Dario’s Surprise

Around nine o’clock that night, I started getting antsy. I knew I ought to just go to sleep, but I wanted to see if there was anyone hanging around at any of the bars. After all, people are more likely to talk when they’re drunk, and I wasn’t getting any leads sitting around the house staring out at the stars.

I decided to start at Sugar’s, because I hadn’t been there since Sunday night, when I’d gone there looking for Brad. I was still planning to keep my vow of celibacy—at least until I got this case behind me. Back in Waikiki, who knew what would happen. But on the North Shore, I was keeping my pants zipped up. Then what was I doing going to a gay bar? Well, for one thing, I wanted somebody I could talk to about Brad. I was hoping his friends would be there.

Ari was there, sitting with Dario at a table near the bar. Of course I knew that Dario was some kind of investor in Ari’s project, and Dario had been the one to call Ari and get me the place at Cane Landing, but I didn’t picture them as the kind of friends who hung around together for a drink.

While I was at the bar getting a beer, Dario came up. He wearing a Next Wave logo t-shirt and cargo shorts, looking like he’d spent a long day on the selling floor at the surf shop. “Got to drain the lizard,” he said. “You gonna come join us?”

“Sure.”

I took my beer over to their table. “Hey, Kimo, how’s the house working out?” Ari asked. He wore a white dress shirt open at the neck, with a loosely-knotted striped tie, and he looked tired.

“It’s great. I really appreciate your fixing it up for me.” I held my glass up and clinked it against his.

“No problem. Any friend of Dario’s, you know.”

I realized, looking at Ari, that there was a question he could answer for me. “You know, I wanted to ask you something about Sunday night, something that’s been bothering me.”

“What?”

I put my beer down on the table. “I can’t figure out why Brad took Tommy Singer out to the beach. He took me home; why not Tommy?”

“That would be thanks to Rik.” Ari folded up the papers he had in front of him and put them into his briefcase. “Rik stopped by Brad’s to see if he wanted to come out, but Brad’s car was already gone. Your truck, however, was there in the parking lot. When Rik showed up at Sugar’s, while Brad was at the bar with the college guy, he told Brad you were out there.”

“That’s right. I wanted to apologize.”

“Brad didn’t know that. Just before he left, he told me he thought you were angry, that you were waiting for him to get home to make a scene. I told him he was crazy, you weren’t like that, but that’s probably why he didn’t go back there.”

“And with Tommy Singer being a closeted college student sharing a dorm room, they couldn’t go there,” I said. “Beach the next best thing.”

“Guess so.”

Well, that made me feel like crap all over again. Every thing I’d done with Brad had been wrong, and each seemed to have led inexorably to his death. But like Terri said, there were so many what ifs. I couldn’t focus on them.

Dario came back and sat down with us.

“How’s The Next Wave doing?” I asked him. “Still slow?”

“Dead. I took in about a thousand dollars today. After I pay for the merchandise, I’ve got just about enough left to keep the doors open. Fortunately most of my staff quit, so I don’t have much in the way of payroll.”

“The silver lining is that if this goes on much longer, the county commission will get nervous and want to jump start development up here. That puts Bishop’s Bluff in a good situation,” Ari said.

“If we can all hold out that long.” Dario took a long drink from his beer. “But enough about my troubles. So, Kimo, how are you enjoying this forced retirement of yours?”

“It’s not bad. I’ll have to get another job eventually, but it’s nice to go back to a time when all I had to worry about was the surf conditions.”

Of course that wasn’t true, but I was playing a part—a part I felt I had to keep playing even around an old friend like Dario. We kept on talking, and drinking. We ordered a pitcher, and it was gone much too quickly, so we ordered another. We talked about surfing, and the North Shore, both as it was when Dario and I were younger, and now. Ari told us a couple of stories about growing up in Minnesota, and then we started talking about what had caused us to leave home and come to the North Shore in the first place.

“I was so damn glad to leave the Big Island I think I’d have been happy on a pig farm,” Dario said.

“I forgot you came from the Big Island,” Ari said. “Whereabouts?”

