![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solidfoamsoulOkay, this is some of my BFF's (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kittencuffs) new fic "Monkees' Island". Behind the cut cuz, well, ya it's long.
AND GOOD.
So read it and comment and tell us how much you like it.
The Monkees (and Peter and Micky's girlfriends) end up stranded on a deserted island.
So this is Chapter One of who knows, Parts one and two of seven. She doesn't wanna post it at any "real" fic areas until she's finished it.
It was my fault.
Just... totally my fault. I'm the one who got us into the whole mess in the first place. If I hadn't responded to that ad in the paper—if I hadn't even looked at it, none of this would have ever happened.
It sounded legitimate to me, it really did. It was just a sweepstakes offer, send in your name and address with three dollars and you could win an All-Expenses-Paid Vacation to One of the Most Beautiful Tropical Isles in ALL THE WORLD! Come on, three bucks wasn't so much for a vacation. And I'd always wanted to visit the tropics. (...Okay, I wasn't exactly sure where the tropics were, but everyone's always saying how beautiful they are, right? Who wouldn't want to visit them?) And the symphony hall where my girlfriend Mona and I played was coming to the end of its season, and we'd been together for three months now, and that wasn't too soon to ask her to take a trip with me, right? Especially since I'd ask the guys, too, and Nora, who was Mona's twin sister and also Micky's girlfriend.
It would've been a lot of fun if we won, and I thought we'd all have a really good time, that's all.
So I didn't tell anyone about it. I cut the ad out of the paper (Micky didn't like that; the other side had the last half of an article about a go-go club with topless dancers that was trying to open in town, but couldn't get their cabaret license approved because everyone was objecting to them opening at all), and spent the week collecting bottles to turn in. That was hard, though, because we already turned in our bottles every week, and it was Mike's job to take them all down, and there was no way I could sneak them out past him. And Mona's and Nora's whole building collected bottles together, and used the money to fund their food co-op. I tried digging through garbage cans in the street, but the police kept chasing me away. (That was okay, though; you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I found in there, yuck!) So I went around the building, asking people for their bottles. Mostly, I got the door slammed in my face a lot, but a few people let me have their bottles.
At the end of the week, though, I only had one dollar and ten cents, and the deadline for mailing in entries was the next day. So I pulled out my piggy bank, and Mike gave me the hammer (he made me promise, though, to be careful and not smash my fingers with it first), and I said goodbye to Corky, tied a tiny handkerchief around his little shoe button eyes and sent him off to that great deposit box in the sky.
After counting up my life savings, I borrowed another eight cents from Davy, and took the entry down to the post office myself the next morning.
For a couple weeks, I would jump on Mike as soon as he brought the mail in, but there was never anything for me except the telephone bill. I just assumed that I'd lost, as usual, and forgot all about it. That was okay, though; I'm allergic to coconuts anyway.
So when a big manila envelope arrived addressed to me, and I had to sign for it, I got a little nervous. When you had to sign for packages, that was fun—but signing for letters only meant trouble. The other guys hovered over me while I untied the flap, and tried to soothe me.
“Hey, Pete, I bet it's just a jury summons!” Micky said, as though that were any reassurance. “That's no big deal, you just go down to the courthouse for a few hours every day until the trial's over, and then you go back into the jury room with eleven other guys and decide whether some kid really did knife his father or not.”
“He can't even decide which socks to wear in the morning, how's he gonna decide whether someone he doesn't even know lives or dies?”
“He'd go with whatever Henry Fonda says,” Mike put in, “but that's too big to be a jury summons. They're folded up, and you don't have to sign for them. Maybe you're being drafted.”
I whimpered and threw the envelope across the room at that suggestion.
“It's not a draft notice,” Micky sighed with exasperation as he fetched the envelope. “Draft notices have the national seal in the corner.” He displayed the front of the envelope, tapping on the seal-free corner.
“Done anything to be sued for?” Davy asked.
