It required only two hundred miles of cottony white clouds, as seen from several miles above a sparkling blue Pacific, for the three girls to become acquainted. Seated together on the starboard side of the aircraft, they made an interesting study in contrasts with Kalola's dark, exotic beauty, the blonde prettiness of Ellen Canfield, and Lynn, the vivid and vivacious redhead.
By the four-hundred-mile point, they had begun to tell each other their troubles.
"I saw your picture in the paper," Lynn sympathized with Ellen. "How terrible for you for your… her… husband to die that way."
Ellen regarded her blankly. Then her lazy, pretty mouth curled into a smile that was half sincere. "You mean like the papers said, from an overdose of 'L'? Bullshit, darling. Maxy fucked himself to death, and don't start thinking what a lucky girl I was either. The son of a bitch didn't screw himself into the next world on me. He got tired of me after the first week. All I did after that was hustle for him to keep him in bread."
"Men are dirty bastards," Kalola put in, her eyes slitting and her lips forming a hard, bitter line. "I will never be nice to another man. I will take them for everything I can get from them… after I have made them screw me, of course."
"My own experience with them has not been so good," Lynn confessed. "My own husband divorced me for no better reason than because he happened to catch me playing with his best friend's cock. Now, mind you, we hadn't done a thing. It was at a party and we'd all been drinking. I'd been dancing with this man and he got a hard-on, and all I did was take it out and stroke it a little."
"And they think they're so superior," Kalola snorted, "the narrow-minded, nasty, selfish bastards!"
Ellen nodded in sympathetic agreement.
"What will you do in the islands?" Kalola asked her.
Ellen shrugged and looked vague. "I don't know. I hear there's a nice hippie colony out on Oahu. Max had two kilos of pot stashed away. I sold it for enough to get a plane ticket. I still got a half a kilo and a dozen tabs each of LSD, mescaline and speed. That'll get me by for a while."
"You're better off than I am," Lynn said. "That cheap brother-in-law of mine gave me only three hundred dollars. I guess I'll have to find me a little grass shack on the beach and live off of bananas."
Kalola looked at her pityingly. "Boy, you malihini wahines sure got plenty to learn. If you find a grass shack anywhere, it will be on top of a high-rise apartment building and cost you two hundred bucks a month. They catch you swiping bananas they put you in jail and forget they got you in there."
"What is a malihini wahine?" Lynn asked.
"Wahine is girl," Kalola replied, "and malihini is newcomer… like tenderfoot or greenhorn. You'll be lucky to find an apartment at all. I've got friends who live in what we call 'The Jungle'. That's the poor people's district off the main street in Waikiki. Sometimes you can get an apartment there for a hundred a month… you pay the gas and lights."
"Why don't the three of us try to find one together?" Lynn suggested. "Wouldn't that be fun?"
"Sure," Kalola agreed, "but I don't know what we'll do for a living. You don't know anything but teaching school, and I guess I can't get a job dancing… not after walking out on my contract in San Francisco."
"Why don't we all turn pro?" Ellen asked. "Seems to me, with all the rich tourists and other squares there, we ought to make out okay by whoring."
"Probably have to," Kalola agreed.
"I wouldn't mind," Lynn said. "But maybe there's a better way. I have a very good camera with me, and I'm something of an amateur photographer. We can probably rig up a darkroom to develop our own pictures. What I had in mind was blackmail. We pick out an important man and one of us brings him to the house. When you both have your clothes off and things are getting real interesting, one of the others can take the pictures. With infra-red film you don't even have to have light."
The other two looked at Lynn with suddenly increased respect.
"Maybe you're not so malihini after all," Kalola said. "Okay, I'll go see Joe Moto when we get to Waikiki. Maybe he's got a house for us."
It has been said that the most charmingly Polynesian part of Oahu is the International Airport at Honolulu. That this atmosphere is deliberately and not too subtly contrived detracts not one whit from the validity of the statement, for the rest of the island is even more commercial, more of a tourist trap, and even phonier.
Not that this meant a thing to Kalola. She was used to it and expected nothing else. From the time the plane came in sight of the crater of Haleakala on Maui, and then swung north to pick up Diamond Head, she was happy because she was home. She didn't need to hear the canned strains of "Beyond the Reef" to become misty-eyed. The familiar scent of plume ria or pikake was enough to strum the strings of her sentimental heart.
