by James C. Clar
Thunderstorms are somewhat rare on Oahu. The temperature seldom varies enough or quickly enough to goad the air into that particular form of violence. When they do come, they arrive with a kind of magnificence – loud, electric, otherworldly. Visitors often miss the magic. They grumble about the rain, about the loss of beach time. “Hey,” they say, “we get this at home.” Who can blame them? They came for sun and warm, gentle breezes, not Iowa weather disguised in a grass skirt and a lei.
Residents, on the other hand, know better. They grudgingly welcome the storm and the sharp crack of thunder riding the trade winds; the “liquid sunshine” and the jagged bolt of lightning ripping its way through a sky gone unaccountably black. It’s a reminder as well; the islands aren’t always soft.
Late one afternoon, during just such a storm, I felt something – something strange, something portentous – pull me outside. Living alone and with no real obligations to speak of, I was free to indulge such impulses. The usually bustling streets of Waikiki were awash and all-but deserted. Rain hammered the Ala Wai Canal, now invisible behind a curtain of water. Palm trees flailed like tortured animals. The usual dry susurration of their fronds had become a rasping chorus, insectile and urgent. The distant lights of Moiliili and St. Louis Heights on the mountainside to the north shimmered like a dream half-forgotten, distorted and surreal.
I was soaked within seconds, wandering without direction up and down the grid of streets that ran between Ala Wai Boulevard and Kuhio Avenue. Thunder cracked overhead as I trod the faded heart of Waikiki. Then, in the flash of a particularly vicious bolt of lightning, I had the proverbial epiphany. I knew what I had to do.
I began entering condo buildings, dripping pools of water in the foyers as I pressed intercom buttons more-or-less at random. In the old days, you’d need a doorman’s permission to enter. I wondered how I would have managed back then.
“Clarisse, is that you?” I’d ask in a disembodied voice.
“Wrong unit, brah. No ‘Clarisse’ here.”
Not everyone was so polite.
“Get lost, asshole. You gotta try harder than that!”
So much for Polynesian hospitality. I pressed on, literally and figuratively.
Eventually, I came to a mid-century building with windswept palms, a coral walkway, a porte-cochere like something out of a vintage postcard or travel brochure. I chose a button. I was more deliberate this time. The name below the intercom had faded and was illegible.
“Aloha, Clarisse, are you home?”
There was a pause. Then a voice. It was tinny and uncertain.
“Yes. Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Eddie.”
“Eddie? I don’t know anyone named Eddie.”
“That’s all right,” I replied. “I really don’t know anyone named Clarisse. But I’ve been looking for you a long time.”
A drop of water ran from my forehead and down my nose.
Silence. Then, after a moment or two …
“I guess I’ve been looking for you, too. Come on up.”
I heard the click of the lock releasing. Before stepping inside, I turned around and looked back. The rain had stopped. The sky was clearing. The tang of iodine hung thick in the air, along with the scent of ginger and plumeria. People were beginning to reappear. The streets gleamed, swept clean by the storm. The run-off flowed into the drains and, inevitably, merged with the warm, amniotic waters of the Pacific.
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James C. Clar is a teacher and writer who divides his time between the wilds of Upstate New York and the more congenial climes of Honolulu, Hawaii. Most recently, his work has appeared in The Sci-Phi Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Antipodean Sci-Fi, The Literary Fantasy Magazine, The Blotter Magazine and Freedom Fiction Journal.