Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [60]
A few hours later, when Dr. Ahmed confirmed that Alice would be discharged immediately, David asked her what she wanted to do. The question angered her.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Would you like to go home,” he said, “or would you like to stay?”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“You mean take a vacation?”
“No,” David said. “I mean just be here. The two of us. I don’t know what to call it. But I’m not ready to go home. I spoke with Mr. Sobel at Trinity and told him you’d had a medical emergency—that we weren’t sure yet when we’d be back.”
Alice smoldered visibly over this. “Did you tell him what happened?”
“Of course not,” David said.
She crossed her arms and stared out the window. In the morning light, the weight she’d gained from the pregnancy was more apparent: a roundness to her arms, the hint of belly pressing out of her gown. He turned to see what she was looking at. Palm trees waved in the parking lot below. In the distance, mist snaked through the volcanic mountains.
“What would we do here?” she asked finally.
“Why don’t you let me handle that.”
When she didn’t reply, he took her silence as a decision.
He promptly informed Harold, who sent them a car. When she saw it, Alice asked, “Why all this?”
David balked, or trusted his gut—he wasn’t sure which. But he was certain she must not know they were being helped. “I just thought it would be easier,” he said, though he had no idea what to do next. He would consider the hotel a kind of home base until he had a clearer plan.
In the car, Alice placed the urn in her lap and held it there. If she was waiting for David to mention it, he didn’t say a thing.
The Mandarin Oriental was located at the dead end of the Kahala neighborhood, where houses were built on real estate of impossible value, and blocks and blocks of walled-off, Spanish-style stucco homes ran parallel to the ocean. The hotel’s gorgeous modern design stood in stark contrast to the residences around it, with two adjacent towers of white and ocean blue, its structural lines built out with white girders from each window, so the various wings appeared to be surrounded by stacked, transparent cubes, a kind of scaffolding that somehow lightened the structures, made them seem as if they could, like a pair of gliders, ride the air. The towers backed up to the Waialae Country Club at the base of the Ko’olau Ridge, a house-speckled mountain lush with trees that climbed like a slow-building wave into the distance, all the homes facing the ocean, though it was impossible to see the water until you entered the hotel itself. The high walls of a third, perpendicular structure—a giant porte cochere—blocked all sightlines, making the strand beyond it seem even more private from the other side. David and Alice were treated like royalty upon arrival—Harold’s doing, David knew. One of the managers, a Japanese man named Murahashi, gave them a personal tour after they checked in, showing them five restaurants on the premises, several shops, the pool, spa, and gym. He then walked them through the porte cochere that led to the beach. Two long jetties enclosed the reef-calmed waters, the long, private strip of sand demarcated by a dense web of palm trees. “This is a very popular place to marry,” Murahashi said, and as if on cue, a handsome Japanese bride and groom appeared, walking toward a white gazebo that faced the ocean, the bride clutching her train happily, the two of them leaning into the breeze, their families seated in chairs on grass as immaculate as a fairway. Murahashi walked David and Alice through the restaurant off the beach, the Plumeria, an airy room filled with mahogany, its floors of cool slate. Alice seemed unfazed by the beauty of it all.
“Of course,” Murahashi said, leading them into a gigantic courtyard, “our permanent residents are what make the hotel so famous.” Before them was a giant man-made lagoon, walled off at its far end by