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It was an epiphany. He realized that the history of mankind, all the great and stupid wars—the Trojan War an obvious example—all the scientific discoveries and inventions, everything from the cure for smallpox to the pocket fisherman and Swiss Army knife; all the books, poems, and plays ever written; all the songs ever sung, the art ever made; everything ever done by any human anywhere: It was all for one deep overpowering reason.

To get laid.

It's not a strange concept. It makes sense. We are animals. We are, at our essence, biological. And the biological urge is to reproduce. Propagate. Keep the species from going the way of the dodo.

Joseph thought about the history of Hawaii. In the early days, tribal conflict was simple and clear-cut: kill the men, take the women, stick it in. Then the Europeans arrived, but did things really change? Did Captain Cook come to these
islands in search of spices and gold or to get off with some dark-skinned honeys? Did Columbus leave Spain searching for a quicker route to India, or was it just a kind of Old World booty call?

The more Joseph thought about Francis's offer, the angrier he became. He didn't want to be bought. He didn't want to be subjugated. He didn't want to personify the history of Hawaii and let some conquering white man plant his pole in him. No fucking way. That's how we got like this.

It was dark when he arrived at his uncle's house. Joseph let himself in through the screen door on the back porch. He heard the television murmuring from the family room, saw a light on in the kitchen.

“Uncle?”

“In here.”

Joseph followed the sound of his uncle's voice, through the kitchen and into the family room. Sid was sitting on the couch, a handgun resting on his lap. He was watching figure skating on the TV.

“What're you doing?”

“Watchin' TV.”

“Ice skating?”

“I like it.” Sid pointed to a young man in a pirate costume doing some kind of elaborate spinning moves in the air. “Triple toe loop.”

Joseph watched as the young man landed smoothly on the ice and then began to do some kind of crazy tap dance steps to Dixieland music. Sid was delighted.

“He Russian. Dey got all da good ones in Russia.”

Joseph sat down on the couch next to Sid. “I talked to the producer.”

Sid arched an eyebrow. “Wot he say?”

“He's willing to hire us.”

Sid turned to Joseph. He was beaming. “Yeah?”

“He wants me to have sex with him.”

Sid sat back, thinking. He turned and gave Joseph a searching look. “He say dat den?”

Joseph nodded. “Yeah.”

“Wot you say den?”

“I said I'd think about it.”

“Wot's to think about?”

Joseph shrugged. “I don't know. I didn't want to say no right away. I thought I'd go back and talk to him some more.”

“You should fuck 'im.”

Joseph looked at his uncle. His jaw dropped. “I'm sorry. What?”

“Fuck 'im. Give 'im wot he want. It would be good for da family.”

“But Uncle, I'm not gay.”

“I'm not Italian, I eat pizza.”

“Uncle Sid. I don't want to have sex with him.”

“Lot of people gotta do wot dey don' wanna do. Fact of life.”

“This is different.”

“I'm not Jewish, I like bagels.”

“It's not the same thing.”

Sid shrugged. “Wot's so different den? Still two people wit' dey clothes off goin' at it.”

Joseph had heard enough. “I gotta go.” He stood up to leave.

“Rent some gay porn. You see. Not dat different.”

Joseph turned to his uncle. “I thought you'd be outraged.”

Sid looked at Joseph. “I'm a businessman. Seem like a good deal to me.”

...

Lono sat at a table eating a plate of
zaru soba,
scooping up the cold buckwheat noodles with his chopsticks, dunking them in sauce, and slurping them down as he kept one eye on the door, casually watching the customers, mostly Japanese tourists hungry for a taste of home, as they entered. It was the same quaint restaurant, kind of like a rustic country lodge in Japan, that he'd recommended to the woman he was looking for. The food was good. The location, on a quiet side street between Kalakaua and Kuhio avenues, was prime for anyone staying at one of the big hotels in Waikiki who wanted to get away from the tourist glitz and catch a little peace and
udon.

