CHAPTER 6
.6.
“Please, forgive the intrusion,” Jimmy said. He was standing stiffly on the lanai as if he’d just spotted a shark in the shallows. “I’m looking for Stingray.” He paused, squinting at me through the screen. “Are you… Him?”
For a moment, I felt like saying no. It would have been easy. He was obviously expecting to find a postcard, some bronze titan with a surfboard and a permanent grin, not an Irishman of his own age nodding off against a Remington Portable. Plus, there was something about Jimmy that, despite the expensive cut of his suit, spelled trouble with capital letters. He had the kind of suaveness that usually precedes a loud noise and a lot of broken glass.
My old mentor’s words rushed to haunt me, though. Something about the kuleana of the water. So I scoffed, pushed back from the desk, and stepped out onto the lanai.
“Stingray was my waterman nickname,” I said, the wood of the deck warm under my bare feet. “My name’s Horatio O’Neill. Most people call me Ray.”
Jimmy seemed to consider that, weighing the name like a heavy coin. “Ho-Ray-Tio, of course,” he said. “Makes sense.”
“Yes, well, try telling that to my Dad. He’s a history professor; he likes his names with a few centuries of dust on them.”
He chuckled. A schoolboy’s chuckle, light and out of place in a man who had been floating face down in the Pacific. “Everyone calls me Jimmy, even Dad,” he explained. “Except Uncle Ole. He insists on calling me Junior.”
The way his face tightened at the name ‘Ole’ told me everything he wasn't saying. We shared a sudden, jagged smile, the kind of look two guys share when they realize they’re both being aggravated by older men.
“I wanted to thank you properly for fishing me out of the ocean,” he said. The smile died, replaced by a look that was a hundred fathoms deep. He looked haunted, like someone who’d seen the bottom of the ocean and didn’t like the color of the sand.
“Do you remember anything?” I asked. I could still feel the phantom weight of his water-logged lungs against my ribs, the way he’d been a dead anchor dragging at my "Stingray" kick.
Jimmy shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Better that way, I think.”
He nodded, a slow, solemn movement. “I was told not to offer money because when a Hawaiian saves a life…” He trailed off, his gaze roaming over my skin that never really tanned to brown, sun-bleached mocha hair, hazel eyes, and the stubborn line of my jaw. He had the expression of a man looking at a mislabeled artifact. The question marks in his eyes were blinking like neon.
“One-eighth,” I said, cutting him off before he could trip over his own feet.
“What?”
“I’m one-eighth Hawaiian. The rest of me is mostly Irish, though one of my mother’s grandfathers was Portuguese. So one-eighth Hawaiian, one-eighth Portuguese, and three-fourths Irish. I’m a math problem. Not a postcard.”
Jimmy blinked, his Scandinavian blonde hair catching the sun. “I – I’m Danish. Born in LA. Dad came to the US when he was young, built the bakery business from nothing. I guess I’m one hundred percent Danish.”
The potential puns involving the pastries his father sold from San Diego to San Francisco stood between us like a bad joke at a funeral. I could almost see the "Danish Prince" headlines in my head.
“Look,” I said, disarming the bomb before it could go off. “You owe me nothing, all right?”
“But you saved my life! There must be something I can do to—" His gaze roamed again, taking in my bungalow. It was a slightly derelict beach shack, three-quarters tucked behind banana trees, and he was looking at it with the cold, calculating eye of a Hollywood auctioneer.
I bet Daddy sent you to some elite business school, I thought. I could see the wheels turning. He was probably wondering if he should buy me a new typewriter or pay to revamp the whole damn house. These people! They think everything comes with a price tag and a receipt.
My voice went cold, turning into that "Stingray" rasp that had helped me win the moniker. “Out here we believe that saving a life is its own reward. It’s about Pono. Balance. Harmony. Not price tags. You don’t pay a man for giving you your breath back.”
Jimmy took it like a slap. He blushed right up to the roots of his hair, looking like a kid who’d been caught swearing in church. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Don’t worry. You didn’t,” I assured him, though my smile didn't get beyond ground level. I felt the urge to show off, to let him know that just because I lived in a beach shack, that didn't mean I was for sale. “There’s this saying my hapa-haole Grandma was always repeating: O ke aloha ke kuleana o kāhi malihini. Love is the host in strange lands.”
Grandma Julia would have clipped me behind the ear for using that tone. My waterman mentor would have just walked away.
And then I noticed his eyes. Jimmy was drowning again, his jaw set so hard it looked like it might snap. What the hell was I doing? Less than 48 hours ago, this guy had been face down in the Pacific. I had reclaimed him from the deep, given him my Ha, my Mana. To do what with it? Torture him because his dad was a millionaire? That was as much his fault as it was mine to have been named after a Shakespearean sidekick.
“I’m sorry,” I said, the edge in my voice softening. “I'm being an ass. It’s the heat. Would you like some coffee?”
Jimmy shook his head, trying to find his footing. “I’m the one who should apologize. I intruded. I disrupted your work.” He glanced at the Remington Portable through the screen door.
A hollow chuckle found its way to my throat. “I wish that were true. The paper is winning today. It’s blank, and I’m losing the argument.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Come on, let’s have some coffee. It’s Kona, and it’s strong enough to wake the dead.”
I stepped aside, holding the screen door open. As Jimmy entered the bungalow, he looked around with a mixture of surprise and a strange kind of gratitude, like he’d finally found a place where he didn't have to be a "Danish Prince" for five minutes.
As the door clicked shut behind us, I felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the trade winds. I’d reclaimed this guy from the Pacific, and in my mentor’s book, that meant I was holding the bill for whatever he did next. I looked at the back of his blonde head. I wondered if I was actually binding myself to a new friend, or if I’d just tethered my life to a sinking ship that was determined to take me down to the dark with him.
Did I really have a choice, or was the "Stingray" making a comeback as a character in a script I hadn't written yet?
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