Ellen glanced disinterestedly about her with that bored and blase attitude she considered most proper and becoming to a hippie.
Lynn, on the other hand, was full of "ohs" and "ahs" and behaved in the normal, rubberneck fashion of the typical tourist. She had to be steered firmly by souvenir stands offering koa ashtrays, ersatz grass skirts, ukeleles and numerous other items… most of which had been made in Japan.
They took the airport bus to Kalakaua Avenue and were in the heart of famed Waikiki, although all they could see of it were the fronts of huge hotels, apartments, stores and honky-tonk spots.
"Isn't there supposed to be an ocean around here someplace?" Lynn asked, disappointed.
"Oh, sure," Kalola replied. She waved a hand to the west. "Somewhere out there beyond the hotels… if some mainland real estater hasn't drained it and started a new sub-division. Come on. We go find Joe Moto." She led them down Lewers Street and turned on Kuhio Avenue, stopping in front of an ancient frame building with a faded sign on its porch. The sign depicted a sick-looking palm tree. Beneath this time-worn cutout could be seen the name, "Pacific Paradise Hotel." The grounds were shaded by kukui trees and the moist, warm air was cloying with the sweet scent of frangipani. Behind the office they could see, half hidden by the lush, tropical growth of shrubs and flowers, a number of small shacks that leaned awry on crumbling foundations.
A bandy-legged, squat and swarthy man with squinted slits of eyes and a bald, bullet-shaped head, came out at Kalola's call. He stood on the front porch, picking his teeth with a match stick and regarding the three girls dubiously. "You come back, hunh?" he greeted Kalola. "You want house now. Who these other wahines?"
"Friends of mine," the little dancer told him. "Come on, Joe, fix us up with a place. We plenty damned tired."
"I dunno," Joe said. He was eyeing Ellen, taking in her flowered pants and the medallion hung between her large breasts. "We don't want no hippies. Big trouble from cops alla time."
"Boy, you sure dumb," Kalola rejoined scornfully. "All rich tourists from mainland dress hippie style now. Anyway, Ellen no make you trouble. She damn good, hard-working whore."
"Oh," Joe Moto said. "Why didn't you say so? Okay, take number four. It ain't locked." He started back into the house. "Rent went up again while you was gone," he said. "You pay one-twenty a month now."
"Jap sonomobeech!" Kalola muttered under her breath as she led the two girls to number four. The two bedroom house was permeated by the musty smell of mold and of rotting timbers. It was permanently occupied by countless cockroaches, cane spiders bigger than the inside of a tea cup and small lizards of all colors.
"Is it a house or a Goddamned zoo?" Lynn asked plaintively as she looked for a spot free of insect life where she might deposit her suitcase.
"You'll get used to 'em," Kalola assured her. "Let's go swimming."
They changed into bathing suits and walked the shaded streets to the beach, a small semicircle of sand between two hotels and crowded with people. They swam in the warm water and played in the almost negligible surf, then stretched out on the beach to take the sun.
"Who should we start on?" Lynn asked as she wiped suntan lotion on her gleaming thighs. "I mean where do we start looking for a blackmail victim?"
"Wouldn't just whoring be simpler?" Ellen questioned, but Kalola ignored her. Her forehead was wrinkled in thought.
"Hey!" she exclaimed, "I bet I know who we can take. Mike is running for state senator. He's got a thing about blondes. With election coming up, he'll be a cinch. You want to try him, Ellen?"
Ellen shrugged. "Why not? The islands seem a funny place to be making it with an Irish politician… but what the hell."
"He's not Irish," Kalola explained. "His name is Mike Fuda. He's jap. I can introduce you to him."
"Let's go home then," Lynn suggested. "I want to see about turning that closet in my bedroom into a darkroom, and I have to figure out where I can hide and get a shot of him and Ellen."
"You chicks go ahead," Ellen said lazily. "I'm gonna stay on the beach awhile."
"Okay," Kalola agreed, "but be right here where we can find you later. Soon as Lynn gets everything set up, I'm going to call Mike Fuda and make a date for you. Mike goes for blondes like a monkey goes for peanuts. He'll start at your toes and eat you up."
Ellen shrugged. "I don't mind getting eaten. There was a queer kid in San Francisco who'd come up to the pad every day to eat my pussy, until that damned Max started charging him."
