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“What does that mean?”

“She has a stainless steel bar connecting her labia lips.” The doctor tried to draw a diagram in the air to help Stanley understand. “It's common nowadays. Everyone's getting metal stuck through their genitals.”

Stanley felt dizzy. He leaned against the wall. Now more than ever he was committing himself to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“What happened?”

The doctor again struggled to suppress her smile. This was, after all, a story she would tell at parties and medical conventions for the rest of her life.

“It appears that repeated impact with the metal bar caused your father's air bags to rupture.”

When Stanley still didn't register comprehension, she spoke in the vernacular.

“His penis got popped.”

Sid plopped the sizzling teriyaki steak down on a plate in front of Joseph. “Dis is new.”

Joseph looked at the meat. There was no way he was going to eat it. “Smells like you added pineapple juice.”

“Taste dis.”

Joseph shook his head. “I'm not hungry.”

Sid wasn't about to take no for an answer. “C'mon den. Try it fo' me. Da haoles are gonna love it. I call it North Shore steak, Haleiwa-style.”

Joseph pushed the meat away. “I'm thinking about becoming a vegetarian.”

Sid looked at him like he was insane. “Why fo' you do dat den?”

“Look, Uncle, I'm just here for the bones.”

“Dey on da roof.”

“They ready?”

Sid nodded. “Dey ready.”

Joseph took a cardboard box and a pair of disposable rubber gloves up to the roof and began packing the bones. The maggots and the sun had done their job, stripping the bones of any remaining tissue or marrow and drying and
bleaching them so they looked like something you would find in a science lab or doctor's office.

Somehow, as just a pile of bones, they didn't make Joseph feel nearly as queasy as when they were part of a viscous, bacon-smelling, steaming heap of cooked flesh. He packed them in the box and carried it down the ladder.

Sid was waiting at the bottom with a roll of packing tape. Joseph looked at him.

“Wait. I want to add something.”

“What fo' den? Dis is enough.”

Joseph put the box down and went into the house. He came back with a pen and a slip of paper. Sid looked worried.

“I want to send a message.”

“A box of bones is fo' sure plenty message.”

Joseph scrawled the message on the paper and held it up for Sid to read.

Sid laughed. “You da crazy one in dis family.”

He followed Joseph over to his truck and watched him put the box of bones on the passenger seat.

“You wanna taste the North Shore steak Haleiwa-style now?”

Joseph shook his head. “I'm going to go away for a while.”

“You goin' fo' mainland?”

Joseph nodded. Sid patted Joseph on the shoulder.

“We catch some work soon, dat fo' sure. Don' worry. I call you when we got work.”

“Thanks.”

Joseph gave his uncle a hug and climbed into his pickup. Sid gave him a long look.

“I'm sorry 'bout da gay guy. You wuz right.”

Joseph nodded. “I'll be in touch.”

“Dis your
ohana.
Don' forget.”

“I won't.”

Joseph smiled, started the truck, and drove off.

...

It is difficult to sleep balancing a stupid rock on your root chakra.

Every time he moved, even if it was just a tiny twitch, the rock would roll off. Francis wondered if the constant rolling would interrupt the curative powers of the crystal. Maybe he should just tape the thing on.

He'd grown accustomed to the stench of the patchouli, he hardly smelled it anymore, but now he worried that he'd corrupted his nose and would never be able to smell anything else. Then Yuki came over with a new mix of aromatherapy insanity and began spritzing it around his room. Francis wanted to be annoyed with her, but he couldn't. For all her New Agey weirdness, she cared about him, something he couldn't say about his ex-significant other.

Francis had received the documents from Chad's lawyer. A sizable sum was being held in an escrow account for him. All he had to do was scribble his initials in six different spots—little plastic stick-on arrows pointing the way—and sign at the bottom.

Francis didn't even think twice. He signed it and dropped it in the return pouch. It wasn't because of his sudden unemployment; it was because he didn't want to dwell on it. He didn't want to think about his relationship with Chad. All the lies, infidelity, and negativity: Francis was past
that. He was moving in a positive direction. He was ready to start a new life.