“You guys are a lot of help!” I groaned, and finally untangled the string. I held my breath as I unfolded the flap and dumped the contents out on the coffee table. A thin magazine, a stiff envelope and a cover letter slid out. Micky grabbed for the magazine, Davy for the envelope, and I picked up the cover letter. Behind me, Mike started reading it out loud over my shoulder.
“'Dear Mister Tork,'—hey, man, Mister Tork is his father—'An entry in your name was recently made for a raffle to win an All-Expenses-Paid Vacation to One of the Most Beautiful Tropical Isles in ALL THE WORLD! This letter of congratulations is to inform you that you have won'—hey, Pete, you won something!”
He reached around and took the letter out of my hands, and continued reading. I sighed and looked in the envelope, hoping there was another part to the packet that I could discover for myself. (There wasn't.)
“'—that you have won an All-Expenses-Paid Vacation for you and your friends, a maximum of eight people—'”
“I don't have eight friends,” I interrupted.
“Look on the bright side,” Micky consoled, pulling his glasses out of his pocket to read the magazine better, “you don't have eight enemies, either.”
“Don't interrupt. '—to the island of,' uh, Koo... Coco... Hey, Mick, what's this word?” Mike passed the paper to Micky, pointing; Micky adjusted his glasses and squinted to where Mike pointed.
“Kukokeli Ikelanaka,” he rolled off easily, handing the paper back to Mike.
“Yeah, to the island of what he said, 'for five days and six nights. Your only requirement will be to attend four one-hour seminars, held in the Grand—' Mick?”
Micky leaned over Mike's shoulder and read, “Kaleaki Mokeli.”
“'—Hotel where your party will be lodged. Your reservations include room and board, full room service, pool privileges, access to the hotel's exclusive gym and sauna, and two private boat rentals from the—'”
“Ponukonu Kouloko.”
“'—rental company to tour the local island shorelines, to be redeemed at your convenience. Please find your reservation slips enclosed; fill them out with the names of each guest you'll have accompany you, mail them in the provided return envelope, and we'll take care of the rest! Best regards from Paradise, R. J. Royal,—'”
“Hoaka Kakama.”
“'—Properties.'” Mike patted Micky on the head and handed the letter back to me. “Did you really sign up for a raffle?”
“Yeah, almost a month ago,” I said, carefully tucking the paper back in the manila envelope. I never won anything like this before, and I didn't want to wrinkle everything. “I forgot I did, though. Isn't it great when you send off for things, and then forget you did, so when they come in, it's like Christmas?”
“Reservation slips right here,” Davy said, handing me the little envelope. “You just fill out the names, like it says, then put them back in here and mail it off.”
“Wild place,” Micky added, engrossed in the brochure. “Beaches, volleyball, swingin' nightlife... Sounds like a groovy vacation to me.”
“You can bring up to seven friends, so who you gonna take, mate?”
“Well, you guys, of course.”
“Ah, you're the best!” Davy grinned, clapping me on the back.
“Well, okay, if you're sure you wanna bring us,” Mike said, pretending to be modest, but I saw him trying not to grin.
“And Mona, too.” Davy whistled suggestively; I was going to correct him—Mona and I had only been together a few months, and she liked to take things slow—but Micky's elbow prodded me in the ribs viciously. “Ow! Micky!” I pulled away, rubbing my side. He had elbows like iron clothespins sometimes. “And Nora, too! I wouldn't leave Nora out!”
“Aw, me brother!” he wailed, affecting a horrid Italian accent. He threw his arms open (and his glasses across the room; Mike fetched them before someone stepped on them) and tackled me in an overenthusiastic hug, smacking loud kisses on my cheek. “I knew Mama, she was a-wrong when she told me you would never accept me as-a one'a your own!”
“Yeah, okay, okay,” I said, pushing him away and swiping at my cheek. “But I'm going to invite them, okay? It's my invitation!”
“Of course, pal! Of course you'll be the one to invite them!” He pushed me over to the couch and sat me down, then clunked the telephone in my lap. “Right now!”
It was my fault.
