Chapter 1

It wouldn’t have been so bad if Carmel, as he liked to call his bastard self, had died snorkeling, or picking up a cone shell, or falling off a fucking cliff. Yes, I would have felt stabbed in the heart, butI’d have been surrounded by sympathetic friends and enveloped in loving arms. If he’d died of AIDS, I’d have had understanding and condolences, but he had never had anything worse than crabs, and that was a long time before I’d met him. But no, all he’d done was spread rumors about me and make up some huge imaginary mountain out of an imagined slight. And he had taken off with a twenty-two-year-old lady-boy, a katoey, from Thailand.

So now what I get are phone calls and texts saying, “Russell, did you really do that to Carmel? Because he seems like such a nice young man. I don’t know why he would just turn on you like that for no reason, so there must have been something you did!”

So now Russell is the asshole, and it’s affecting my emotional life right when I’m mourning not only the loss of my love but also the loss of whom I thought my love was, and of my own identity in relation tohim. I have these health issues going on, too, and I thought he’d be my mainstay through them. I don’t feel bad for a man of thirty-seven, but my doctor noticed a few things and wanted me to have a cardiologist appointment, a colonoscopy, and blah, blah, and blah. Here, everything is done on Maui Time and is often fucked up beyond belief by people who don’t speak English as a first language, nursesand PAs who may or may not have reached puberty yet, going by how fucking young they look, and so on.

To top it off, the gully-washer rain storm and run-off cancelled my underwater photography session withthe guy looking to make a multi-million-dollar movie here. I don’t have a Plan B for income this month,and Carmel ran off without paying his half of the bills. So I wasn’t in a good mood when the phone rang,once more.

“Yeah,” I growled.

“Russell? It’s Mike. Dad passed away. The funeral is Tuesday, so I hope you can hop a plane and get here. You know you’re the…”

That’s all I heard. I hadn’t heard my brother Mike’s voice in sixteen years, not since he’d married Cecile and she’d told him his gay brother was not to be invited anywhere near her good Christian home and their future children.

I mumbled, “Okay,” and hung up.

Well, if I have to fly to the mainland right away, at least it gets me out of the damn colonoscopy. I’d better get on the phone and cancel things. At least I don’t have to worry about that bastard being upset because I have to go away. Go fuck yourself, Carmel. Oh, I forgot, you have a lady-boy to do that for you.

But damn, Carmel had turquoise eyes you could sink into, a body a gym-bunny would die for, and a smile that bewitched men and women alike. Sometimes I don’t know what he saw in me, but then I look at my bankaccount. Shit. Must stop thinking and feeling sorry for myself and get some phone calls made.

Daddy’s dead? He was so young. I thought he had years to go. I wonder how Mom is holding up, or if she even understands he’s gone. I wonder what the hell happened.

* * * *

That was Sunday. Carmel had taken his leave (and his things and some of mine) on Friday night after dinner, which I’d fixed, and after telling me how many boffos he’d had on the side during the two years we were together.

I had loved him and thought he’d loved me. I can’t say we even had any fights, and maybe that should have warned me. I don’t know. I’d never been in love before, well, not since tenth grade when I crushed so hard on the gym teacher. I had thought that was love, and when he’d married Miss Ingles, the art teacher, I was devastated.

Which reminded me! Now that I knew Carmel had been unfaithful, to say the least, I needed to make an appointment to get tested, right away. Goddamn it. I thought I was over all that kid stuff, but nope. And now I had to get airplane tickets for tomorrow? I might have inserted a few soft words about my feelings. No, I doubt they were soft.

Oh, geez, I can’t be busy hating Carmel right now and have my brother’s face pop up in its place. I can’t hate Dad anymore if he’s dead. Shit, I can’t even make up with him, like I’ve been ready to forthe past ten years. Asshole.