.”
There was one boy in particular whom I’d noticed the last time. His name was Storm. Storm of the big thighs that he could wrap around my head—the tighter the better. I could wear him out for lunch.
And right then, a rumble of thunder sent the six go-go boys scurrying into the crowd. Lightning flashed and smoke billowed, and the girls went wild. “Get ready,” I said to David. And when the fog cleared, there he was: his arm upraised, lightning bolt in hand, hurricane of my dreams—my one and only Storm. With skin the color of caramel and raven black hair, he had a smile that said, “Come and get it.” I could see us living happily ever after in a little sugar shack on the leeward side of the island. Every morning my big kahuna slipping from bed to pick fresh papaya, the two of us slathering each other—
“Hey there, hottie,” Little Rickey said as he sidled up to David.
Little Rickey was too little—at least for me. I could eat him for breakfast and still be hungry an hour later. And then came Hector, sculpted from Cop-pertone marble. These boys and their perfect bodies. They’d spotted David right away. He was easy on the eye and now he was slipping dollars into their trunks and giving them the feel.
But not me. I was waiting on my Storm who’d begun working his way through the crowd. His head up, he seemed to sniff the air like a dog on point. Maybe he was searching for the one guy who would take him away from all this—and that guy would be me. Without taking my eyes from him, I slugged back the rest of my martini. Where was that waiter when you needed him? I waved my arm and held up my empty, and right then Storm looked in my direction. His eyes brushed across me and landed on David. And then he started moving our way.
“Gimme another,” I said to the waiter, winking as I handed him a twenty.
Then I peeled off another twenty and ran it across my lips, creasing it in half. And just like that, Storm altered his path: right past David, right to me.
“Hey, sexy,” he said, straddling my leg, squeezing it between his thighs, just the way I’d dreamed it. “Whatcha got there?”
It was maybe the first time I’d heard his voice. His eyes flickered around the room, and then came back to my twenty. I could feel myself getting light-headed; the boy could make me dizzy. I held the twenty under his nose like a dog biscuit as I ran my hand down his chest, over that impossibly smooth skin, all the way to his little swim trunks.
“Go on. Gimme a squeeze,” Storm said.
The boy had a big basket—which wasn’t the only reason I’d noticed him. I wasn’t only a size queen. Probably he was also quite intelligent.
“That’s right,” he said, his lips grazing my cheek as he leaned toward my ear.
“Now, reach inside.”
I was breathless with anticipation as I slid my hand beneath the loosened waistband of those skimpy swim trunks. Down I went, deeper into the basket of treasure, following the trail leading to the gold, all along its lovely smooth-ness.
“Go on,” Storm said, taking the twenty from me. “Pull me off a little.”
And hearing those words, such intoxicating words, with his mighty tool gripped in my fingers, my head began to swirl and dip and roar with a thou-sand voices. And like that, I went out. I blacked out. Right there in front of Storm, my perfect Storm, my legs buckled and I fell backward off the stool. I fell back into a coven of mean girls who shrieked and giggled and shoved me off their laps and onto the floor—which was how I came to, their voices echo-ing in my ears and David’s face hovering above mine.
“Teddy? You okay?”
I would’ve hit him—had I not been curled on the floor. Of course I was not okay. “I’m fine,” I said, yanking on his pant leg to pull myself upright.
“We should go,” David said, offering me a hand.
“We’re not going anywhere,” I said, clutching his shoulder as I glanced around. “Where’s Storm?”
“Over there,” David said, nodding to where Storm was now astride a gorgeous Asian woman. She was feeding him slowly from a six-inch stack of bills. There was champagne in an ice bucket, and a well-dressed man who seemed amused by his lady’s amusement.
“You know what? I think Storm likes you,” David said, hardly able to keep from laughing.
“Oh, shut up,” I said. I saw now what I should have done. A twenty got you noticed, but twenty ones bought you time. There was a lesson there some place and I might’ve written it down if I’d found a pencil. “How about one for the road?” I asked David.
“Are you kidding? We’re outta here,” he said, roughly propelling me for-ward.
I let him push me. He’d get his later. Maybe I’d do something nasty to him once we got back to the apartment. I’d have a nightcap in the study and plot my course of action. That’s what I decided.
“No, Teddy, this way,” David said, yanking me from the bar.
Okay, so maybe I couldn’t see so good. The music was so loud and the lights were whirling in circles. It could make a person dizzy. And David was jerking me around. I felt like a rag doll as he shoved me out the door and into the night. “You don’t have to push,” I said, or at least that’s what I tried to say.
“You’re drunk,” David said, laughing.
“The hell I am,” I said, marching forward with intent. It wasn’t my fault there was a banyan tree in my path—with an extended root system buckling the sidewalk. Next thing I knew, I was down, my palms skidding across the asphalt. And my ankle probably broken.
And once again, there was David, looking down at me with concern. This was getting to be a habit. “You okay?” he asked. I could tell he was trying not to laugh.
“Of course not,” I snapped.
He helped me to my feet, careful not to touch my hands where the blood was oozing like pinpricks. Meanwhile, across the parking lot, there they were: that gaggle of mean girls who’d witnessed the whole thing. They were pointing and giggling, doubled over with laughter. “Oh yeah?” I shouted to them. “You think that was funny? How about I break my nose now? Would you like that?”
And next to me, Mr. Compassion was laughing so hard I thought he might asphyxiate himself.