Prologue - The Robin Hood of Waikiki

This was no camp fire; this one definitely qualified as a bonfire. The rock enclosed fire pit was easily six feet across and piled high with enough hotly burning scrub and cedar wood from the surrounding desert to run a crematorium. It was more than anyone needed unless it was February – as in Presidents Day weekend - in the freezing high-desert night.

Rudy Davis and his friend Pete had spent the last two days hiking the low desert mountains in and around a place called Lost Coyote Gulch and now, they needed some serious warmth. They had seen the Gulch while pouring over topo maps at the Salt Lake BLM office, searching for places in the Utah desert that they had yet to explore. As soon as they saw the name, they knew they had to check it out.

“What is it about campfire coffee?” Rudy asked. “There’s no earthly reason why it should be this good, all scorched and overcooked and full of grounds.”

“It’s all about need.” Pete replied. “A bowl of white rice is the best meal of his life to a starving man.”

Rudy snorted. “When did you get so deep?”.

“I’ve always been deep. Just because I generally leave the philosophizing to you, doesn’t mean I’m not deep.”

"The only deep you are is the kind that requires boots." Rudy laughed.

Rudy stared into the fire for a while, luxuriating in the warmth. The moon was full and bright in a cloudless sky and he drew in a deep breath of crisp, sage-scented air. “Peace,” He said almost to himself. “Blessed peace.”

“Huh?”

“There’s just not enough peace in my life. That must be why I let you drag me out on these God-forsaken hikes in the middle of nowhere.” Rudy answered.

“Not enough peace, huh? I'm going to go out on a limb here; Circe?”

“Circe, work, everything. To tell you the truth, I just don’t know what it’s all about anymore." Rudy continued. "I mean, We drag around day after day, surviving, doing what we have to do, or maybe just what we think we have to do. The years flash by like mile markers on the interstate and our lives disappear before we’ve figured out how to live them.”

Pete wasn’t quite sure what to say to this. He understood what Rudy was getting at. Pete had constructed a careful facade around his own life and he found it best just to get through each day while trying not to think too much about it.

“Yeah.” He finally said. “I know what you mean.”

Rudy threw the dregs of his coffee on the fire and laughed. “Listen to us, we sound like a couple of used up old men. Hell, we’re in our mid-thirties. This is no done deal.”

“Yeah, you say that now, then tomorrow it’s back home and back to work the day after. Looks pretty done to me, unless that lotto ticket comes through. Nothing changes for the better unless you make it change.”

“Me? What about you?”

“What do I have to change for? You’re the one pissin' and moanin'.” Pete said.

“Touché.” Rudy laughed, getting to his feet and turning toward the tent. “I’m hitting the hay.”

He crawled into his sleeping bag exhausted from the 10 miles they'd done today. He drifted off to sleep with the lines from an old Eagle’s song dancing around in his head: “Things in this life change very slowly if they ever change at all.”

.....................................................

Rudy was aware of the stares when he checked his luggage at the Delta counter in the Salt Lake City International Airport, a mere 24 hours later. Stickers covered his distressed steamer trunk. That and the five foot long blue canvas duffel plus his trusty gym bag looked like a lot of gear to the average tourist. What they didn’t know was that he had spent the last couple of hours whittling a lifetime’s worth of possessions to these three parcels. It had been an illuminating, even cathartic exercise, deciding which of his possessions mattered enough to cart on them on his back. He was not a tourist, not this time. No, he was a fortune-hunter, an explorer, an adventurer, an intrepid... oh hell, he was an idiot.

Over the years he had passed through this airport more times than he could count but now he saw it with new eyes; the marble floors with the shape of a world map outlined in nickel under a sheen of highly buffed acrylic, the skiers with their sun-burned faces and white raccoon eyes where their goggles had been, the Mormon Missionaries saying goodbye to their families on their way to spread the one true Gospel.

That last image reminded him of the dream that had been the catalyst for this sudden departure from sanity, the one in which a Jellyfish dressed as a Mormon Missionary had told him it was time for a change in his life. The messenger may have been a bit ludicrous but his heart told him that the message was on point.

Up the escalator to Gate Level and down the long hallway toward the departure gates, framed photographs of various Utah sights slowly cruising past as he stood on the moving sidewalk. A silly, nearly imperceptible smile appeared as the one with the morning sun illuminating the upper portion of a red-rock canyon in Southern Utah approached and then disappeared in his wake. Had it really been only 36 hours ago that he’d been hiking there with his old friend Pete, blissfully ignorant of the pending changes in his life?

It was late twilight when the L10-11 rose off the tarmac and began it’s ascent above the Great Salt Lake. Thunderheads rolled in from the west and in the fading light Rudy could still see the shadowy green of the agitated monster below, white caps appearing like scales. They sped into the dark crimson of the vanishing sunset while the lights of the city disappeared into the wavering heat trail. Two hours later they were 30,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean as the last of the mainland lights disappeared and he finally leaned his seat back and closed his eyes. Since all of this had begun a few short hours and a lifetime ago, he had hardly given a thought to Circi. Now as he drifted off she haunted his dreams.

