Chapter 28: Saralinda

"So you guys live on a yacht?" Malia asked me.

"Yeah, a yacht or a ship or whatever. It's in Fiji right now. We'll be flying there in a few days to catch up with them." I didn't really want to explain all about why we were still on Maui after the ship left, and about Dr. Anna, and everything. But I told her more about Furthurmore, and about all of the people.

"So, Gary's got himself a harem. Huh. Figures..."

A harem? I'd never really thought about 'The Girls' being Gary's harem. It did kind of fit, sort of. But it sort of didn't.

"It's not really a harem," I told her. "Like, harem women are all kept locked up, aren't they? With, what do you call those guys – eunuchs – guarding them. And they aren't allowed to do anything except wait for the master to call for them. It isn't like that with Gary. We can do whatever we want, and we don't have to sleep with Gary if we don't want to. And, like, Joanne sleeps with Jake and Sid too, and she's getting married to some guy who used to be on the boat. And I saw Kate and the captain have sex once."

"But you're one of these women?" she asked me quietly.

"Well, kind of, I guess. Not officially, yet. I'm sort of just a guest. But I'm upstairs with the other 'Girls', and I help with the chores, and, um, I sometimes sleep with Gary..."

We were sitting on the lanai of her grandmother's house, with a huge tray of flower blossoms in front of us. The smell was overwhelming. Moira and Gary were off with Malia's brother, checking out something. Malia hadn't wanted to go with them, and I'd wanted to be with Malia, so I stayed behind too. Malia was showing me how to make leis; how to chose the flowers and string them on the thread. She was really fast at it, and her leis always came out perfect. Somehow, she knew exactly which flower to pick up next to fit with the one before. Mine came out kind of, I don't know, lumpy.

"You said you wanted to get off Maui?" I asked her to change the subject.

"I do," she replied emphatically. "Not for forever, but I want to get away from leis for a while."

"Maybe you could come with us. Joanne is leaving the ship in Fiji – she's going to San Diego to get married – so there's going to be an empty room."

Malia's hands froze, and she looked at me.

"But you don't do anything, do you? I mean, you just sail around, eating good food, and partying, and having sex, right?"

"Well, I guess we go on hikes and tours and birdwatching and stuff whenever we get somewhere," I explained, though it felt a bit empty saying it.

Malia shook her head, and her hands got busy with the lei again.

I sat there in silence, feeling stupid and babyish next to her. Here we were on the bare veranda of a wooden house, stringing flowers on strings to sell to tourists, and I was kind of offering to have Malia leave this primitive life for a world tour on a rich guy's fancy yacht. And she'd suddenly made me feel like I was the poor one. 'You don't do anything, do you?' Ouch.

"Well, what do you want to do?" I asked her.

Malia was silent for a long while, and I was afraid I'd pissed her off by asking, or something. Finally she spoke.

"I want to become a conservation biologist. But nobody here can see past my looks and my background. They see me only as someone's future wife. So I need to go somewhere else, off-island, and go to school."