The women in Emma's crew hosed the boat down and hauled it into the halau. The paddlers worked quietly and dispersed quickly, leaving the four of us—Pat, Emma, Yoshi, and me—on the dark beach.
You might imagine a Hawaiian sunset as a florid blaze over the water, edged with pinks and golds, but here you would be wrong. Those sunsets happen on the west side of the island, the dry sunny side that draws all the tourists. Here on the rainy windward side, the sky darkens and the palm trees become black silhouettes, and it's nighttime. If you really want to see something, stand on the beach at dawn. When the rising sun lights the ocean, then creeps up the forested slopes rising up from the shore, and finally illuminates the snowy peak of the volcano...well, I've heard it's spectacular. I don't usually get up that early myself.
"One minute everything's fine," Emma fumed, "an' next minute she falls into the water in front of me. No warning at all."
I seemed to be the only one who was feeling the cold. Emma was fairly incandescent with rage. She seemed to think Kathy Banks had keeled over on purpose, specifically to ruin paddling practice.
"Was she breathing when they took her out of the water?" Pat asked.
"How should I know?" Emma crossed her sturdy arms. "Sherry and Pam were the ones who pulled her up. That was all we could do. None of us had a phone out there. Man, I knew something like this was gonna happen."
"Cause of the diet?" Yoshi asked.
"You put your crew on a diet?" I was glad I had resisted Emma's attempts to persuade me to join her crew. The thought of daily workouts was bad enough, but a diet on top of everything else sounded downright totalitarian.
"No, I did not put anyone on a diet. I mean, I might have told 'em that we could all stand to lose a little weight."
A chill breeze sliced through my loose knit angora sweater. I hugged myself and rubbed my upper arms.
"Can't you eat whatever you want?" I said. "With all the exercise you guys do?"
"You don't want extra weight in the boat," Emma said. "You gotta be light so your boat rides higher in the water. That way there's less drag, and you go faster. But look, I did not encourage this. In fact, I told them, you can't train on five hundred calories a day."
"Five hundred calories a day! Plus hours of paddling? You guys are like galley slaves. How does anyone think this is fun?"
"Molly, when you start paddling with us? Once you're out on the water? You'll understand."
"No," I said. "That is not going to happen."
You can't equivocate with Emma. You show any hint of indecisiveness, and she'll steamroll right over you.
"I mean, when the Labor Day Race is over," she said. "Right now I'm dealing with seven crew members and only six spots in the boat. Everyone wants to race, so it can get a little ugly."
"Can?" Pat said. "Looks like it already has."
"We call it paddletics," Yoshi said. "When paddlers get too competitive within their crew, and turn on each other."
Yoshi has mellowed a lot since he first moved here with Emma as a freshly minted MBA. At first, he didn't like living in Mahina. He claimed there were no decent jobs to be had, and would say things like, "I can't live in a place where no one can tell I'm wearing a two thousand dollar suit."
Tired of his grumping around the house, Emma got him into canoe paddling, which he embraced with the zeal of a convert. Most of his time is now spent paddling and hanging out at the beach. Today he wore board shorts, a souvenir t-shirt from the previous year's Labor Day canoe race, and a cap with the logo of a local paddling shop.
One thing that hasn't changed about Yoshi is his need to be the Expert. His favorite pastime is explaining things to people.
"Paddletics!" Pat exclaimed before Yoshi could expound further. "Molly, isn't that one of those words you hate? What do the Word Police have to say?"
Pat knows I hate sloppy neologisms: Homophobe. Anything-gate. The worst of the bunch is the suffix –holic, which got snapped off the end of 'alcoholic' and now is attached to any word you can think of to indicate addiction or even mere affinity. Normally I enjoy arguing etymology with Pat, but right now, I wasn't in the mood.
"I've heard worse. Paddletics could mean affairs of the paddle, in the same way that politics means affairs of the city."
A fire truck pulled up, lights flashing. Pat shook his head and went over to talk to the driver.
"Okay, Molly. We're gonna head home. I hafta change. Sorry about making you miss the Pair-O-Dice."
"It's okay, Emma. I wasn't even thinking about happy hour. You should get going. You must be freezing." Emma's wet rash guard and board shorts clung to her sturdy frame. I shivered in sympathy.
"Nah, not really. It's not that cold. Oh, I dunno if I can have lunch tomorrow. I gotta follow up with Kathy. I'm gonna visit her tomorrow at the hospital if she's still there."
Emma and Yoshi started back to the parking lot. I called after them,
"Give me a call tomorrow. I'll go with you to visit Kathy."
Emma paused and turned back.
"Seriously?"
"Yes. Of course, I know her too. I mean, I work with her."
"Sure. Okay." Emma sounded unconvinced.
An hour ago the ocean sparkled cobalt blue. Now whitecaps foamed on the black water, illuminated by a cloudy sliver of moon. I was lightheaded with hunger, and I doubted I would ever feel warm again. Pat came back as the fire truck pulled away.
"What's going on?" I asked.
Pat shook his head.
"Who knows? I told them the ambulance came and went already. They tried to argue with me."
"Maybe you shouldn't have been so sassy on the phone."
"I told them to go take it up with their dispatcher. Molly. Molly!" Pat gripped my shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. No, I'm not. I will be, though."
My two-tone turquoise Thunderbird looked unfamiliar, black and white under the sodium light. Pat gently removed my keys from my hand, opened the car door, and deposited me on the driver's side. I pulled the heavy door shut, cranked the window open, rested my hands on the wheel, and started doing the breathing exercises from the video that came with my yoga ball. I didn't want to be sick all over my new-old-stock upholstery. Pat braced his hands on the door and bent down to eye level.
"I told you, you have to see someone about this."
"This breathing is supposed to fill me with peace and calm," I said.
"It doesn't seem to be working."
I leaned forward and rested on the hard steering wheel, focusing on the sensation of the cool Bakelite pressing on my forehead.
"No. It's not working."
"Do you want me to drive you home? You can probably leave your car here overnight. Who would be stupid enough to steal a 1959 Thunderbird?"
"I'll be okay." I hoped I really would be. "It's a little unnerving, the way Kathy collapsed at the exact moment we were talking about her."
I expected Pat to say something to reassure me. Emma's crew simply got overzealous with their diet, he could have said; Kathy probably overexerted herself.
Instead, he squinted out at the black water.
"Something about this doesn't feel right to me. I don't think this is going to turn out well for Kathy."
He pulled his attention back to me. "I hope I'm wrong. Molly, you go home and get a good night's sleep."
"Pat, why did you say that? Why do you think this isn't going to turn out well for Kathy? What doesn't feel right?"
I wondered if years of reporting on murder and mayhem had made Pat paranoid. He used to be a reporter for the County Courier, before the layoffs. Now he teaches freshman composition part-time at our university and runs his own news blog, Island Confidential.
"Go see a doctor about this." Pat wasn't going to answer any of my questions. "Before you keel over. I'm serious."
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