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A Dreamed Vacation Dedicated to Anu Submitted by R On a week night in Pittsburgh in February, after another long day at work, another jerky bus ride home through the slushy dark, and hurried frozen dinners eaten in front of the TV, it was hard to believe there exists a place like Hawaii. But Hawaii is what she wanted to hear about, again, once they'd crawled early into bed. "I'm just c-c-cold, not tired," she said through the comforter over her head. "Let's go to Hawaii tonight." She couldn't see him smile - his face was outside the covers - so he gave her a fast elbow squeeze. The room was so black that he didn't have to close his eyes to conjure scenes from the one trip he'd taken to Honolulu, long before they'd found each other. Now he couldn't even imagine going without her. "Well, put on your sandals," he said. "We're not staying right on the beach?" "No," he said with mock mpatience, "we're being frugal, remember? We're staying in the high-rise hotel, a few blocks back..." "But we like it," she chimed in, "because it feels like we're living in an apartment, and not just tourists." "Exactly!" he said, and they were off. Taking her hand, he led her across Ala Moana Boulevard, which was bustling with buses and scooters, on around the edge of a marina full of brightly bobbing boats, and onto the hot white sand at the west end of Waikiki Beach. "It's crowded," she said happily, snuggling closer, not wrapped now in a blanket, but lying on one in the sun. The water, too, was teeming with people, laughing and shouting and splashing against the dramatic backdrop of Diamond Head. After a while, they drove the rental car in that direction and on up around the island, stopping at roadside stands to share sweet spears of pineapple and sips of cool milk from a young fresh coconut. Mists hung in the jungle of trees around a Japanese temple, where he showed her how to get the carp and one brave sparrow to eat right out of her hand. Then they wound their way back through the rolling pineapple fields back to downtown Honolulu, where they dove into the exotic sights and smells of Chinatown. After watching a mango sun set over the harbor from Aloha Tower, they found their way back to Waikiki, where they sat down to a candlelit dinner in a tiny restaurant they'd discovered near their hotel. "There's nobody here but us," she whispered as she drifted off. "Exactly," he said and squeezed her hand. Reaching over to make sure she was tucked in, he thought about how he would really take her there someday. But now he had to fall asleep, so he could join her for the stroll back to their room along the breezy, moonlit beach.
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