These guys, they kinda... look up to me, you know? I grew up with four brothers and two sisters, and I practically raised them myself. I guess, if we were a typical family, I would be the father. (Micky would be the mother, I think, since he looks best in a dress. Peter and Davy would be our 1.6 children—Pete the one, Davy the point-six. ...Yeah, I think I've given this a little too much thought.) I'm supposed to look out for them. These knuckleheads work themselves into a frenzy over some new hare-brained scheme, and I keep them from going bust. It's kinda like my job, dig? It's more than just the band, they're like my brothers.
Guess I fell asleep at the wheel this time. I should've smelled that rat from a thousand paces. I should've seen right through that scam and put a stop to everything before we ever started out. But I didn't. I dragged us all right into it.
Micky hovered over Pete as he spoke to Mona, and snatched the phone away the moment Pete told her about the trip. The two of them darted back and forth from the kitchen area to the living area, Pete trying to capture the phone again (without tripping over the cord) and Micky trying to keep him from capturing the phone again (while making him trip over the cord). Just when I was thinking I should stop this before someone fell down and broke an organ, they rounded the staircase for the final time; with four inches of cord left, Micky ran out of room to run and Peter reclaimed the phone and announced to either Mona or Nora that he was coming over. Micky made a face that clearly said “Why didn't I think of that?” and followed him out the door.
As soon as they were gone, I put in a call to the Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel to check out whether they were expecting reservations to be made in the name of this sweepstakes. I thought that would put an end to the whole thing then and there, but the hotel operator said that yes, they were expecting it, and even gave me Pete's name as the winner. I called Hoaka Kakama Properties; R. J. Royal was in conference, but his secretary repeated all the details of the trip to the letter. I even called the Coast Guard to ask if the island of Kukokeli Ikelanaka really existed, and it did.
Everything sounded so legit that I forced myself to shake off the bad vibes I was feeling. We didn't get good things sent our way too often—not like this, anyway; every now and then we'd get a lucky break on a gig, or Babbitt wouldn't catch up with us for a couple days when the rent was due, but that was about as much favor as we got—and I didn't want to ruin it for everyone with a suspicious mind. So that night, I helped Peter fill out the reservation card, and three weeks later we were winging our way across the Pacific Ocean.
The flight was mostly uneventful, save for the first fifteen minutes when Mona and Pete both discovered they had a fear of flying they'd never known of. Oh, and a rather awkward moment when the four-year-old seated in front of Micky turned around for a moment, then announced to his mother (and the cabin in general) that “that man has his hand up that lady's skirt!” There was almost an air hostess pileup as all four of them rushed over to quiet the kid and his mother (he got a pair of wings and about a thousand red crayons, she got a glass of wine), throw blankets in Nora's and Micky's laps, and then take Mona's plea for two aspirin and a double martini.
Once we'd landed and were released into the terminal, Peter immediately sank down onto the nearest bench to try to conquer his queasiness, and Micky bailed for the men's room. Davy, Mona and Nora followed me to the baggage carousel to claim our luggage, but Mona and Nora quickly turned their full attention to their whispered argument. (I distinctly heard Mona hiss the term “Mile High Club.”) I don't think it was coincidence that Peter's stomach settled, Micky emerged from the rest room, and Mona and Nora abandoned their argument all at the exact moment Davy and I wrestled the final trunk onto the dolly. Grinning conspiratorially while Davy and I wheezed, Micky innocently offered to push the dolly out to the waiting Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel shuttle van.
I should've realized something was fishy when our chariot backfired constantly on the highway, but I didn't. The driver shouted back, over the steady plinka-plink of ukulele music on the radio, that the engine “got sad” when he went over 45 miles an hour. Micky, our resident mechanic, didn't seem to find anything wrong with that statement, so I figured it was good enough for me. (It never occurred to me to look and see if he was even paying attention; he probably had his hand up Nora's skirt again.) I should've realized something was fishy when we all suddenly lurched forward as the driver turned off the paved road, but I didn't then, either. (One of our bags fell off the overhead luggage rack and landed squarely on Pete, who squawked in alarm.)