After the other two had left, Ellen slept for a while. She awoke and sat up to light a cigarette and stare dreamily out at the flat, shimmering expanse of blue that was the Pacific. She felt no particular thrill at the knowledge that she was in the Hawaiian Islands. To her, a beach was a beach and an ocean was just a hell of a lot of water. Had Max not upset her life by dying, she would as soon have been back in the dark, familiar confines of the room they had shared in the building a block off of Haight Street, San Francisco. When she thought of the many friends, of both sexes, who had come there to make love to her on the semen-stinking, urine-soaked mattress, she grew homesick and wished she had not come to the islands in the first place.
She had no illusions concerning her chosen role in life as a hippie girl. She was well aware of the fact that she was not a real hippie and that the crowd she had met in the Hip Room were nothing more than a group of moral degenerates who had found it convenient to dress and talk like hippies as a cover for the constant round of dissipation that had become a way of life for them. Among those who had accepted Max as a leader, she had never heard a discussion on any subject more serious than the high price of dope, or how to stay stoned and sexually debauched without working. She had mentioned moving to the hippie colony, but doubted that she would be accepted by them. It suited her purpose to remain with the two girls she had met on the plane. If they wanted her to hustle for them, that was all right with her. She thought that being a professional prostitute was the best job in the world, and remembered with scorn her previous life as a virginal secretary in an insurance office.
A young man, blond-haired and husky, came out of the water before her. He stooped to retrieve a surfboard, tucked it under his arm and came up the beach toward Ellen. He stopped in front of her and stood there dripping, an appreciative grin on his face.
"Hi," he said. "You must be a new arrival. I haven't seen you before. Do you surf?"
Ellen shook her head, her long, blonde hair rippling across her back in the sunlight. "No. Is it fun? Why don't you tell me about it?"
He sat down beside her and accepted one of her cigarettes. He told her his name was Dan McCraken and that he was on summer vacation from college on the mainland. "Surfing is groovy," he assured her, "but not so good when the waves aren't up. Like that out there." He waved his hand to indicate the listless, two-foot-high surf. "That's strictly a bummer. What are you doing here? Are you vacationing, too?"
Ellen smiled and failed to answer. She was quite adept at not answering personal questions until she was ready. "You smoke pot or drop acid?" she asked instead.
Dan hesitated a moment, then admitted that he had tried it a few times.
"I thought you might have some friends who'd want to buy," she said. "In case you do, I'm holding."
"I might," he replied cautiously. "How about a date tonight? We could go to a show."
Ellen regarded him intently. She saw that he was less mature than she had first supposed. Still, he was big enough and old enough. He was apparently dumb and innocent, but he had a good, muscular body and, to her, cock was cock.
"Okay," she agreed, "but let's get everything understood between us from the start. You'd like to fuck me, wouldn't you? You figure if you take me to the show, and maybe buy me a hamburger, you can talk me into giving you a little. That right? Well, why don't we save ourselves some time? I don't give a shit about shows or hamburgers. I just like getting laid. So, if you want to screw me, never mind the rest of that crap. Okay?"
Dan's prominent Adam's apple jerked up and down and he blushed deeply under the peeling red and brown of his recently acquired tan. "Gosh! I never met a girl like you before. Yeah, if you want it, I sure do. You're the prettiest chick I've ever seen."
"I don't want to wait until tonight, either," Ellen declared. "There must be some place on this beach where we can do it."
"Sure," he said eagerly. "Up toward Diamond Head, there's a little cover. Hardly anyone ever goes there. Wait 'til I leave my board with some friends of mine." He rose and took his surfboard over to where a group of youths his own age lolled on the sand. He talked with them for a minute, then returned.
It was quite a long walk, but on the way Ellen confirmed her belief that it was probably going to be worth it. As soon as they were out of sight of the crowd, she slipped her hand inside Dan's bathing trunks to feel his prick, ascertaining to her satisfaction that his cock was fully man sized, and that it was already hard as stone and throbbing with readiness.
She calculated that they would be gone no more than two hours. Surely it would take Kalola and Lynn longer than that to get the house fixed up the way they wanted it and arrange the date with Mike Fuda for her.
The cove was as isolated as Dan had promised and was the prettiest spot she had yet seen on the island. He led her to a natural bower formed by red ginger and hibiscus. As they dropped together to the warm, white sand, she was already taking off her bikini top and Dan was staring in slack-jawed fascination at her pink-tipped, creamy breasts as he fumbled to remove his own shorts.