He prayed that the stupid crystal balanced on his ass would do the trick.

...

He should've come home a hero. A man who had stood up for free enterprise, for the American way of life. A man who had gone to battle against a Sumo and a tribe of savages and returned triumphant. A man who didn't just talk the talk, a man who actually walked the walk.

But he didn't feel that way. Jack felt deflated. Victory was not ensured. The situation in Honolulu was more complicated than he thought; his only living relative had run off and joined a hula-dancing cult of Mormon freaks, and here he was sitting in his urologist's office learning from the fucking quack who'd put the air bags in that they couldn't be removed without permanent tissue damage and the loss of all penile function for the foreseeable erection-free future.

Jack sat there wearing one of those stupid paper gowns and listened as the quack reeled off a laundry list of bad news. It appeared hopeless. The only light at the end of the tunnel was a risky procedure that a team of doctors in Bangkok had developed. Something about Thai marital relations made it a somewhat common occurrence for cheating husbands to get their cocks chopped off by angry wives. Thai doctors had become the world's leading penis reattachment specialists. The idea the urologist had was to actually remove portions of Jack's penis and reattach them through microsurgery.

It would take a few months for Jack's penis to heal enough to be removed, so he'd just have to sit tight. This was the best Western medicine could offer.

On the one hand he was relieved. Having a constant boner for years on end can make you a little—well, edgy. Aggressive, even. It was like the air bags kept a testosterone engine pumping away in his brain. Once his penis was popped, after the initial excruciating pain subsided, Jack felt relaxed for the first time since he had the stroke.

It was almost as if he were a different person. When Stanley told him he was quitting the business and staying on Oahu permanently as some kind of missionary, Jack just nodded. He didn't even feel like yelling. How could he? When Jack thought about it, Stanley's conversion seemed inevitable. His son was a follower looking for a leader. Jack wasn't mad, only disappointed. He consoled himself with the knowledge that at least Stanley was in a place with nice weather.

Jack thought about selling his business. Retiring. Maybe he could dump the Hawaiian headache and the Vegas operation on some sucker. But then what would he do—collect Social Security and hang around Las Vegas? Sit glassy-eyed and limp-dicked in a strip club? Rot away in the sun like some leathery old lizard? No fucking way was he doing that. Retirement is for people who can't think of anything better to do. Retirement is for losers.

Jack decided he needed to spend more time in the office. Get some work done. Be responsible. And save up for a trip to Thailand.

...

Lono had heard about a woman's touch, but he'd never actually seen it in action until Yuki moved into his loft. The first thing she did was paint the walls a series of pinks, purples, and soft greens. Then she went out and bought furniture. Lono tried to warn her that Topaz might make a scratching post out of some of the things, but she didn't care. She was making a comfortable home for both of them. The cat would have to adjust.

Lono would have to adjust too. He'd come to the conclusion that now would be a good time to get out of the sex industry. In fact he wanted to sever his ties with the criminal underworld all together. It had something to do with seeing those two chumps in their matching black suits lying dead on the ground. Not that they hadn't deserved it; Lono wasn't feeling guilty; it was something else, something he couldn't put his finger on. He'd begun to feel uneasy. Started looking over his shoulder when he knew no one was there. It was a warning from the island spirits. It was time.

He'd saved up plenty of money and was thinking of investing in a farm on the big island. Organic baby lettuce. Why not? All the tourists want it. And if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was give the tourists what they want.

Yuki, expecting a sizable settlement from her sexual harassment suit, was all for it. It was, she said, part of her life mission to help the planet and the human race by doing something productive and beneficial. What could be better than organic farming?

...

Joseph wrapped the box as carefully as possible. He felt a little bit like one of those mad bombers you see in movies. He
didn't want to leave a hint of anything on the package, no fingerprints, marks, or telltale hairs that could be traced back to him. It had to be clean, totally generic. He put down the Beretania Street address of the Honolulu Police Department as the return address. He didn't use a name.