No, it wasn't until we pulled up in front of the Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel that I realized something was fishy. As the van slowed to a stop, Davy leaned across my lap to peer out the window at the ramshackle building with the sand-scoured stucco and weedy landscaping.
“Is this it?” he asked me softly.
“'Fraid so,” I answered reluctantly.
The driver twisted around in his seat and made an elaborate gesture. “Welcome to the Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel!” he said brightly. “Please enjoy your stay, and know that the shuttle van is at your service any time between nine and seven. All you need do is pick up your phone and request service at the front desk.”
“Thanks, man,” I nodded, but I think he turned away and hopped out of the van before he heard me. Davy and I shared a look of apprehension as we stood to help Micky and Peter pull down the bags from overhead. The driver came around the back and opened the rear door to drag our trunks onto the gravel driveway. We each shouldered as many bags as we could manage (except Micky, who only took one trunk, refusing to remove his other arm from around Nora's waist; I'm no psychic, but I had a strong feeling we wouldn't be seeing too much of them this week—not clothed, anyway), and followed the driver-cum-porter into the hotel.
Peter, clutching the manila envelope he'd received three weeks ago, rang the bell at the front desk as we all stared around the foyer.
“Gosharoony,” Micky whistled softly, “'grand' must be a colloquial term...”
We all nodded in silent agreement. This place may have been grand once, but it had gone to seed a while back, probably before any of us were born. The walls were papered with red and gold brocade, but most of the gold had worn away to reveal a rusty orange color underneath. The floors were hardwood, but hadn't seen a good waxing in months, maybe years, and had swollen out of joint from the salty, humid ocean air. The trim around the windows and doorways was painted glossy white, but the paint was bubbled and peeling off in strips at the edges. A glass chandelier hung overhead, adorned with thick ropes of cobwebs between the crystals; three bulbs were burnt out, too.
I looked around, noticing a sincere lack of presence in the lobby. “Seem kinda quiet in here to you guys?”
“Yeah, it does,” Mona agreed. She was still eying the webbed chandelier warily.
“Maybe the place is haunted!” Davy hissed in a spooky voice. “We haven't played that one in a while.”
”Hallooo!”
We all jumped a mile and a half (and one of us gasped a startled “Oh my god!”—and I'm ashamed to say it might have been me) as the desk clerk came bustling out of the back room. He was a squat, round man with a horseshoe of reddish hair and massive eyebrows, wearing a garish orange-and-red Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a threadbare undershirt beneath, and Bermuda shorts. The smoldering cigar he was chomping on smelled worse than the bottom of the laundry hamper back at the pad, too.
“Good afternoon!” he greeted, beaming at us, “and welcome to the Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel! How may I assist you on this beautiful island day?”
Peter stepped forward. “Hi, my name is Peter Tork and these are my friends and we won a sweepstakes!” he rattled off, and eagerly thrust his paperwork at the man.
The clerk's demeanor changed instantly. “Oh,” he grumbled, scowling deeply. “One of you. Right. Yeah, your rooms are all ready. One-oh-nine and one-twelve, one flight up.” He turned to the board of key hooks on the wall behind the desk (most of the keys, I noticed, were present and accounted for), plucked two rings off, and grudgingly handed them to Peter. “First seminar is in twenty minutes, refreshments will be served, don't be late.”
“In twenty minutes?” Davy asked incredulously. “We have to do one of these things now? Already?”
“Yeah, man,” Micky sighed unhappily, “we'd really like to unpack and... ah, settle in, you know?” He rocked on his heels, gently bumping his hip against Nora's; she bit her lip to hide a smirk and slid her gaze off toward the stairs.
He glared sourly at Davy, and released a stream of cigar smoke in his direction. “Twenty minutes,” he confirmed with a dour nod. “Don't be late.”
As we reluctantly picked up our bags again and headed for the stairs, Peter, pointing out the silver lining as usual, said, "At least there'll be refreshments!" Smiling brightly, he slung three bags over one shoulder and took a trunk with his other arm, and started up the stairs; two steps up, he slipped on a loose board and fell sprawling back into Davy and Micky.
