KAUA'I ME A RIVER.

By JoAnn Ba.s.sett.

This one's for Diana and Roger Paul.

Mahalo nui loa for including us in your Kaua'i hau'oli la hanau celebration.

CHAPTER 1.

Up until noon I'd avoided thinking about my birthday. But then the mail carrier came in and thumped a stack of bills and bridal catalogs down on my desk and waved a white business envelope under my nose.

"You know anybody this name?" growled the mailman. It wasn't actually a mail "man", but a mail "lady," but not by much.

I stared at the envelope. The name I go by is Pali Moon. But the letter in question was addressed to my birth name-a lengthy string of celestial gibberish that my 1970's hippie parents must've considered real *far out.' I never use my real name. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of people who even know it. But there it was.

"Oh, this must be a friend messing with me," I said. I hoped the mail carrier hadn't noticed my eyes bug out when I'd read my birth name and put two and two together and realized this letter had come on my birthday. Even under the pressure of her scowl I managed to come up with an almost believable fib. "My college roommate and I took Astronomy together and we came up with crazy handles for each other."

"I didn' know," she said. "I almost throw it in the *return' pile but I think I betta ask. We gotta do the da kine job, ya know."

"Mahalo, and sorry about the confusion. I'll tell her to knock it off."

The return address was a lawyer's office in Ha.n.a.lei, Kaua'i. I a.s.sumed it was a lawyer because, honestly, who else but a lawyer would use the word *Esquire' after their name? What does the word even mean? It conjures up an image of a chap in top hat and leather breeches gripping a riding crop and clopping through town on a chestnut mare. Not exactly the image I had of the residents of the little town of Ha.n.a.lei on the north sh.o.r.e of Kaua'i. Ha.n.a.lei's enduring claim to fame is it was the inspiration for a hippie-days ode to pakalolo-marijuana-called "Puff the Magic Dragon."

It took me a minute to calm down after the mail carrier left. Why would a lawyer in Kaua'i send me birthday greetings?

My birthday has always been a downer. When I was a kid, I didn't like it because it fell in mid-June when school was out for the summer. I never got to wear the crumpled Burger King crown in cla.s.s and I never got to ask the girls in my room to a sleepover. Now that I'm a fully-functioning adult, my birthday b.u.ms me out for a different reason. It's not the getting older. I don't mind getting older. I turned thirty-five this year and it's fine. I'm a lot more confident at thirty-five than I ever was at twenty-five. What's depressing is my birthday shines a light on my almost complete lack of family, or ohana. In Hawaii, ohana is the backbone of society. But aside from a half-brother on the mainland, I don't share even a smidgen of DNA with another soul on the planet.

The good news is I'm usually too busy in June to sit around fretting about my birthday. I'm the owner of "Let's Get Maui'd," a wedding planning business in Pa'ia, Maui. June is my second-busiest month; December being number one. For the past couple of years I've managed to dodge my *special day' by concentrating on pleasing fussy brides on their *special day.' And that's fine with me.

Soon after the mail arrived my best friend, Farrah Milton, called me on my cell. "Happy birthday, Pali. When are you coming over to get your present?" Farrah works right next door to my shop, but she has to call and ask me to come over if she wants to see me. She runs the Gadda da Vida Grocery and she can't leave the store for even a couple of minutes. The residents of Pa'ia are p.r.o.ne to *the munchies' at all times of the day or night. A locked door between a guy and the Snickers bar he's craving is an invitation to major property damage.

"You free now?" I said.

"Not free, but the price is dropping fast."

"Okay. I'll be right over."

I went in through the front. There's an annoying little tinkly bell on the front door that announces anyone coming or going. I used to come in through the back to circ.u.mvent the bell, but Farrah got jumped last year so now I'm careful to avoid startling her.

"Hey, hau'oli la hanau!" she said, wishing me happy birthday. She dashed around the counter and gripped me in a tight hug. Farrah isn't fat, at least by American standards, but she isn't wiry like me, either. If I were making a stick figure of Farrah I'd draw her middle section as sort of an oval. I'd put in a sideways "8" to emphasize the girly parts. She has major "girls" that are hard to ignore.

"You don't look a day over thirty-four," she said with a wink. "You and Hatch going out tonight?"

"No, he's working today. He's planning something great for tomorrow, though."