“Kamuela. Also known as Waimea. The whole town’s pretty much run by the Parker Ranch. My dad was the real deal, a paniolo his whole life, just like his daddy and his granddaddy and his great-granddaddy before him.” He drank some more beer. “You can just bet how happy he was when I told him I wanted to be a surfer, not a paniolo.”

“Probably about as happy as my dad when I told him I was leaving Minnesota,” Ari said. They both looked at me.

“Sorry, my dad was a surfer when he was young, and I’m the baby, so my folks didn’t get too excited when I told them I wanted to surf. They just wanted me to wait until I finished college.”

Ari drained the last of the pitcher. “Another?” Dario and I nodded, and he signaled the waitress. “So tell us about growing up on the ranch,” he said to Dario. “You learn to ride horses, rope cattle, all that stuff?”

“You bet. I’m a rootin’ tootin’ dang cowboy all right.” He laughed. “It sounds pretty goofy to be a Hawaiian cowboy, but the Parker Ranch is the largest privately owned ranch in the country. Over 225,000 acres, over 50,000 head of cattle, a hundred paniolos to take care of it all.”

“Oh, those long, lonesome nights on the range,” Ari said. “Just you and the other cowboys. No womenfolk around for miles.”

“It wasn’t exactly a porn film,” Dario said dryly. “Most of the time you’re just too damn tired to think about anything besides curling up in a bedroll or a bunk house and getting some sleep.”

“Oh, come on, you must have a story to tell us,” I said.

“My life is not the stuff of your late-night fantasies,” Dario said.

“That’s right, you’re a married man,” Ari said.

It’s a good thing I didn’t have any beer in my glass, or I’d have choked on it. “Married?” I asked. “What’s his name?”

“Her name is Mary,” Dario said. The waitress delivered the new pitcher, and I poured a glass full and took a good long drink from it. “I like a little variety in my diet. So shoot me.”

“Don’t say that so loud,” Ari said. “Somebody’s likely to take you up on it.”

“Okay, Dario,” I said. “Explain to me how you got married. I’m dying to hear this one. It either has to involve parental pressure or a significant amount of alcohol.”

“Neither. Well, maybe a little of the first. I went home a couple of years ago and saw Mary. Her dad’s a paniolo, too, and I’ve known her all her life. She’s five years younger than I am, and she was just wasting away there in Kamuela, dying to get out. The only way for a girl to get out of there is to get married, so I married her and brought her over here.”

“But you don’t actually sleep with her,” I said.

“He has a child,” Ari said, and I could see the mischief dancing in his eyes.

“This is surreal.” I leaned in close to Ari. “He sucked my dick,” I said, and as I did I realized I was probably drunker than I had thought.

Ari laughed, a big guffaw that resounded around the room. “Mine, too,” he said, when he finally stopped laughing.

“I’m a bisexual,” Dario said, struggling to regain some dignity.

“You’re an omnisexual,” Ari said. “I’ve seen the way your dog runs away when you come in the house.”

I laughed, and Dario said, “That was uncalled for, Aristotle.”

“You must only fuck her from behind,” I said. “Can you pretend she’s a boy from that angle?”

“This conversation is on a vertical slide.” Dario drained his beer, then pulled out a few bills from his wallet and dropped them on the table. “Good night, gentlemen. And I use that term loosely.”

He got up and stalked out of the bar. “I guess I hurt his feelings,” I said. “But considering how much my tits hurt when he was done with them, I think we’re even.”

“Do tell.” Ari scooted his chair over closer to mine, and I told him the whole sorry story. A funny thing, though; the more time I spent on the North Shore, the more times I told that story, the less power it seemed to have over me. I guess that was a good thing.

We left a little while later, both of us trying to make sure the other was sober enough to drive. I made it back to Cane Landing without incident—the roads were almost completely deserted, so I probably couldn’t have hit another car if I’d tried.

I barely managed to punch in the security code and stumble to the bathroom, where I found a bottle of aspirin, and took a couple, along with several glasses of water. Then I collapsed into bed.

When I awoke in the morning, just as the sun was rising, I barely had a hangover, just a vague headache that I treated with more aspirin. The yards at Cane Landing were fresh with dew and the promise of a new day. I got dressed and drove down to the outrigger halau, to see if their Thursday morning practice was still on.