More to come, when she codes it all up and when I get back from work...
kittencuffs) new fic "Monkees' Island". Behind the cut cuz, well, ya it's long.AND GOOD.
So read it and comment and tell us how much you like it.
The Monkees (and Peter and Micky's girlfriends) end up stranded on a deserted island.
So this is Chapter One of who knows, Parts one and two of seven. She doesn't wanna post it at any "real" fic areas until she's finished it.
It was my fault.
Just... totally my fault. I'm the one who got us into the whole mess in the first place. If I hadn't responded to that ad in the paper—if I hadn't even looked at it, none of this would have ever happened.
It sounded legitimate to me, it really did. It was just a sweepstakes offer, send in your name and address with three dollars and you could win an All-Expenses-Paid Vacation to One of the Most Beautiful Tropical Isles in ALL THE WORLD! Come on, three bucks wasn't so much for a vacation. And I'd always wanted to visit the tropics. (...Okay, I wasn't exactly sure where the tropics were, but everyone's always saying how beautiful they are, right? Who wouldn't want to visit them?) And the symphony hall where my girlfriend Mona and I played was coming to the end of its season, and we'd been together for three months now, and that wasn't too soon to ask her to take a trip with me, right? Especially since I'd ask the guys, too, and Nora, who was Mona's twin sister and also Micky's girlfriend.
It would've been a lot of fun if we won, and I thought we'd all have a really good time, that's all.
So I didn't tell anyone about it. I cut the ad out of the paper (Micky didn't like that; the other side had the last half of an article about a go-go club with topless dancers that was trying to open in town, but couldn't get their cabaret license approved because everyone was objecting to them opening at all), and spent the week collecting bottles to turn in. That was hard, though, because we already turned in our bottles every week, and it was Mike's job to take them all down, and there was no way I could sneak them out past him. And Mona's and Nora's whole building collected bottles together, and used the money to fund their food co-op. I tried digging through garbage cans in the street, but the police kept chasing me away. (That was okay, though; you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I found in there, yuck!) So I went around the building, asking people for their bottles. Mostly, I got the door slammed in my face a lot, but a few people let me have their bottles.
At the end of the week, though, I only had one dollar and ten cents, and the deadline for mailing in entries was the next day. So I pulled out my piggy bank, and Mike gave me the hammer (he made me promise, though, to be careful and not smash my fingers with it first), and I said goodbye to Corky, tied a tiny handkerchief around his little shoe button eyes and sent him off to that great deposit box in the sky.
After counting up my life savings, I borrowed another eight cents from Davy, and took the entry down to the post office myself the next morning.
For a couple weeks, I would jump on Mike as soon as he brought the mail in, but there was never anything for me except the telephone bill. I just assumed that I'd lost, as usual, and forgot all about it. That was okay, though; I'm allergic to coconuts anyway.
So when a big manila envelope arrived addressed to me, and I had to sign for it, I got a little nervous. When you had to sign for packages, that was fun—but signing for letters only meant trouble. The other guys hovered over me while I untied the flap, and tried to soothe me.
“Hey, Pete, I bet it's just a jury summons!” Micky said, as though that were any reassurance. “That's no big deal, you just go down to the courthouse for a few hours every day until the trial's over, and then you go back into the jury room with eleven other guys and decide whether some kid really did knife his father or not.”
“He can't even decide which socks to wear in the morning, how's he gonna decide whether someone he doesn't even know lives or dies?”
“He'd go with whatever Henry Fonda says,” Mike put in, “but that's too big to be a jury summons. They're folded up, and you don't have to sign for them. Maybe you're being drafted.”
I whimpered and threw the envelope across the room at that suggestion.
“It's not a draft notice,” Micky sighed with exasperation as he fetched the envelope. “Draft notices have the national seal in the corner.” He displayed the front of the envelope, tapping on the seal-free corner.
“Done anything to be sued for?” Davy asked.
“You guys are a lot of help!” I groaned, and finally untangled the string. I held my breath as I unfolded the flap and dumped the contents out on the coffee table. A thin magazine, a stiff envelope and a cover letter slid out. Micky grabbed for the magazine, Davy for the envelope, and I picked up the cover letter. Behind me, Mike started reading it out loud over my shoulder.