"Well, I've got something for you right now." She handed me a small box wrapped in newspaper and tied with a length of dried palm frond. "Totally recycled wrapping. Cool, eh? But no worries, I didn't re-gift you or nuthin'. I picked your present out special."

I tore off the wrapping. Inside was a jeweler's box. I don't wear jewelry so I hesitated. I needed to prepare myself to say, *Oh, I love it' when I really didn't.

I popped up the lid. Inside was a necklace with a gleaming Tahitian pearl strung on a black rubbery cord. For someone who isn't into jewelry it was a great compromise.

"Wow, it's perfect," I said truthfully. "Really gorgeous." The large pearl was a deep smoky gray. When I held it up to the light it shimmered with jade green and rosy pink highlights.

"Okay, like I get it that you don't dig jewelry, but your birthstone is pearl. And I thought the black rubber thing makes it more like an amulet than a necklace. And you know how I feel about amulets."

Farrah's chosen lifestyle puts a capital "C" on the words *counter-culture'. She owns an impressive a.s.semblage of Tarot cards, Ouija boards, crystals, pyramids and charms. Her collection of all things paranormal is along the lines of a foodie collecting cookbooks or a cat lover filling her house with cat calendars, kitty T-shirts and feline figurines.

"Mahalo for the beautiful amulet," I said. "I'm going to put it on right now."

She helped me with the clasp and we hugged again. A customer came in so we said our good-byes and I slipped out the back. In the fuss over my birthday present I'd totally forgotten to tell her about the lawyer letter.

I took the unopened envelope home with me that night. Farrah had been busy with customers for the rest of the afternoon, so I hadn't been able to go back over and show it to her. I wanted to open it with a friend standing by to offer moral support. Next to Farrah, my roommate Steve is just such a friend. From the day he moved in we've been way more than just roommates. We're close. Not in the way you might expect a boy/girl thing to go, but close like brother and sister. A couple of years ago when he responded to my *roommate wanted' notice I'd balked. I was a bit leery of taking on a guy as a house mate. I didn't need the aggravation of s.e.xual tension and double entendres with my morning coffee. Luckily, Steve cleared things up right away.

"Uh, are you in favor of gay marriage?" he'd asked after I'd given him a short tour of my three bedroom, two bath house in Hali'imaile.

"Well, yeah. I'm a wedding planner. I'm pretty much in favor of any kind of marriage there is."

"No, what I mean is, I'm gay. So would you find it offensive if I had friends, you know, like gay friends, visit me here at the house?"

"You mean like sleep-overs?"

"Maybe."

"Look, I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own room. I only care that you obey the law, keep the noise down and clean up after yourself."

"You know guys like me sort of hold the patent on clean," he'd said. "You want to check out my car? You could eat sushi off the floor mats."

"Got it. So, I guess my next line is *Ho'okipa to your new home.' That is, if you think you'd like to live here with me."

He hugged me. And that was the start of a beautiful friendship.

On my birthday night I parked my decrepit green Geo Metro on the street and came up the front steps. I rarely use the front door, but since it was a special occasion I thought I'd get festive.

"Hey," yelled Steve. "I'm in the kitchen making you a fabulous dinner. I hope you weren't expecting a surprise party."

"Thanks but once a year is enough for me."

Steve had organized a big blow-out party when I'd been released from witness protection right before Christmas. It'd been fun-the party, not witness protection-but I was glad he'd stifled the urge to go for an encore after only six months.

"I'm pulling out all the stops, girl," he said as I came into the kitchen. "Steven hinted he'd like to be invited, but I told him I wanted to give you my full attention."

"I still think it's funny your boyfriend's name is Steven. Do you both turn around when someone at the Ball and Chain calls your name?"

He looked puzzled. "No. Because his name is Steven and mine is Steve. I think I can recognize my own name when I hear it."

"Ooh, touchy," I said. "Sounds like this topic's come up before. Sorry. Anyway, speaking of names, get a load of this." I handed him the still-sealed envelope. Steve was one of the handful of people who knew my real name.

"What's this? Looks like it's from a lawyer," he said.

"Yeah. A lawyer on Kaua'i."

"Weren't you born on Kaua'i? Maybe it's something to do with your mom."

