From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [251]
It seemed that Lorene was only a house name Mrs Kipfer had picked for her out of a perfume advertisement. Mrs Kipfer did not think Alma was either French enough or intellectual enough for the star performer of her establishment. But her real name was Alma Schmidt, of all names. And she lived in Maunalani Heights, of all places. If he had tried, he could not have picked a more un-whorelike name out of the phone directory. And if he guessed, he could not have picked out of a real estate classified section a more un-whorelike place for her to live.
Maunalani Heights was the donjon and inner keep of the upper middle class of Honolulu, as distinguished from the rich men. The rich men, like Doris Duke, owned beach estates along Black Point and Kahala Beach and Kaalawai between the foot of Diamond Head and the sea. The rich men, like Doris Duke, owned these estates but did not live in them. The upper middle class of Honolulu owned Maunalani Heights and lived on it—rising up and up above Kaimuki, high up, where they could look out across the eroded ancient crater of Diamond Head which was a US Military Reservation, on out past that far out to sea along the world’s curve where sometimes they could watch far out the rain coming in from Molokai on the south wind like a curtain to cover Diamond Head, then Kaimuki, then finally themselves. It was a fine place for the upper middle class to live but it was a long ways from the beach.
Kaimuki was the saddle between the Heights and Diamond Head; it was also a densely settled community of the more well-off Japanese, except for the big square of it between 13th and 18th Avenues against the flank of Diamond Head which was the government’s cut of Kaimuki that was called Fort Ruger. It was almost symbolic, the way Maunalani Heights dominated the well-off Japanese of Kaimuki.
And up here, Alma Schmidt and a girl friend from the Service Rooms had a house, on Maunalani Heights. He was even more astounded when he saw the house they rented.
More accurately, Alma Schmidt and girl friend from Service Rooms lived on Wilhelmina Rise, not Maunalani Heights. Wilhelmina Rise was the steep sloped ridge running up from Kaimuki to the Heights at the very top of Kalepeamoa, elev. 1116 ft. Wilhelmina Rise was sort of the outer keep to the donjon of the Heights which, strictly, included only Maunalani Circle at the tip top and Lurline Drive a little lower down and Matsonia Drive a little lower still and Lower Lurline Drive still lower and then Lanipili Drive which was so short it hardly counted and, possibly but doubtfully, Mariposa Drive; all of these like regressive stairsteps below the Circle but still well up at the top, on Maunalani Heights. Still, it was legitimate for Alma to tell him Maunalani Heights, because all the other inhabitants of Wilhelmina Rise told people they lived on Maunalani Heights. And anyway, he did not know the difference. He had even thought that it was all rich men, like Doris Duke, who lived on Wilhelmina Rise. He never admitted this to her, however, after she explained it to him.
The house itself was on Sierra Drive which runs tortuously up the ridge twisting back and forth between houses on so many different levels that it reminds you of an illustration from a fairy tale, just off Wilhelmina Rise Street which runs straight up crossing and recrossing Sierra so steeply that even in coming down you have to take the drop in second, running down and out under trees that a moment ago you were looking down at the tops of through the windshield and thinking of those steep streets in the Casbah movies or in fairy tales. It was a small one-storey house of something, probably concrete block, but plastered over so smoothly it looked all of a piece with its low pitched roof that hung far out over the walls like in a Spanish hacienda in a fairy