“'Dear Mister Tork,'—hey, man, Mister Tork is his father—'An entry in your name was recently made for a raffle to win an All-Expenses-Paid Vacation to One of the Most Beautiful Tropical Isles in ALL THE WORLD! This letter of congratulations is to inform you that you have won'—hey, Pete, you won something!”
He reached around and took the letter out of my hands, and continued reading. I sighed and looked in the envelope, hoping there was another part to the packet that I could discover for myself. (There wasn't.)
“'—that you have won an All-Expenses-Paid Vacation for you and your friends, a maximum of eight people—'”
“I don't have eight friends,” I interrupted.
“Look on the bright side,” Micky consoled, pulling his glasses out of his pocket to read the magazine better, “you don't have eight enemies, either.”
“Don't interrupt. '—to the island of,' uh, Koo... Coco... Hey, Mick, what's this word?” Mike passed the paper to Micky, pointing; Micky adjusted his glasses and squinted to where Mike pointed.
“Kukokeli Ikelanaka,” he rolled off easily, handing the paper back to Mike.
“Yeah, to the island of what he said, 'for five days and six nights. Your only requirement will be to attend four one-hour seminars, held in the Grand—' Mick?”
Micky leaned over Mike's shoulder and read, “Kaleaki Mokeli.”
“'—Hotel where your party will be lodged. Your reservations include room and board, full room service, pool privileges, access to the hotel's exclusive gym and sauna, and two private boat rentals from the—'”
“Ponukonu Kouloko.”
“'—rental company to tour the local island shorelines, to be redeemed at your convenience. Please find your reservation slips enclosed; fill them out with the names of each guest you'll have accompany you, mail them in the provided return envelope, and we'll take care of the rest! Best regards from Paradise, R. J. Royal,—'”
“Hoaka Kakama.”
“'—Properties.'” Mike patted Micky on the head and handed the letter back to me. “Did you really sign up for a raffle?”
“Yeah, almost a month ago,” I said, carefully tucking the paper back in the manila envelope. I never won anything like this before, and I didn't want to wrinkle everything. “I forgot I did, though. Isn't it great when you send off for things, and then forget you did, so when they come in, it's like Christmas?”
“Reservation slips right here,” Davy said, handing me the little envelope. “You just fill out the names, like it says, then put them back in here and mail it off.”
“Wild place,” Micky added, engrossed in the brochure. “Beaches, volleyball, swingin' nightlife... Sounds like a groovy vacation to me.”
“You can bring up to seven friends, so who you gonna take, mate?”
“Well, you guys, of course.”
“Ah, you're the best!” Davy grinned, clapping me on the back.
“Well, okay, if you're sure you wanna bring us,” Mike said, pretending to be modest, but I saw him trying not to grin.
“And Mona, too.” Davy whistled suggestively; I was going to correct him—Mona and I had only been together a few months, and she liked to take things slow—but Micky's elbow prodded me in the ribs viciously. “Ow! Micky!” I pulled away, rubbing my side. He had elbows like iron clothespins sometimes. “And Nora, too! I wouldn't leave Nora out!”
“Aw, me brother!” he wailed, affecting a horrid Italian accent. He threw his arms open (and his glasses across the room; Mike fetched them before someone stepped on them) and tackled me in an overenthusiastic hug, smacking loud kisses on my cheek. “I knew Mama, she was a-wrong when she told me you would never accept me as-a one'a your own!”
“Yeah, okay, okay,” I said, pushing him away and swiping at my cheek. “But I'm going to invite them, okay? It's my invitation!”
“Of course, pal! Of course you'll be the one to invite them!” He pushed me over to the couch and sat me down, then clunked the telephone in my lap. “Right now!”
It was my fault.