My mother had been a 1970's hippie who'd lived at Taylor Camp, a hippie haven on the North Sh.o.r.e. She died when I was five years old. My little brother and I were taken in by her best friend, a woman we called Auntie Mana. Auntie moved us to Maui to be closer to her extended family. As a single mom with three teenagers of her own and now two little hanai kids-that's what Hawaiians call foster kids-Auntie Mana needed all the help she could get.

"I don't know. It's been almost thirty years. You'd think anything to do with my mom would've been cleared up by now."

"Why haven't you opened it?"

"I guess I'm afraid of what it might say."

"Do you want me to do it?" He pulled a paring knife from the knife block on the counter.

I nodded.

"Sheesh, you've got a black belt in martial arts and you're scared of a piece of paper," Steve said in his tsk-tsk voice. "Maybe you've got *pulpuslacerataphobia'."

"What the heck is that?"

"Fear of paper cuts. Look it up, it's a real word."

He slit the envelope and pulled out the letter. It was a single sheet. From what I could see, it didn't look like there was much writing on it.

"Hmm" Steve said when he was finished reading. "Confucius say: You are about to embark on a long journey."

"Long journey?"

"Well, I guess a trip to a neighbor island would be a long journey for Confucius," he said. "They didn't have airplanes back then, you know."

"Give me that."

Steve handed me the letter.

I read it. When I finished, I was even more confused than before.

CHAPTER 2.

Sure enough, the letter was from a law office. The attorney who'd sent it wasn't the same person as the name on the return address, however. The signature was that of one Valentine Fabares, and she didn't use the honorific "Esquire" after her name but rather "Attorney-at-Law."

The message was brief. I'd been summoned to Ha.n.a.lei to attend a meeting regarding an "urgent family matter" on Wednesday, June 27th. Since I had no family to speak of except my little brother, I figured it must be a mistake.

I looked at the clock. It was six-thirty in Maui, which made it nine-thirty at night in San Francisco. Probably too late to call an acquaintance but not too late to pester a family member.

"Hey, Jeff," I said when he answered. I always resented that Jeff had a normal name. He had a different father than I, so either his dad was less hippie-trippy than mine, or my mother had learned her lesson and she'd insisted on a name that didn't sound like two stoners naming their kid after enjoying two joints of pakalolo and a tab of peyote. Jeff had the same last name as my mom, Warner. Hard to imagine a more normal name than Jeff Warner.

"Hey, Pali. How's it going? Everything okay?" Jeff and I are what I'd call "arm's length" siblings. We both care about each other, but we don't make keeping in touch a high priority.

"It's all good. I'm calling about something I got in the mail today," I said.

"Yeah? What is it?" His voice sounded as if he was waiting for me to say something funny. "Oh, I get it. Today's your birthday and I forgot to send you a card. Sorry."

"No, that's not it. I got a letter from a lawyer on Kaua'i. Did you get one too?"

"No, but it'd take longer to get here. What's it say?"

I told him about the meeting in Ha.n.a.lei on the twenty-seventh.

"Seems I haven't been invited," he said. A beat went by and he said, "Pali? Who's it addressed to?" It was as if he was two steps ahead of me. Jeff works at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. He's literally a rocket scientist. He's been two steps ahead of me since he was three years old.

"The name that shall not be named."

"Huh. Well, there's a clue for you right there."

"Yeah, maybe. Anyway, how're you doing?" I said. It didn't feel right to just ask him about the letter and hang up; especially since it was my birthday. We chatted for about ten minutes and then Jeff said he had to be at work by six so he better get to bed.

"We should talk more often," he said.

"Yeah, we should."

"Oh, and happy birthday, Pali. I'll let you know if I get a letter like yours."

I hung up feeling good I'd talked to Jeff, but also thinking that more than likely he wasn't going to be summoned to Ha.n.a.lei. I had a strong feeling the *urgent family matter' had nothing to do with me or my pitiful two-person family.

The next morning I called the law offices of Raymond Albrecht, Esquire, and Valentine Fabares, Attorney-at-Law. I gave my name as *Pali Moon' and asked to speak to Ms. Fabares. She came on the line almost immediately.

"Ms. Moon, I'm glad you called," she said. She did sound glad, which made me relax a little. She'd probably already realized her mistake and was as eager as I was to clear it up.