The first time he’d seen her was at the Merry Prankster, the little downtown tavern that Pete owned. She’d been hanging out there for a while with her latest beau, one of Pete’s ski buddies. Like every other man in the place, Rudy was struck by her looks. Her smooth skin and honeyed complexion made the perfect backdrop for the emerald eyes that reminded him of the Caribbean on its best day. The smattering of freckles across her cheeks provided punctuation.

Pete had tried to warn him off, but when he saw the look in Rudy’s eye, he knew he was just spitting into the wind. She was a man-eater, Pete had told him, and she’d made the rounds with most of his Ski Team pals. Sucked ‘em dry and then moved on.
“She’s a thousand dollar suit over a raggedy pair of underwear” he said. “All show, no go.” Rudy knew that Pete was telling it straight but he had that damned deviant Y-chromosome that’s so good at making men act foolishly.

A few days later Rudy saw her at the Prankster again, this time sitting at the bar alone, and he decided it was time to make his move. He sat next to her and said, “Hi, my name’s Rudy and I have to tell you, you have the most incredible eyes that I have ever seen.” It was a lame line but it was also the truth. Besides, she knew how to use them and they were telling him that any opening would do.

Circe sized him up for a few seconds then flashed a smile of perfect white teeth. “Well, what do you know, a man with something other that my tits on his mind.” Rudy nearly fell off his bar stool. He could picture himself in 30 years telling their grand kids how their grandmother had used the word “tits” in the first sentence she’d ever spoken to him. Classy. Truly elegant, he thought acerbically.

“Most guys think they can pick me up by telling me what a great rack I have, or they’ll tell me that I have the tightest little ass they’ve ever seen.”

H remembered wondering if the girl was for real but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. He couldn’t put his finger on just exactly what it was about her that set her so apart from all the other beautiful women in the world but at this moment, she was most physically appealing woman ever. It must be the eyes. He’d never seen eyes that color before and they were stunning.

“Maybe it’s that tiny little skirt and the cleavage you’re showing that inspires that. You should think about what you’re putting out there if you don’t like it.” That was a bit harsh, he realized as soon as he’d said it but he hated being lumped with “other men”. He’d seen women like this before. They do everything they can think of to attract men then despise them for falling for it. I have a brain too. I’m not just some bimbo. Yeah, whatever.

Annoyance at his comment flashed across her face but she recovered quickly and touched his arm, leaning toward him flirtatiously. “What makes you think I don’t like it?” She said in a subdued Lauren Bacall voice. He was still working on his comeback when she spoke again.

“So, I hear you were a big time athlete in college.”
“Where did you hear that?”

“I’ve seen you here before. I asked around.” She said. “Word is you were in the NBA until you quit. Why did you do that?”

“Don’t believe everything you hear.” Rudy said, annoyed, not willing to get into this conversation again. The girl was really irritating even if she did make him feel like a sailor on liberty.

“Kind of short for a basketball player, aren’t you?” She looked Rudy up and down as if she could measure him with calibrated eyes.

“I have that dreaded white man’s disease,” he said, faking humility, “I’m short but I can’t jump.”

“Cute.” She said then tipped her head back and drained her beer in one long gulp. “Well, Rudy, what do you say we go to your place and see if you can still sink the long jumper?” So much for small talk.

“What about your boyfriend?”

“He’ll get over it.” She said matter-of-factly. One day the big head would prevail over the little one but this wasn’t going to be the day.

“After you, ma’am” he said in his best John Wayne.

They spent the rest of the weekend sinking the long jumper, yo-yoing the belt high dribble and burying three-pointers. This was what passed for romance in those early days of the nineties.

When they finished their calisthenics the following night, Rudy lay on top of the covers, sweaty and spent while Circe headed to the bathroom to freshen up. She returned to his bed smelling of toothpaste and sporting eyes that were the cold gray of gun metal. Those stunning green eyes had been courtesy of Bausch and Lomb. Nothing about this woman was what it seemed and he wondered why that didn’t surprise him.

His instincts told him to run from this woman as fast and as far as possible and his instincts were seldom wrong. His worst mistakes were never because his instincts were off but because he ignored them. Reaching across the nightstand he switched off the lamp and settled into the covers. A sense of foreboding crept in with the darkness as he rolled over and searched for sleep.


The plane hit a pocket of turbulence and recoiled with a jolt, waking him from his Circe-haunted sleep. Outside his window there was only the blackest night and he wondered, not for the first time, just what in the world he was doing. Who knew that when he finally did run it would be this fast and this far?

© 2008. David Heiniger. All Right Reserved.