He'd been coming here about the same time for the past couple of days, hoping to bump into her. Lono knew it was a long shot—for all he knew she'd gone back home or moved on—but he also understood that people are creatures of habit; when they find something or someplace they like, they return again and again. If she were still in Honolulu, she'd eventually make it back to this restaurant. She was the type.

He was on his second cup of hot green tea when he finally realized that she'd been sitting at the bar for almost half an hour. When she entered, Lono had thought it was a teenage boy from Tokyo. But when he heard her ask the waitress
for extra tofu, he recognized her voice. She looked fantastic, even better than he'd imagined. She had, for whatever reason, taken his advice and changed her appearance completely.

But while Lono the pimp might've dressed her in a more urban style, a clean white tracksuit from Adidas and a Sacramento Kings jersey, he had to admit that her new look was very good. Very sexy. Like some androgynous Brazilian skate-boarder hipster. New York street-cool but with a kind of Rio de Janeiro samba style. If he had been attracted to her before when she was all mousy and New Agey, now he could hardly look away.

But something troubled him. He had thought she was out of the game, yet here she was, a few blocks from the prowl, dressing the way he'd suggested.

Lono resisted the urge to approach her. Instead he decided to be smart. He'd follow her, see what her sport was, and then make his move.

Lono signaled for the check, slapped some cash on the table, and slipped out the door.

...

Jack had called the number Paul Rossi had given him. He'd been surprised when a woman answered the phone. At first he thought he'd dialed it wrong, but she asked him what he wanted and he said, “I have a problem.” She told him she didn't know what he meant, but if he went to the Paris Hotel on the Strip and played the third slot machine from the end in the last row of slot machines on the southwest side of the casino between ten and eleven, someone might talk to him about his problem.

So here he was. Jack plugged another quarter into the slot and punched the button. He watched the wheels spin around and around, annoyed with himself for even caring if he won or lost. He checked his watch. He'd been there fifty minutes already and figured he'd won five or six bucks. But he was getting aggravated. He wasn't used to waiting around for people.

“
Bonsoir.
Would you like another beer, monsieur?”

Jack turned and saw a cocktail waitress, a full-figured Latina with a thick Sinaloan accent, bending over him, dressed like a French maid. Ordinarily her deep cleavage and full round ass would've given him pause and on a normal night he might even flirt with her, try to get in her pants. But not tonight.

“Sure.”

She handed him a fresh beer off the tray she was carrying. Jack pulled a crumpled wad of cash out of his pants pocket and dropped a well-worn five on her tray.

“
Merci.
”

Jack didn't even watch her as she walked away. Instead he turned back to the stupid slot machine, something called Moolah Galaxy, and plugged in another quarter.

He played a few more times and then checked his watch. It was eleven, straight up. Jack sat there. He was tired of playing the slots and sick of waiting. He wondered if Paul Rossi was just fucking with him. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew one thing. Fuck this. He was out of here.

Jack grabbed his walker and started to hoist himself up to standing.

“You giving up?”

Jack turned and saw a serious-looking young man standing behind him.

“Yeah. I'm played out.”

“The next one is the winner. That's the way it works. You pump the machine for hours and then you give up. The next guy comes and
bam,
first time he's got the jackpot.”

Jack studied the man for some kind of clue. He was obviously powerfully built, with the thick muscles of a boxer and the square jaw of a marine; he had a kind of nondescript sandy brown hair and pale blue eyes. But he wasn't dressed like a hitman, at least not Jack's idea of a hitman. The man was wearing faded blue jeans and some kind of simple gray pullover sweater. Hired killers don't wear sweaters.

“Be my guest.”

Without saying a word the man leaned over, dropped a quarter in, and hit the button. They both watched as he hit three cherries and the machine began regurgitating coins at an alarming rate.

“Heard you have a problem.”

...

Hannah sat on the bed trying to finish grading her students' papers before Joseph came back with the pizza. Her stomach had been growling for about an hour and the handful of stale peanuts she found languishing in the back of a cupboard hadn't done much to quiet it down. She stuffed a piece of gum into her mouth and turned her attention back to her work.