These guys, they kinda... look up to me, you know? I grew up with four brothers and two sisters, and I practically raised them myself. I guess, if we were a typical family, I would be the father. (Micky would be the mother, I think, since he looks best in a dress. Peter and Davy would be our 1.6 children—Pete the one, Davy the point-six. ...Yeah, I think I've given this a little too much thought.) I'm supposed to look out for them. These knuckleheads work themselves into a frenzy over some new hare-brained scheme, and I keep them from going bust. It's kinda like my job, dig? It's more than just the band, they're like my brothers.
Guess I fell asleep at the wheel this time. I should've smelled that rat from a thousand paces. I should've seen right through that scam and put a stop to everything before we ever started out. But I didn't. I dragged us all right into it.
Micky hovered over Pete as he spoke to Mona, and snatched the phone away the moment Pete told her about the trip. The two of them darted back and forth from the kitchen area to the living area, Pete trying to capture the phone again (without tripping over the cord) and Micky trying to keep him from capturing the phone again (while making him trip over the cord). Just when I was thinking I should stop this before someone fell down and broke an organ, they rounded the staircase for the final time; with four inches of cord left, Micky ran out of room to run and Peter reclaimed the phone and announced to either Mona or Nora that he was coming over. Micky made a face that clearly said “Why didn't I think of that?” and followed him out the door.
As soon as they were gone, I put in a call to the Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel to check out whether they were expecting reservations to be made in the name of this sweepstakes. I thought that would put an end to the whole thing then and there, but the hotel operator said that yes, they were expecting it, and even gave me Pete's name as the winner. I called Hoaka Kakama Properties; R. J. Royal was in conference, but his secretary repeated all the details of the trip to the letter. I even called the Coast Guard to ask if the island of Kukokeli Ikelanaka really existed, and it did.
Everything sounded so legit that I forced myself to shake off the bad vibes I was feeling. We didn't get good things sent our way too often—not like this, anyway; every now and then we'd get a lucky break on a gig, or Babbitt wouldn't catch up with us for a couple days when the rent was due, but that was about as much favor as we got—and I didn't want to ruin it for everyone with a suspicious mind. So that night, I helped Peter fill out the reservation card, and three weeks later we were winging our way across the Pacific Ocean.
The flight was mostly uneventful, save for the first fifteen minutes when Mona and Pete both discovered they had a fear of flying they'd never known of. Oh, and a rather awkward moment when the four-year-old seated in front of Micky turned around for a moment, then announced to his mother (and the cabin in general) that “that man has his hand up that lady's skirt!” There was almost an air hostess pileup as all four of them rushed over to quiet the kid and his mother (he got a pair of wings and about a thousand red crayons, she got a glass of wine), throw blankets in Nora's and Micky's laps, and then take Mona's plea for two aspirin and a double martini.
Once we'd landed and were released into the terminal, Peter immediately sank down onto the nearest bench to try to conquer his queasiness, and Micky bailed for the men's room. Davy, Mona and Nora followed me to the baggage carousel to claim our luggage, but Mona and Nora quickly turned their full attention to their whispered argument. (I distinctly heard Mona hiss the term “Mile High Club.”) I don't think it was coincidence that Peter's stomach settled, Micky emerged from the rest room, and Mona and Nora abandoned their argument all at the exact moment Davy and I wrestled the final trunk onto the dolly. Grinning conspiratorially while Davy and I wheezed, Micky innocently offered to push the dolly out to the waiting Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel shuttle van.
I should've realized something was fishy when our chariot backfired constantly on the highway, but I didn't. The driver shouted back, over the steady plinka-plink of ukulele music on the radio, that the engine “got sad” when he went over 45 miles an hour. Micky, our resident mechanic, didn't seem to find anything wrong with that statement, so I figured it was good enough for me. (It never occurred to me to look and see if he was even paying attention; he probably had his hand up Nora's skirt again.) I should've realized something was fishy when we all suddenly lurched forward as the driver turned off the paved road, but I didn't then, either. (One of our bags fell off the overhead luggage rack and landed squarely on Pete, who squawked in alarm.)
No, it wasn't until we pulled up in front of the Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel that I realized something was fishy. As the van slowed to a stop, Davy leaned across my lap to peer out the window at the ramshackle building with the sand-scoured stucco and weedy landscaping.