Not that he was worried that the guys in Las Vegas would call the cops. What would they say? We sent some hitmen to kill these guys in Hawaii and look what they did to them? It was more likely they'd just throw the box in the trash and get the hell off the island. That was the hope anyway.

He filled out the address forms at the Federal Express office, declined insurance, and paid cash.

Then he went home to finish packing.

...

He had called; he wanted to see her before he left. But Hannah had decided that she didn't want to say good-bye. She didn't want some tearful scene at the airport, didn't want to have to come home to her messy little house and deal with the fact that he was gone. She was hoping that by putting it off, by delaying it, maybe it wouldn't happen. At least maybe it wouldn't feel real.

So she didn't return his calls. Instead she graded tests, prepared classroom assignments for the coming weeks, and drank a six-pack of beer. She was hoping she wouldn't cry, she really tried not to, but she did anyway.

Mary Sue Meaker was having a bad day. She just wasn't built for kicking habits she loved. It was the third time this year she'd tried to quit smoking. She'd stopped drinking caffeinated coffee, sodas, and tea a couple of months ago and had just barely managed to do it without taking an ax to her lazy-ass husband, Bert. She'd managed to give up the bacon and eggs for breakfast and the double-whammy cheeseburgers for lunch, somehow lowering her cholesterol seventy points without having to eat like a rabbit.

Now her doctor was telling her she had to quit smoking. So she crawled out of bed, brewed up a big cup of decaf, and set about fixing her hair without her customary cigarette smoldering like incense in the ashtray on her vanity.

She was trying to get her hair to stand up, have a little body like that country singer she admired, but it was almost impossible. Mary Sue had to spray half a can of lacquer just to approximate the effect, and all the hair spray she inhaled had given her a weird little buzz. She needed a smoke just to get back to normal.

Mary Sue pulled a box of nicotine patches out of her purse and slapped one on her arm. She thought for a minute
about putting another one on, just to be on the safe side, then decided to save it as a backup. She said good-bye to Bert, who was busy reading the sports page while he irrigated his colostomy bag at the kitchen sink. Bert nodded in her direction and asked her to get some real bacon on the way home tonight. The turkey bacon just wasn't cutting it, and it was tomato season. How the hell can you have a proper BLT with turkey bacon? Mary Sue knew he was right; she didn't know if she could quit smoking and not eat bacon at the same time, so she said she'd pick some up on the way home.

She walked outside and climbed into her Toyota, rubbing the nicotine patch to kick-start whatever the hell it did, cranked the air conditioner all the way up—her hair, it should be noted, did not move in the breeze—and headed to work.

She had been working for Jack Lucey Production Catering for almost fifteen years. She liked it there. Jack was a good guy to work for, when he wasn't trying to get her to spend the afternoon with him at the Silver Mine Motel just outside of town, and she thought Stanley was a super kid. Real neat.

She'd been with them through good times and bad. Mary Sue classified this Hawaii escapade as one of the bad times. She'd never seen Jack or Stanley acting so strange.

Her doctor had told her that stress was a killer. Naturally, she worried about Jack. She was glad he was coming back. She didn't know the nature of his emergency, but she was getting lonely in the office.

Mary Sue had been at work a couple of hours when the FedEx guy arrived. She'd already drunk half a pot of decaf, checked the fax machine and found out it had run out of toner, answered several inquiries by e-mail, read the paper,
skimmed the latest issue of
Weekly Variety,
taken a couple of phone messages, spoken briefly with Stanley about sending some money to the Honolulu bank account, and slipped a second nicotine patch onto her ankle.

The FedEx guy was cute, and if Mary Sue had been twenty—make that thirty—years younger she would've thought about asking him to meet her for a cocktail after work. Instead, she signed for the box and began scouring the office for some scissors so she could cut the thick tape that bound it.