Ellen laughed. "You never see any tits before? Suck 'em, buddy boy, they're vitamin enriched."
Danny did. He thought she was the strongest, boldest girl he had ever met, but although she embarrassed him, she also inflamed him with desire. She was certainly unlike any of the scrawny, flat-chested, sun-bleached girls who ran with the surfing crowd in California.
"Wipe the sand off of your cock and stick it in me," she ordered as she tugged to make him roll over on top of her. "I haven't been fucked since I left the mainland and I'm burning up. Ah, yes! That's it! Goddamn, how I like having all that meat in my cunt! Ram it to me, baby!"
Dan was fumbling and inept. She was only the third girl he had ever done it with, although he talked big among the other boys and bragged about imaginary couplings. Encouraged by her urging, he let himself go, jamming his cock in and out of her hot, grasping cunt with what he considered brutal force.
Ellen was disappointed. He came quickly, before she could, pulling out of her to leave her frustrated and still passionate. She sighed, realizing he didn't know any better. She would have to pretend it was all right and try to get him ready again. The second time would be different. He was grinning down at her, obviously proud of himself and believing he had shown her a good time. She kissed him and wiggled her hips suggestively. It was no use. They'd have to wait.
At that moment a shadow fell across them, and she looked over his shoulder to see another boy standing in the entrance to the bower. She recognized him. He was one of the surfers with whom Dan had left his board. Behind him were four others.
"What the hell you guys doing here?" Dan demanded angrily.
"We just thought we'd see how you were making out, little buddy," the one nearest the entrance said, grinning wickedly. "We thought you might need a little help."
"He sure does," Ellen replied for Dan, pushing him off of her. "Line up, fellows. Better yet, if one of you wants some asshole, I'll take you on two at a time."
Ignoring the protesting Dan, they crowded into the bower and one stripped off his trunks, getting astride of her with no need for further invitation. She let him enter her, then made him turn on his side so she could raise one leg. "Come on," she said to another of them, "do it in my ass. I like being double-decked."
She squealed with delight when the boy began working his prick into her anus and the first one started humping her. She imagined she could feel the two cocks almost touching each other within her body. This was living, she thought exultantly. To have hard, male bodies, smelling of sweat and salt water, filling her and hammering at her, hands and eager mouths mauling and sucking at her breasts, to know that this was happening while others watched, waiting their turn while they stared with burning eyes at her naked limbs, seeing the cocks tunneling into her… this was the only time she really came alive.
She saw that even Dan was getting another hard-on. She rolled toward him. "Put it in my mouth," she told him. "Let me suck it for you." Now she was complete, every body orifice fully utilized, the three different kinds of sensation building in her all at once. She began to come, going a little crazy with each climax that followed one after the other in nearly continuous procession, each one more poignantly ecstatic than the last. Then her cunt, her ass and her mouth were suddenly full of cum, the sticky, hot stuff flooding her as the boys grunted and cried out in the wonderful agony of passion. Ellen came a final time herself.
She was limp and weak when they pulled out of her, but only for a minute. She called to the others, "Take me now… the same way. Hurry, don't let me cool off." They willingly mounted her and fucked her with fresh enthusiasm. She looked up at one of the boys who had just left her body. "If you know more guys, go get them," she begged him. "I want a real gang-bang. Please!"
He pulled his trunks into position and trotted off on his errand. He knew where he could usually find at least a dozen of the surfer crowd hanging out.
It was two o'clock in the morning when Ellen walked into the house on Kuhio Avenue. She hoped the other girls would be asleep, but they were not. They were sitting in the living room, glaring at her and tapping their fingers on chair arms. An empty bottle and two glasses were on the end table between them, but they weren't drunk… just furious.
"I know… I know," Ellen sighed wearily, holding up a hand to forestall their attack. "I know I'm a cop-out and a bummer, but I couldn't help it. You see, I met this surfer and it turned out he had a bunch of friends and… well… the first thing I knew it was too late to keep a date with Mike Fuda and…"
Joe Moto stirred uneasily and came awake. He listened to the commotion for a while. "I knew it," he scolded himself. "I knew them three cunts would be nothing but big trouble. Lucky if someone don't call the cops. Maybeso tomorrow I throw 'em out on their asses." But he knew he wouldn't… not as long as they paid the exorbitant rent he was charging them. His Oriental soul would have known no peace had he, through petulance, allowed his temper to cause him to miss the chance to make a profit.