Hawaii - James Michener [554]
"Am I good in bed?" she pleaded. "Really good."
"You numbah one wahine."
"Have you known many girls?"
"Surfin" is surfin'," he replied.
"For example, Maud Clemmens? Did you sleep with her?"
"How you like s'pose nex' week somebody ast me, 'How about Rennie? Dat wahine screw?' "
"Kelly! Such words!"
"Da whistle gonna blow, Rennie seestah," he warned her, climbing into his own clothes.
"I went down to the library, Kelly," she said softly. "And there it was, like you said. This big long book with the names written down by the missionary. It says that your family can be traced back for one hundred and thirty-four generations. It must make you feel proud."
"Don't make me feel notting," Kelly grunted.
"Why does a Hawaiian have the name Kelly?" she asked, slipping on her stockings.
"My kanaka name Kelolo, but nobody like say 'em."
"Kelly's a sweet name," she said approvingly. Then she kissed him and asked, "Why wouldn't you take me to your home?"
"It's notting," he shrugged.
"You mean, your ancestors were kings and you have nothing for yourself?"
"I get guitar, I get surfboard, I get cute wahine like you."
"It's too damned bad," she said bitterly, kissing him again. "Kelly, you're the best thing in Hawaii." They went on deck and she made a quick sign to her roommate, thanking her. The tall girl laughed and winked. When the whistle blew for the last time, warning the various beachboys who had come down to see their haole wahines off, Rennie asked hesitantly, "If some of my friends decide to come to Hawaii ... girl friends that is . . ." She paused.
"Sure, I look out for dem," Kelly agreed.
"You're a darling!" she laughed, kissing him ardently as he pulled away to run down the gangplank. In the departure shed the beachboy Florsheim--they called him that because sometimes he wore shoes --sidled up and asked, "Kelly blalah, da kine wahine da kine blonde, she good screwin'?"
"Da bes'," Kelly said firmly, and the two beachboys went amiably back to the Lagoon.
Once or twice as the year 1946 skipped away, Kelly had fleeting doubts which he shared with Florsheim: "Whassamatta me? Takin' care lotsa wahine, all mixed up. Where it gonna get me?" But such speculation was always stilled by the arrival of some new divorcee or widow, and the run of working it around so that he got into bed with them, while they paid the hotel and restaurant bills, was so great that he invariably came around to Florsheim's philosophy: "Mo bettah we get fun now, while we young." So he maintained the routine: meet the ship, find the girl that someone had cabled about, take her surfing, live with her for eight days, kiss her goodbye on the Moana Loa, get some rest, and then meet the next ship. Sometimes he looked with admiration at Johnny Pupali, forty-nine years old and still giving the wahines what he called "Dr. Pupali's surfboard cure for misery."
One afternoon he asked Pupali about his surprising energy, and the dean of beachboys explained: "A man got energy for do four t'ings. Eat, work, surf, or make love. But at one time got stuff for only two. For me, surfin' and makin' love."
"You ever get tired?" Kelly asked.
"Surfin'? No. I gonna die on an incomin' wave. Wahines? Tell you da trufe, Kelly, sometime for about ten minutes after Moana Loa sail, I don' neveh wanna see da kine wahine no ino', but nex' day wen anudder ship blow anudder whistle, man, I'm strip for action."
In the lazy weeks between girls, Kelly found real joy in loafing on the beach with Florsheim, a big, sprawling man who wore his own kind of costume: enormous baggy shorts of silk and cotton that looked like underwear and fell two inches below his knees, a tentlike aloha shirt whose ends he tied about his middle, leaving a four-inch expanse of belly, Japanese slippers with a thong between his toes, and a coconut hat with a narrow brim and two long fibers reaching eight inches in the air and flopping over on one side. Florsheim always looked sloppy until he kicked off his clothes and stood forth in skintight