As part of their requirements for accreditation, her students had been asked to write an essay in English. Each paper offered up a different set of challenges. The kids had, to say the least, their own unique understanding of grammar and
sentence structure. But unlike most of her colleagues, she didn't take off points when some of her more creative students dropped a few words of pidgin in their essays and reports. Why shouldn't they? It was the language they spoke at home and on the streets. It was what they grew up with. It was what she grew up with too. It was authentic Hawaiian flavor. She wasn't going to punish the kids for that. She wasn't going to tell them it was bad grammar. As far as she was concerned, it wasn't. Why were people always trying to squash the uniqueness out of Hawaiian life? Why try to make it bland and homogeneous like the mainland? It's not Disneyland with pineapples.

It amused her that Joseph refused to speak much pidgin. He'd use some words, like
pau,
when he was finished eating. But he never spoke in the slangy patois of his uncle. Perhaps he was too well read. Or maybe he was embarrassed to be so Hawaiian. Maybe that's why he wanted to leave.

Hannah was still trying to wrap her brain around that. They both had nice places to live, and if they pooled their resources they could have an even nicer place. They had good jobs. They had the weather, the beach, their friends and family. They had each other. Now Joseph wanted to give all that up.

Most people work their whole lives in boring jobs to make enough money to move to Hawaii and spend their golden years chilling out in the tropics. Here they were, already a big step ahead, and what does Joseph want to do? Go to the mainland and work his ass off. She wondered if he knew how cold it got in New York. How crowded and expensive and stinky it was.

She wondered if she could be happy without him.

He entered the bedroom carrying the pizza one-handed, doing a bad imitation of the little Italian guy printed in red on the takeout box. Hannah was hungry, so it took her a minute to notice that Joseph wasn't wearing any clothes. He'd somehow managed to undress between the front door and the bedroom while still balancing a large sausage-and-pepper pizza with one hand.

He stood there, like a waiter in a nudist colony, a fullblown erection saluting her. Hannah burst out laughing.

“What are you doing?”

Joseph smiled. “You ordered sausage.”

And with that he tossed the pizza on the bed and dove on top of her. He pulled her legs up in the air and plunged into her as she giggled. Hannah tossed her head back and groaned as Joseph began thrusting. She threw her arms around his shoulders, feeling his strong muscles flexing, and sucked on his neck. She began to twist his nipples. He moaned.

“You're gonna make me come.”

Hannah smiled. “I don't want the pizza to get cold.”

...

Francis sat on his hotel bed and looked at his cock. It was still mighty erect, hard and throbbing, ready for action. Only before it had been pink and healthy as a newborn with a perfect Apgar score, and now it had developed a slightly bluish tinge around the edges. Francis was worried. Sure, some of it could be wear and tear; he'd abused his penis like a madman ever since he arrived. But it was also unsettling, like wrapping a rubber band around your thumb and leaving it on for too long. It was turning that kind of blue.

Tomorrow would be two days since he'd popped the Viagra cocktail, and his dick was showing no sign of taking a rest. Francis, on the other hand, was exhausted; the constant boner had become more of an albatross than a joy. He needed to rest and hoped that if he took the night off, had a quiet meal and a hot bath, laid off the booze and speed, it might help his cock deflate.

The hotel room had its own Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom and he'd spent the last half hour soaking in it, letting the steaming water and bubbling jets unwind his speed-freaked muscles. It worked, too. He felt all the chemical tension and fatigue begin to melt away. But the Jacuzzi hadn't had much effect on his cock. It stood out of the water like a buoy bobbing in the harbor.

Periscope up!

After the bath, Francis sat in his terry-cloth robe and calmly ate a green salad and grilled skinless chicken breast while he watched an old movie, a clumsy drama about some straight guy who falls in love with a woman who doesn't believe in love because she's a successful something-or-other. He drank Evian. He was being good.

Then the phone rang.

“I figured you'd be sitting alone in front of the TV eating room service, so I thought I'd call.”

It was Chad.