“Is this it?” he asked me softly.
“'Fraid so,” I answered reluctantly.
The driver twisted around in his seat and made an elaborate gesture. “Welcome to the Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel!” he said brightly. “Please enjoy your stay, and know that the shuttle van is at your service any time between nine and seven. All you need do is pick up your phone and request service at the front desk.”
“Thanks, man,” I nodded, but I think he turned away and hopped out of the van before he heard me. Davy and I shared a look of apprehension as we stood to help Micky and Peter pull down the bags from overhead. The driver came around the back and opened the rear door to drag our trunks onto the gravel driveway. We each shouldered as many bags as we could manage (except Micky, who only took one trunk, refusing to remove his other arm from around Nora's waist; I'm no psychic, but I had a strong feeling we wouldn't be seeing too much of them this week—not clothed, anyway), and followed the driver-cum-porter into the hotel.
Peter, clutching the manila envelope he'd received three weeks ago, rang the bell at the front desk as we all stared around the foyer.
“Gosharoony,” Micky whistled softly, “'grand' must be a colloquial term...”
We all nodded in silent agreement. This place may have been grand once, but it had gone to seed a while back, probably before any of us were born. The walls were papered with red and gold brocade, but most of the gold had worn away to reveal a rusty orange color underneath. The floors were hardwood, but hadn't seen a good waxing in months, maybe years, and had swollen out of joint from the salty, humid ocean air. The trim around the windows and doorways was painted glossy white, but the paint was bubbled and peeling off in strips at the edges. A glass chandelier hung overhead, adorned with thick ropes of cobwebs between the crystals; three bulbs were burnt out, too.
I looked around, noticing a sincere lack of presence in the lobby. “Seem kinda quiet in here to you guys?”
“Yeah, it does,” Mona agreed. She was still eying the webbed chandelier warily.
“Maybe the place is haunted!” Davy hissed in a spooky voice. “We haven't played that one in a while.”
”Hallooo!”
We all jumped a mile and a half (and one of us gasped a startled “Oh my god!”—and I'm ashamed to say it might have been me) as the desk clerk came bustling out of the back room. He was a squat, round man with a horseshoe of reddish hair and massive eyebrows, wearing a garish orange-and-red Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a threadbare undershirt beneath, and Bermuda shorts. The smoldering cigar he was chomping on smelled worse than the bottom of the laundry hamper back at the pad, too.
“Good afternoon!” he greeted, beaming at us, “and welcome to the Grand Kaleaki Mokeli Hotel! How may I assist you on this beautiful island day?”
Peter stepped forward. “Hi, my name is Peter Tork and these are my friends and we won a sweepstakes!” he rattled off, and eagerly thrust his paperwork at the man.
The clerk's demeanor changed instantly. “Oh,” he grumbled, scowling deeply. “One of you. Right. Yeah, your rooms are all ready. One-oh-nine and one-twelve, one flight up.” He turned to the board of key hooks on the wall behind the desk (most of the keys, I noticed, were present and accounted for), plucked two rings off, and grudgingly handed them to Peter. “First seminar is in twenty minutes, refreshments will be served, don't be late.”
“In twenty minutes?” Davy asked incredulously. “We have to do one of these things now? Already?”
“Yeah, man,” Micky sighed unhappily, “we'd really like to unpack and... ah, settle in, you know?” He rocked on his heels, gently bumping his hip against Nora's; she bit her lip to hide a smirk and slid her gaze off toward the stairs.
He glared sourly at Davy, and released a stream of cigar smoke in his direction. “Twenty minutes,” he confirmed with a dour nod. “Don't be late.”
As we reluctantly picked up our bags again and headed for the stairs, Peter, pointing out the silver lining as usual, said, "At least there'll be refreshments!" Smiling brightly, he slung three bags over one shoulder and took a trunk with his other arm, and started up the stairs; two steps up, he slipped on a loose board and fell sprawling back into Davy and Micky.
More to come, when she codes it all up and when I get back from work...
